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A community forum on the LacCourte Oreilles Reservation was designed to hear from the people about what’s important to voters. (Photo by Jaynie Parrish)
There is so much about this presidential election that appeals to voters’ base instincts: Ugly threats involving immigrants or Muslims; school-yard shouting matches that replaced Republican debates and, especially concerning, the threats and violence, found at Donald Trump’s campaign rallies.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
This is Trahant Reports.
One alternative presented itself on a beautiful pre-Spring day in the northern woods of Wisconsin. Instead of enjoying that first sunny break from winter, citizens, activists and politicians, spent the day inside the Lac Courte Oreilles Bingo Hall for “You Talk, We Listen!” This was a classic exchange of ideas, democracy in action.
The event was on the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Reservation and the tribe was clearly the host. A welcome by Tribal Chairman Mic Isham, and a drum and a flag song, made it clear that that was in Indian Country. But the discussion was about the whole neighborhood: Rural Wisconsin. It was about health of lakes, water, schools, state government, and even the presidency. The day was long and punctuated by respect.
As the Rev. John Stanley put it when he had his chance to talk: “Where ever there is a venom, there is a serum. People are the remedy for the sickness.” Or as Rita Pachal said, “We need to fix our democracy first.”
What does it mean to fix democracy? For speakers at LacCourte Oreilles it was a call to action. A call to organize. And a repeated, emphatic, call to vote.
Wisconsin is a new battleground over piping Canada’s Tar Sands oil to markets. “We fought the Keystone (XL pipeline) and we won,” said Carl Whiting, co-founder of Wisconsin Safe Energy Alliance. But now the company is set to build a pipeline across Wisconsin that will carry the millions of barrels of the “dirtiest oil.” He described a farmer whose house is near the current line and his foundation rumbles from the a pipeline only a few hundred feet away. He’d like to sell out, but the company doesn’t want to spend that much money.
There is common-ground in the pipeline issue, the idea that private property rights are being trampled on as fast as the environment. The company can also use eminent domain laws that require landowners to sell a strip of their land for the pipeline.
Korey Northrup said these pipelines will have an impact on traditional activists such as tapping trees for syrup. “We shouldn’t have to worry that a pipeline will ‘rain’ oil,” she said.
Any community forum, of course, is just the beginning of a conversation. Here in Wisconsin, there were many voices missing. We need to hear from people who did not or could not make the event. We need to hear more from young people. And there needs to be more of a conversation with conservatives.
One of the great stories from American history is the feud between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. These two men did not like each other or their politics. They were as far apart as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Yet late in life, Adams wrote to Jefferson, “You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.”
There remains a lot of explaining required in this country.
I am Mark Trahant reporting.
