Rhoda R. Gilman - Stand Up!: The Story of Minnesotas Protest Tradition

From Farmer-Labor Leader, January 15, 1930

The Story

of Minnesotas

Protest Tradition

Rhoda R. Gilman

2012 by Rhoda R. Gilman. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, write to the Minnesota Historical Society Press, 345 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul, MN 55102-1906.

www.mhspress.org

The Minnesota Historical Society Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481984.

International Standard Book Number
ISBN: 978-0-87351-849-9 (paper)
ISBN: 978-0-87351-857-4 (e-book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gilman, Rhoda R.

Stand up! : the story of Minnesotas protest tradition / Rhoda R. Gilman. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-87351-849-9 (paper : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-87351-857-4 (e-book)

1. Protest movementsMinnesotaHistory. 2. MinnesotaSocial conditions. 3. MinnesotaPolitics and government 4. Progressivism (United States politics)History. 5. Social reformersMinnesotaBiography. 6. Political activistsMinnesotaBiography. 7. MinnesotaBiography. I. Title.

HN79.M6G55 2012

322.409776dc23

2011040232

Image page 12, Library of Congress.

Photo page 145, Avye Alexandres.

All other images from Minnesota Historical Society collections.

Minnesota is a state spectacularly varied, proud,

and handsome, with a progressive political tradition

It is a state pulled toward East and West both,

and one always eager to turn the world upside down.

John Gunther, Inside USA (1947)

Some regard Minnesotas political culture as moralistic and some see it as radical, but most would agree that it has been a seedbed for cultural and political movements that have changed the country, and its history weaves a pattern of wide opposition between left and right. This tension may account for the frequent presence of alternative parties and electoral experiments. As a historian and political activist, I have often been asked such questions as: Why are Minnesota Democrats called the DFL?Have we always had third parties?and Who was Ignatius Donnelly?Floyd Olson?Gus Hall? Yet there has been no brief, readable work that would summarize the story and answer those factual questions. After working for many years as a Minnesota historian and taking part in struggles for social change during my own times, I have tried here to provide one.

This is a story of successive protest movements, including political parties and other organizations that have sought to gain power within the state and to shape its government along with its social and economic patterns. It is a story of conflict and defeat, of change and tenacity. I have tried to give enough of the historical framework to make the context clear and the movements understandable, but I have left interpretation and analysis to deeper and more detailed studies. There are plenty of those. Some are listed in the bibliography at the end of the book.

Power in American society is about wealth, so the root of most protest has been economic. Nevertheless, there have been demands for racial, religious, ethnic, or gender rights, and those have sometimes divided or derailed movements that were formed along lines of economic power. Protest can be conservative as well as radical, and if radicalism is defined as rapid change at the roots, then many of Minnesotas protest movements have been conservative in the sense of struggling to preserve the local control and small-scale business of an agrarian society against the steady march of corporate industry and the concentration of wealth.

Movements based on single issues, such as prohibition or abortion, have enlisted strong passions and have raised serious questions about the fairness of the American two-party system and its electoral laws. More broadly based small parties have challenged those laws with proposals to replace plurality (winner take all) voting with a system based on ranked choice. With its persistent small-party tradition, it is no wonder that Minnesota has been in the forefront of that effort.

An exception to the usual pattern of protest has been the long and continuing fight to secure equality for women. This fight has coincided almost exactly with the existence of Minnesota as a territory and state, but it is far wider than just giving votes and political office to women. Like the struggle to save the earths environment, which has only begun, the empowerment of women affects customs and religious beliefs that have endured through many generations of human society. Ecofeminists see a profound relationship between the status of women and that of the earth. As we look ahead, the preservation of the planets living systems seems certain to demand fundamental changes not only in our politics but in the values that underlie our industrial civilization. One such change is likely to be the increased importance of a local economy and hence of local government. So the story of Minnesotas protest heritage may be more significant to readers in the next century than in the last one.

As the timeline of history merges into the present, the landscape flattens and it is hard to know which peaks and valleys will stand out as we move beyond them. At the same time, it can be instructive for a historian to come off her perch as an observer and to take responsibility for her place as an actor. My involvement with the Green Party has made me part of the developments discussed in the last chapters. But journalists are not the only ones who write the first drafts of history, and I describe Minnesotas recent protest movements in order to place them firmly in the context of the states protest traditionand to draw lessons about their meaning.

Minnesota politics began when the territory was organized. The year was 1849. The United States had just invaded Mexico and taken the northern third of the country, including California. The gold rush there was in full swing. But the real gold of the great West was, and always had been, its land.

The forests and prairies and mountains were sacred to Indian people, but in a very different way they were also sacred to the hoards of squatters and sodbusters who were ready to take them and turn them into ranches and farms and towns. The convictions of those eager immigrants were captured in a set of verses printed in one of St. Pauls first newspapers:

Sunlight and music, and gladsome flower,

Are over the earth spread wide;

And the good God gave those gifts to men

To men who on earth abide.

Yet thousands are toiling in poisonous gloom,

And shackled with iron bands,

Yet millions of hands want acres,

And millions of acres want hands.

Tis writ that ye shall not muzzle the ox,

That treadeth out the corn.

Yet behold ye shackle the poor mans hand

That have all earths burdens borne;