On Thursday, I spotlighted a September Spotlight on Northern video in which Mayor Mike Levsen discussed Northern State University, Aberdeen water quality and crime, economic development, and a variety of other issues. I also mentioned local self-professed bigot, liar, and dead-ender Pati Koeniguer’s inarticulate critique of about ten seconds’ worth of Mayor Levsen’s hourlong conversation with NSU professors Jon Schaff and Ken Blanchard.
Koeniguer said Mayor Levsen needed to apologize for saying that “the white population birth rate is just too low to replace people that are dying and moving away” and that local anti-immigrant squawkers are “liars, white bigots, dead-enders, and to be honst with you they are not rational.”
Mayor Levsen uses his weekly column to explain why he owes no apology for his comments. On birth rates, he says he sees no need to sugarcoat facts or duck questions:
A discussion about potential future growth of Aberdeen elicited my comment that either we had to accept that our population will shrink, or we had to do what is necessary to accommodate newcomers and make it possible for them to enjoy life here.
This exact same concept was recently also expressed by a representative of the Federal Reserve Bank speaking in a Minnesota city.
My comments reflected the self-evident understanding that local residents’ (mostly white) birthrate is not high enough to maintain population growth and replace those who die or leave. That’s not criticism of family birth control choices, it’s just a statistical fact.
Apparently, this is uncomfortable for some to hear. I could have sugar-coated an answer and ducked the question, but there’s no reason to [Mayor Mike Levsen, weekly column, Aberdeen American News, 2018.12.08].
Mayor Levsen says he’s telling another uncomfortable truth when he describes the immigrant-haters as bigots and liars:
The letter also took offense at hearing the words “bigot” and “liars.” I try to not resort to name-calling directed at any individual, and did not in this instance. The reference was to political groups who continue to repeat the lie that immigrants cause crime rates to increase. There is a mountain of evidence disproving that claim over and over and over. It’s not even an item of rational refutation anymore.
Those who intentionally ignore this fact and persist in their fearmongering are lying, and that is the appropriate descriptive word. Is it a lie based in bigotry? Again, that may be uncomfortable to hear, but it also may be accurate [Levsen, 2018.12.08].
We don’t need to sugarcoat facts about bigots and liars in our midst. We don’t need to back away from making hard judgments just because some Trumpists will cry snowflake-crocodile tears about “name-calling.” When we hear lies from bigots, we have a right and a duty to say, “Hey, bigot, quit lying.”
Mayor Levsen is just doing his duty, not only informing his constituents with a weekly column (something no other elected official in Aberdeen or Brown County does) but also calling out the ugly behavior of a few Aberdonians who threaten the reputation and continued prosperity of our community.
I like that he called out these hate groups, but his concentration on birth rates seems out of place. The real problem is not birth rates. If you didn’t have young people and young families escaping the state, current birthrates would maintain the population.
Population loss has been a problem in rural South Dakota since early statehood, when the population of many rural counties reached a peak. It’s been a steady decline since about the 1930s for rural areas and small towns. It used to be that young rural kids would migrate to Sioux Falls or Aberdeen or Rapid City. Sioux Falls now gets a lot of rural migrants, and Rapid City gets a few, but many now head to the coasts, the sunbelt or other Midwest states.
I have been surprised to see how many of my Lincoln High (Sioux Falls) Class of ’69 left South Dakota. That was a lot of talent, and fertile young families, just given away to elsewhere. If you could half that, you might be on the way to solve the problem. To do that South Dakota has to make major changes. I don’t see that happening. The elite seem happy the way things are, if they aren’t trying to make things worse.
So, more and more South Dakotans join caravans to migrate out of the state. Like the Hondurans traveling through Mexico to our border, South Dakota’s young and not-so-young seem to be escaping a bad situation and looking toward the future. When people are either content or completely hopeless, they tend to stay where they are. When they are not content, but with a lot of hope, they move on.
I stayed for as long as I did because I found I could make a difference, and I had hope that things would change, but they didn’t and they never will, I fear. When I figured that out, and I decided I needed to make some money for retirement, I left.
I don’t think any of us ex-South Dakotans are “bad hombres” leaving to sell drugs to ‘Sconnies or Iowegians. I think we left for the same reason that migrants and refuges come to America.
“When people are either content or completely hopeless, they tend to stay where they are. When they are not content, but with a lot of hope, they move on.”
Really good comment Don. I’d add, even with only a little hope, people will gather up their courage to take a shot.
This too is right on and very well put.
“I think we left for the same reason that migrants and refuges come to America.”
I can’t add anything better to that. Thank you.
One difference between people leaving SD for a better life and migrants and refugees leaving their countries is that the latter are often literally trying to escape from violence threatening their lives.
The new HBO documentary movie “Icebox” tells a chilling story of 12 year old Oscar who was threatened with death after trying to resist his forcible conscription into a Honduran gang. His experience being transported by dangerous coyotes, trying to survive the desert, then being captured by ICE and placed in a cage with other children, being beaten and labeled a gang member because of a tatoo forcibly burned on his body, and finally facing an U.S. immigration judge alone, sends a chill up the spine of any sentient person.
While there is violence in SD and other midwest states, efforts to escape violence are typically supported these days, in stark contrast to the experience of migrants and refugees.
Why does the mayor of Aberdeen feel responsible to “do what is necessary to accommodate newcomers” in order to achieve population goals? Just let people in this country legally decide where they want to live. Birthrates in the U.S. are 1.8, Honduras 2.5, Syria 3.0, and Uganda 5.5. The people in these countries must decide if that’s a place to bring more children into their family, into the immediate surroundings they know, not a U.S. responsibility to open borders and eliminate the pain of poor decisions. We can help, be a good example, but we can’t save the world no more than you can save someone from themselves.
But we’re committed to growth, Hap. Recall something I blogged thirteen years ago about Madison’s commitment to the idea that we either grow or die, and Lee Yager’s rebuttal to that position, his contention that Madison was becoming a “metropolitan madhouse” and that Madison ought to just stay the size it was. (I don’t think Lee was complaining about foreigners back then; in his book, even more white people were bad for Madison.)
Growth is not inherently good… and you seem to take that position with human population. Preaching restraint in reproduction is, as Mayor Levsen might say, “not unreasonable.” But that’s not the position any city council or chamber of commerce or economic development corporation or employer takes, not in this state. We want more, more, more: more workers, more houses, more taxpayers so we don’t have to raise tax rates on anyone already here.
In Mayor Levsen’s worldview, it makes perfect sense to invite new people to come to Aberdeen to keep our population and workforce and tax base from shrinking. To accept the position of the dead-enders, even if it weren’t racist, would require a reversal of economic development thinking and goals and an acceptance of fewer workers, fewer opportunities, and fewer taxpayers, which would likely lead to a decline in the overall quality of life in Aberdeen.
Oh my 13 years ago junk man versus art. Well, he’s the more practical guy and lot more than a junk man art has its limits. Fine, grow the town, Madison didn’t cause our protectionist forefathers refused the interstate Karl Mundt wanted to give us, there’s definitely a lesson to learn there, but Levsen is throwing race into the mix and making it politically different. To be a cynic what’s his angle just Mr. Goodguy or the powers that be want more cheap labor to the detriment of working-class people already there? We could have been Brookings but one elite family protected themselves not labor. The new progessives care more about their ideas than the working man which used to be the basis of the party.
HC, I have no idea what your “junk man versus art” is about. Care to enlighten?
I wouldn’t say Levsen is the one who added race to the conversation. Seems to me it is already there and pretty much everywhere else, thanks in large part to Ole Baldy. He can take most of the credit/blame for putting skin color front and center in this country, including in Aberdeen.
In addition, the places that are growing in the USA are doing so via immigration. It’s either domestic immigration to the coasts and inland cities, or foreign immigration that’s keeping small towns afloat, or even improving them on most community metrics.
So of course Levsen talks immigration and the racists in Aberdeen like Al Nosestrap who’ve been part of their fear mongering snake oil shows. Unfortunately, where POC immigrants go, racist haters seem to spring up like Russian thistles.
Oh, that’s Cory’s link Lee Yager was a successful recycler and very smart guy and his dad before him. We’ve heard these arguments how art will reinvigorate small towns that comes from detached artists not working people. Our town’s history restricted free markets to benefit the powers that be working people are naturally suspicious of the influx of immigrant labor with different values. Someone was just explaining how it is recent immigrants who are often the most critical of new immigrants especially those who don’t come here legally because they most understand their precarious position and how they will have to compete with newer, cheaper labor. What continues to bother me is how progressives (not traditional Democrats) have no empathy for their working-class roots often first generation college educated snobs that turn their backs on their own people and think they’re better. Grinds my gourd.
HC, I think you don’t know much about working artists.
“We’ve heard these arguments how art will reinvigorate small towns that comes from detached artists not working people.”
It’s no different from running your own business of anything else. Licenses, sales tax, orders to fill, shows to arrange, deliveries to make, shows to install, booths to set up and take down, insurance to buy, buyers to schmooze, suppliers to find, last minute emergencies to manage, staying up all hours of the night to get a project finished on time, etc.
That’s a working person. The only difference is, their product is art and it has reinvigorated small towns. That’s an economic fact, not a story. Lanesboro, in southeastern Minnesota is a good example. Ask some West River folks about Hill City. Commerce is commerce, whatever the product.
HC, I’ve heard this before and I find it troubling.
“progressives (not traditional Democrats) have no empathy for their working-class roots often first generation college educated snobs that turn their backs on their own people.”
I have friends who have academic PhDs, MDs, researchers, and other advanced degrees and they’re liberal/progressive. They have turned their back on nothing. The rigid right has been steadfastly promoting the idea of well-educated people as cultural snobs for decades. It’s really permeated the country.
“Ivory towers” is a well-worn phrase to indicate a highly educated person in academia who is far removed, far above, the rest of us in the trenches.
My friends and most of my grad school professors were not that type. In fact they were anxious to avoid an ivory tower mentality. They understand working class as well as you or I do.
I think you needn’t be so quick to make assumptions about people based on their education or career, or just the fact that they call it a career, rather than a job.
People with advanced educational degrees are rarely exceptional. What they are is individuals who spent or borrowed a lot of money, went to school a long time and worked hard at it. No more and no less. There’s nothing that makes them innately superior and most of them are well aware of that.
Try not to stereotype them.
Utilizing 1st and 2nd amendment rights of free speech and to bear arms, chanting “Jews – will not – replace us”, white nationalists surrounded by militias with assault rifles, were defended by our president exclaiming “they included many fine people from both sides”. The 1st Degree Murder verdict by a jury in Charlottesville serves as Society’s response to “Pati in Aberdeen’s” public request for an apology from its courageous patriotic Mayor, and to the idiotic president’s perpetual campaigning for votes from irrational people.
On related thread sarge man-splains superior elites as we liberals. Point out sarge says immigrants are fantastic and has taken to ending posts with “peace”. This is a blog technique to “avoid hate speech filters”, or being banned. Harpers 12.18.
It was Brett Weinstein using Evolutionary Biology to explain how different class structures react differently to protect themselves. I have the strongest identification as working class Trump saw just how to play it the GOP never did anything about immigration cause the rich wanted that cheap labor. Let these artists do what they want but Madison’s biggest draw is not going to be the arts as Cory’s link argued. I’ve seen labor exploited the biggest protections are not from laws but simple supply/demand that creates a living wage of course employers are going to squawk a careful immigration policy is necessary which leaves me very distrustful of anyone preaching high immigration or open borders they sing the song you like but possibly for very different motives. You’re right I shouldn’t stereotype educated people, no, just the progressives. They’re the ones who don’t understand the dynamics and fail to see the struggle of the working class in their midst, their own people in their own towns cause they like to think globally, not locally. Think global act local they ain’t even doin that they’re putting everyone else in front.
HC said, “You’re right I shouldn’t stereotype educated people, no, just the progressives.”
It’s okay because All progressives stereotype working people?
No. None of the stereotyping is okay. Not even, not even wing nuts. Seriously. My biggest issue.
Then why do you have a list of names you call Republicans? If it’s your biggest issue why do you do it???
Hold up, Hap—Levsen’s not throwing race into the mix. Well before the above interview, well before the hate rallies began, well before Levsen was mayor, city leaders bought into growth as an imperative. Levsen comes on and perpetuates that imperative. Growth has to happen, and Levsen doesn’t care what color people come make that growth happen.
The bigots, liars, and dead-enders throw race into the mix by complaining, first about Hispanic immigrants at the beef plant, then about African immigrants. Levsen wades into their muck, telling them obvious demographic fact: if they really value Whitopia, they need more white people.
The racists want Whitopia. Mayor Levsen isn’t after Browntopia, Blacktopia, or Redtopia—he just wants Aberdeen to keep growing.
HC, I’ve said several times that Pootiepublicans are not all Republicans. Several times in several comment sections.
On the other hand, what are your plans to deal with your stereotyping issues?
Most likely follow suit and announce a disclaimer from time to time.
Here is annuncomfortable fct. A few weeks before Dems get control of congress, wingnuts decide it is time to debate raising the minimum wage, First time in nearly 8 years. What’s the hurry?
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/republicans-minimum-wage-hearing_us_5c0e9a18e4b06484c9fd2b3b