This is the script from a YouTube video I posted today.
These are not normal times. I can’t just do the same things I normally do, and pretend nothing is happening.
I. Freedom and Responsibility
I believe in the innate freedom of every person to choose how they want to live their lives. (And every person is a person, regardless of their race, religion, sexual orientation, gender expression, or ability.) I also believe that freedom comes with responsibility.
If we choose to live in a society — which is not really a choice in the 21st century — then we also have a responsibility to the others around us, to respect and defend their freedoms. The civil rights movement was born of the principle that no one is free, unless we all are free. Or, to put it another way: injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
But it’s not just about individual freedoms. Working together, we can do things that none of us can do alone. Collective action allows us to create a better, more just, more meaningful world, for everyone.
II. Power and Money
The late, great senator from my home state of Minnesota, Paul Wellstone, famously said it best: “We all do better when we all do better.”
Or maybe you prefer the words of Jesus: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12 [NIV])
Power and money are corrupting forces. Yes, complex organizations need some kind of hierarchy, to make decisions and maintain order, but everyone should still have a voice. And money is an essential tool for an economy to function, when we remember its fundamental purpose: storing the value of human effort, to facilitate trade.
But there are those among us who ignore the social contract; those who choose to hoard wealth and power. Their insatiable desire for more drives a wedge between us. Great empires of injustice are built on the backs of the masses, whose labor is essential to the construction of those empires, but who do not receive their fair share of the value they produce.
Every large-scale economic system, across the spectrum, from communist totalitarianism to laissez faire capitalism, creates an imbalance of wealth and power. It is the power of the people, the purpose of democracy, to provide a counterbalance, to ensure liberty and justice for all.
III. The Internet
The Internet exploded in the 1990s, at a unique time of international openness and realignment, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. There had never in human history been such a powerful tool for the free exchange of ideas, with anyone in the world, nor such an opportune moment for it to appear.
Fast forward to 2026, and obviously that utopian vision for the Internet has become severely corrupted by power and money… as almost all large-scale human endeavors inevitably do.
Today, misinformation and abuse are everywhere. Corporations have acquired, or squashed — often acquired in order to squash — many of the once-independent voices. Countries that were once exploring a new openness have slammed the door shut. Social media echo chambers encourage people to indulge their worst impulses. Every website seems to be drowning in ads and AI slop.
And yet, individual, self-hosted blogs still exist. Independent voices can still speak freely to the world on YouTube… even if the mysterious algorithm ultimately decides which voices rise to the surface in the vast ocean of “content.”
One word (OK, it’s a portmanteau/neologism) shows, better than any other, that the Internet can still live up to its earliest ideals: Wikipedia.
The Internet hasn’t completely lost its potential for the kind of collective action that allows us to do better — to create a more informed, more interesting, more just world — for everyone. But we have to work harder at it.
IV. Minneapolis
I live in Minneapolis. I love Minneapolis. It is a city that embraces the spirit of Paul Wellstone.
It’s not a perfect place. We all know that. But it’s a place that is trying hard to do better. And that’s made it a desirable place to be, for a lot of people.
A place that celebrates nature, with its award-winning park system. A place that celebrates the arts in their many forms, especially with its thriving theater and music scenes. A place that celebrates the diversity of its people, with a vast array of thriving restaurants and small businesses. A place that celebrates learning and innovation, with the University of Minnesota and numerous smaller colleges.
A place that is in jeopardy, in the present moment.
Minneapolis is a city of immigrants, built on stolen Dakota land.
I say that not because I believe it can somehow be “unstolen,” or as some kind of token white guilt self-flagellation. We live in the world we live in. We can’t erase the past — as much as some of us may try — but we can choose how we write the future. Choosing a future where we do better requires understanding how we got here in the first place.
People from all over the world choose to live in Minneapolis, because it is a place where they are welcome. Where they find opportunities. And where they become a part of the fabric of the community, making the city better for all of us by sharing their talents, their hard work, and the things that make their cultures unique. This is what the city has always been.
But, of course, Minneapolis is not perfect. No place is. Fort Snelling is a painful reminder of that, from its use as a concentration camp after the Dakota War of 1862, to the use of the nearby Whipple Building by ICE in 2026. (The Whipple Building is not part of Historic Fort Snelling, which is managed by the Minnesota Historical Society.)
Another painful reminder is the history of redlining, which still shapes the character of our neighborhoods more than a half century after the practice was banned. (The city has a program for homeowners to remove the now-unenforceable racial covenants from their property deeds, which my wife and I did in 2021.) And just six years ago, we experienced one of the most difficult times we’ve ever faced as a community, with the police murder of George Floyd.
But despite — maybe because of — our flawed history, and our imperfect present, we are always striving to make Minneapolis a place where “we all do better.”
The civic spirit of our city is a threat, to greed and corrupt power. So we’ve become a target. But our humble reputation for “Minnesota nice” belies the fierceness with which we will defend the things that make this place special.
That quote from Paul Wellstone, “we all do better when we all do better,” is not just an empty platitude. It’s a foundational pillar of the kind of progressive politics that has held strong here over the decades. And it’s something that those corrupted by wealth and power will never understand.
Here, we actually believe in something beyond ourselves. Our moral compass has not been skewed by the pull of avarice and cynical nihilism.
The thing is, we know we’re not especially unique in that regard. We believe most people, everywhere, feel the way we do. That everyone deserves a fair chance to live their own lives, and that they should treat their neighbors with care and respect. It’s just something that most of us go about quietly.
But. Now is the time to not be so quiet about it.
V. Do Better
These are not normal times… in Minneapolis, in the United States, in the world. I can’t just do the same things I normally do and pretend nothing is happening. I have to speak up. I have to do better.
I believe in the innate freedom of every person to choose how they want to live their lives. I also believe that freedom comes with responsibility. Individual freedom comes with the responsibility of helping to ensure and defend the individual freedom of others, and to engage meaningfully with others, to do the things we can’t do alone.
“We all do better when we all do better.”
But… what, exactly, does it mean to “do better?”
Is it a state of being? Or a call to action?
It’s both. And you can’t have one without the other.
