Last updated on 2019-11-26
a guest column by Sioux Falls denizen Dave Baumeister
This week, I was the guest of Minnehaha County Commissioner Dean Karsky at a gathering of community-minded citizens in Sioux Falls.
This is one of those early-morning breakfast meeting groups that convene weekly to talk about what is going on in local government. I knew a few of the people present personally and knew some others by reputation. I was happy to hear all of them talking about how government is “supposed” to work.
From what I could tell, the folks in this group were of different political persuasions and backgrounds. However, not once did the subject of national politics come up.
We heard a little bit on state level from farmers in the group about South Dakota’s ban on industrial hemp, the benefits of the crop, how it doesn’t have the intoxicating affects of marijuana, and how we may end up falling behind our neighbors in that respect.
But for the most part, the discussion revolved around Sioux Falls and Minnehaha County— specifically, Home Rule and the “Triple Check” petition process for limiting the original Home Rule charter in Sioux Falls.
Joe Kirby, one of the authors of the Home Rule charter back in the 1990s and a supporter of some of the issues behind the petition, spoke to the “breakfast club” about bringing more unity to the city council. As it is now, under the charter, a mayor only needs a coalition of a few council members to ensure he gets his way.
Kirby said he believed that taking the mayor our of the room would bring back the need of having to form a consensus to get things done.
However, this was a digression from the original topic Kirby was supposed to address, having a Home Rule charter at the county level. What little talk there was about that dealt with a change in elected officials, combining offices, and saving money. No one said we should “get right on that,” but, as was appropriate for breakfast, it did become food for thought.
This all brought to mind two things I have known for a long time.
First, no matter how much attention politics gets at the national level, by far, the most important level of government is local—i.e. city, county and school.
Local is where we should be looking if we want to effect change.
Second, politics and political parties can give us guidelines to follow, but they should not be the focus of how to govern. All people can have good ideas, regardless of whether they have a “D” or an “R” after their names. The founders of the United States knew this, which is why they made compromise essential to changing the Constitution.
The Wednesday morning breakfast group in Sioux Falls is a shining example of this philosophy. Instead of only looking at our differences when bodies try to govern, we need to first look at where we agree and build on that.
It would certainly save a lot of time and produce far better results.
“Local is where we should be looking if we want to effect change.” Perhaps, but I’ve found that very few want to stand up to the powers that be. Maybe that dynamic is stronger in smaller communities and not so much in Sioux Falls, but business people feel they must keep their mouth closed or they’ll lose business, or won’t get things approved, etc. It’s not good but that’s why the local good old boys, The Madison Mafia, or whatever you call them always seem to win. It’s actually quite fascinating to hear a bit of Russia’s history with Stalin, how he took control, and amazingly how people fell in line. It doesn’t take a whole lot of fear for people to decide to just look away in Stalin’s case he took it to the extreme and whatever the people thought the revolution would bring, it didn’t.
You described the breakfast meeting well, Mr. Baumeister. Was the group approx. 50% women? Did any women speak? Were any women present in an important role? Were any women invited to attend?
Women in government is a progressive vehicle for positive change. What happened in Iceland is a model Sioux Falls should adopt. Or not. As usual in SD, change is hard. Especially when it involves changing.
https://fortune.com/2016/10/31/iceland-us-women-in-parliament-congress/
Does Kirby text message the council too? Probly coulda been something as a theater director.
“All people can have good ideas, regardless of whether they have a “D” or an “R” after their names.”
There are a wide variety of religious groups, many interdenominational, and others interreligious, working very hard to make that point and more. They are pushing back hard against the deformed “Christianity” of Demon Drumpf and the pseudo Christians who make excuses for him.
This open letter comes from “Commonweal” magazine and is signed by a diverse collection of Christians. It’s titled “Against the New Nationalism.”
is.gd/SRoBVW
From The Atlantic, “Why Some Christians ‘Love the Meanest Parts’ of Trump.”
is.gd/nfe4LZ
And from Sojourners, “Church Leaders, Like Politicians, Must Shift The Dominant Narrative on Poverty.”
is.gd/oVzwjZ
Porter, There were no “quotas” that I know of to have women present, but I would say about a third of the people were female, and all of them spoke. There was no hierarchy or “roles” that I could tell. There was one older gentleman at the end of the table who started things rolling, but the conversation was pretty self-sustaining after that. There was only one elected official present. As I said in my column, these were people from all walks of life. I was told that this group has been meeting every week for 25 years, but I don’t know how many original members were still there. But I don’t believe their goal was to change anything. What I saw was a bunch of people discussing and learning about their community in a nonjudgmental way. I am sure those discussions have sometime led to change, but this was not a group whose purpose it was to be “pulling strings behind the scenes.”
If this is the person you think should run our country – yes – you better try to make changes locally.
https://youtu.be/g2Q0E2dzTJw
What a pleasure you must have had Mr. Baumeister. Thanks for sharing.
Happy describes an interesting tension: local politics matter more, but lots of people keep silent on local politics for fear of local retribution. Is that why so many people feel more comfortable spouting off about the President and Congress, because the federal government feels so far away and abstract to more people? Are lots of people just to chicken to say what they think to the people they are talking about?
Porter, interesting question. Aberdeen has breakfast meetings or kaffeeklatsches like Dave describes. I’m of the impression they are mostly men sitting around talking about civic matters. Do women engage in similar activities? Are they welcomed in such conversations?
PaulT apparently disagrees with Dave’s thesis that discussing local matters is more interesting and effective than beating our national partisan drums. The person in PaulT’s video, along with most if not all of the people at Dean Karsky’s breakfast table, could run this country better than the current occupant of the White House.
But let’s not be distracted by Dave’s thesis. We have plenty of other threads where we can conduct the conversation Paul would like to have (dang! all four of my preceding posts fit that bill—Dave’s local focus is a good counter to the rest of DFP’s Friday output!).
Local pols cannot do to ‘We The People’ the damage the feds can do when you have a total orange colored moron in the kremlin annex and Moscow Mitch, a bought and paid for Russian shill, running the Senate.
Given that, “Local politics matter more, but lots of people keep silent on local politics for fear of local retribution.” Cory, that’s what gets grudzie’s goat about your blog. The “WE Five” ex-pats feel free to point out the stinky parts of SD, because we have no risk of retribution.
It’s fascinating to me how marijuana is discussed in your state. There’s exactly the same percentage of users there as there is here. However, pot enthusiasts in SD are afraid to say anything for fear of a knock on the door. That’s also why I’m so wary of a full-on right wing “fringer” like John Dale espousing a liberal view of decriminalization. He doesn’t pass the smell test and could easily be gathering names of users for who knows what. If I was smoking weed in SD, I wouldn’t want my name anywhere near his petition. Same with medical, if passed. Who’d want their name on a state registry of pot users? Might as well put a target on your house.
(First off, John Dale isn’t working for anyone but himself.)
But Porter, you make a great point about the importance of getting views from elsewhere. South Dakota’s one-party regime wants to shut outside voices out of our local conversations because they know they can’t intimidate people who aren’t dependent on our isolated and in-bred local economy. They must thus marginalize such voices.
Of course, it’s funny to find outsiders who give that much of a darn anyway about local South Dakota issues. We should consider ourselves fortunate to have the input fo so many independent observers like Porter, Debbo, Mike, and others.
I aspire to a similar independence. Perhaps what makes me a useful blogger is the same thing that makes me an unlikely winning candidate: I just don’t give enough of a darn about what my neighbors think of me. I don’t care about being liked; I just care about getting the facts right and telling the truth, about any issue, local or otherwise.
I’m kind of a semi-outsider but I do care about what happens up there. For one, I control property in SD and for another, since we liberals around the country send money to Red states, we do have an inherent financial interest in how it’s distributed.
PS … with all due respect, Cory. You don’t know squat about what John Dale is all about. He carries your petition and you need to believe the best.
My guess Cory things must always go back to Evolutionary Biology and Psychology. If you conform you will get food and survive. Human Beings are semi-hardwired to agree beyond what is obviously wrong because it’s safe. It keeps the paycheck coming in, it keeps people smiling at you in the grocery store, etc. To disagree creates risk so people go along they don’t want to think that someday those same people will come for them. In the short term it’s just better to nod your head and agree till it’s too late then they realize they have given themselves over to something like all the monstrous dictators who promised equality for all. It’s why so many of us hate Communism and Socialism because they expect you to give up your personal opinions for the supposed better good.
Local politics is interesting, and sometimes foreign politics are real interesting. Take this that happened at the G-7.
“BIARRITZ, France — Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made a surprise visit to the city hosting the Group of Seven summit Sunday, a move that caught President Trump off-guard and added another element of tension to the meeting of world economic leaders.
Zarif’s arrival in Biarritz appeared to be a covert initiative by French President Emmanuel Macron, a senior European official said, and other leaders were not informed ahead of time. There was no immediate plan for the Iranian foreign minister to meet anyone other than French officials, officials said.
President Trump, whose antics have often left other world leaders searching for words, had little to say when asked about the unexpected guest.” Washington Post 8.25.2019
Man, that was a Bah Zing moment… I would’ve loved to have been in the room to see chubby’s jowls drop.
“…Communism and Socialism… expect you to give up your personal opinions for the supposed better good.”—Hap, you just described Trumpism.
I recognize the risks of not confirming. I live those risks every day.
I’m thinking about conformity in the context of the brain drain story: when we have to live with each other in the same community, we learn to live with each other. We find ways to get along and carry out necessary local policy. When brain drain leads to the clustering of like-educated, like-minded people, communities of both types, the less-educated rural and the more-educated urban, may exert more conformist pressure on non-conformists. But I’ll posit that local life in the conservative rural areas that usffer from brain drain will exert more conformist pressure than the urban areas that don’t suffer the same brain drain, in part because those urban areas are experiencing a constant influx of more diverse individuals, while whatever influx comes to the rural areas consists more of people like those already there who will respond more negatively to any newcomers who don’t conform to and thus are perceived to threaten their vision of a community that looks and acts like and affirms the majority at every turn.