Over the past decade, our city has been a battleground for transformative policy. We’ve passed a labor standards board, a community-led department of public safety and rent stabilization. These weren't just policy proposals; they were blueprints for a city where working people could actually survive and thrive. But time and again, these fights have been sabotaged by a Mayor's office captured by corporate interests, by proxy campaigns bankrolled to protect the powerful and by a city hall rigged to shut out the people it claims to serve.
And while we watch obstruction plays out in the halls of power, Black and Brown workers are left holding the bill. As workers we ask for nothing extraordinary, except the ability to provide for our families. And yet, year after year we are being crushed between record inflation, a federal occupation, and an authoritarian state that answers only to billionaires and the corporations that do their bidding.
We’ve had enough.
As the working class of Minneapolis, the people who build this city-who clean it, feed it, and keep it running-we deserve more than crumbs and empty promises.
We deserve a new deal.
ONE City ONE Future: A New Deal for Minneapolis
The racial wealth gap in the Twin Cities tells the whole story: the median white household holds more than 7 times the wealth of the median Black household. Life expectancy shifts by as much as 10 years depending on your ZIP code. These are not random outcomes. They are the direct result of policy choices, and lack of policy choices that our city has made over decades.
We’re demanding a $25 wage, a corporate wealth tax, Just Cause Eviction protections and Municipal Grocery Stores. These policies aren’t a wishlist, they're a blueprint for the kind of city that honors its residents. These policies are the future of Minneapolis, where wealth stops flowing in one direction and starts working for the people who actually generate it.
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We are demanding a $25 minimum wage not as a ceiling, but as a floor. At $25/hour, a full-time worker earns around $52,000 a year. That's not wealth. That's stability. That's rent dropping back to 30% of income. That's a parent who doesn't have to choose between keeping the lights on and feeding their kids. And it means Black workers, immigrant workers, and service workers stop being forced to subsidize billion-dollar corporations with their poverty.
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Some Minneapolis neighborhoods have four or five full-service grocery stores within a mile. Others, particularly in North Minneapolis, have none. Residents in food-scarce neighborhoods can spend 30 to 60 minutes on transit just to reach fresh produce, in a city where food prices have surged over 20% since 2020.
This is the predictable outcome of leaving food access to the whims of private profit.
Municipal Grocery Stores are a direct strike against that logic. Models from other cities of city-owned community centered grocery stores show staple goods priced 10–20% lower when you strip out corporate markups and speculative pricing. These stores also mean union jobs, local sourcing, and food security that doesn't evaporate the moment a corporate chain decides a neighborhood isn't profitable enough.
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After pandemic protections ended, Hennepin County saw over 14,000 eviction filings in 2023 alone,most of them for just a few hundred dollars in unpaid rent. Eviction isn't just losing a home, it's a permanent mark that follows families for years, locking them out of future housing, jobs, and financial stability. It is, in practice, a poverty trap with a landlord's signature on it.
Just Cause Eviction protection cuts that trap off at the source. It says simply: a landlord must have a legitimate reason (nonpayment, a real lease violation, necessary occupancy) to remove a tenant, not just profit motive. Housing is a human right, not a revenue stream, and our city's policy should reflect that.
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Minneapolis is home to a multitude of Fortune 500 corporations (General Mills, Target, U.S. Bancorp, Best Buy etc) that pull in tens of billions in annual revenue from our city and its people. And yet, many workers can't survive without public assistance. Nationally, taxpayers shell out an estimated $150 billion a year subsidizing poverty wages through SNAP and Medicaid, the same programs that are now being gutted by Trump's agenda in Washington.
A Municipal Wealth Tax would generate tens of millions annually for Minneapolis. That money belongs here, to us. It should be reinvested in housing, food access, and the local economy, not extracted upward to enrich shareholders who've never set foot in North Minneapolis.
Minneapolis is home to some of the nation’s best organizers! Join us and get plugged into a network of like-minded members of the community who are working together to demand a just and thriving city for everyone in Minneapolis.
A better future for us all is still ours to claim!