Perspective: Will Minneapolis learn from the failed handling of its last uprising?
“to take the handcuffs off the police.” Indeed, the Times pointed out that the new mayor was “a policeman, committed to strengthening the power of the police” in a city wracked with racial tensions. On election night, the openly religious Stenvig called for morality and order in public life and crowed that “my chief adviser is going to be God.
” Stenvig’s shocking ascension as a law-and-order politician reflected the deep structural racism in the city. Close analysis of the 1969 election results showed that Stenvig drew strong support from Democrats and Republicans alike living in white neighborhoods. Those white neighborhoods had resulted from the widespread use of to confine African Americans to only two small areas of the city. Stenvig’s anti-establishment approach even attracted white voters who otherwise ignored municipal elections.— a new iteration of white supremacy — now animated voters. Naftalin’s effort to bring business executives and experts together with young African American leaders and civil rights organizations in the wake of the 1967 unrest had threatened the racial status quo and alienated many whites in the city. As a union president, Stenvig brought working-class voters into coalition with more conservative Republicans. Together, they replaced the Democratic establishment “elites” with a shared adherence to Stenvig’s stated affinity for “the golden rule.”Yet this affinity remained rhetorical. During his first term, Stenvig did little to address discrimination and consistently protected the police department’s interest. In his 1971 campaign for reelection, Stenvig repeatedly used racially loaded terms such as “hoodlums” and “burning and looting” to ensure that white voters across the city did not forget the 1967 uprisings. The dog-whistle strategy proved potent. He decisively defeated W. Harry Davis — the most prominent African American civil rights leader in the state — for a second two-year term. Soon after his reelection, Stenvig settled the long-standing labor dispute between the city and the police department in the officers’ favor. Meanwhile, African Americans and American Indians in Minneapolis continued to experience disproportionate police harassment and brutality. Stenvig lost in 1973 to his Democratic opponent. Yet voters returned him to the mayor’s office for a third term in 1975. By then, Stenvig’s calls for Christian morality in public life sparked a new municipal focus on pornographic bookstores and, in particular, the people who frequented them as a rare safe space. Stenvig’s political career finally came to an end when he lost the 1977 mayoral election. The police effort toStenvig did more than embody white backlash politics in Minneapolis. He — often backed by a majority of the city’s voters — institutionalized it. Stenvig’s use of the mayor’s office for much of the 1970s to protect officers from external oversight cemented the police union’s powerful presence in city politics. In the 1980s, Democratic Mayor Donald Fraser turned to a reformer from New York City to transform policing. The new chief, Tony Bouza, faced union opposition at every turn. In 1985, the Minneapolis Star Tribune openly wondered in an editorial “whether the mayor and the council will control the police department or whether power will shift to the police union.” Many white voters in the city continued to stand behind the police union. During the 1990s, when the New York Times dubbed Minneapolis “Murderapolis” because of its high murder rate, officers consistently pointed to the need for law and order as white residents fled the city for the suburbs. Multiple attempts to increase civilian oversight fell short as the union expertly exerted political pressure in city council races.
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