Letter: Rochester needs new leaders with fresh ideas

I am a retired Mayo Clinic anesthesiology consultant living in Rochester since June 2000.

Organized people are powerful: That's clear from the Post Bulletin about Faith in Minnesota's organizing in local elections. I am a volunteer leader with Faith in Minnesota because when people organize together, we get more done.

Last year, I and fellow volunteers held over 500 conversations with Rochester community members about issues they care about. We pooled the themes and shared them publicly. We met with county commissioners and members of the city council and school board for open discussion. We attended meetings of these bodies to name concerns regarding housing and homelessness, affordable health care, climate, and education funding.

We saw that unless we were willing to stand by and watch schools lose funding, climate action get delayed, and the homeless go to jail for being homeless, we needed new leadership in Rochester. Leaders with values aligned with ours. Not leaders who, once elected, feel forever entitled to power even when they have no new ideas. New, effective leadership who will work with other leaders to find solutions to hard problems.

So, we're organizing to win. We're knocking doors and making calls, talking to voters about what's at stake and listening to what they want to see be different. I volunteer alongside a hundred other people in Rochester with Faith in Minnesota because I want local government working not moneyed interests or elites.