>White New York
> may be more conservative than white Middle America, and more of
> promising white folks live in Middle America than in New York.
One of the biggest mistakes that the Left makes is its assumptions about "Middle America." If you are ensconced in one of the liberal/progressive enclaves on the West or East Coast, it's really easy to make assumptions about what people think in Middle America. You hear about states like Kansas changing the school curriculm several years ago to favor creationism, but those extreme views are not held by most Kansans, That crap was thrown out the door once the majority of Kansans got pissed off enough about that nonsense to get it thrown out of schools.
The fact is that Middle America is not flyover "Bush Country." As I've pointed out before, the newspaper here is filled daily with anti-Bush letters to the editor. Even the conservative Johnson County Sub includes lots of anti-Bush letters and "sound off" comments. Kansas City has become more liberal since I left it 15 years ago. Look at the voting results on a country level from the past few presidential elections and you will see that change. Johnson County, Kansas--home of the rich suburbs I live in currently--used to elect Republicans every two years to Congress. Now they have a Democratic congressman.
Kansas has long been what I would characterize as a "liberal Republican" state. It has strong populist undertones in rural counties. In fact, Ross Perot won several counties in southern Kansas during that election where he did well (1992?). I see Kansas as being more progressive than states like Nebraska, Oklahoma and reactionary Wisconsin. Yes, I said "reactionary" Wisconsin. Despite the liberal enclaves of Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin has some deep reactionary tendencies. It's the state that elected Tommy Thompson to office numerous times and gave the world the John Birch Society.
There are many progressives, radicals and anarchists out here in the Midwest. But to those of you who live jaded leftist lives on the coasts, we don't matter to you. Hell, even Amy Goodman isn't going to visit Kansas City on her tour, when we have a 100,000 watt independent community radio station that runs her show every morning. It was really cool that Doug came out to Iowa. If more progressive authors and speakers came out to the Midwest, we could reach lots of people. Amy Goodman or Noam Chomsky are going to get a bigger turnout in Kansas City than they would in New York City or Washington, DC. People out here know about Chomsky. We do have Borders, cable TV, network radio, and the Internet, you know.
I've been pleasantly surprised at the amount of activism out here in Kansas City and the larger region. It's enough to keep me busy! I've been working with some liberal activists who are involved with media reform. We are putting on a media reform strategy workshop on May 1. I can't make the workshop that weekend because I'm going to the Great Plains Anarchist Caucus meeting in Columbia, Mo., which will draw anarchists from as far away as South Dakota. The following weekend I'm going up to Madison, Wi. for an anarchist book fair. And none of this will put me in contact with folks from that current hotspot of North American anarchy: Colorado. Over in Colorado, the anarchists have set up infoshops in a handful of cities and towns and have been busy with all sorts of activism. Shit, even the high schools here in Kansas City have young anarchists in them.
I was over at the neighborhood grocery store yesterday where I treated myself to a copy of the New York Times ($1.50 here in Kansas). The cashier looked at the picture of George W. on the cover and asked me if he was ever going turn over Iraq to the Iraqis. I was taken aback, but I said to her that he had better do it soon, because the Iraqis are mad and are perfectly capable of running their own lives.
Yes, that conversation took place in Kansas.
Chuck0