My friend @lisabendermpls is not running for a third term as Council Member for Ward 10.

I'm having complicated feelings about this. And here I go, sharing them. https://twitter.com/WedgeLIVE/status/1325501473380159488

But first, let's just level-set a bit.

Lisa Bender is a caring, progressive policymaker who has made a real difference in Minneapolis. She's helped bring about a number of very important progressive policy wins, from the minimum wage to a nation-leading Comp Plan.

She is also, importantly, the first and only progressive Council President I have ever had the opportunity to work with. And not only that, the first progressive CP since at least the 1990s, if not back further than that.

That has mattered. It still matters.

So, on to feelings.

I'm happy for her. Or maybe "relieved" is closer. Being a Council Member is hard. Harder than I've ever seen. Being Council Prez is harder. And being the first progressive Council Prez in at least a generation is harder still.

Why is it hard?

Lisa Bender is one of the most lied-about and unfairly maligned people I have ever known. Folks were out there last week spreading some new lie about how she's listed her house for sale. When folks want to say crazy shit, she's been an easy target.

And that gets me to my second feeling: sadness, not for her, but for the rest of us.

She's been a damn good Council Member, and a damn good Council Prez. As I've said, the first and only progressive Council Prez I've ever known. And she's leaving.

She's leaving at least in part due to the way she's been treated. By the NIMBY Right in this town, and by those who believe they are to the left of her.

It sucks to have your name used as a vulgar slur. To have folks vandalize your house. To be the target of constant weird lies.

To zoom out a step: as a society, we seem to have a real problem with women in power. Progressive women are never progressive enough, somehow - while they're also far too radical.

The level of misogyny I've seen aimed at my friend Lisa has been staggering, maddening, and sad.

(A quick aside: It's been really weird watching people as [seemingly] diverse as Nekima and Carol Becker declare, with the sort of total confidence and total wrongness and lack of any evidence that Donald Trump would admire, that Lisa Bender is running for mayor.)

So I'm sad for us, even as I'm happy for her.

And I'm grateful. I'm grateful to Lisa for running against an actual conservative Council Member for a very progressive part of our city, and winning very handily. And then being the first Ward 10 CM in a generation to win again.

I'm grateful for the policy wins she racked up, in collaboration with advocates and colleagues: a local $15 minimum wage, sick and safe time, a nation-leading comp plan, transforming the way we build streets to center people over cars, starting the transformation of public safety

I'm grateful we've had a progressive Council President, for once in my lived experience. That has mattered, especially as a counterbalance to a less-progressive mayor. I hope we'll have one again, after the 2021 election - but that is absolutely not a given.

I'm grateful that Lisa helped move the Council to the left, not just by her own win in W10, but by supporting others. This is the most progressive Council we've ever had, folks, and she's a part of that story.

And still, after all of that, I'm mostly sad at the moment.

I knew this was coming. I know her well enough to know, to have known, that this is where her heart was.

If we want good people in office we have to have their backs.

If we want smart, hardworking, decent, caring, progressive people to run, and win, and to continue to run, we maybe have to not treat them like shit.

Just an idea.