Alondra Cano

Healing, Truth-Telling, and Harm: How Responding to the loss of George Floyd can Repair a Broken Nation

Lecture by Alondra Cano, City Council Member, Minneapolis

Alondra Cano is the city council member from the district in Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered in March 2020. She was a leading proponent of abolishing the Minneapolis Police Department. During this session she shared what she has learned from the tumultuous events of 2020, and what we can take away about planning and design of multicultural and inclusive American cities.

Cano is the first Latina to have been elected to serve on the Minneapolis City Council. She’s the Ninth Ward representative and part of the youngest and most racially diverse governing Council in the history of the City of Minneapolis. During her first months in office, she made national headlines as she worked shoulder-to-shoulder with American Indian leaders to secure a unanimous Council vote to abolish Columbus Day and recognize Indigenous Peoples Day. As the daughter of Mexican undocumented immigrants and low-wage workers, she led the charge to pass a $15 per hour minimum wage ordinance helping over 71,000 workers. As the mother of three boys growing up in East Phillips, she fiercely defended the community’s Green Zones vision to create pollution-free neighborhoods for the most low-income areas of Minneapolis.

Organized by the Urban Design Program at Columbia GSAPP.