The foundations of Minnesota politics have been shaken, and the aftershocks are vibrating nationwide. Vance Boelter, dressed as a police officer and wearing a latex Halloween mask, entered the homes of state level lawmakers in the dead of night. He assassinated Melissa Hortman, a leader in the Minnesota House, and her husband, and tried to kill state senator John Hoffman and his wife. The Hoffmans were rushed to surgery, and are still alive.
As The New York Times put it: “The assassination of an elected official is rare and shocking anywhere on American ground. Nowhere is it more jarring than in Minnesota, a state known for a singular political culture with value placed on bipartisanship and a tradition of civic involvement that transcends ideology.” Both Hortman and Hoffman were Democrats who were known to work across the aisle. Boelter was appointed to a bipartisan workforce development board twice by two different Democratic governors, including Tim Walz.
Vance Boelter, in his late 50s, traveled multiple times abroad to preach his religious faith – and was apprehended last night not far from the home he shared with his wife and five children after the largest manhunt in Minnesota history.
Found in one of Boelter’s cars was a hit list of nearly 70 people, largely from Minnesota, along with their home addresses. Police also recovered at least three AK-47s and a handgun; who knows how far Boelter would have gone had he not been engaged by the police before escaping.
Political violence certainly isn’t new in the United States. The founders understood the risks, having fought the world’s military super power over America’s independence.
So when the framers coalesced in Philadelphia to write a new Constitution, post-revolution, they assigned the task of writing America’s statement of purpose – the Preamble to the Constitution – to Gouverneur Morris. Morris was from a prominent loyalist family, but switched allegiances to throw himself wholeheartedly into the Patriot cause.
Morris had a way with words, and when he turned in his draft of, “We the people,” the other framers were privately like, “Dang. He nailed that.” They wrote letters to each other saying that no one could have done a better job conjuring a north star for the new nation to chart a course by.
Morris wrote:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
As much as we like to make of our individual rights – and those are important – read the words of the Preamble carefully and make note of the vision that is cast, and for whom. Note how repeatedly, Morris – and later all the people that helped to ratify it – spoke not of the individual, but of the collective. Morris writes of the common defense, the general welfare, domestic tranquility, a union. We are securing the blessings of liberty not just to ourselves, but for everyone who comes after us.
America at her best was not going to be made up of millions of individuals breaking into homes to carry out acts of violence. American values were for everyone.
According to his longtime friend and roommate, Vance Boelter was a Trump voter. Law enforcement has yet to release a motive, but given the people we know are on the list, right-wing authoritarianism is likely a piece of the puzzle.
Shooting political leaders in cold blood, whether it’s based on left-wing ideological purity or the grievance politics of religious white men, is meant to send a clear message. Not only do the perpetrators of violence want to remove the perceived threat, they want to scare everyone else into silence too. Shut up, they say, or what happened to Hortman and Hoffman will happen to you too.
It’s intended to make people feel as though their efforts – the small candle of light they seemingly possess – will never be enough to overcome the vast wilderness of darkness that surrounds them, leaving them with no choice but to succumb to it.
Here’s what I’ve wondered: am I on Vance Boelter’s list? I don’t know if he knows who I am, if I pose enough of a threat to his worldview, being neither a pro-choice activist nor a Democrat, that he would write my name down. I don’t know if I rise to the top of a 70-Minnesotan threat list.
And here’s what I know: you can’t scare me into silence.
I have no desire to be chosen, but if I am forced to help lead the rise of the resistance, then I would do all I could to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly into the arena. I would keep doing the next needed thing. I would light someone else’s candle with my single flame.
My hope is that you would do the same. And together, collectively, we would send the darkness that surrounds us into retreat.
If history will remember our names, let it be because we did more than criticize and wring our hands. Let us remember that the millions of daily efforts of all of us mean more than we can comprehend at this moment with our finite minds that are bound by time and space.
Let us look to our forebears: the men, women, and children, who saw political violence for what it was – cowardly – and continued to move through the world acting as though what they did mattered. Because it did. And it does.
Let us not give into the temptation that too many have embraced: the idea that political violence is necessary or legitimate.
My heart is broken for Minnesota. For the Hortman and Hoffman families. For everyone who feels surrounded by darkness and fear at this moment. And my best advice is to refuse to let anyone extinguish your light, no matter how small it seems. Refuse to believe the lie that what you do doesn’t matter and that you should just give up and wait for someone else to fix it.
Why us?
Why not us? Are we not the ones we’ve been waiting for?