A long-time friend of this blog attended Mayor Hodges’ official city anti-Trump town hall meeting last night at Shir Tikvah, on Minnehaha Parkway in Minneapolis:

Rabbi Latz welcomed us, and Mayor Hodges mentioned that Minneapolis was not always such a welcoming place for Jews. Ah yes I note the victimization of various groups started early.

But no worse than the victimization of the audience.

More below the jump.

The crowd was about 80-100, mostly white I’d estimate about 10% African American, I noticed no Asian-Americans, few Latinos, no South Asians, mostly older. About 5 or 6 city council members were welcomed. There is likely a tape of the speech as there was a formal camera on the podium the whole time. If you watch I hope you get compensated for hazardous duty pay differential.

So Mayor Hodges began by saying we live in unique place in history as over half of the world’s population live in cities. Donald Trump (DT will be my shorthand) are the prime targets of his attacks. The mayor’s message is that Mpls will be a beacon for the rest of the country. Then she flipped to page two of her speech but it was missing so there was a brief intermission while her aide brought it up to the podium.
So the first order in the Time of Trump (TOT will be my shorthand) is to defend communities that are under attack. Then she started going through the list of victim groups starting with Transgendered GLBT community. Must stand with these vulnerable transgendered youth so the big move is to put in some more bathrooms.

The next victim group mentioned are immigrants. The mayor pledged again that the police will not ask people their immigration status. The city is going to put up $50,000 to find out communication gaps in the immigrant community. City will partner with faith based groups like ISAIAH to offer sanctuary. If DT comes after immigrant communities, “He’ll have to come through me.”

Muslims were particularly singled out for protection. If DT starts a registry of Muslims, the mayor said, “I’ll be the first to sign up.”

Next group was people with disabilities. DT mocked a disabled reporter. The city is upgrading its ADA compliance.

The next group of victims were the Jewish Community. DT “has given open license to anti-semetic groups nationwide. Anti-Semitic attacks are up sharply since January. The mayor did not mention the rise in anti-semetic attacks during the first few years of Obama’s presidency. Oh well.

The City council and the mayor anticipated increasing hate crime attacks. She then said that the city is hiring another hate crimes investigator. If you experience hate crimes, we will investigate. Hmmmm I think I can guarantee the number of hate crimes investigated will go up. Can you say “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

OK back to the list of victims. Next were women (womyn?). Big push to increase the city workforce from 29% women to 45% women. I would use Steven Hayward’s idea of just declaring that 20% of the men are simply in-the closet pre-surgery transgenders and voila we have achieved the goal. Anyway the mayor says there is outright misogyny in the TOT.

The attacks are appalling. It is the standard conservative agenda: lower taxes, repeal of universal healthcare, anti-choice for women’s control of their own body, etc. But it’s worse DT has an agenda of suppression, centralizing power in the white house, cause chaos, suppress dissent. The White house website was “scrubbed” of references to clean energy… There is encouragement to suppress peaceful protests. “But I say not in my country, not in my city.”

So the victim list was done and now she began to lay out the agenda.

First in TOT: encourage voting. City had highest percentage turnout in 48 years. I note that in my 35 years in Minneapolis, the Democrats have been solidly in charge. Who was in charge 48 years ago? Let’s put them back in. Back to the message…The mayor wants MORE early voting. Need to get voters out to defeat DT.

Second in TOT need to lift up journalists. The city will be more responsive to release information from requests. She particularly called out Peter Callahan who has had to wait to long for his requests to get fulfilled. The city will be commited to getting information out there.

Third in TOT lift up peaceful protests. In Mpls the police and peaceful protesters work together. State legislature is trying to suppress peaceful protests.

Fourth in TOT is to lift up artists. We need them more than ever. DT wants to silence them, cutting their funding. Mayor is meeting with the main arts groups to find out their needs.

The Mayor is committed to the goal of “One Minneapolis.” The city is in the forefront of being attacked in the TOT. She said we don’t need just resistance but love and compassion.

Here she worked in some sentence about not allowing our enemies to disrupt our elections.

Then she threw out the olive branch, though I was probably the only one in the room she could have given it to. She said not to attack our brothers and sisters who voted for DT as they feel vulnerable too. The crowd had a nice round of applause.

So she said, “Minneapolis in TOT, this is our call.” She recounted the last time she had been at Shir Tikvah was the night of the inauguration. The lesson was from the book of Exodus using that as an analogy of the new Pharaoh who ordered that all male Hebrew baby boys to be killed. A nursemaid performed the first act of resistance by saving the baby Moses. She went through the story strongly mentioning that the world was robbed of those baby boys and their talents. I thought but you support abortion rights and don’t mention the millions of babies in our time killed and the world robbed of their talents. But obviously the mayor was unable to connect those obvious dots.

Anyway she thanked us for coming and ended at about 8:30. There were no questions. Hmmmm, she had complained earlier about DT picking and choosing which news organizations he’d allow into briefings. Yet she took no questions? Well at least she was fair and excluded everybody.

Submitted for your use however you want. It was a painful experience. Please let the team know I took one for them.

Secretive enemies in a grand conspiracy against the Mothercity.  Carefuly shaped narrative that can not be questioned.

This is all sounding familiar.