“I Don’t Horse-trade. You Can Vote for Saving Lives – or Not”

Interview with Robin Wonsley by Ty Moore

Robin Wonsley, DSA Minneapolis City Councilmember, on her first year in office and her independence from the Democratic Party. 

I want to start with the big labor news this week: the vote in Congress, led by the Democratic Party, to impose a bad contract on rail workers and ban them from going on strike. Three of the four DSA members in Congress voted with the Biden administration on this, which has created a real uproar in DSA. What are your thoughts?

There’s definitely valid anger coming from working-class people, especially members in DSA, towards the Squad for an action that absolutely seems like a betrayal of the working class. Basically siding with railroad companies in a capitalist party over the needs of railroad workers. I think this is indicative of an ongoing struggle that’s been happening within DSA on how to truly keep in check the electoral power that we’ve built, all the way to the federal level.

What does it look like to have checks and balances on candidates and elected leaders that we’re putting into office, who are supposed to be representing a socialist vision, a socialist platform, and the will of the people? And when our electeds are in violation of that, what do we do to hold them accountable? 

Last year in Chicago, there was a DSA-elected alderman who voted for an austerity budget, a betrayal of working people. The DSA chapter in Chicago publicly called him out and told him to resign from DSA. I’m seeing similar proposals come forward in response to the railroad vote too. I’m hoping that our leadership within DSA don’t shy away from this debate because it’s not going away!

If we don’t wholeheartedly lay down the expectation that as a socialist you are choosing the people every single time, it’s gonna be DSA’s demise.

I think when you are attached to the Democratic Party, you’re forced into trying to serve two masters. You’re going to be pulled between trying to uphold the interests of a political party beholden to capitalist forces while also trying to serve the interests of working class people. You’re going to ask: is there a way I could maintain this middle ground between the people and the capitalist forces to somehow advance a leftist agenda, a socialist agenda? 

If we don’t wholeheartedly lay down the expectation that as a socialist you are choosing the people every single time, it’s gonna be DSA’s demise. 

Why did you decide to run independent of the Democratic Party, to take a path most would consider to be harder, when so many DSA candidates have found success running on the Democratic Party line?

My decision to run for office solidified during the uprising that took place in 2020, following the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd. That uprising was a clear marker that the Democratic party establishment had failed working-class people and Bblack and brown people once again. Prior to George Floyd, I had been organizing against police violence and for anti-capitalist proposals that would uplift working class people, primarily Blackblack and brown people, like the fight for a $15 minimum wage, and for fully-funded public schools.

I can’t do the work of strengthening working class people’s political power, from within the Democratic Party.

Every single one of those struggles that I participated in wasn’t against Republicans. It’s always been against liberal Democrats. And we’re talking about the kind of liberal Dems who love symbolic gestures and hate action. They are at all the events during Black History Month. They’re signing all the Juneteenth proclamations. And then when a Bblack person gets killed and working-class people and Bblack and brown people are in the streets saying “you ain’t gonna kill us no more,” they are the ones authorizing the cops to deploy tear gas against them, to brutalize folks, to silence dissent.

So for me it was very clear. I can’t do the work of holding this capitalist system accountable, of extracting necessary resources for working people, of strengthening working class people’s political power, from within the Democratic Party. 

 I also was able to galvanize a number of Marxist and socialist friends who have been part of all sorts of struggles with me. And if my campaign was going to be successful, I was going to need them on my team. We knew independent political organizing was how we’d already won some of the most monumental working class victories in this city, like the $15 minimum wage.

And we figured, why the hell not? We all have skills in running campaigns. We know how to put together a socialist, Marxist program. We know how to build broad popular support around working-class demands. So having a team of seasoned Marxist organizers was also very critical to my decision to run independent, knowing that we could put up a successful fight.

It was a really close, hard-fought battle with a candidate backed by the Democratic party, and business came in a close second to you. Tell me a bit more about how the Democratic Party responded to your run.

We saw the conservative wing of the DFL [Democratic Farmer-Labor Party is what Democrats in Minnesota call themselves] not only target my race – they ran a whole slate of candidates. They ran candidates against most of the incumbents who stood on the protest stage after George Floyd’s murder and made that declaration to defund the police.

So they made this a referendum on “do you support the police or not?” Mayor Jacob Frey’s conservative DFL machinery really galvanized a whole slate of candidates who were out saying that they would do whatever was needed to build support and credibility for the MPD again. Even though it was MPD who caused our city to burn down. Even though the Minneapolis police had triggered protests in every single state across the US and in 70 countries around the world. 

Again, these were not Republican candidates. The political rhetoric and tactics they used came straight from the Democratic establishment political playbook. You know, the usual fear-mongering, racist, counter-revolutionary playbook that corporate Democrats have used to gain electoral power for decades. Returning to my race though, one tactic that the Democratic establishment threw our way to try to block us from winning was stripping our campaign of its VAN access [a voter outreach database] five weeks before the election. My campaign knew that our pathway to victory would depend on running a top-notch field operation. Democratic leadership quickly learned that too, and hoped that taking away our voter engagement database would promptly weaken our field operations and overall chances of winning. But they underestimated the brilliance and ingenuity of my badass Marxist team, who quickly got us a new voter database while also upholding our strong field plan. 

Another tactic they employed was sending a Jacob Frey approved, corporate-backed DFL candidate into our race. And their candidate’s campaign was modeled straight from the Democratic establishment playbook, but with a liberal twist. Their candidate was a woman of color and former immigrant, who could speak beautifully about the need for mass affordable housing, while also firmly stating her opposition to popular housing policies like Rent Control, which was widely supported by ordinary people across Minneapolis. 

The corporate Democratic machinery had hoped that her candidacy would split the progressive vote in Ward 2, and sis did give us a run for our money. Had my campaign not run the strong field game that we did, I would not be talking to you now as a Minneapolis Council Member. I should also mention that even after winning our race, sis and the conservative Democratic machinery that backed her contested the election results via an extensive recount process. Unsurprisingly, those were very stressful times, but in the end I got the bragging rights of being the only candidate to have won their race three times. 

With more and more DSA candidates winning office in recent years, there’s been a lot of discussion about the pressure that comes down on elected officials – pressure to engage in horse-trading insider politics which leads even some socialists to vote for anti-worker policies. What has been your experience over the last year with these pressures, and how have you dealt with them?

I think that’s a core part of politics, the horse trading. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, as a way of ascending power within local government, which is an extension of capitalist rule. Those are the expected rules of the game. 

One thing that’s helped me is that in every fight, people know where I stand. And it’s not to say I won’t work with my political opponents. But the basis of our work is gonna be, “How is this going to empower working-class people? How is this policy or budget request going to take from the already powerful and rich and give it to those in need?” When I approach my colleagues about something, they know it’s gonna be a strong political proposal for working-class people, and that I don’t horse-trade votes.

For instance, just this budget cycle I brought forward amendments that totaled about one and a half million dollars. And the biggest chunk of it was a $1.2 million amendment to fund fire suppression for four Minneapolis public housing high rise apartments.

This is in response to the deadly fire of 2019 that claimed five lives, public housing resident lives – because of divestments, those fire suppression fixtures were not updated. As a champion of public housing, I had the opportunity this budget cycle to get dollars to public housing, to a public asset. 

I knew it was gonna be a fight, but I brought the proposal and I met with every single colleague about it. And never did I say, “hey, if you vote for this, I’ll vote for your thing.” I maintained the line: “you might not support it, that’s fine. But at the end of the day, people shouldn’t have to risk losing their lives because they live in public housing. So you can vote for saving lives – or not.” That was my line. And because I held that line, we eventually won the amendment. 

We aren’t afraid to bring forward the things working class people need and, win or lose, make our colleagues vote on it.

I think that example shows what independent politics is about. Some of my progressive colleagues were not on board with my amendment initially because they thought it wouldn’t win. But when they saw we had this prime opportunity to actually advance something meaningful for working class people, they all rose to the challenge. The other progressives started whipping support amongst city staff and the council conservatives for my budget amendment . And the collective solidarity that my progressive colleagues showed during the budget vote absolutely helped get my budget amendment passed. 

Where do you get leverage, if not from trading votes and scratching colleagues’ backs? 

One leverage point for my team is our mantra of “fuck it.” We aren’t afraid to bring forward the things working class people need and, win or lose, make our colleagues vote on it. We’re not afraid of taking “L’s” or forcing our colleagues to take bad votes. And best believe, we’re gonna do all the work necessary to not give our colleagues any meaningless excuses to vote our stuff down. We’re gonna talk to everyone, we’re gonna talk to the staff and external partners, we’re gonna remove any ammunition that folks will use, like petty personal stuff. When our proposals come up for a vote, you are going to have to vote it down because you hate poor people. So that’s my role. We’re gonna bring the proposal and you are gonna have to reveal yourself and where you stand. 

Traditionally, elected officials absolutely hate taking losing votes, but my team doesn’t care. And our “fuck it” disposition scares the shit out of Democrats across the spectrum. They hate having to publicly air their political grievances and disagreements . Democrats hate having to say: “I hate poor people, I hate renters, I hate homeless people.” They hate being put in that predicament. 

So the fact that we will bring a proposal to a vote, win or lose, is a different approach than our progressive or even DSA colleagues. We see this again and again in DSA – for instance around the Medicare for All debate. The squad was being asked to bring Medicare for All to a vote in Congress. And what we heard from Squad members and others in DSA was that they shouldn’t because it was gonna lose. It’s this idea that we should only bring forward palatable things, or proposals we know will win.

Ultimately the greatest leverage that a leftist elected official has is the people

There was a contingency of socialists who were saying, no, take the vote. Make elected leaders have to reveal what side they are on. Are you siding with big pharma, are you okay with people dying? Or are you on the side of the people, who need healthcare, universal healthcare – who needed it yesterday? Take the vote and trust that the people will organize from there.

This is why my office loves when working-class people come to City hall and disrupt business as usual by occupying the chambers or shutting down Council meetings. We encourage that, because ultimately the greatest leverage that a leftist elected official has is the people. This is why my team ran on making city hall a place that prioritizes working-class people’s needs, and that cannot happen through simply horse-trading and sharing nice words with my colleagues; it has to happen through struggle. 

I think liberal democrats often see themselves as mediators for working class people. As an Independent Socialist, I see things differently. I’m forever beholden to the will of the people. That baseline understanding serves to remind me that I’m on the inside to be the amplifier of working-class people’s needs and struggles. I’m there not to simply have a seat at the table – I’m there to do everything I can to ensure that working people are building the table and setting the table. I feel so honored that I get to do that work alongside so many brilliant folks across the city, to create real and lasting transformative change for working-class people.