DFL leaders are condemning those responsible for a melee that erupted during a convention for Minneapolis City Council candidates Saturday, causing the event to end unceremoniously in a frantic scene and with no candidate endorsement.
Minneapolis police spokesman Brian Feintech said officers responded to the convention at Ella Baker Global Studies & Humanities Magnet School to find a large group of people dispersing. Police made no arrests Saturday, but the officers heard several reports of injuries and fights. At least one person was taken to HCMC by paramedics for non-life-threatening injuries, and another was treated at the scene, Feintech said.
Video posted to Twitter by John Edwards, who blogs about Minneapolis politics as Wedge Live, shows the chaos break out at the Ward 10 endorsing convention after supporters of Minneapolis Council Member Aisha Chughtai took the stage. Supporters for Chughtai’s challenger, Nasri Warsame, shouted and jeered in the gymnasium, and a man waving a Warsame sign jumped on the stage. More people in Warsame shirts followed and continued to shout, slam on tables and wave signs, disrupting the convention proceedings.
“This is embarrassing!” convention chair Sam Doten shouted, finally adjourning after pleading futilely for order. “We are shutting this down!” he said. “This is no longer safe!”
In a Facebook post afterward, Warsame said his campaign manager “has been assaulted by one of the other campaign staff member, and he’s now being transported to hospital by an ambulance.”
“The convention was shut down due to turmoil, and all the people were instructed to exit the building,” Warsame wrote. “No endorsement at this point, but more questions to ask regarding the process.”
Chughtai also released a statement, casting blame on Warsame’s campaign for leading his delegates onto the stage and “assaulting me and my supporters as I was about to begin my convention speech.” Chughtai said more than a dozen of her supporters were “physically assaulted,” along with a photographer documenting the convention, and more were bullied and harassed as “an attempt to scare us.”
“Eventually, our supporters locked themselves in our hospitality room, so they would be safe and away from a rapidly escalating and dangerous situation,” she said. “The Warsame campaign followed us off the floor and was only held back by a group of brave volunteers who blocked a hallway while our supporters were able to escape from the locked hospitality room out a back door of the building to safety.”
Minneapolis DFL Chair Briana Rose Lee said on Twitter that “several DFL volunteers were assaulted” at the convention, including members of the state executive committee.
“The behavior displayed today was despicable and unacceptable,” Lee wrote. “I don’t know the next steps yet. But there will be repercussions.”
The video does not show clearly what preceded the fight. “I don’t know what triggered it,” Edwards said in an interview. “People just kind of spontaneously came forward to the stage.”
Edwards said there had been votes on rules and disagreements on procedure, and that issues with translating appeared to be causing some confusion earlier in the day. Chughtai was about to give the first speech of the convention, and Warsame would have been next, followed by a question-and-answer segment and then votes.
Saturday evening, Minnesota DFL Chair Ken Martin apologized to the attendees. “While we are still gathering all of the details of what transpired today, I am extremely disheartened by reports that a fight broke out,” Martin said. “Violence has no place in our politics, and it goes against our party’s most cherished values of democracy, inclusivity, and empathy. I sincerely hope that the perpetrators will be held accountable by law enforcement, and I will work to ensure they are held accountable within our party as well.”
He said the state DFL party is working with Minneapolis DFL to “determine what the next steps in the endorsing process will be given today’s events.”