By PETER MOLENAAR
Like many in this neighborhood, I don’t entertain expensive vacation plans to distant places, but prefer to explore the natural beauty which surrounds and embraces our city. Dakota trails along the Mississippi and Minnesota are known. Minnehaha Creek contains the spirit as well, but upstream from the falls, the bed is bone dry now. Indeed, the dry bed of Minnehaha whispers its own truth, yet MAGA Republicans say it ain’t so.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party candidate for Governor has declared that investment in public education is a “black hole” (get it?). Evidently, the concept of reparations in the form of early childhood education is beyond their mental capacity… fixated as they are on granting more tax breaks for the rich and super rich.
Moreover, Keith Ellison, our hard working, mild mannered “people’s attorney” is opposed for the office of Attorney General by a hedge fund attorney! Hedge fund? What’s that? Well a hedge fund is a place where a person with a big pile of money puts that pile with a bunch of other piles in order to create a monster which sucks wealth from the system without adding a tangible thing… all without lifting a finger
Note:
It was more than a century ago that an activist-philosopher named Lenin made the statement: “We are not indifferent to the outcome of bourgeois elections”. In fact, prior to the upheaval in Russia, the comrades there were quite active within the bourgeois-democratic framework, even as they understood that ‘democracy’ is always seriously flawed under the capitalist system, i.e., bourgeois-democracy is a form of dictatorship of the capitalist ruling-class. However, on the other hand, fascism is an “open-faced” dictatorship of the most chauvinistic sector of the capitalists… and we are anti-fascists, are we not?
And so then…
Here in “the hood”, a persona was forged, largely within the walls of Smith Foundry. I am privileged now to participate in the Anti-Fascist United-Front of Labor in support of Democrats, under the banner of the Minneapolis Regional Retirees Council (AFL-CIO). Yet, I openly declare the unsustainable reality of the capitalist system. Indeed, I have earned the right to speak!
Yes, it is the bloody capitalist system which is heating up the planet… imposing the drought which has silenced Minnehaha. It will be a democratic socialist revolution which restores her spirit and her voice.
