Challenging Inequity With Integrity

Commentary by Alicia Gibson | March 5, 2023
 
Editor’s Note: Alicia Gibson is an Adjunct Professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, community advocate, public intellectual, and mom. She ran for the Ward 10 Minneapolis City Council seat in 2021. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers.
 
Growing up in Oklahoma as the outspoken progressive was risky business. Each time I stood up for reproductive freedom or against hate I knew I would be a target. I also knew my best chance to change minds and also to simply survive would be to outwit, but also to connect as personally and genuinely as I could with those whose politics I vehemently rejected. Perhaps navigating the contours of extreme political disagreement is a particular inheritance of mine. My own grandparent’s relationship was born of political violence: my grandfather was an American GI stationed in Tokyo and my grandmother was a Japanese operator working extra shifts to help her family survive in a city that had been largely destroyed by American firebombing. They were both people of passionate feeling and argued endlessly about the war. Later as a conflict resolution scholar, mentored by a Middle East peace expert, I learned to tell the signs of democracies in crisis: do people have relationships with whom they disagree? How quickly do political differences turn violent? 

One does not have to be a peace scholar to discern the signs that our country is a democracy in crisis. The election of Donald Trump to the presidency marked a dangerous turn; we have watched in horror as violent language and threats from the ideological right turn into real violence. The critical task of the moment is to acknowledge the depth of this political crisis. Violent rhetoric and tactics have become so normalized that it is now also employed by those on the ideological left, even among those who say they prioritize a “politics of care,” who champion “inclusion,” and who see themselves as inheritors of the Civil Rights Movement. 

In Minneapolis the violence bubbled over onto the surface after a city council vote that I myself disagree with. Instead of letting the voices of the community leaders stand on their own (I encourage everyone to read the press release from the Minnesota Urban Indian Directors), and allowing for the political process to unfold peacefully (see Rep. Hodan’s efforts at the state legislature), violent threats were hurled at council members and their families. One council member was trapped on an escalator with a phone shoved in her face while someone screamed profanities at her. 

It’s important to understand the several ways in which this violence fails us. First, it does not further the cause. Instead, it creates noise and distraction away from those we should hear clearly. Second, it pushes those who disagree on the issue further away – the message becomes repugnant as does the cause. Third, it further disincentivizes political participation by anyone other than angry ideologues with axes to grind. In a healthy democracy our representatives look like us; they are not necessarily career politicians but rather come from a variety of professional and life experiences. If we are serious about creating systems of care preferably our political representatives come to us as caregivers and peacemakers, and not as warriors out to burn it all down with shields of dogma in which they encase themselves from disagreement. 

There is no doubt that addressing systemic inequities and the harms they have caused comes with a unique challenge: how do we do this work with integrity? If we are to do anything other than reproduce the same cycle of winners and losers and pain and rage, it is a challenge we must accept and meet.

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About Alicia Gibson

Alicia Gibson is an Adjunct Professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, community advocate, public intellectual, and mom. She ran for the Ward 10 Minneapolis City Council seat in 2021. She has a BA in International Studies from American University, a JD from the University of CO School of Law, and a PhD in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Minneapolis. She has lived in South Africa and studied the Truth and Reconciliation Process, worked in the field of environmental and federal Indian law, served as a district court law clerk, and taught critical thinking and writing at the university level.