Jeanelle Austin
For Minnesota State Senate
Open Seat with Jeanelle Austin
Want to know more about Jeanelle for the People? Come grab a coffee and a seat with Jeanelle at Sovereign Grounds to learn for yourself. Drop in anytime between 12-6 PM for real dialogue about the future of Senate District 62. Get to know your neighbor before casting your vote at the upcoming convention.
Jeanelle on MPR News
Jeanelle Austin says she and her neighbors are both “grieving” and “standing up to ICE.”
Priorities
If we want safer streets, stable families, and a stronger workforce, we start by making sure young people don’t fall through the cracks. Youth policy is public safety policy. It is economic policy. It is healthcare policy. It is education policy. When the young people are safe, healthy, educated, and rooted, the things adults worry about inherently improve. When we take care of young people, families stabilize, communities heal, and our state becomes stronger.
1
Gun Safety
When youth are harmed by gun violence, adults pay for it: ER visits, long-term disability care, lost wages, funerals, and the trauma that follows families for generations. By preventing gun violence, we keep parents working, grandparents care giving, young people being young people, and neighborhoods intact.
2
Health and Fitness
Investing in health and wellness means reducing long term public spending, which keeps families, workplaces, and communities functioning. When we invest early on with trauma-informed and culturally responsive care, we prevent the longer term needs for things like crisis intervention, chronic illness, ER visits, and the (in)justice system involvement. Essentially, it costs us far less to provide care early on. Preventative care is the key.
Making healthcare more accessible for our youth will benefit the whole family.
3
Education
When young people are inspired in school, they engage. Engaged students become voters, workers, caregivers, and leaders. These are then people who will be prepared to participate in society and make change now and down the road. Our communities are better off when young people are prepared to lead them.
Investing in the education of our youth means investing in our neighborhoods. Our neighbors work at the schools and are part of their formation. When we invest in schools, we invest in all of us.
4
Economic Growth
A healthy economy is one where young people can work, afford to live, and stay rooted in the communities that raised them. Youth employment is workforce development and requires investment in the businesses that will hire them. Affordable housing is economic security for everyone. Youth cannot work, learn, or heal if they and their families cannot afford to live here.
About Jeanelle
I was born and raised in South Minneapolis. The fourth of seven children, my parents built our home through a Bryant Neighborhood program where neighbors came together and put in the sweat equity to keep the home affordable. I learned how to play on the hot sands of Phelps park back in the day when the slides were metal, the swings made of black rubber, and the 2-foot kiddie pool provided joyful relief from hot summer days. I was a beneficiary of free lunches, government food, and the Fare Share program run out of Pillsbury House & Theatre. For most of my childhood, my mother was a stay-at-home mom and an ordained Christian minister. My father, who passed away after a cancer journey, worked for the State of Minnesota and also served as an ordained Christian minister. He believed in youth and education so much that he would give every kid on the block 50 cents for every A and a quarter for every B earned on our quarterly report cards. I was raised with strong moral values rooted in justice and community service.
Concerns From Our Youth
- Reduce gun violence by restricting assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.
- Provide stable housing for youth, young adults, and families navigating housing insecurity.
- Unemployment rates are high among youth.
- Need for accessible healthcare and trauma- and culturally-informed wellness resources.
- Better representation in the education curriculum.
- Increase accessibility and safety for disabled students.
- Urban farming opportunities for accessibility to growing commonly consumed cultural foods.