Source: In These Times
by Alex Han
“In 2023, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party held a slim, single-seat majority in the Minnesota State Senate and control of the State House and Governor’s Mansion. It had been a decade since the last Democratic trifecta in the state, which like many similar moments of prior eras, produced only incremental wins for progressives and the Left. Since the financial crisis and Great Recession of the early Obama era, a core group of community and union organizers in Minnesota had been building what they called ‘alignment’. It would go beyond the traditional coalitions so many of us were used to — ones coalesced around a single fight but too pragmatic to inspire people to action. Real power building, I was told, would require something different: An ability to work across organizations and ideologies while holding up bigger sets of common, universal demands.” (03/19/26)