Saturday the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party held an event to nominate someone for a seat on the Minneapolis City Council. There were apparently two candidates up for consideration, the incumbent Council Member Aisha Chughtai and the challenger Nasri Warsame. Video of the event shows Chughtai’s supporters taking the stage at which point Warsame’s supporters came forward and began shouting and allegedly assaulting people. Police had to be called to sort it out and afterwards the chair of the Minnesota DFL issued a statement blaming the problems on Warsame’s supporters.

After reviewing video evidence and speaking with numerous attendees of the Ward 10 convention, DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin released the following updated statement:

“As we learn more about the incident that took place at the Ward 10 endorsing convention, it is clear that the conflict was instigated by supporters of city council candidate Nasri Warsame. Harassment and violence are unacceptable, and we expect candidates and their campaign teams to work hard to curb such behavior when it comes from their supporters, staffers, or volunteers. Warsame and his team took the opposite approach at today’s convention by escalating the situation and encouraging conflict. Reprehensible behavior like this from any DFL Party candidate and campaign will not be tolerated.”

The event had to be called off without any speeches or an endorsement because of the violence and disruption. The two candidates released statements that seemed to blame the other candidate’s supporters.

In a Facebook post afterward, Warsame said his campaign manager “has been assaulted by one of the other campaign staff members, and he’s now being transported to hospital by an ambulance.”

“The convention was shut down due to turmoil, and all the people were instructed to exit the building,” Warsame wrote. “No endorsement at this point, but more questions to ask regarding the process.”

Chughtai also released a statement, casting blame on Warsame’s campaign for leading his delegates onto the stage and “assaulting me and my supporters as I was about to begin my convention speech.” Chughtai said more than a dozen of her supporters were “physically assaulted,” along with a photographer documenting the convention, and more were bullied and harassed as “an attempt to scare us.”

“Eventually, our supporters locked themselves in our hospitality room, so they would be safe and away from a rapidly escalating and dangerous situation,” she said. “The Warsame campaign followed us off the floor and was only held back by a group of brave volunteers who blocked a hallway while our supporters were able to escape from the locked hospitality room out a back door of the building to safety.”

Here’s Warsame at the hospital.

Just visited one of my delegates in hospital, wish her quick recovery!

Violence & unfairness have no place in democracy!! pic.twitter.com/7C44LaY3vw

— Nasri Warsame (@Nasriforward10) May 14, 2023

So what exactly happened here? According to a Warsame supporter who attended, there was frustration because the event didn’t seem to be run well and when Chughtai took the stage with her supporters they felt as if it was being treated as a coronation for the incumbent and people became angry and started booing. Then some of Warsame’s supporters began encouraging people to come forward and that’s when it became a melee.

The guy with the microphone was asking everyone to sit down and a guy in a Chughtai shirt kept shouting “Point of order!” but no one was listening. One of the Warsame supporters had picked up a bullhorn and was marching back and forth shouting something. A minute later the Warsame protesters (not sure what else to call them) climbed onto the stage and were just waving signs.

I have no idea what they thought they were accomplishing but I will say the general tone of this is familiar. This is deplatforming in action. The Warsame supporters shouted down the incumbent so that the entire meeting had to be adjourned.

“This is embarrassing!” convention chair Sam Doten shouted, finally adjourning after pleading futilely for order. “We are shutting this down!” he said. “This is no longer safe!”

Ironically, Warsame appears to have been promoting himself as the law and order candidate in this race.

If elected as your city council, I will prioritise safety and work tirelessly to ensure the people of ward 10 are safe from the harms of perpetrators and drug dealers by collaborating with the man and woman in the uniform, who put their lives in a danger to keep us safe. pic.twitter.com/NtMkNiynyU

— Nasri Warsame (@Nasriforward10) May 12, 2023

On the other hand, Chughtai is a progressive former labor organizer who has supported abolishing the police force for the safety of marginalized members of the community. So it’s a bit ironic that her people wound up calling the police on the black candidate in the race.

Nasri Warsame and his supporters protested against the establishment backed incumbent Aisha Chughtai

Things got out of hand and the pro-ABOLISH police Chughtai supporters threatened and then proceeded to call the cops 🤣

Is the DFL is anti-Black men? https://t.co/9b9i2UKQdR pic.twitter.com/y84ZcdzXAT

— AK Kamara (@realakkamara) May 13, 2023

Here’s the video of the disruption which is about 6 minutes long.