We’re proud to partner with Pillsbury United Communities to train and pay residents to hold local government officials accountable at the fourth Documenters Network location
By Darryl Holliday
In a year like no other, people across the Midwest stepped up to live-tweet and take notes at more than 1,000 local government meetings, sharing civic news and information with friends and loved ones during a global time of need. In the process these Documenters helped launch a people-powered newsletter on local government in Chicago, questioned mayoral candidates in Cleveland and jumped hurdles to make “public” records public in Detroit.
Today, I’m excited and humbled to welcome new partners to a growing network as our friends at Pillsbury United Communities launch Minneapolis Documenters.
Pillsbury United Communities is one of Minnesota’s most well-established community organizations, with 140 years of service to diverse communities across the Twin Cities and beyond. Like City Bureau’s mission to “equip every community with the tools it needs to eliminate information inequity to further liberation, justice and self-determination,” PUC’s mission is to “co-create enduring change toward a just society where every person has personal, social and economic power” by serving the Black, Brown, Indigenous, immigrant and working-class residents of Minneapolis.
A rundown of the Documenters Network that's now launching in Minneapolis.
Public meetings are workshops for local democracy. Across the country, gaps in coverage of these meetings leaves community members less informed and less able to make informed decisions about schools, development or who to vote for in local elections. Access to information from these meetings allows people to hold local officials accountable. At a time when Minneapolis residents are calling for accountability from both local government and the media, Minneapolis Documenters offers a pathway to building community power by bringing the public into both spaces.
As always, the only qualification to become a Minneapolis Documenter is attendance at a Documenters orientation. Once trained, Minneapolis Documenters will be paid to attend trainings and document public meetings in the public interest.
And they’ll be working in good company.
Minneapolis Documenters will join PUC’s other community media enterprises, North News and KRSM Radio, and is led by Pillsbury United Communities’ Civic Producer Jackie Renzetti and Director of Policy and Advocacy Kenzie O’Keefe. Both are former Twin Cities-based journalists and media educators.
“We believe sharing resources between news organizations and opening up the reporting process to the public is key to a sustainable, equitable media ecosystem that supports civic participation,” Renzetti said. “We envision this as a resource that can open new opportunities for collaborative journalism and civic action in Minneapolis and beyond.”
Here at City Bureau, we’re excited to be in community with these folks. Pillsbury United Communities joins staff in Chicago, Detroit (Outlier Media) and Cleveland (Neighbor Up) in building a new kind of civic infrastructure that is always local but stronger together.
To date, the Documenters Network has trained more than 1,600 people across three states. By the end of this year, the network will expand beyond the Midwest (look out for new Documenters sites in the South, the Great Plains and the West Coast) as new partners inform, engage and equip community members who want to get civically involved by connecting their neighbors to critical information.