Leadership Quote by Jacob Frey

The line is built like a promise and a rebuke, and that’s why it lands. “A city that works for everyone” is the safe, mayoral universalism voters expect; the snap comes in the qualifying clause: “not just those who’ve always had a seat at the table.” Frey is signaling that the problem isn’t merely broken systems, it’s who those systems have historically served. The metaphor does a lot of political work. “The table” implies decisions get made in rooms with guest lists, and the phrase “always had” frames exclusion as structural and habitual, not accidental.

It’s also carefully calibrated language for a city where “equity” isn’t an abstract campus term but a live municipal fight: policing, housing, transit, development, and whose neighborhoods get investment versus surveillance. In Minneapolis, that subtext can’t be separated from the post-George Floyd era, when city leadership has been pressured to move beyond symbolic unity and into material change. Frey’s phrasing tries to thread that needle: it acknowledges entrenched power without naming the specific actors (developers, unions, business associations, affluent homeowners) who might feel accused.

The intent is coalition politics with an edge. He’s courting people who feel locked out, while reassuring moderates that the mechanism is inclusion, not revenge. “Make sure” is managerial, almost technocratic, suggesting competence rather than radical overhaul. The gamble is that the metaphor raises expectations: if you promise new seats, people will ask who’s losing their reserved ones.