As Minneapolis Council member Andrea Jenkins retires, she reflects on ‘tumultuous’ time in office
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When Andrea Jenkins was first elected to the Minneapolis City Council in 2017, she was the first Black openly transgender woman elected to public office in the United States.
The 64-year-old has been a political force on City Council and has served as president and vice president since she was first elected to represent Ward 8 in 2017. She has called her time in office “tumultuous” — most notably in 2020 during the pandemic and the upheaval after the murder of George Floyd in the ward.
Jenkins has also managed living with multiple sclerosis, a diagnosis that she received the same year she was elected.
“Since that time, there has been a visible decline in my mobility and my physical way of navigating and negotiating the world,” she said.
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The politician, athlete and trailblazer said her retirement will allow her to return to her true identity.
“First and foremost, I identify as a poet and a writer, and being in this job didn’t really allow me to focus as much time and energy as I wanted to on my creative life, and so I wanted to get back to that while I still had some mental acuity and passion and abilities,” Jenkins said.
Jenkins also wants to take a more active role with her three grandkids and hopes to travel with them. She also said she has an ailing mother that she needs to look after.
During her time on council — and even her previous work with the University of Minnesota on a transgender oral history project — Jenkins inspired others, like state Rep. Leigh Finke, the first openly transgender lawmaker elected to the Minnesota Legislature.
“Her steadfastness and clarity has been really inspirational to me. I continue to see her as a person whose strength and commitment is a guide path for me,” Finke said.
When Finke decided to run for office in 2022, she said she reached out to Jenkins to learn the campaign side of things. But she learned a lot more from Jenkins about what it means to run for office as a transgender person.
“And she was just, ‘Make sure this is something that you want to do, make sure you are ready for what is going to come, right?’” Finke remembered about their conversation. “I was naive, like I think everybody is when they run their first race. I thought I could handle whatever was going to come.”
Finke said Jenkins helped her learn how to be a public figure while still protecting herself.
“She helped me understand that this, it’s a difficult space to be in. She has seen as much as anybody how hard it can be to be trans in the public,” Finke said.
Finke said Jenkins was speaking from experience. In 2021, Jenkins was inside a vehicle leaving a Pride event in Loring Park. A group of activists blocked her car for 90 minutes, refusing to let her leave until she agreed to sign a document with a list of demands, including supporting the resignation of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and establishing a police accountability commission.
A KARE 11 video shows part of the incident, including an activist criticizing Jenkins for her support of the police.
Jenkins said she was held hostage by the protesters.
“I would call it political violence,” she said. “Certainly, I was not physically harmed in any way, but emotionally and psychologically … I’ve had a tumultuous time in office, particularly around race.”
At the last Minneapolis City Council meeting of the year, elected officials and the community paid tribute to Andrea Jenkins and other outgoing councilmembers.
Sitting in her motorized wheelchair — a bouquet of orange roses in its front basket — Jenkins listens to comments from community activist Bill English.
“More importantly, she did her job with a sense of commitment to her community and her people. And that’s all of them. It didn’t matter that you weren’t African American, if you lived in Eighth Ward, she served you just as well and welcomed everybody.”
One of Jenkins’ last acts in office was a controversial one: the future of George Floyd Square. The council adopted a plan allowing traffic in the re-design for the intersection at 38th and Chicago.
It’s a plan that some activists oppose; they want a pedestrian-only plaza. But Jenkins said her vote — like all of her decisions as Ward 8’s representative — came from a place of wanting to put her constituents’ needs first. And she said the passage of the plan re-imagining the future of the area may be one of her best accomplishments while in office.
