Alright – so, Kim Norton in my humble little opinion was the queen of autism disparity when she was a state legislator in Minnesota. She has written so many bills to list here that wanted to give more butter to the buttered up while screwing with low-income autism families. I kid you not. Norton was one of the reasons that we as Somali autism parents advocated really hard because all of her legislations wanted to give millions of dollars to the wealthy autism families while giving almost nothing to the low-income autism families who we know are disproportionately minorities. To make a long advocacy work short, we have defeated her disparity creating legislations in every corner and at every session. Actually, when the R’s were in control, her bills would never come up in any committee even for a hearing, but when Huntley or Liebling were in charge – her bills would pass those committees. Luckily, we were able to advocate in the Senate and in conference committees and defeat them in the end.
Then Norton retired from the Minn House of Reps and for some reason decided to come back this year and ran for mayor in Rochester Minnesota. Drum roll please…..there is a minority person running against Norton for the Rochester mayor position. Ahhh, this is Mozart music to my ears. Liebling on the other hand wanted to run for governor of Minnesota then changed her mind and wants to run again for her seat at Minn House of Reps. The good news is there is a Somali running against her. Yep, it does not get better than this.
Norton and Liebling have been very difficult in our autism and equality advocacy journey. I am not going to write all of the horrible things they did as that would take days to complete, but in a nutshell, they have always voted against anything autism that enhanced or helped minority children with autism. They voted to eliminate the Minn autism task force (don’t worry – it didn’t work because we defeated this bill in conference committee) because we wanted equality, they tried to silence and eliminate our voices. In all of their efforts, we have defeated them in every corner and none of their bills passed in the final legislation which is good. And, now they want to come back and create even more horrible policies. I think we need to come out and vote against them because our children’s future depends on it.
I ask the voters in Rochester where there are a lot of Somalis to please vote for Regina Mustafa to be the next mayor of Rochester. We also need to come out in high numbers and vote for Abdulkadir Abdalla who is running for Minn House District 26A in Rochester.
As Somalis and in general as Minorities, we need to use our voices for the betterment of our lives and that of our children. One way of doing this is having those that reflect us at the decision-making table. Disparity in Minnesota is so high because we are never at the table.
Update – June 29, 2018:
Sadly, Abdulkadir told me that he withdrew and is not running this cycle. Bummer. I am hoping, he comes back next time in couple of years. The good news is we can still beat Norton and not allow her to be the next mayor in Rochester, MN. Please get out and vote for Regina Mustafa to be the next mayor in Rochester and let’s defeat Norton.
Above words do not reflect any candidate, agency or committee.
Idil – Autism Mom and Advocate