‘Raise Your Voice’ Archives
Native Sons
By Peter Molenaar What happens to people who drive west on Franklin Avenue to the point where it ceases to exist? It is likely they will turn south on Penn Avenue and discover Birchbark Books one block away. That”'s what happened to me. Birchbark is locally our best store of Native American Indian literature. I did purchase one of Louise Erdrich”'s fourteen novels while there. But it was by chance that I perused a geography book which revealed a park named after our state”'s second governor. There exists within this park, on a tributary of the Minnesota River, a lovely waterfall now called Ramsey Falls”¦ another Dakota sacred site named in honor of a shameless conqueror. Is the true name lost? What happens to people who drive southeast for eight hours? They will find the land where wild garlic once grew in great abundance. “Shikaakwa” was the Illiniwek word for this medicine plant. From the tongues of early French explorers, the word became [...]
Too Much To Ask?
by Peter Molenaar March 10”¦ Lord knows that the industrial grinding wheel imposes an arduous task upon a worker. Nonetheless, I am happy to have returned to Smith Foundry in the aftermath of hip replacement surgery. It is, after all, $20 / hour plus benefits. Note: in Minnesota, 137,000 children live with parents who earn the minimum wage. February 25”¦ Hundreds gathered at the capitol rotunda to demand: “Raise the Wage.” Lead by Organized Labor, representatives of constituent nationalities were the featured speakers. The finale featured the song of Ojibwe drums. March 3rd”¦ (more…)
Turn, Turn, Turn
By Peter Molenaar It was a pleasant surprise to find not one, but two of my comrades on the front page of last month”'s Alley Newspaper. Pete Seeger and Meridel Le Sueur were both amazing human beings. Truth to tell, however, Pete”'s Party status has been somewhat hazy. He was “close”, they said. As for Meridel, thirty some years ago I gave her rides to and from meetings ”“ so I”'ve known all along that she was a Communist. Pete Seeger passed away January 27, 2014, at the age of 94. In point of fact, in the period of rising fascism, at age 17, Pete did join the Young Communist League in opposition to the pacifism and left-isolationism he encountered at Harvard University. He believed the whole world should unite to defeat Hitler. THIS MACHINE SURROUNDS HATE AND FORCES IT TO SURRENDER rang the words of his banjo. In the prime years of his life, so it followed, the “authorities” did their best to hound and to blacklist [...]
