Letter From Our Executive Director Regarding Speaker Emerita Hortman

She was taken from us. We Will Not Offer Her a Small Grief.
Emilia Gonzales Avalos
Executive Director, Unidos MN 

Mark and Melissa Hortman, with their dog, Gilbert.

Commissioned artwork created by Gerado Alba

Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman was taken from us by the kind of political violence that is becoming all too common—violence that doesn’t just hurt individuals, but threatens the integrity of our institutions and the safety of public leadership. Her loss is profound. But her impact didn’t end with her passing. It continues in the work she led, the people she stood with, and the values she fought for.

Melissa was not just a legislator. She was a builder of futures. She built bridges across ideologies, across communities, and through difficult moments. She believed in progress not as rhetoric, but as responsibility. As a promise we make to one another, especially when it’s hard. And she made that promise real through consequential work for working families—expanding access to paid leave, improving education, and fighting for economic dignity across the state.

At Unidos MN, we know that promise because we’ve lived inside it.

Our leaders, everyday community members who chose to take responsibility for our conditions, stood beside her as she treated undocumented Minnesotans not as outsiders to power but as partners in shaping it. The meatpacking workers, the agricultural workers, the nannies and service workers, the undocumented leaders all walked with her through policy fights, through backlash, and through the fragile yet sacred work of creating space for immigrant families at the heart of Minnesota’s future.

The work and vision we accomplished  together in 2024 through our coordinated Future Fund PAC was not just strategy. It was the kind of faith you place in people when the stakes are everything. It was a vision of a Minnesota where no one’s humanity is up for debate. Not the immigrant mother. Not the queer student. Not the undocumented essential worker who held up this state through a pandemic but still lives without healthcare.

Relationships forged through the struggle of confronting hard issues are profoundly unique. They are built not on convenience or comfort, but on shared purpose, sacrifice, and survival. In those moments, trust is not theoretical; it is tested. People see each other in raw, unfiltered ways: in fear, in courage, in failure, and in grit. These bonds go deeper than casual friendships because they are rooted in mutual reliance and the knowledge that the other person chose to show up when it mattered most. Melissa showed up when it mattered most, without pretense, unafraid to ask the hard questions, and never dodging the truth. She gave us real answers and met us with respect, treating us not as outsiders, but as full stakeholders, worthy of dignity, voice, and power. 

And that’s why I want to speak clearly to one thing today:

Her final vote in the Minnesota House was not a vote against immigrants.

It was a wrenching, complicated compromise. One she took not with pride, but with deep reflection, because she believed it was the only way, in that moment, to protect Minnesota from further harm. She believed it would preserve the fragile groundwork we had built together for future protections, future wins, and future hope. And we are a testament to that hope.

Because Melissa Hortman never treated politics as a purity test, she treated it as an act of care. A practice of courage. A long, unglamorous labor toward justice. Even when the cameras were off, even when the hashtags faded, she was still there pushing for the undocumented worker, the student in crisis, the single mom who needed one more reason not to give up. She didn’t show up for the headlines, she showed up for the people. And she was determined to be an instrument to reinstate healthcare for undocumented adults in the future.

Melissa was taken from us, but her legacy lives on in the generations of Minnesotans impacted by her policies. Let us honor her by continuing the work to improve the lives of all working families, to advance climate justice, protect reproductive rights, strengthen public education, and build a healthcare system that upholds human dignity. Let us continue the work for a Minnesota that embodies the inclusive and just democracy our nation so urgently needs.

So let us mourn with full hearts, without apology. But let it be a courageous mourning. The kind that refuses to turn away. The kind that holds sorrow in one hand and determination in the other. Because Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman did not live a small life, and we will not offer her a small grief. 

We will grieve by building. We will cry, and still organize. We will honor her not only in silence, but in the noise of collective demand. The chants at the Capitol. The organizing in church basements. The policies reshaped by those she believed in most — the workers, the immigrants, the people too often told to wait their turn. That is the Minnesota she saw. That is the future she helped make possible.

Let us not return to business as usual. Let us rise with the courage she carried, with the clarity she led with, and with the compassion she never abandoned. Let us finish what she started — and begin what she dreamed.

Rest in power, Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman.
Rest in love, Mark Hortman and sweet Gilbert.
Your legacy is not behind us. It is with us — and ahead of us.

Let us be brave enough to carry it all the way home.