Re Nick Espinosa prospective campaign

Rumors that Nick Espinosa wants to run for office. Many people in Twin Cities had bad experiences and had to kick him out of their orgs. Here is one writeup, and for a bunch of previous disturbing data points refer here: https://storify.com/CultureClap/predator-activist-nick
Consider yourself warned!!!
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SOURCE: Ashley Fairbanks (Jan 3 2018): https://www.facebook.com/ziibiing/posts/10102497922986102

Several times over the past few months, Nick Espinosa has talked to me about running for State House against Diane Loeffler. I have asked him over and over to not run. Many people have asked him to not run. He refuses to listen.

I’ve told him...

You shouldn't run for office because the top Google suggestion for your name is "predator."

You shouldn't run for office when you still haven't properly satisfied the victims who you hurt.

When you’ve wasted the time and energy of so many women in this community because we felt some kind of way when people said we shouldn’t toss people like you in the trash.

____________________________

You know, when things went down with Nick a few years ago, I was in the middle of defending myself from retaliation at the hands of a man who hurt me and my friends. It felt deeply personal.

The things he had done reverberated in me. The manipulation of the women in his life and work. Looking at women as accessories to his power. The cheating. The pursuing of young women after they asked him to stop.

I wanted to protect those girls that said he had treated them improperly. Probably because no one had ever tried to protect me. I jumped in. I publicly called him out. I was angry, and I was done with men who got away with hurting us.

And time passed.

The weird thing most people don’t talk to you about after you report sexual violence, is the guilt you feel. How people can subtweet, sneer in public, cast a glance and blame you for ruining someone’s life. You begin to absorb it.

So when people started talking about transformative justice processes for Nick, I was interested.

Here we have this idea, transformative justice. That we can fix our communities for ourselves. That we have the agency and the power to transform people and quell hurt. Not being able to believe in the potential of this process made me feel like I didn’t actually have the capacity to believe in things like police abolition.

I still had so much animosity towards him, and I felt broken for not being able to make it go away.

I pushed myself to spend time with him, to cultivate a relationship where I could unload some of the toxic baggage he’d put on my back. Return it to his arms. It felt like a relief.

No longer could his presence in a room dictate what kind of day I was going to have. I got rid of the power he had over me.

I’d be dishonest if I acted like this was the sole reason I wanted to spend time with Nick. He was also politically helpful. I would overlook the times he’d return to vitriol when talking about how this community had wronged him.

That was a mistake.

Nick played me, just like he’s played so many others. He is desperate to run for office. To center himself, once again, as the leader, savior of something. Just like he did in so many other movement spaces. He will do anything, time and time again, to justify why he should be the leader of something. Like the multiple organizations he’s either destroyed or been asked to leave in the past few years. He refuses to change, to check his ego. It is a destructive pattern.

I refuse to feel gaslit by Nick anymore. So I'm writing this.

I believe in transformative justice. But I also believe that people have to be ready, themselves, to be transformed. Nick is not ready. He was offered second chances by myself and people I care about in exchange for not running for office. He cast those offers aside when he continued to pursue this seat in the Minnesota Legislature.

I am sad to write this, but he will not listen to reason, from me or from other people. He has also lied about me supporting his bid for office, a lie which is especially painful to hear from so many of my movement sisters.

The truth is this: I will NEVER support him. I will never support any candidate when a victim of their's has told me that they have hurt them.

So I am asking him, this one last time, not to run.

Will you join me? Please comment below.