Oliver Weilein won the special election for the Iowa City Council seat in District C in a landslide on Tuesday. Weilein received 60 percent of the vote. The other candidate in the race, Ross Nusser, finished with 40 percent of 6,902 votes cast.
A month earlier, Weilein won the primary in District C with 69 percent of the vote to Nusser’s 27 percent. He carried eight of the district’s nine precincts. In the primary only voters living in District C, which includes downtown Iowa City and the Northside, could vote. In the special election, all registered voters in Iowa City could vote.
Weilein carried all eight of those precincts in District C again on Tuesday, and overall, won 22 of the city’s 28 precincts. He also received more early/absentee votes than Nusser, 991 to 888.
According to the Johnson County Auditor’s Office, voter turnout in Tuesday’s election was 15 percent. The last time Iowa City held a special election to fill a seat on the city council was in 2018. In that election, which Bruce Teague won, turnout was 9 percent.
Weilein works at Systems Unlimited, assisting people with intellectual disabilities, but is better known as a musician in Iowa City-based punk bands and for his community work, including as a founding board member of the Iowa City Tenants Union and an organizer of benefit concerts to raise money for causes, such as providing necessities for unhoused people and supporting LGBTQ Iowans.
“I’ve been involved in bottom-up, autonomous grassroots community organizing,” Weilein explained in an interview with Little Village before the District C primary.
Weilein’s speech to his supporters at Kindred Coffee on Tuesday night after the election results came in reflected his organizing experience.
“I’m somebody who thinks that change happens from the ground up, and it’s not going to happen from the top down,” he said. “And using something as small-scale as a city council seat, and getting the city onboard and making life easier for working class people,” but winning an election is only a beginning.
“We can’t wait for Democrats to save us,” he said. “You don’t have to ask permission from Democrats, or anybody in government, to improve your community. If you are in a union, make it more radical. Make it rank-and-file. If you don’t have a union, organize your workplace and start one.”
Weilen said he and other organizers are “in the process of revamping the Iowa City Tenants Union,” and pointed to Iowa City Mutual Aid, which “is doing so much good work now.”
In his interview with Little Village before the primary, Weilein said, “The real political progress will come from community organizations that build power among themselves autonomously.”
“So, using a position on the city council to embolden organizing like that, and provide material support and improvements for all residents in Iowa City can help bring about that process.”
At Kindred on Tuesday night, he asked people to imagine how powerful organized grassroots resistance to injustice can be.
“Imagine for a second, when this insane, cruel bill that stripped civil rights from trans people in our state,” Weilein said, “imagine if we had such robust ground organizing, where — if you’re going to pass this bill — the airports don’t run. The highways are shut down. No one goes to work.”
It would send a message: “We don’t need them, they need us.” Weilein considers actions like that to be examples of “what Martin Luther King called ‘good tension.’”
King often talked about the creative possibilities of tension, most famously in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” in which he discussed the “type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth” that people who criticize peaceful protests frequently misunderstand.
“Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension,” King wrote. “We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.”
Weilein, who’s played in punk bands since he was a teenager, phrased that idea differently: “It is the tension that happens when the people in power and the ruling class get fucking scared.”
“I’d love for people who say that they are pro-labor, who say that they are pro-working class, who say that they stand with marginalized groups, but they refuse to get on board with this movement. I would love for them to look inside themselves and ask themselves why? Why is that the case?” he said at the close of his speech.
“And so, we just need to think differently. This isn’t about elections — like I said earlier, you don’t have to ask permission, you can do it yourself.”
