Roseville, Minnesota is a city situated between Minneapolis and St. Paul. It may only have 36,000 residents, but it is officially recognized as a city, complete with municipal government. As of about 2016, nearly one-third of Roseville’s population was non-white. Yet the city council was composed of four middle-aged white members. Dannah Waukazo Thompson wanted to change that.
Thompson, a 28-year-old Native American activist and paralegal, entered the race to represent minorities and to fight for justice and equality in Roseville. She decided to run for Roseville City Council with no political background, mentoring, or funding. She took on the municipal political sphere by herself. Impressively, she came within 800 votes of winning a council seat from incumbent Bob Willmus.
Thompson recently moved to Roseville. She works as a paralegal at a debt collection firm, but she was a political science major in college and has always had an interest in the political world. Part of many local activist groups, Dannah devotes much of her time to the betterment of the community.
Dannah said that there were many push factors that led her to run for City Council. Dannah cited events such as Trump’s election and police shootings of young black men including Jamar Clark and Philando Castile as events that stirred up civic engagement in her community. This engagement took the form of protests, teach-ins and talk-back events, and increased dialogue with local politicians.
Amidst this, she said that she, “wanted to be somebody who would be able to bring a change to the system so that we could take a break and not have to fight for our lives all the time and could make systemic changes that could possibly save lives”.
Dannah faced an uphill battle from the start. While campaigning, some people—including the other council candidates—told her not to talk about the fact that she is Native American. Some even told her not to focus on the fact that she is a woman. But Dannah believed that her own experiences as a Native woman could bring progressive changes to the rapidly growing city.
By focusing on issues like affordable housing, higher minimum wage, and removing criminal background checks from rental application processes, she was able to bring attention to issues that disproportionately affect minority communities. For example, with affordable housing, Dannah researched possible city funding sources as well as racial bias in the housing process in order to create a multifaceted and feasible solution for Roseville.
“By talking about minority issues,” she explained, “I was able to bring attention to the problems affecting indigenous communities like Natives as well as other minority groups”. She brought together her professional knowledge and experience with her identity to engage minority communities and encourage white communities to think about these issues of inequality.
While Dannah’s race was just for a small city council, the political sphere she was entering was one still fraught with tension after the 2016 elections. Dannah has many white coworkers who voted for President Trump for business reasons. Those votes felt like a betrayal to her and her minority coworkers. This made Dannah think more about who needed to represent Roseville’s citizens in coming years. Supported by social justice groups in Roseville and civic engagement in Minneapolis, Dannah was driven to be a new kind of politician.
Aside from Trump’s election, Dannah was also greatly influenced by local politics, such as Jacob Frey’s victory in 2016 mayoral election in Minneapolis. Frey was elected mayor with the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party endorsement, and many touted him as being the progressive candidate for the race. Recently, he has made affordable housing one of his main issues as well.
Yet Dannah noted that Frey was behind a lot of new fancy condos built around Minneapolis before he was elected—and on his website he listed ‘residential expansion’ as one of his main issues. With rent prices already skyrocketing in the Twin Cities, Frey’s luxury condos pushed up the cost of living in Minneapolis even more. This rent crisis exacerbated a Native American homelessness, culminating a homeless encampment located in downtown Minneapolis. More privileged communities saw Frey based on his campaign platform alone, unaware of his history in Minneapolis. Struggling minority groups couldn’t avoid that history, and now face the consequences.
This inspired Dannah to run as a candidate who followed through with promises to specifically help minority communities in Roseville. Dannah said that she was taught in her life to always think seven generations ahead. While Mayor Frey in Minneapolis may not have thought ahead when he built those luxury condos, Dannah ran to serve the City of Roseville now and in the future. She also ensured all of her campaign promises were all backed up with thoroughly researched and sustainable financial plans.
The City of Roseville did not make it easy on candidates. There was only one public speaking event for council candidates, held before the primaries by a third party to increase voter participation. The candidates did not know at the time if they would be on the ballot. The City of Roseville did not hold on any formal election events. That made it difficult to get word out about the candidates, and it gave an advantage to incumbents and candidates with more funding.
One thing is evident about Dannah; although she is just over 5 feet tall, she is not to be underestimated. She said that what her opponents may not realize is, she still got 6,200 votes. In Dannah’s words, “that’s not nothing”.
Dannah may have lost her political race, but she says that she remains hopeful. After the 2018 midterms, seeing a record number of women as well as Native American women win their elections has given her hope to keep fighting, and has bolstered her spirit so she isn’t actually too disappointed about losing.
Dannah Thompson is clearly here for the long fight; and to anyone considering following her footsteps into the political sphere, whether municipal, federal, or global, Dannah advises: “when in doubt just go for it because there’s never going to be too many people trying to save the world”.
Images:
https://www.facebook.com/Dannah-Thompson-for-Roseville-City-Council-430548354038194/