DeVelle Jackson

DeVelle Jackson earned a high school diploma from Mounds View High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His career experience includes working as an activist and in construction, field engineering, and construction superintendent roles. Jackson has been affiliated with The King Center.[1]

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I’m DeVelle Jackson, an Independent candidate for Congress in Minnesota’s Fifth District. I did not come to public life through a party ladder. I came through communities, work, classrooms, churches, civic service, and studying how leadership serves or fails people.

My background spans construction, field engineering, and superintendent work. It taught me that preparation matters, problems must be identified honestly, competing priorities reconciled, and results must stand on their own. Public service should meet those same exacting standards. People who work hard and carry real responsibilities deserve a government just as serious about its work.

I earned my B.A. in Political Science from the University of Minnesota with distinction, focused on constitutional government, political institutions, public power, and civil liberties. I have prepared for law school as the next step in that work.

For four years, I have volunteered as a docent with The King Center. That work affirmed that nonviolence requires discipline, organization, courage, moral clarity, and action when institutions fail the people they serve.

I am running as an authentic Independent because elected officials should answer first to the people they represent, not a party establishment. Independence means building coalitions when it serves the people, challenging abuses of power, and putting constitutional responsibility above faction. My candidacy was not assembled to fit someone else’s political lane.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

The Two-Party System

America’s representative system does not belong to two political parties. The Constitution does not require citizens to pass through a party establishment to participate meaningfully in public life, yet the two-party structure increasingly determines who receives money, attention, access, and even recognition as a serious candidate. I am running as an authentic Independent to challenge that cycle. Elected officials should answer first to the people they represent, not to party establishments, build coalitions issue by issue, and exercise independent judgment. I want to prove that a candidate can compete, govern, and persuade without surrendering that judgment to party command. The seat belongs to the people not a partyPrivacy, Data Rights, and Surveillance

Privacy must remain a right in an age when governments and corporations can collect, purchase, combine, and monetize intimate data at unprecedented scale. People should have meaningful control over their personal information, location, movements, communications, biometrics, and devices, including the ability to access and withdraw data. Government should not purchase information to bypass warrant requirements. Facial recognition, geofencing, surveillance pricing, forced biometrics, and constant-recording technologies require enforceable limits. Innovation should expand human capability, not normalize a society in which being watched, tracked, profiled, or monetized becomes the price of ordinary life.Affordability, Labor, Jobs, & Growth

Affordability requires more than helping people pay for what remains scarce. When supply does not grow, additional assistance can meet the same shortage without bringing prices down. Direct relief should be paired with investment that builds more housing, domestic production, trained workers, small-business space, and essential services. That means making it easier to build, produce, hire, train, and compete while ensuring working people share in the value they create. A stronger economy should reward labor, expand opportunity, and give small businesses room to grow. The goal is greater supply, stronger competition, more good jobs, higher productive capacity, and less pressure on household costs.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

Too many issues people care about have become political theater, performed for attention without the sustained work required to produce results. I am passionate about turning priorities including affordable healthcare and housing, labor rights, Social Security and Medicare, voting and civil rights, accountable government, privacy, education, and economic opportunity into realtime action. I will pursue them diligently, relentlessly, and tenaciously, with the persistence that put me on this ballot. But persistence alone is not legislating. I will work across differences, make the case, and use my independent platform to pressure and persuade colleagues to build a majority consensus or coalition that moves good policy from principle into law.

Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?

I look up to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., particularly for the discipline behind his leadership. His example shows that nonviolence is not passivity, and that moral conviction must be joined with organization, courage, strategy, persuasion, and sustained action. My volunteer service with The King Center has deepened my appreciation for the work required to move people and institutions rather than merely speak about what is wrong. I want to follow that example by remaining grounded in principle while still doing the difficult work of building coalitions, confronting injustice, and persuading people who do not already agree with me.

What legacy would you like to leave?

I want to help break a political culture dominated by party ladders, seniority, performance, and constant division, and replace it with action people can actually feel in their lives. I want to activate people who have grown disillusioned with politics, prove that independent leadership can break through established structures, and show that influence does not have to be inherited from a party machine.

I also want to help move America past cultural fights that keep people separated from one another and focused on what divides us. We need a stronger shared identity built around what we hold in common as Americans, something that can rise above those divisions and that we can genuinely be proud of and patriotic about together. That also means being a country whose leadership, conduct, and example in the world strengthen that shared patriotism rather than undermine it. I want to help restore that sense of common purpose and turn it into participation, service, and action.

What organizations or individuals have endorsed your campaign?

I have not received formal organizational or individual endorsements to date. I have actively sought support across the district, but as an Independent candidate I am building outside the party-aligned networks that traditionally drive many political endorsements. My campaign is focused on earning support directly from voters and organizations willing to evaluate the candidacy on its merits rather than party affiliation.