Voices for Racial Justice: Our statement on the 2023 legislative session
As the 2023 legislative session comes to a close, Voices for Racial Justice joins our communities in celebrating dozens of historic bills - now laws! - that are inching us toward a more racially just Minnesota. These victories include:
Drivers licenses for all
Free school breakfasts and lunches
Restoring the vote to over 55,000 of our formerly incarcerated community members
Protecting our trans community members and ensuring access to gender-affirming care
Enshrining the right to abortion care access in our state constitution
Gun control measures
Cannabis legalization and expungement
Expanding MinnesotaCare to include undocumented immigrants
Paid sick days and paid family and medical leave
Automatic voter registration
Free public college for Minnesota families making less than $80,000
Free prison phone calls
Allowing the residents of East Phillips to transform the Roof Depot into an Urban Farm
Banning forever chemicals
100% Clean Energy by 2040
Lead pipe replacement
Child tax credit that will cut child poverty by one third
$1 billion investment in affordable housing
Summer unemployment insurance for hourly school workers
Increased and more accessible renters’ tax credit and expansion of the student loan tax credit
Prescription Drug Affordability Board
Grain indemnity fund for farmers
Public School funding increased
Permanent funding for the Community Solution Grant Program
Allocation of funding for community safety grant programs
Enhance Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act
Establishment of office for Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls
Ethnic Studies
These victories are a culmination of decades of organizing and advocacy for change and investment in Black, brown, Indigenous, and LGBTQ people.
The VRJ policy team has focused heavily on democracy and civic engagement over the past several years because we knew that if we flexed our collective power we could present our elected leaders with a mandate for community investment and care. Together, we made it clear that we would hold them accountable to their campaign promises.
Our collective solidarity and power felt more tangible than ever this year. And, the insidiousness of racial capitalism was still on full display as corporations like Mayo Clinic and Uber won out over their employees and the public. Workers deserve to be cared for and supported, and next session we need to continue to rally with them and grow our collective power so that our laws protect people instead of profits.
We encourage our communities to seize this moment as an invitation to dream bigger, to imagine what else we can cultivate to support future generations of organizers and expand our access to and influence in decision-making spaces. Civic engagement and democracy don’t end with election seasons or legislative sessions - they are a way of being in relationship with each other, caring for each other, and making sure that we’re all equipped to show up, together, to continue to build the abundant and just world that we dream of.
With gratitude for the ancestors who’ve brought us to this moment and for the community care and organizing that have sustained and strengthened us, and with promises to continue fighting for the future ~