Below is an excerpt from the upcoming book of essays, Human Toll, written by José Antonio Zayas Cabán.
Author’s Note
This essay is written in the spirit of the plena—the Afro-Puerto Rican tradition known as el periódico cantado, or the sung newspaper. Born in Puerto Rico, plena is more than music. It is a vehicle for truth-telling, memory-keeping, and community dialogue. Through call and response, it relays the news that official channels ignore, connecting people to each other, and to the stories that shape their lives.
Like a plena, this piece moves between past and present, pain and joy, resistance and imagination. It is a record of what we’ve lived through, what we’re fighting for, and what becomes possible when we listen deeply, act boldly, and refuse to forget. It is a song for those who have been silenced. And a response for those ready to sing back.
How I Learned to See Differently
I remember one of the first times I felt the weight and joy of having an impact on someone else. I was in elementary school in Puerto Rico, and I had signed up for a volunteer program where you “adopted” a grandmother in a local nursing home. I would visit her, bring her small gifts, and spend time listening. It was more than volunteering; it was connection. I saw how something as simple as a visit could bring joy to someone. I remember thinking: this matters, and it matters how I do it.
Later, I watched my father live a similar ethic. I remember going to the grocery store with him and seeing how he interacted with unhoused people. He didn’t just hand over some spare change, he invited them in. Once, he walked a person into a fast-food place with us, bought them a meal, and sat down to make sure they ate. He treated them with the dignity that most of society denied. He made sure they knew they were seen.
Those early impressions became the blueprint that guided me, even before I had the words for justice, solidarity, or systemic harm. They stayed with me through Hurricane Georges, when I saw how uneven recovery was in my home country Puerto Rico. My middle-class neighborhood was more quickly cleaned up, while a nearby barrio where I volunteered struggled for weeks well after, without proper care or attention. Even the local media seemed to forget us. I remember opening the newspaper and seeing stories about baseball players chasing home run records—Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire—while Puerto Rico was still struggling to recover. That was the first time I realized that injustice doesn’t just survive through policy. It persists through silence. Through selective storytelling. Through what the world decides is worthy of attention.
That realization would come back to me years later when, while finishing my doctorate, hurricanes Irma and María hit Puerto Rico. Again, now living in the mainland United States, I watched the global gaze drift elsewhere even as people remained in crisis. This time, I turned to music. I began shaping musical projects that aimed to tell the truth of what was happening, that demanded attention, that raised funds, that insisted: There is still work to do, there is still a need.
As an artist, I have always seen narrative as a battleground. What does it mean to make progress? Who gets to define progress? How is progress achieved? Who is remembered, and how? I carried that same question into political organizing, where I grew frustrated by a system more interested in winning elections than transforming lives, placing wins well above outcomes and accountability. I saw a parade of promises followed by silence. And an advocacy ecosystem that was more concerned with access to power than with building power to actually make change. I knew I wanted something different.
So when I took the job at Our Streets, I saw an opportunity to bring all of this together. I wanted to build something rooted in solidarity instead of proximity to power. I wanted to disrupt the conventional process that has consistently led to that “comfortable order” and present an approach that asked us to deal with that “uncomfortable justice.” Something that wasn’t designed to negotiate behind closed doors, but to force open the doors of possibility and do the work with transparency…through the filter of public accountability. Something that told the truth: that this is not about roads, it’s about reparations. Not about traffic counts, but about whose lives are counted. Not about better commutes, but about better futures. Something about lived experiences and quality of life.
I believed we needed to move away from a discussion about shifting the overton window into a conversation about breaking it. I wanted to remove all shackles and barriers and inspire communities, coworkers, decision makers and stakeholders to think without limits, and to imagine a future without hierarchy. A future where the intersection of race and class is non-hierarchical, fully horizontal, and the privileges of the few become normal for the many.
I set out to design and build a program that worked with the community—not for them—to build trust through vision, and credibility through follow-through. We anchored our organizing in public history, in human stories, and in an unflinching moral commitment to restore what was taken, to return what was stolen, and to reimagine what was always possible. I wanted to refuse the seductive lie of incrementalism and name it for what it is: the bondage of class hierarchy, the strategy of those who benefit from delay.
This chapter is about what happened when we refused that lie. When we said no to footbridges and yes to land return. When we chose not to change the system and instead model its replacement. This is the story of Near North Minneapolis and the fight to bring back 6th Avenue North. But it’s more than that. It’s a story about seeing the truth, refusing its inevitability, and loving someone you don’t know enough to fight for a world they deserve—without expecting anything for yourself or anything in return.
Bringing Back 6th: What It Means to Reclaim “The Avenue”
When we first began engaging with the Harrison Neighborhood Association, one of the earliest community ideas for reconnecting the neighborhood across Olson Memorial Highway was a footbridge. A narrow strip of concrete arching over the six-lane corridor. A footnote to injustice. And that’s the tragedy: when people have been harmed for generations, when the system has trained and conditioned them to expect nothing more, a bridge feels like a win.
But I felt differently. Not because we had the answers, but because we asked a different question: Why is this community being asked to climb over the very harm it didn’t cause? That footbridge would have cemented the highway’s permanence for another generation. It would have marked the neighborhood’s acceptance of a poisoned compromise. I rejected it. We rejected it.
Instead, we began to open up a new conversation. One that was bigger than pedestrian safety. One about returning land, repairing harm, and restoring joy. It was difficult at first, and it is still difficult. Some people thought we were naive, and many were entrenched in this cultural phenomenon of “car dependency.” Others thought we were being too confrontational. But the truth is that the burden of respectability has always been used to suppress the voices of the oppressed. What they call disruptive, we call necessary. What they call radical, we call overdue. When they talk about traffic, we talk about people.
Footbridges, highway caps, land bridges—these are the emblems of what I call memorialized injustice. They ask us to remember the harm without ever repairing it. They preserve the highway while pretending to heal the community. These projects cost hundreds of millions of dollars and yet somehow never touch the root. They are symbolic grave markers, not acts of resurrection.
When we say “Bring Back 6th,” we mean it. Not a metaphor. A material demand. Olson Memorial Highway destroyed a thriving corridor—home to jazz clubs, Black businesses, Jewish social halls, and multiracial organizing. It replaced vibrancy, the feeling of safety and walkability with dead concrete. It erased memory with asphalt. And it continues to suffocate the community with air pollution, noise, disinvestment, and danger.
Most privileged white Minnesotans would never tolerate this. They live in places once protected by racial covenants, where homes appreciate, parks are nearby, commutes are quiet, and kids don’t get asthma from traffic emissions. They enjoy what we call quality of life. If we agree that quality of life is a human right, then the path forward is simple: remove the highway, return the land, and reconnect the neighborhood.
I’m not here to adjust the system. I’m here to model its replacement. When people ask what we mean by our “intersectional community-centered approach,” this is it. It means designing with—not for—the communities most harmed. It means holding agencies accountable to vision, not just compliance. It means programming events like Imagine 6th Avenue North, Open Streets Glenwood, and our Mobile History Museum to educate, and to also activate. To spark imagination and expand it. To invite residents to see what a neighborhood could feel like if we center joy, community and generational wealth instead of traffic.
Our Streets is not an agency. We are not a think tank. We aim to be a trust-building engine. We refuse performative engagement and backroom deals. We canvas. We survey. We stay. We do not disappear after the ribbon is cut. We host block parties in the street to ask better questions: What would it look like to live without fear of being displaced? What if we could enjoy the fruits of our own imagination without having to leave our neighborhood to find them?
The work is slow, but not because we are. It’s slow because those who benefit from the current arrangement propose incrementalism as the cost of their continued comfort. But we are not here to move slowly so that others can stay in power. We are here to show what power looks like when it is shared, when it is built—not inherited.
And when we succeed, it will not be because we outmaneuvered the system. It will be because we outlived its assumptions. Because we dared to believe that highway land could become a home again.
Principles in Practice: An Implicit Blueprint
So how did we do it? We didn’t start with the agency, or the department, or the consultants. We started with the community. We went to frontline neighborhoods and built a program with their stories, their concerns, and their ideas. Not with checklists or tech fixes—but with values as our compass. We began with the power of imagination that people have, and gave them the tools to imagine something more.
We also recognized the imbalance that comes from generations of disinvestment. Frontline communities are not just under attack, they are under-resourced. That’s why our work is rooted in relinquishing resources. We don’t just want to bring support, we want to transfer it. Our goal is to share our ideas, our expertise, and our staff time to amplify the histories, desires, and priorities of the community. We use our tools to shape their voices into work that fits within existing systems and, instead of conforming to them, challenge them to respond. To me, true partnership means asking, not assuming. And building power means doing it together. Sharing it.
The work we do is intentionally disruptive. Not in chaos, but in purpose. We model an approach that defies how agencies and departments typically operate: budgeting by timelines, tracking by task, and measuring success by outputs instead of outcomes. Our strength is in our flexibility. We believe that grassroots and grasstops must be interconnected. That philanthropy must stay in dialogue with the vulnerable individual. That policy must answer to lived experience. This flexibility is not a lack of discipline, it’s the highest form of accountability. Because we never lose sight of what really matters: lasting impact.
Below are the principles that guide our work at Our Streets.
Ask Imaginative Questions Before Seeking to Apply Answers
I prefer to begin with questions instead of solutions: What if this land could thrive again? Who has been conditioned to expect less—and why? These questions shift the frame from traffic to justice.
Listen Without a Script
We canvass block by block, not to pitch a fully defined plan, but to expand imagination and learn how people talk about their neighborhood. To the agencies, engagement is a box to check. To us, it’s a practice of sustained trust-building.
Joy Activism: Model the Vision in Public
At events like Imagine 6th Avenue North and Open Streets Glenwood, we talk about change and we make it visible. Through art, block parties, renderings, and storytelling, we transform streets into platforms for possibility.
Center Community-Created Benchmarks
Before any policy asks, we co-create metrics with residents: What outcomes matter most? Safety, health, displacement risk, generational wealth, cultural vitality—they define progress.
Reject Compromise That Doesn’t Change Power
We say no to symbolic solutions that leave systems intact. We prioritize return and repair and reject ribbon-cutting optics that only decorate the harm.
Anchor in Narrative and History
Through mobile museum exhibitions, oral histories, and public storytelling, we make legacy visible. We take organizing out of its vacuum and root it in memory.
Stay and Come Back—Even When There’s No Immediate Win
We stay after the meeting, after the survey, after the spotlight. We choose to come back. That consistency is our organizing strategy.
Hold Power Gently, Always Share It
We collaborate with grassroots and institutional partners alike, but always lead with the people closest to the harm. We don’t hold a vision in front of them. We support them in building their own.
Together, these principles form a practice, not a prescription. A way to walk forward in integrity, especially when the path is uncertain. A method to invert the rigid, extractive norms of institutions. A refusal to reduce justice to timelines and outputs. Instead, we chase outcomes that matter, with a vision rooted in restoration, imagination, and joy.
Reclaiming Policy: The Community Preferred Alternative
When we talk about highway justice, we are talking about racial justice at the intersection of economic justice and environmental justice. These struggles are inseparable. To isolate one is to weaken them all. We cannot afford to engage in purity politics that erase class struggle. Nor can we allow our language to be sanitized into abstraction. If we are serious about justice, we must speak the whole truth, especially when it makes people uncomfortable.
When we talk about a “Community Preferred Alternative,” we’re not just talking about policy. We’re talking about power. It’s a statement that says: the time has come to give agency back to the community by taking unchecked power away from the agency.
Not just as a critique of public planning, as a demand for transformation. Because what we call agencies today, like Departments of Transportation or Metropolitan Planning Organizations, often operate more like remnants of imperial governance than instruments of democracy. They mirror a lineage that stretches from British monarchy to Roman imperialism: created to extract and suppress, designed to impose and enforce.
The Community Preferred Alternative inverts that logic. It refuses the idea that people closest to the problem are somehow furthest from the solution. It insists that the role of government is not to dictate but to serve. That co-participation and co-creation are not optional, they are essential.
This is about self-determination. It is about community-led governance. It is about a radical redefinition of who holds the pen when futures are drawn. In our work, policy isn’t an abstract tool. It is a battleground of values. And our demand is simple: the agency, the MPO, and the government itself must remember they are public servants, not decision-makers above or apart from the people.
And we cannot stop at structural critique. We must also interrogate the narratives we use when we talk about justice. Too often, racial equity is framed in a way that ignores economics. Environmentalism is touted without regard for land loss or displacement. And advocacy groups—sometimes with the best of intentions—pass policies that sound good on paper but feel hollow on the ground. If we are not fighting to end wage theft, to stop evictions, to challenge austerity and climate injustice in the same breath, then we are not building justice. We are just renaming the harm.
Real policy transformation requires that we abandon the fantasy of neutrality. That we name who benefits, who pays, and who is left behind. It demands that we move through discomfort, across sectors, and into coalitions that are complicated but honest. Because liberation is not linear. It is layered. And to get there, our policy must be too.
We Are Not Asking
The moral question has always been simple: Why are communities that were systematically destroyed—by redlining, by covenants, by disinvestment, by highways—being asked to accept half-measures and monuments in place of justice? Why must the same neighborhoods asked to sacrifice their health, safety, and wealth now settle for a footbridge? Or a glossy brochure promising “mitigation” without repair?
My answer is equally simple: we are not asking. We are demanding. Because communities like Near North Minneapolis deserve what white and wealthy neighborhoods already have: clean air, safe streets, public space, economic access, walkable lives, and joy.
We will not be placated by asphalt art alone. We will not be grateful for land bridges that span a wound without healing it. We do not mistake symbolism for change. We will build monuments to joy, yes, but not until justice has been done.
When people ask what this campaign is really about, I tell them: it’s not about transportation. It’s about quality of life. It’s about power. It’s about whose imagination shapes the future and who is forced to adapt to someone else’s vision.
We’re not here to ask for inclusion. We’re here to redraw the frame. To say that organizing is more than issues, it’s about the integration of identity, class solidarity, dignity, and direction. We are not adjusting old systems. We are rehearsing new ones. And we are doing it in public.
In a world that trains us to lower our expectations, our refusal is our power. I believe in full restoration, not half-hearted reform. I believe in returning land, in re-establishing neighborhoods. Not gentrification or restoring them as they were, but as they could be if shaped by the dreams of those who live there.
I believe that disruption is love in public. That joy is a strategy. That storytelling is a form of power. And that justice is not measured in miles of road, but in miles of life and land regained.
This is my vision. Our vision. Not a compromise. Not a plea. A declaration. We will bring back 6th Avenue North. And we invite the nation to look closely at what we’re fighting against, and the future we are fighting for.