By DWIGHT HOBBES
This is but one reason I don”™t give a tinker”™s damn who wins what office in Minneapolis next month: if you can name single candidate for mayor, city council or dog catcher who”™s stumping as an agent for change in the prevalence of violence against women, I will eat his or her hat. Yet there isn”™t a single one who wasn”™t born to a woman.
Safe Haven Shelter out of Duluth documents that in this so-called progressive state the stats of women being abused in the home is an unmitigated disgrace. Only a few notations made at http://safehavenshelter.org/: domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women ”“ more than injuries by muggings, stranger rape and car crashes put together; almost a third of homeless Minnesota women were abused; about 76% of women killed by their partners were stalked by their partners before their murder. There”™s more at the website, a lot more ”“ look it up. And, according to the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women, 22 women were killed in 2015, 18 in 2016 and 19 in 2017. How much would you like to bet that number has not gone down since. But, here, in 2021, in the aftermath of that damnable contagion having cornered women with their abusers during last year”™s lockdown, we can fully expect it to have considerably risen.
What are seated politicians as well the glad-handing would-be”™s who want you to vote them into a nice cushy job and a fat salary doing to address this ongoing civic catastrophe? That rhetorical question demands a straight answer, at least some indication they give a damn about so much as approaching a solution to this widespread problem. But it is a non-issue.
It”™s not like abused women don”™t vote. Which wouldn”™t be an excuse anyway, but, we know how so-called political movers and shakers think: show me the money. Show me where and how I can get in power and control purse strings. There are no dollars at stake in sticking up for those who can”™t stick up for themselves. No shady deals done under the table over tea or cocktails to grease self-interested palms of people pretending to be out for the public good.
When the returns are in with self-congratulatory hoe downs for the winners and the losers still having gained ground so far as establishing or increasing a profile, women will still be beaten within an inch of their lives. Or worse, wind up in a grave. And Minneapolis politics will be big business as usual.
