Escape From Minneapolis
15th June 2020
If Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender didn’t exist, Portlandia would have had to invent her.
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Militant bike activists are the dumbest and most loathed figures in urban civics. No group of people is as entitled, obnoxious, or clueless as a bunch of white hipsters in lycra shorts out to convince city officials that giving them more bike lanes will end wars, eliminate racism, and save the planet. There was only one possible career pathway for Bender in Minneapolis. Urban planning through politics as a DFLer.
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Minneapolis still isn’t a college campus, but it has the first student council to run a major city. Besides Bender, there’s Keith Ellison’s son, who describes himself as a “visual artist, storyteller, and political organizer”, Phillipe Cunningham, whose bio is, “progressive, Black, queer & trans”, Lisa Goodman, “activist and dog mom”, and assorted other characters who ought to be debating at the student center.