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Shannon Watson (“Candidates should stay in their lanes,” Nov. 2) takes a specific, legitimate concern — that current candidates for state auditor seem to be running for what they wish the role was, rather than what it is — and broadens it to the point of erasing many of American history’s most inspiring moments. The truth is, America is a much better place today because politicians stepped outside their lanes.
The United States wouldn’t even be the United States if New England town meetings and colonial legislatures hadn’t passed resolutions and supported active resistance to King George III in the 1760s and 1770s. There were plenty of people who said Samuel Adams and George Washington should stay in their lanes and let the British crown pass the laws it wanted to. Thank goodness they didn’t listen.
In the 1850s, cities and towns in northern states (including Minnesota) brazenly defied the federal government’s attempts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, freeing Black prisoners from jails and obstructing federal bounty hunters trying to send Black men, women and children to captivity in the South. This defiance was well outside the lane of a city council, but thousands of northerners recognized that their duty to justice was more important than their duty to unjust laws. I for one agree with them.
Today, across the country, we see state and local officials standing up for their friends and neighbors in resisting the thuggish acts of masked street gangs operating under the auspices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies. Families are being ripped apart, innocent lives ruined, whole communities terrorized. Would Watson prefer that governors, mayors and others simply stand aside, telling fearful children that it’s just not their lane?
Of course, local officials have a job to do, and it’s right and proper to expect them to focus on that job as candidates and in office. But part of living in a democracy is the obligation of those with a democratic mandate given to them by voters to stand up for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It should be the rule, not the exception.
Dave Kamper, of Brooklyn Park, is a writer and organizer.
