Take No Shorts

You may shoot me with your words,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
-Maya Angelou

Ever since she toppled incumbent Jackie Cherryhomes in 2001, Minneapolis Fifth Ward council member Natalie Johnson Lee, the council’s lone African-American woman, has continued to rise. She has successfully deflected and deflated those wanting to blow her off-especially the North Side wannabes and has-beens who are bitter that Johnson Lee derailed the Cherryhomes gravy train, and the DFL potentates who mock her as an “Angela Davis with funky hair.”

“These are the same people who said that I could not beat Jackie. They are mad because, through me, people who have been disrespected are getting access,” she told me recently.

Johnson Lee got her “incredible fighting spirit,” as one council member called it, growing up scrappy, black, and working class in Oklahoma City. According to Johnson Lee, a single mother at seventeen, her family taught her that she had “every right to be who I was.” Their motto was “don’t give no shorts [Johnsonspeak for slighting someone] and don’t take no shorts.”

After high school, she landed in Philadelphia and earned a two-year accounting degree. From there, she started working for General Mills, who eventually enticed her to Minnesota. After a stint in the corporate “big house,” as she puts it, Johnson Lee got into employment training jobs, first at the Urban League and then the Employers Association.

When husband Travis failed to unseat DFLer Cherryhomes in 1997, Johnson Lee decided to take up the mantle in 2001 under the Green Party banner. She firmly believes that her husband, who managed her campaign, paved the way for her improbable seventy-six-vote victory margin against the allegedly unbeatable Cherryhomes.

Johnson Lee, who won with little support or respect from old North Side guardians like the Urban League and the black clergy, suddenly had to play nice with people who had actively campaigned against her. She says of her relationships with them, “We’re cool now. We have conversations together.” But the tightness in her voice betrays her knowledge that many in the old guard would knock her off in a hot minute. “Jackie gave them a lot of goodies over the years. They were understandably reluctant to give them up.”

Getting the proper respect is a recurring theme with Johnson Lee. Those who know her on the council say that she can be quick to turn a phrase or a look into a sign of disrespect. Says one of her closest allies, “Disrespecting Natalie is a very bad thing to do. If she senses that people are not taking her seriously, she will get in their face.”

Some well-placed political veterans, such as former council member Lisa McDonald, say this in-your-face approach is just what Minneapolis politicos need. “Natalie is the only one at City Hall shaking it up and rattling cages. What has Don Samuels done besides sit in a tent and go hungry? She sure has [Mayor] R.T. Rybak’s shorts in a bundle.” Still, McDonald believes that Johnson Lee could use more political “savoir faire” instead of sometimes “needlessly pissing people off.”

Some of Johnson Lee’s council colleagues agree with McDonald. One member flatly told me her “stuff is raggedy” and that she relies too heavily on others to do the heavy lifting on tough procedural battles. Johnson Lee counters that she refuses to use Robert’s Rules as a “manipulation tool.” “I can go head to head with the best of them when I need to.”

Yet the criticism, despite Johnson Lee’s tough exterior, stings a little. “The learning curve here has been huge,” she admits. “I’ve had to get used to the backstabbing nature of Minneapolis politics. I’ve had to try to work with people like R.T. Rybak, who thinks he is a great teacher, but is not always very teachable, especially when it comes to black people.” After pausing for a moment, she says, “I make no apologies for who I am and how I serve the people who sent me here. R.T., the old DFL machine, the black preachers-they did not make me and will not define me. I have just as much right to advocate, negotiate, and yes, piss people off-as any other Minneapolis council member. This is my house, too.”