For those of us who live in the suburban Midwest, coastal lifestyles and politics can seem "unreal" even when everything looks the same.
> When socialism was at its height, it was Kansas not New York which
> produced the largest circulating left papers.
Lucifer the Lightbringer is in the house!
Doug is already pointing out in his responses that the situation in the Midwest is different than it was a century ago. But the Midwest is not exactly this bastion of "red states" that the fucking chattering pundits on the coasts make it out to be. There are plenty of people living out here who are from the coasts. The politics in Midwest cities are more liberal than you think.
A group of progressives and radicals here in Kansas City have managed to throw the Kansas City mayor's race for a loop. The hot topic of the mayor's race is the city's abuse of the TIF program. The progressives in the local Reclaim Democracy group commissioned a study of TIF financing that was researched by one of the econ professors at UMKC. They released the report (http://kcindymedia.org/newswire/display/72977/index.php) in January, giving them enough time to generate a buzz about the report during the mayoral campaign. My friend Tom Klammer does a radio program at KKFI (our Pacifica affiliate) and he asked each mayoral candidate about the TIF study. A few weeks ago local bloggers used the state's sunshine laws to get a recent audit of the TIF program released to the public. Now the current pro-developer mayor is spitting mad and the entire TIF program has taken center stage in the mayor's race.
Just shows what a small group of activists can do if they insert a lever into the right place.
> Rural areas might appear right but that is because they have been
> neglected. Interesting enough in the past several years at least 4
> anarchist info shops have opened up in fairly small size towns in
> Missouri (including my own). The potential is there.
I don't know which town you are in, but infoshops have opened in Kirksville, Kansas City, Springfield and one is rumored to exist in Columbia. St Louis has several interesting anarchist projects, including a cooperative bakery. An infoshop just opened in Iowa City. Omaha had an infoshop several years ago and one opened briefly in Wichita. I don't know the status of the infoshops in Oklahoma and Arkansas.
There is a small anarchist community in Vermillion, South Dakota. I attended an anarchist conference in Vermillion back in 2005.
The anarchists in Lawrence have a growing infoshop and they recently took a bus with 37 people to the NCOR conference in Washington, DC. The Lawrence anarchists just organized another anti-war protest at the recruiting center there.
We had an anti-G8 protest two years ago here in Kansas City, in conjunction with the one in San Francisco where Josh Wolf was filming stuff that landed him in jail. Our protest brought together over 150 activists and union members. The local police put together a large counter-mobilization of their own.
Plans for protests of the 2008 RNC and DNC conventions are underway in Denver, Minnesota, and Lawrence. I'm organizing an informational session about these protests, which will happen on Sunday, April 15th in New York City.
> On a side note, the same problem I was complaining about happened to our
> info shop. At least four founding activitists have left for DC, San
> Francisco, and N.Y in the past year.
We see that problem here in Kansas City too. We've lost activists to Seattle and San Francisco. Some people come back. I just met today two new activists who have come to KC from North Carolina.
Doug writes:
>> But if they were deployed to Dubuque, they'd be energized into lifelong activism?
Dubuque is hosting the Jesus Radicals conference later this summer. I've already marked Dubuque on my calendar of radical events to table at this year.
Don't diss my home state! Iowa rocks.
;-)
Chuck