Time for justice and accountability

After this past election, we have the opportunity to avenge Minnesotans we lost and bring justice and accountability. 

I distinguish avenge from revenge — the latter being a bloodlust, and often selfish. To avenge is to punish the evildoer in pursuit of justice for the wronged. 

U.S. Sen.-elect Peggy Flanagan will avenge Minnesota by “ripping ICE apart,” the vetoes be damned.

Justice is the legal, moral application of due process to avenge for criminal acts. Black and brown Minnesotans, both citizens and undocumented, deserve justice for how this federal administration has attacked their security and livelihoods, tearing apart families and sending Minnesotans to countries and continents they have never been to.

Yes, Democrats have a 100-day agenda and tsunami mandate to undo the harms of this federal administration. End the war. Roll back all the tariffs and restore Congress’ sole authority to tax. Restore funding for food benefits like SNAP and WIC, after cuts hurt working families and strained food banks across the country. Reverse cuts to Medicaid and ACA subsidies which ended coverage for disabled people and made health care coverage unaffordable for millions of families by raising premiums by at times hundreds of dollars a month.

In Minnesota, Gov.-elect Amy Klobuchar has promised to prioritize passing and signing comprehensive gun safety reform, the U.S. Supreme Court be damned. Nothing will bring back State Rep. Melissa Hortman and the victims at Annunciation, but a DFL trifecta can ban weapons of war from being used to murder more Minnesotans.

But let us be absolutely clear. When Minnesotans like Flanagan say we will “avenge Minnesota,” they mean we will investigate, prosecute and bring to justice the agents of the federal administration who contributed to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and harmed all of us in ways large and small. The sacrifices of Good, Pretti, and countless others will not be forgotten. They will not have died in the snow, blood in ice crystals, and buried in the earth for us to take half-measures and let killers go free.

My sources in state government say that part of the reason why it took just days to bring charges against Derek Chauvin for the 2020 murder of George Floyd compared to nearly a year for the killers in 2026 is because Chauvin was a local cop. To charge two federal agents on state murder charges is nearly unheard of, and retribution from the Trump administration is a concern.

After the midterms, Trump and Vance are in full retreat. They are blaming each other. Bring the charges. Bring justice to Minnesota.

We have a great task before us. The late Sen. Paul Wellstone taught us that politics was the practice of improving people’s lives and that we can make what was once impossible, possible through organizing neighbors around common values. Flanagan will now hold the Wellstone seat in the U.S. Senate. Minnesota and every neighborhood across this country has sacrificed. We donated to friends and family to stretch the food budget. We delivered diapers and baby formula to families we didn’t know because we recognized their humanity. When there was a blood emergency, we donated blood in the bus parked by the grocery store because somebody, somewhere needed that blood.

The day after the election, Gov. Tim Walz quietly visited the memorials to Good and Pretti in south Minneapolis. He said on social media that he was “inspired to see all those who showed up to pay their respects and leave an ‘i voted’ sticker.”

He added: “We have not forgotten. Accountability is coming.”