MCN Rotunda Rally

Remarks by Brian Rusche, executive director of JRLC
Minnesota Council of Nonprofits Day at the Capitol
February 5, 2009


What Kind of People Are We?

This is the central question of this year’s session -- What kind of people are we?

When times get tough will we band together and help people weather increasing homelessness, increasing uninsured, increasing hunger, and increasing job loss?

Or do we say to people who need help, as the Govenor’s budget does, you’re on your own. You’re different, you’re unworthy, we’re going to abandon you because tax breaks to the wealthy are more important.

That’s essentially what’s going on. If you look at the budget as an accounting exercise, the Govenor’s budget balances and that’s fine, but if you look at it as a moral document, an expression of the choices and preferences of all of us as a free people, deciding together what kind of people we want to be, it fails the moral test. That’s because we in Minnesota don’t abandon each other.

We’re in a deepening recession and more than ever people need the support of the whole community. This is expressed in the work that non-profits do every day. Your presence here today can help spark a new approach to the budget that says, We can be a great state again if we do what we’ve always done and that is this: invest in our people; protect their dignity, prepare for the better days ahead.

In the depths of the Depression in 1933, Governor Floyd B Olson looked at a sea of red ink and said there’s only one thing we can do, raise the income tax, and invest in our people.

In the early 60’s Minnesota had a ho-hum economy, underperforming our neighboring states, but Gov Elmer Anderson had a vision for raising new revenues and investing in our people. Later, Gov Wendell Anderson and Gov Arne Carlson had the same approach; When times were tough we raised the revenues we needed; we asked people to sacrifice a little bit so we could avoid inflicting pain on the needy and as a result, the commonwealth of our state remained quite a bit above average.

What kind of people are we? If we let the Governor’s budget stand we will belittle ourselves. 113,000 of our neighbors will lose health insurance, 30,000 of them children. The lines at the unemployment office and the shelters will grow, poverty will become more commonplace, and the shame of income and wealth concentrating at the very top will cause thousands to lose faith in our democracy.

This is our moment to tell our elected officials that we are a people that don’t abandon our neighbors.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice…”

Today we bring the weight of our opinions, and the strength of our voices to bend our state’s budget to something more worthy of the good people of this state. On behalf of the faith communities that I represent, let me join in with the non-profit sector and say, We need a statewide conversation about this budget because Minnesotans will not quit, we will not yield, and, in our State, we will not abandon each other.