We are now joined by a former elected official, one of the few elected officials to be a member of the DSA, Democratic Socialist America in the 1990s. That is former mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota, my hometown, Mr. James Shebel, excuse me. Thank you for joining us.

Good to be here. So are you a native St. Paulite or did you move here at some point?

No, I'm native. grew up on the west side, Highland Park of St. Paul. So

some time in D.C.

in the Carter administration, Clinton administration, but with that, St.

Paul's my home.

I love it.

Great.

And what was your early life like in St. Paul?

Was it sort of a political place at the time?

Are there people agitating for, you know, this was, would have been

sort of the post-New Deal era, right? Was it a hotbed of left-wing activity or not so much? Well, my

grandfather worked at Ham's Brewery and he was a union member. So I remember reading the union

advocates as a young kid.

I had an uncle who was very active or like politics and was always encouraged me to get involved.

So a turning point for me or part of my political education was when I was in college and like so many other people in the 60s read Michael Harrington's The Other America.

And I was one got to do something about it.

So it was always, it just made a lot of sense to me. And I went to Nazareth Hall,

which was what we call the minor seminary, four years of high school, two years of college

studying to be a priest, and then went to St. John's and Collegeville. But those years were

very formative in that Dorothy Day would come and speak

just about a year. I met her, her Daniel Berrigan. The monks at St. John's very much lived in a community,

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