The Last Page
Neumann, Rachel
AFEW MONTHS before the ugliest American election in recent history, more than fifty people gathered in a park for a potluck lunch and discussion about what real democracy would look like at the...
...Surrounded by corn fields, filled with fundamentalist Christians, and made up of squat, one-story houses, it's home to the agricultural branch of the state university...
...No, it's actually not," said one of my traveling companions, a Vietnamese-American woman who grew up in Oklahoma...
...Manhattan, Kansas...
...This Manhattan sits bull's-eye in the middle of the country...
...When I commented on this rare harmony, one man shrugged...
...The crowd was slightly larger than usual because of the few out-oftown guests, but otherwise this was a regular Monday gathering in Manhattan...
...The Monday potluck is sponsored by the Manhattan Peace and Justice Society, a committed group of more than seventy-five people, many of whom have been working for progressive causes for over thirty years...
...I looked around again, she was right...
...It's so flat," I commented, when we stopped on the fourth day at a gas station in the middle of a wheat field...
...Steady work...
...Throughout our trip, I found these and many more examples of politics as daily practice...
...Back among the skyscrapers of my Manhattan, I wonder how to create the solidarity I found in more isolated areas...
...The wheat fields rolled and dipped in a way that I could never find in the forcibly flattened and paved streets of New York City...
...In Salt Lake City, I met with a coalition of longtime environmental activists, local unions, native rights groups, and committed democratic socialists and anarchists, augmented by an odd assortment of left/progressive folks...
...Nourishing...
...To paraphrase the Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton, we need politics like bread...
...AFEW MONTHS before the ugliest American election in recent history, more than fifty people gathered in a park for a potluck lunch and discussion about what real democracy would look like at the local, national, and international levels...
...no cafés or nightclubs, no cozy bookstores...
...It doesn't feel like a "college town," though...
...A few teenagers brought their friends...
...In Kansas City, Missouri, a group of older women stand by the highway every week, holding signs expressing their hopes for peace...
...Together, with bright spirits and without acrimony, we planned a meal, discussion, twelve workshops, a march, rally, and skit...
...RACHEL NEUMANN 128 n DISSENT / Winter 2001...
...Similarly, there was an unexpected diversity to the crowds we met...
...Some got up early to make special dishes—homemade casseroles, homegrown-tomato salads...
...Imagine someone in New York so easily acknowledging that there is more to learn...
...I visited Kansas last summer as part of Democracy in Motion, a "road show" of educators and organizers who drove from New York City to Los Angeles in a '74 Eagle converted tour bus named Mabel...
...Only some of the crowds were mixed ethnically, but everywhere I encountered a variety of life stories and beliefs that I seldom find at community events in my more-celebrated Manhattan...
...At one stop in Kansas City, I found myself sitting between a church secretary and an anarchist...
...Our goal was to share information about the growing movement against corporate globalization and to encourage local organizing and coalition building...
...We don't waste time fighting with our friends...
...Sustaining...
...Out here," he said, his gaze taking in the huge Mormon temple, the twelve-story electric-company office, the hills, and the desert, "we know who are enemies are...
...How can we build tight communities that also have space for our immense cultural and personal diversity...
...Manhattan, Kansas, is a reminder of the need for a politics that is more than a string of victories, defeats, and arguments...
...Many workers took a long lunch break...
...In Denver, Colorado, native women march daily to save their low-income housing...
...We traveled to places that might have missed other tours: medium-sized cities and small towns that—until this trip—I would have thought were in the middle of nowhere...
...During one of our conversations, a man in Kansas City apologized for not knowing more about the history of democratic protest: "I've only recently emerged from my trance," he said...
Vol. 48 • January 2001 • No. 1
