rt rybak

It's that time again: Minneapolis has citywide elections (official site) every four years in the election "off-year." This year's election on November 3rd will have two new twists: the most dramatic change is the shift to Ranked Choice Voting or Instant Runoff Voting for city offices (promoted by FairVote MN); also, the Board of Estimates and Taxation may get dissolved by referendum, consolidating more power with the Mayor and City Council. [More: "The auditor would report to the audited"]

The official outreach website for the City's IRV is at VoteMinneapolis.org and they are tabling local events until Election Day. Find your precinct and sample ballot here. Multi-lingual election info is available en Español (Spanish), Hmoob (Hmong) and Soomaaliga (Somali) - call 311 or 612-673-3000 for language help. Public awareness of how it works, especially among disadvantaged communities, looks really bad right now.

What's on the ballot? Mayor, City Council wards, the 2 at-large members of the Board of Estimate and Taxation, and the Park and Recreation Board (3 At-Large & 6 District Commissioners). The vote is expected to take several weeks to completely count everything (one reason the city cites for not calling it "instant" runoff).

Will Ranked Choice Voting mix up Minneapolis' dull & entrenched political establishment? Probably, for one reason in particular: The word from inside the RT Rybak for "Mayor" campaign is that the highly paid consultants running everything are "lollygagging" around waiting for the 2010 governor's race to start, but they don't really care about the city races.

Below the fold, all the candidates and links for mayor... Going deeper: 2009 Minneapolis election rundown: City Council, our favorite shady local deals & more!

Rosemary Williams and four other Minnesota women have decided to resist the foreclosure and eviction monster that's destroying our communities.

People from the Twin Cities are helping these women defy eviction, the Hennepin County Sheriff, and the big banks that want to steal their homes. Produced by Twin Cities Indymedia and the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign. Here's the 110-second trailer; the full 12 minute video is posted below the fold...
 

110-second trailer URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGZCXaXSbbA
12-minute video URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQeNyVjHuvQ

Rosemary Williams, Linda Norenberg and thirty of their supporters crowded into Mayor Rybak's office on a rainy Wednesday morning. The mayor was out, it transpired.  So was his chief of staff.  Could the office call the mayor?  No.  "He doesn't have meetings with people who just stop in his office," said mayoral aide Erica Prosser.

"I'm losing my house, me and my kids are," said Norenberg, a Robbinsdale woman who is struggling to avoid foreclosure.  "We don't have time to wait for his schedule."

"We believe that if GMAC or US Bank or some other bank walked in here, the mayor would have a face to face, "Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign organizer Cheri Honkala told Prosser.

Latest (8/20): Anti-foreclosure activists crowd mayor's office; Rybak hides, doesn't support foreclosure moratorium.  "Call 311," says an aide.

Talks broke down between Rosemary Williams and the companies preventing her from owning her home, organizers revealed Tuesday at 3138 Clinton Ave.  But plans were also announced about how the eviction resistance will continue.

The offer from GMAC and Aurora Loan Services - two of the plethora of companies in the picture (a hard-to-follow flowchart was handed out on Tuesday) - was for Williams to rent the home, reportedly at $850 a month, for a mere 12-month period with no option to buy and no guarantees against a future rent increase. Without the deed to the property that she says she's paid for "a million times over," Williams considers the deal unacceptable.  Cheri Honkala called it "really not an offer."  As such, although fears of a raid don't seem to be on people's minds, a 24-hour presence at the home is still being maintained.

In response to the stalled talks - which were, admittedly, an improvement over GMAC's previous position offering $5,000 to end the campaign - PPEHRC and the People's Bailout Coalition are now planning a "major protest" at a different politically advantageous site each week in an attempt to force the issue and keep supporters active.  First up: Mayor RT Rybak's office at 11am on Wednesday (meeting first at the Government Plaza LRT Station on 5th Street).  Beyond that, Honkala hinted at plans to take the fight to Pittsburgh for the upcoming G20 summit resistance (schedule/organizing bodies, latest organizing update), at which an economic justice march has been scheduled for Saturday, September 20 preceding other marches and actions the entire next week, and shortly thereafter to an action in Washington, DC.

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