In Episode 238 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes stock of the Democratic ticket's new vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and the role he played as Minnesota governor in two of the major activist struggles in the North Star State over the past years—the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising, which began in Minneapolis; and the fight against Line 3, which delivers Canadian shale oil to US markets, and imperils the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabe indigenous people.

MAGA excoriates Walz for his supposed coddling of the "rioters" in 2020, when in fact the National Guard troops he mobilized committed human rights abuses. On the other hand, he did open a civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis police department, finally resulting in a consent decree mandating "changes to address race-based policing." Similarly, Walz capituated to the oil interests on Line 3, which went operational in 2021. But despite this betrayal, he has won plaudits from progressives for his policies in support of labor and decarbonization of the state econmy. And the cannabis legalization bill he signed in 2023 expicitly recognizes the sovereign powers of Native American nations, allowing a cannabis economy to take hold on the state's Anishinaabe lands.

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Production by Chris Rywalt

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