As I noted in 2023, this is always the ward I feel the most unqualified to write about. Once again, a lot of the discussion in the ward is happening in Somali; when I went looking for information on Mahamoud Hassan I found a video of a 15-minute campaign event, about 13 minutes of which are in Somali. These people might be making a really powerful case for Hassan and I would not know!

There are two people on the ballot this year:

Mohamoud Hassan (DFL)
Jamal Osman (DFL-endorsed, incumbent)

Mohamoud Hassan filed for the 2020 Ward 6 special election and then didn’t answer questionnaires or attend the candidate forums, and then he filed for Park Board District 3 in 2021 and didn’t campaign at all. This time he actually has a website and attended the LWV forum.

I am not actually a fan of Jamal Osman. (I went into a whole lot of detail two years ago and my suspicion about his connections to the Feeding Our Future scams has not been assuaged by any of the more recent revelations.)

However, I watched about half of the LWV forum and Hassan was just so deeply unimpressive. The first question was about gun violence and what the City Council might be able to do about it and Hassan’s answer was to add more police, period. Jamal Osman talked about prevention, and youth programming, and how much the violence interruptor programs were helping. I watched a bit more of the Q&A and while Osman’s answers were generally pretty nuanced, Hassan’s didn’t improve much. (To be fair, I was struggling to understand him due to both a pretty heavy accent and a mic that added a little bit of an echo. But what I caught just was not great.) I think if I lived in Ward 6 I would vote for Osman.

I have a new book coming out next June! This one is not YA; it’s a near-future thriller about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on site to deliver babies. You can pre-order it right now if you want.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi but instead encourage people who want to reward all my hard work to donate to fundraisers. This year I’m fundraising for YouthLink. YouthLink is a Minneapolis nonprofit that helps youth (ages 16-24) who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. (Here’s their website.) I have seen some of the work they do and been really impressed. (An early donor to the fundraiser added a comment: “YouthLink was incredible instrumental in my assistance of a friend to escape a bad family situation in Florida with little more than a computer and a state ID. Thanks to YouthLink and their knowledge of resources my friend was able to get a mailing address (which was essential in getting a debit card and formal identification documents), healthcare, hot meals, an internship at a local company, and even furniture for their new apartment.” — That is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about!)

I set up a fundraiser with a specific goal mainly because seeing the money raised helps motivate me. (Having external motivation helps! This is a lot of work.)