Journal

Postcards to Pete

Postcards with timely quotes, sent by a constituent to Representative Pete Stauber of Minnesota District 8

'Postcards to Pete' is an attempt to resist, in a small way, the current daily shattering of democratic norms. Each postcard features a handwritten, pro-democracy quote that a politician such as Representative Pete Stauber of Minnesota District 8 might view as part of his own political and ethical heritage. So far I’ve quoted the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, Ronald Reagan, Russell Kirk, and Pope Leo XIV. Through regular (most often weekly) social media and blog posts, I'm attempting to create a structure for these reminders to gain strength through repetition. I am choosing to believe there is still common ground, a shared history and ethics that Americans across the political spectrum can draw upon, and that can lead some of us back to each other.

— Julie Gard

Crossing Cuyahoga

"Crossing Cuyahoga" is a piece of creative nonfiction that tackles Lou Reed and other rock 'n roll animals, misrepresentation of Native peoples, burning rivers, transplanted livers, and a possible end to the Trump era...

— Carter Meland
from The Massachusetts Review, Volume 61, Number 4, Winter 2020, pp. 742-746

between two shores

What is the eagle stealing
as its long wings
grasp and climb the wind
far up in the silence
with two birds chasing?

On the highway
beneath the ascending flights
tangling dark birds in pursuit.

Already too late, already the swaying
shadows fail and outwit the tender watch.

What rides on an eagle’s indifferent motion
in the rising thermal currents as the sun glances

off the wide surface of the lake
what waves or sky or emptiness?
What is the news
what wars are beginning
what are the eagles dreaming
as streams tumble down the granite face
break free from the hill, gain flight

what breaks free
arrives at its destination?

— Sheila Packa
from cloud birds

Standing on the delicate edge ... democracy

The great composition
The reflections and the differences
The vantage point of bloom and fade
The history of that pull away from the jingo
The thunder of the other kind of colonization
This land, this land
This land is your land
Not this land is all mine
The beautiful fragile thing
The far-reaching antidote to kings
Not just palimpsest
Not just parchment and inkwells
A promise
Not moral surrender or theory
Vision, the constant equation
Of we, we, all of us
In full detail of our becoming
Of our multitudes, our applause
for deep understanding
Of the historic
The cured, the mended
Of the human state of impulse
That creates grace
Of memory, to remember
Everyone, those lost, those fallen
The great experiment witnessed
Not to be drop kicked
Not in need of mouth to mouth
Not a murder victim
This is always a becoming
Not just an abstract
An oasis of purpose
A swearing in of hope
Non-fiction and poetry
Open doors
A complete picture
A shimmering
The listening and the telling
The language of the whole
Including shame, the stain, the grief
The wildfire, the hunger
But never a final elegy

— Diane Jarvenpa

Psalm for the Slightly Tilted

This is not
a good year.
But it has
witnesses.

When you see them protest the powerful,
because who else
protests the powerful,
they stand
like flagpoles outside the courthouse
after the northeaster.

They came with
the wrong shoes
for revolution.
Still,
they showed up.

They come in clothes
that gave up first
beneath
the clouds
torn as boiled hospital sheets

Comfort, Lord,
their bodies—
each a question mark
doing time
as a coat rack,
hung with borrowed jackets.

They are your legion
of bent spoons.
They are the only ones
who showed up—
with their orthopedic flair.

They cant off-rhythm
and mean it.
These are my kind of people:
no tears—just
steam from a kettle
that never quite boils.

In times like these don't forget us:
the lopsided leaning
on one another like paperbacks.

Comfort us standing—
half scarecrow
half saxophone
with a squawk.
Comfort us sitting—
which we do
like furniture
of the modestly ambitious.

In the year they come for us
watch my people
make protest signs
out of old pizza boxes.

Watch—there are no boring people
which is unfortunate.
You'd think statistically
we'd get at least a few—
one-speed souls
with just meh stuff to do.
But none of them
are dull.
Each
carries
a suitcase
held together
by scotch tape.

Comfort them standing up—
where stiffness
becomes state policy.
Their bodies,
folded umbrellas.
Comfort them sitting—
in that collapse
called calm.

These are your coffee stained saints
who rise not with trumpets
but with Advil.
They stand
and wait
creased like maps
of a country
that doesn't exist anymore.

— Ilya Kaminsky (posted with permission)

Descendants of Black Folks Who Don't Have Last Names

Without the recipe of colonization,
there would be no birth of this nation.
No gunpowder, no graveyards on stolen ground—
no America.
Without tribal blood,
without kidnapped gods—
there. would. be. no. America.

You preach "land of the free"
but bind wrists, break backs,
quiet lynchings, hollow screams—
contradiction is your constitution.

You protect animals from cruelty,
then legalize bull bucking
as cowboy culture.
Call genocide a jersey.

You mount foreign founding fathers
on land they stole in armed robbery,
spill blood and name it Thanksgiving,
promise clean water—
but Flint still drinks lies from plastic bottles.

You say "equal opportunity."
We say: Equal for who?
It's only fair when the skin is fair.

Only justice when the judge shares your genes.

Plant drugs in our halls,
guns in the gutter,
poison pipelines so branches never root.

You turn classrooms into cemeteries,
blackboards wet with chalk and blood dreams.
Every backpack—
a body bag
waiting to zip shut.

Beneath your red, white, and blue,
Black lives suffocate under white lies.
We are the legacy you can't unwrite,
history that sits in your mouth
with teeth too Black to extract.

— Dralandra Larkins

What Democracy Means To Me

Democracy is messy. By nature, it is tension. And arguing. I miss when politicians were proud of bipartisan triumphs. I don't believe it was ever easy, but it was necessary. Maybe painful at times: to have to listen, reach across the aisle, consider another's perspective and offer concessions; resulting in the slightest move of the needle—where an individual may come away dismayed at the process because they didn't get their way, yet instead—something greater was achieved. Maybe our people grew tired of compromise. But compromise is what sets our country apart. A healthy Democracy is tedious, exhausting, it involves rhetoric and challenges, debate and returning to the wheel. Democracy is loud. It allows for a multitude of voices to rise. It's a cacophony of differences. Where somehow, we all move forward together, sometimes in the slightest way. We should never want Democracy to be unilateral, or easy. It shouldn't represent one party, the president or one region. By nature it is for all the people, by the people, and the people need to lead the country again, with politicians returning to their roles as civil servants of the people.

— Cole W. Williams

In Memoriam for a Strong DFLer

There's a photograph going around of Melissa and Mark Hortman from the DFL Humphrey-Mondale Dinner last Friday night. It's likely the last photograph of the two of them together. They are frozen in that moment, smiling. His collar is open; her jacket is buttoned. I'm somewhere in the blurry background; My wife and I also attended the dinner. We never met the Hortmans but our lives often crossed each other, as Minnesota lives do. My wife worked at a Brooklyn Park pediatric clinic near their house. And I'm sure I saw Hortman at my favorite annual place to visit: the frenetic Minnesota State Fair DFL booth.

There's another way I feel like I know Melissa Hortman. In my small town in deep-red Douglas County, I'm sometimes introduced to someone by being told, "That's a strong DFLer." We understand how those words mean something about values and how we live them. Melissa Hortman was a strong DFLer. When Governor Tim Walz ran for vice-president and spoke of legislation in Minnesota that improved the lives of children and families in Minnesota, he was talking about work he'd been doing alongside Hortman.

After this painful weekend, we'll get back to work in our local DFL. There's a table at the Pride festival to staff. A booth at our county fair to set up. It's in a dark hallway in the back of the grandstand, where discussions about reproductive freedom can get drowned out by stock car races. We also need to find candidates to take on Republican incumbents, no matter the odds. Someone who can face a campaign the way Melissa Hortman did, over and over.

On Saturday at our local "No Kings" rally, I saw a family with three children, walking back to their car. The youngest was still carrying a protest sign. It stopped me. More than anything else, it seemed to sum up this weekend and what we now face.

"I deserve better," it read.

We all do.

— Michael Tisserand

Member Contributions

We are thankful to the folks that continue to contribute work. We have started gathering new submissions for Fall 2025.

What is Democracy?

We are thankful to the folks that contributed to our call for submissions. We have gathered these works together for your reading pleasure.

Quotes

We have a list of quotes from writers and activists.