The Indianapolis branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation stands with the people of our city in demanding Mayor Joe Hogsett’s immediate resignation. We salute the brave women like Lauren Roberts and Caroline Ellert who not only filed formal complaints against Hogsett’s sidekick, Thomas Cook, but went public with their stories.
By taking a public stance, Cook’s victims reclaimed their agency, revealing the deeply-ingrained culture of misogyny and patriarchy maintained by and accepted in the entire Democratic Party establishment and that permeates our city’s top leadership bodies. They empowered other women to step forward and tell their own stories of abuse, harassment, and intimidation. Investigations by local media confirmed these were not isolated incidents.
Now we know: Both major parties are anti-women
While it has been clear to most that the Republican Party is not a friend of women or an advocate for women’s rights, it is now clear that the Democratic Party is just as sexist.
Between 2017 and 2023, Cook was the subject of three different investigations into sexual abuse and misconduct.
Still, Hogsett continues to stand firm, asserting that he did nothing wrong, calling the women victimized by his administration and Party liars, all while refusing to provide any documentation to back up his claim and responding seriously to any inquiries.
From at least 2017 until early September 2024, the Democratic Party establishment stood just as firm as Hogsett. In May of 2017, Roberts raised concerns about Cook’s predatory behavior. Hogsett refused to respond to her numerous attempts to contact him. So, too, did other Party officials. When, months later, she tried appealing to the Party at the state level, Roberts received this reply: “Based upon advice of counsel, please direct all further inquiries regarding this matter to our attorney.”
No Party official would speak a word about–let alone condemn–the administration’s sexism for years. On August 8, 2024, when Mirror Indy published a letter by Roberts and Ellert, the Mayor and City-County Council President Vop Opsili remained silent. As an ANSWER Indiana video shows, after speaking at the August 12 City-County Council meeting, Hogsett ran out of the building as people followed him demanding some kind of accountability.
Democratic Party set to investigate itself
The local Democratic Party is, understandably, severely fractured. Now that the floodgates are open and city offices are experiencing an influx of complaints about sexual harassment, misconduct, and abuse, politicians like Opsili are suddenly having “changes of heart.” We have to recognize this for what it is: an opportunistic move by self-interested politicians trying to distance themselves from any scandal.
The one exception is Jesse Brown, who is decidedly not part of the Democratic Party apparatus. Brown, a first-time City-County Councilor and member of the Democratic Socialists of America who won against long-time and high-ranking Democratic Party leader Zach Adamson in the primaries last year, immediately called for his resignation.
Finally, on September 9, the City-County Council voted to approve a commission to investigate the Hogsett’s administration’s handling of sexual misconduct and related complaints. There are two fundamental problems that will prevent the investigation from producing any meaningful change.
The first is that the Council Committee on Committees, which includes Osili, is forming the investigative team of seven, five of whom will be Democrats. In other words, the Democratic Party is, through a committee they run, forming a Democrat-dominated investigatory body.
The second is that this investigatory team ”will hire an independent law practice or human resources firm” to conduct the investigation. The Democrats cannot hire an “independent” company to investigate its own practices.
The third problem is that the investigation is unnecessary. We already have all the proof we need.
An investigation that never was
Three years after Roberts’ complaint, Hogsett accepted Cook’s resignation. In the statement, Hogsett lauded Cook for his great work and didn’t mention anything about an investigation. Hogsett brought Cook back into his clique to run his third Mayoral election campaign. Cook remained by the Mayor’s side until 2023.
As Peter Blanchard reported, Hogsett and his administration claimed “that Roberts’ claims were investigated in 2017 — and that Cook faced a reprimand.” Those who survived Cook and Hogsett’s sexism remain rightly skeptical as to the seriousness with which the investigations were undertaken. The mayor refuses to release any documentation or evidence indicating their extent and, in fact, whether or not they were undertaken at all. As Kyla Russell wrote for WISHTV:
“My suspicion is that they don’t exist,” Roberts said. “There’s no record of campaign spending or city spending on my case. The mayor is all but calling me a liar publicly now and saying that I was contacted as part of an investigation. I was not.”
Hogsett said he “respectfully disagrees” that Roberts was never contacted about the investigation into her 2017 complaint she filed. To be fair, then, Hogsett respectfully called the victim a liar.
While claiming victims of sexual harassment are lying, Hogsett told reporters “Sexual harassment training for all city employees, annually, is something in retrospect I wish we had implemented earlier. He could have done so earlier, especially if his Chief of Staff was reprimanded for it. Why didn’t he? To ask the question is to answer it.
Hogsett and Democratic Party scramble to maintain legitimacy
The Democrats are scrambling to retain any sense of legitimacy. Hogsett claimed he had a “frank” discussion with leadership about how to create a safer and better work environment. What could Hogsett, a man who dismissed several complaints about this very issue over the span of nearly a decade, teach anybody about creating a safe work environment?
The “remedies” Hogsett proposed hardly scratch the surface and, in fact, only skirt around it: hiring a national law firm with no local ties, an anonymous reporting system, making sexual harassment training mandatory, and implementing ongoing internal education on sexual harassment.
The city has started sacrificing some of its own. On Sept. 4, an administrator in the Department of Metropolitan Development, Matt Pleasant, was fired after an investigation concluded he engaged in “inappropriate sexual misconduct.” This language leads us to ask: is there such a thing as “appropriate sexual misconduct?”
Hogsett’s remarks at a free concert Sept. 7 indicate that there indeed is such a category. “I want you all…look I ain’t on the ballot. I ain’t running for nothing. I’m running from things, but I ain’t running for nothing,” he told the crowd. Hogsett is the top politician of a county where, according to the latest available data, over 7,000 women reported domestic assault in a single year. This is nothing more than a laughing matter for him.
We need a new local system of government
PSL Indianapolis fully endorses Brown’s call for Hogsett’s resignation and salutes him for being the first to openly oppose this latest manifestation of sexism in our city institutions. Now that the Party is scrambling to maintain legitimacy, why aren’t they at least recognizing that Brown was the only Counselor to represent the people who filled the City-County Council building on August 12?
Hogsett literally “running from things”
Bear in mind that the Democratic Party also defends Prosecutor Ryan Mears who refuses to file charges against a single cop involved in the unprecedented police shooting spree last year that killed 10 Black community members.
When Randal Taylor finally resigned at the end of 2023, a coalition including the families of IMPD victims released a statement at an Indianapolis Liberation Center press conference. They concluded that:
“The problem with policing Indy’s streets will not change because Taylor is stepping down. The government is no longer by the people, nor for the people. It is a government that preys on the people. Taylor stepping down will not solve this systemic problem. Looks like it is on us.”
The problem with sexism in Indianapolis will not end on its own. As we demand Hogsett’s resignation, we demand a new and open election where we can choose someone who truly represents the masses. A mayor who is truly for the people, by the people, and of the people needs to be held accountable to the people. This is how we keep our community safe.
Cook is out. Hogsett is going. It’s up to us! We need a new system.
Featured image: Joe Hogsett speaking at the 2023 Feast of Lanterns. Source: City of Indianapolis.
