Douglas Adams famously said, “anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
Of course, you could substitute “senator” and the sentiment is the same
So why am I doing this? Certainly not after any great ambition to be in the public eye.
But because every single day we see new atrocities. Any one of the atrocities that we have seen daily since January of 2025 would have been sufficient to end any career, but those who are elected to be checks and balances have abdicated their responsibility to the people.
And now it is time for the people to stand up and say enough.
We have spent too much of our time in fear:
Racism, greed, hatred, contempt, are all driven by fear.
First they caused us to fear black people and brown people, and immigrants, then gay and trans and women… if they can keep the fear going, they can continue to amass power to themselves.
They fill our news feeds and our social media with fabricated fears designed to increase their power and wealth:
“Who will keep Haitians from eating your pets? Who will keep trans people from entering your daughter’s bathroom? Who will protect you from brown people taking over the country? Who will stop people from speaking Spanish or Somali…”
I remember when they made us fear socialism, communism, humanism…
And this is the biggest fear of all: the fear that something must change. Drinking and driving, seat belts, helmets, the new deal, the civil rights act, the voters rights act: every single advance made by humans have been met with anger, rage and accusations of insanity.
Ignatz Semmelweitz was concerned about the high infection and death rates in his hospital. He noticed that when doctors finished the autopsies in one part of the hospital they immediately delivered infants in the other part of the hospital. He set up handwashing procedures for the doctors. Immediately the death rate plummeted, and at the same time, Dr. Semmelweitz was ridiculed, cast out, accused of insanity and died forgotten.
Why is there always such resistance for trying anything new?
I think it is because if it can be shown that the way our fathers did things was wrong, then perhaps they weren’t as wise as we thought they were. Or worse, maybe WE aren’t as wise as we think we are.
Maybe instead of trying to bring America back to an imagined past, we should be focusing on leading America to a thriving future.
And suddenly the old ways are coming into question. Women can vote, women can buy homes, black citizens can vote, Gay men can marry –
Everything is changing and we have to wonder if maybe there were some things that weren’t so great. Maybe slavery and genocide aren’t really a great way to build a nation. Maybe the way that women were treated wasn’t the best way to treat the nation.
And all of the sudden people started being afraid that they might have to do some soul searching. And then “Make America Great Again” came and justified every racist, misogynistic, hate-filled rant we ever had.
But this is now falling apart. There isn’t any way to go back. The maga crowd took a sledgehammer and tried to beat all of us back to 1850. But we can’t go backwards. We’ve tasted hope.
We’ve looked at how things could be and said, “We can do better”
Progress always involves saying “Maybe the way we have been doing things isn’t the right way of doing things.”
But then you have to admit that maybe you weren’t as wise as you thought you were, and maybe it is time to do it differently.
Maybe your ancestors were wrong. Maybe your church was wrong. Maybe the puritans were wrong.
Maybe we didn’t all turn out just fine.
We can hope for better days for Minnesotans. We can hope for medical care for all, it can be done. The plans are written. It is within reach.
We can hope for beautiful days to come, fishing on the lakes and walking along the waterfalls and hiking the trails. We don’t need AI. We need to breathe, and fish, and hike.
We can hope for days when ALL of us can learn about each other without fear.
Why do we insist on seeing the world in black and white, when there are so many beautiful colors and breathtaking ways of being so wonderfully different.
We can fund the MPCA and pass laws to keep outsider billionaires from raping and pillaging our land to add more and more and more to their obscene portfolios.
Let’s finally admit that there is no one – NO ONE – who is a self made man. Everyone needs all of us.
That isn’t Marxism. That’s just every religion on earth. This is wisdom that requires humility – that I need my immigrant neighbors as much as they need me, because we are all part of the same community.
When we think that we are self-sufficient and don’t need anyone else, life has a way of reminding us of our social contracts:
That I need healthcare, because I don’t know when my heart will stop.
That I need SNAP programs, because wealth is fleeting and comes and goes.
That everything I have can also be lost – so I will live generously without blaming and shaming another in need.
We must protect our most vulnerable. The woman who must flee her home because of abuse. The child who isn’t safe at home
The indigenous women who still disappear without a trace.
A society that doesn’t protect its weakest members must change or die.
We need shelters and protections. We need reform in our family courts. These are my passions.
And to do that, we need to strive for justice – that the same laws are applied the same way to everyone, whether foreign born or native, undocumented or documented, rich or poor
And we need to keep our covenant. Our treaties, our word, our contracts.
And we need the humility to listen. And if we need to change, let’s face that head on.
Sam Powell for Senate 