Mitra Jalali, president of St. Paul’s all-women city council, said she doesn’t overly focus on the “Brad and Chad” voices — aka the men — who question if the women can lead.
St. Paul made history in January when it swore in the city’s first all-female council.
“I just feel like me and the girls showed up and we’re like, we’re gonna get the streets and parks fixed. We just want to make it even better and we love our city,” Jalali said in a Tuesday interview with The Recount. “I don't want to overly focus on, you know, Brad and Chad and that and them, because that's not like the majority of our community.”
Jalali also discussed the challenges that the council, who are primarily women of color, have faced from those who have an outdated views:“Along with this very outdated mentality about, ‘Can women lead?’ … There was also just a lot of assumptions — like bizarre assumptions — about what we do and don't care about, because we are almost all younger people of color than what people are used to seeing in government.”
“To me, we're always just dispelling often conservative or outdated attitudes about what different types of leaders value,” Jalali continued. “It's so weird to me. I think white supremacy teaches this like zero sum, like either you win or we win and it's not like, what benefits people of color, benefits everybody.”
“That's like an intentional attitude that the conservative movement has invested in,” she said. “That's like a multi-billion dollar narrative-creation effort that has been underway through decades.”
