No one served in public to steal money from children. But soon after I became the state government official, that was exactly how I could do.
It happened a few years ago, at the length of Covid-19 pandemic. Many high school students support their families through the entire job- or part-time jobs that have recently become unemployed due to pandemic-era business restrictions. Minnesota’s economic agency, which I am watching for Gov. Tim Walz, it sent workers to job insurance charges – according to a 1939 state law, they are not eligible for them.
Our agency sends letters to the students to claw the cash-and I know we’ve done that, I’m home. Like other workers who have lost jobs, many of the young people use job checks to feed their families and keep the winter hot.
But the next thing has happened to give me a changed hope for the ability of people in our divided country to resolve problems – especially at the local level.
A little explanation of how I’ve been to the center of this disorder: after careers working in Silicon Valley, my wife, and I did not return to my state in Minnesota, where I did not last for 20 years. I left my Google career, and joined the state government – shocked if I could have something unique to paper as a stranger.
Pandemies following a year later, with George Floyd’s murder a few miles from our new house, brought this new chapter of my life with hyperdrive. I find myself working on new colleagues to solve the crisis after the crisis, often without the playbook.
Minnesota’s insurance program insurance program, which I have run, one of them. The program is a line of life to many of my new neighbors, but the anti-old law that prevents us from sending useless students. Employees have already paid for them, as they do for each other worker.
The change of law as frightening. Minnesota has the only Split National Legislature at the time: The Senate is Republican, and the Democratic house.
Cole Stevens, a teenager from who asks for return to return to more than $ 10,000 in benefits, found other young students in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position in the same position. Join, they move a local organization called youth to perform their case in Minnesota legislature.
I jumped immediately, eager to make for the painful mistake our agency and repairing the system for good. We are alone legislators on both sides of the passage, with problem problem. Students testify to hear after hearing about uneven law and how it affected their families.
The one who is unlikely is a Senator in the Republican Republican, an Electrician Union named Jason Rarick. His party was not eager to expand the social nets of safety, but he had a risk and joined their cause.
“They made it easier for them to encourage them because they were ready to tell their story,” Rarick told me.
The campaign also found AARP allies, the lobbying group, preferring other changes in unemployment insurance laws that affect older people. Young and older activists have made an arousing coalition.
By the end of the legislative session, they have votes to pass the bill, searching for the 86-year-old law and retroactively allowed the young workers they received. The idea of basic justification, strengthened by a difficult respect for students, succeeded.
This one story from Minnesota is not more innovative by people who are not affected, but it teaches a lesson that can benefit all of us: there is many opportunities for positive change. If a group of immigrant high school students, an electrician of the union from Rural Minnesota and government government new from Silicon Valley can cooperate with public interest, possibly anywhere.
We live at a time of disapproval Trust in the basic pillars of our society, such as government, media and organized religion. This is a unique American problem, and requires urgent action. However, the development of words and actions of the present administration – which takes a Chainaw in government services and ignores the rule of law – increasingly degradation of our systems and each other.
Where is hope? The secret to the building of back government trust and other institutions, I found, not focused on what was happening in Washington, but in our own communities. It is a long time that our trust for institutions is stronger than the more local you go. Simple reasons: There is less polarization In local issues, there is an added accountability, and the effects of the work are more visible. Local institutions are mainly reached by immediate community needs, too.
We need a resurrection of people who invest in reconstructing local institutions. The Momentum to Build Local Level, the Great “Laboratory for Democracy,” As the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis was previously called level.
Since the end of my chapter of the state government, I have returned to another local activity, at this time journalism as the publisher of THe Minnesota Star Tribune. This is not a career step I can imagine a decade ago, but I became a believer in local action, and the strong local news is in the center of what is in the center of being connected and informed.
Of course, we all do not change our careers to invest in our communities. The main flip switch is to believe that the local level creation can make a difference.
Voluntarily in local elections. Subscribe to your local newspaper. Support a local business. Donate to a food bank or shelter. Check your neighbors. The best antidote anxiety about our country works, and there are many opportunities outside your front door.
Steve Grove, the main executive and publisher of THe Minnesota Star Tribune, is the author of the future book “How I found myself in Midwest: a memoir again. “
