Personal Agency and the Social Contract

I’m Shawn Holster, and I ran for the Minnesota State Senate in District 63 in 2022, because the issues that comprise our public safety and public health concerns must be addressed at the state level as it pertains to meaningful, practical, structural reform. Public safety and public health are not independent issues, they are already a matrix of the criminal justice system, mental health and addiction treatment, and other social service agencies. By addressing the existing systemic difficulties — in communication, logistics, reporting, and other practical reforms, we can best utilize our already extensive structure to move people through and out of the social support system and to a place of productive, prosperous, independence.

Our friends in the DFL often speak of “the social contract.” A contract requires two parties agreeing to and executing the terms of said contract. Through encouraging the power of personal agency, we can better live up to both sides of that contract, both as individual citizens and as members of the broader community, working together to address our concerns in ways that the state or institutions simply can’t — and shouldn’t.

In my years and in my travels, I’ve acquired a vast collection of vignettes of experience that I can draw upon, and do draw upon, to guide my judgment and decision making process.

I’m asking you to join me, so we can take on the endemic, persistent challenges we all face as a civil society.