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Fear and Loathing in the White Mountains

Posted on March 9, 2021March 16, 2021 by gbaldwin

by Trysten McClain

It’s mid-morning on a warm spring Tuesday and I’m staring over my favorite hot dirty spiced chai at Cafe Monte Alto while reviewing emails and going over my weekly schedule, pondering to myself, ”How will today go?” I’m referring to House Committee hearings this afternoon. What will today provide for relief or distress? Are the Republicans going to keep playing God, ITL’ing housing relief bills, restricting abortion rights, access, and funds, or any other form of denying another basic human need or right today? Will the hearings include more racist and race-baiting language and scapegoating of whatever choice buzzword the Majority chooses for the appropriate hearing? These are not unfamiliar instances for BIPOC activists, elected officials, and any individual who is engaged in the conversation in our state, nor is it a new issue. Since Black Lives Matter found a substantial amount of support after the murder of George Floyd, everyone regardless of political affiliation has taken up arms to either construct a truthfully inclusive world for society, or fighting to retain the White supremacist, sexist, xenophobic, transphobic, and exploitive class-based control our country was founded on. Quite frankly, it is extremely heartbreaking. I found myself back in New Hampshire about a month after the pandemic began, and was living in my car and on couches of family, pondering if I’ll be safe in Rumney, NH away from the chaos of the New York Tri-State Region and the assumed downfall of humanity. I packed up all my belongings and drove back north all within one evening, and still to this day I remember the horror of driving through Manhattan while hearing countless sirens and seeing next to no pedestrians or traffic. As I found myself starting to gain my feet financially and be stably housed again, I watched the footage of George Floyd’s murder and witness the media explode over the course of three days while wondering about all the past microaggressions and overt instances of racism I experienced. Needless to say, I was PISSED with the world and America in general.

I could not tell you the number of miles I marched this summer if I tried, but I assure you it’s not a reach to say about one million steps were made. Together with so many other people over last summer, many of them who are reading this currently were in attendance at protests or events, organized slow changes locally in creating the conversation regarding human rights and respect for humanity. I could not tell you how many times I heard me or a friend be called racial slurs, told “to get jobs”, “go back home” (while many of us grew up in this area), or received physical threats. Our signs were torn up, and to my knowledge, I had the police called on me six different times over last summer for no reason. Three of those calls were on the July 4th event on Plymouth Town Common and following march and die-in, even despite the Plymouth police department’s support. One individual screamed at me and called the cops over me playing music. I was playing Marvin Gaye, and clearly, the call was racially driven by that stranger. If you told me I was going to be thrust from a quiet, financially unstable, and reclusive life into being at the front of the conversation on these issues, being approached by reporters and activists, and having a statewide presence that I try to still withdraw from, I’d assume you’re insane.

As of late, I still to this day do not feel welcomed or wanted in my hometown. The hard cold gazes of strangers and acquaintances, the lost interpersonal and family relationships, the asinine commentary, and lack of effort of the community at large to encourage a diverse, inclusive, respected, and youthful community makes me nauseous. But you know what really is the largest issue in the room currently? As discussed in Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, ‘the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice […]’. I watched many of those currently reading awkwardly look from afar at our demonstrations, and not a single word was spoken between us besides cordial hellos or the ask of our labor for your campaigns or personal interests. Maybe you shared an Angela Davis quote on Facebook, shared a black box on Instagram, watched the movie Roots, talked to your racist Uncle John or some other hollow form of solidarity instead of working to deconstruct the very foundations and environment you built for my generation and the BIPOC community. One particular jarring instance was a day a friend of mine was canvassing with our local former and current officials on Tenney Mountain Highway. Across the way, a Trumper was abusing him with racist and antagonistic comments. Nobody spoke up for him and the silence was violently loud. As a matter of fact, many of whom were in attendance condemned him for speaking back out of anger after the fact. Do you understand how exploitive that behavior is to our traumas and emotional wellbeing that you could not stand up when the opportunity was provided to your constituents? If you’re upset with these words, you need to take a hard introspective look in the mirror and have a long conversation with yourself and your higher power about your values.

I digress, creating division will not solve the issues we’re continuing to face as our voices are being continually suppressed by folks experiencing white fragility, overt racist citizens and state actors, and oppressive legislature such as HB 544. This article is a call-in, not a call-out. We need you to follow through on the promises, values, and obligations to your constituents made to protect and provide for us. We voted for you because we trust you and we want you to be the leadership we imagine. Piss poor excuses or feigning ignorance is not going to suffice any longer. New Hampshire is an aging state that is gentrifying more by the tic toc second of the clock, and we need to work together. Youth like myself need direction, mentoring, and support for our work. I cannot name a single local representative or senator whoever came to an event, offered direction or support, or had the conversation with local activists from the beginning of this movement. It doesn’t have to be this way. Excluding us from the work is an ugly shade of green on your part. But as quoted by Shirley Chisholm, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”

Trysten McClain is a current resident of Plymouth, NH who spent most of his life in the greater Grafton region. He is on the Advisory Board for Plymouth Area Democrats, an area activist for LGBTQ+ rights, Black Lives Matter, and inclusion and many other socially progressive Democrat ideals. He is a young man entering into politics and planning a campaign for State Representative in 2022.

Putting Evangelical Support for Trump in the Crosshairs

Posted on September 5, 2019 by gbaldwin

by Gunnar Baldwin
Plymouth, NH

Since the presidential election in 2016, I have watched in amazement, anger, and disgust as evangelicals across this country have enthusiastically embraced a man whose behavior lacks even a shred of human decency and compassion. It is not that evangelicals have not been on the wrong side of history (and a broad range of ethical issues) all along, but the obvious moral failings Donald Trump would seem to be too hard even for them to swallow. A recent Washington Post article by opinion columnist Elizabeth Bruenig finally helped me pull together a workable explanation—one that is important to understand if we hope to counter evangelicals’ support of Trump in any meaningful way.

Bruenig and others who have written on the this topic explain that it is not that evangelicals are unaware of Trump’s unethical behavior or would condone the same behavior by one of their brethren. Instead, they see him as an instrument used by God to catalyze changes that serve their cause, such as court decisions that further their conservative social agenda and assert Israel’s right to disregard the rights of Palestinians. Trump is seen as necessary strongman, a vehicle for carving out space for fundamentalists to carry out their mission. He has been likened by some right wing evangelicals to King David, another ruler who led a famously adulterous life but who was regarded as a strong protector of the people of Israel.

Consistent with this view, one could point out that many biblical characters, even Judas Iscariot, were seen as instruments of God who were sent to accomplish a divine purpose (such as trigger a resurrection). Yet this viewpoint misses a glaring difference: the Israelites and Christians in the Bible did not seek out, appoint, or condone the acts of the unsavory characters that ultimately furthered “God’s plan” for them. In contrast, evangelical Trump voters actively chose him, and they personally own every hateful and egregious act our President has committed before and during his time in office. They cannot hermetically seal themselves off from personal responsibility for acts of bigotry and cruelty perpetrated or encouraged by him, while enjoying the benefit of conservative court appointees and a newfound freedom to gush homophobic rants. They hired the hitman and they are guilty of his crimes.

Many recent articles and op-ed pieces in mainstream media suggest Trump is pulling even farther ahead with these groups, improving the odds that he may clinch the election a second time and delivering a coup de grâce to democracy. Why? I would suggest that it is at least partly due to the fact that they are not hearing the right arguments from more progressive members of their fold. In fact, evangelical leaders, such as Jerry Falwell, Jr., have been steadily transforming the view of God’s character held by their constituency from favoring humility and compassion to being a power-God who wants believers to bring about change though brute force, assertiveness, and aggression. In addition, a Pew Research religion poll conducted in 2018 showed that evangelicals were the least likely group—by a wide margin—to believe that America has no responsibility for refugees.

I do not suggest that we can sway large numbers of deeply entrenched red state evangelicals with creative messaging, but right now they are reveling in the mantle of moral superiority virtually unopposed. More than ever, we need bunker buster-caliber challenges that shake the foundations of their cozy fantasy. Trump’s supporters are every bit as culpable for locking children in cages, bankrupting cancer victims, and questioning the patriotism of doule-amputee Mexican-American combat veterans as Trump himself and they need to understand this.

These messages will not be effective if they are merely perceived as a fresh round of patronizing by ivory tower liberals, a frequently expressed irritant to which they are hypersensitive. Similarly, it is important that they do not perceive that their core religious beliefs themselves are being challenged—just their approach to acting on them. Fortunately, there are a significant number of evangelicals (particularly younger members) who do not buy into the view that their creator wants his flock to consist of authoritarians and fascists, and they are best suited to deliver that message. This segment may be more susceptible to persuasive arguments from progressives, but they must be carefully nudged into vocally challenging the views of their less compassionate counterparts.

There are a variety of specific topics that should be addressed in Democratic campaign messages that might give more conscientious evangelicals a reason to take pause. Messaging should spotlight the innocent, vulnerable groups who are collateral damage of Trump’s uncompassionate tactics and unfiltered mouth. Examples abound, such as terrified children crowded into filthy detention centers, farmers facing bankruptcy due to trade war political stunts, rapes that are never prosecuted, and homeless people whose employer-provided insurance did not cover enough of the life-saving medical treatment they received. Does their God really want them to be on the hook for these acts of inhumanity as a price for more conservative judges and more stringent abortion laws?

I will end with an anecdote. A family member who once stayed at a Marriot hotel in Salt Lake City (a Mormon-owned chain) and was taken aback to find that he could not order an alcoholic drink to accompany his meal, since the hotel had a strict alcohol-free policy that was consistent with the owner’s religious beliefs. Years later, returning to the same hotel, he was equally surprised to see alcoholic drinks being served in the same dining room. He asked the waitress why the policy had been changed. Without skipping a beat, she informed him that the hotel’s owner had decided that the alcohol ban was unnecessary because serving alcohol was a business decision, not a religious decision. The same type of defense has also been used in court by defendants who carried out contract killings.

During this election, it is imperative to make clear to evangelical voters that their souls are inextricably chained to the heavy cinderblocks of Trump’s abominations and their vote is not an arm’s length “business decision” that can be conveniently abstracted away. However, it will likely not succeed if the message is delivered in a confrontational manner. Diplomatically getting through to—and weaponizing—the moderate ones with constructive messaging may stand the best chance of success.

A Plea for Adequate Education Funding

Posted on July 2, 2019 by gbaldwin

by Gunnar Baldwin
Plymouth, NH

It is high time to recognize the fundamental role that education plays in the security of our country. Just as a strong military protects frontal attacks on our sovereign territory, a strong public educational system is needed to defend our back door, preventing our country from weakening economically, culturally, democratically, and morally from within. Our security should not be defined solely by tanks and aircraft carriers, but also by all other ways in which we protect our way of life and maintain our status as the land of opportunity. Our back door has been breached because we have been willing to sit back and watch other developed countries out-compete us by providing robust education to their children from all income levels. True commitment to security should mean the same willingness to protect our back side where it is most vulnerable—as to defend against hostilities that are aimed at our front door.

In our country’s frontier days, it was reasonable to expect that every child would remain in the community where they were raised and often, that they would follow in the footsteps of their fathers in tending the family farm or the local logging, blacksmith, or carriage-making enterprise. It was up to communities to prepare their offspring for the local future they would have. Today, not so much. Our children will need to become highly-qualified, effective workers in a global economy, competing with their counterparts in Germany, Sweden, and Japan. Even if they pursue blue collar careers, it is still often the case that they will not stay in their home towns. It should say something that many US companies seek to procure work visas for highly qualified workers from abroad because they cannot find enough qualified applicants from the domestic talent pool.

Today, it seems that many conservatives view the fundamental right to an adequate education with disdain, as a necessary evil, like paying to truck garbage to a landfill, that should be fulfilled with the lowest-cost option. Of course, if a family wants to pay extra to send their children to a premium school, that should be their elective right—correct? I think of past local efforts to slash our school’s budgets and of those who championed that cause. The unspoken subtitle was clear: “the school is not good enough for my children, but it is good enough for the rest of you.” We are steadily marching backwards toward a feudal past, where the wealthiest and most powerful families controlled all of the country’s resources and were the gatekeepers—deciding which demographics got the chance to advance into prosperity.

It is imperative that we finally address the lack of political will to recognize what an adequate education (a common denominator for all citizens) consists of and be ready to fund that amount—whatever it is—through a fair tax system. Although conservatives plead poverty, our state government is only poor if it chooses to be, by obstinately ignoring the vital role education plays in a modern prosperous society. Failure to acknowledge New Hampshire’s responsibility to fund education is part of a broader set of factors on the national level that are slowly ratcheting our society back to a time of feudal lords and peasants. We must decide if our country’s future is just for the most affluent among us or should include everyone.

If our efforts to solve the education funding challenge are successful, we must also confront the fact that simply throwing more money at education will only confirm the most dire predictions of our conservative counterparts. Knowing how to apply improved school funding, if and when we get it, cannot be a Phase II issue that is addressed at a later date. We will not get a second chance to fix education if it is not implemented effectively from the outset. There are many ways to poorly manage an education system and far fewer ways to do it effectively.

Many of the problems that have plagued education systems around the country have resulted from the mindless application of funds to education systems, a myopic focus on aptitude test results, or dog-headed efforts by powerful people (like our country’s Secretary of Education) to do things in very specific, unproven ways that simply do not work for the vast majority of the students we need to educate. Effective teachers should receive a premium—enough to attract talented graduates who would otherwise shun teaching to pursue careers that pay a living wage. Many unpopular changes are needed that will affect the status quo and result in winners and losers. We need to ready to defend the right choices.

Taking Steps Towards Positive Impact

Posted on April 22, 2019April 23, 2019 by gbaldwin

by Steve Whitman
Plymouth, NH

Each April we turn our attention to sustainable practices as the spring weather arrives, our yards and community turn green, and Earth Day approaches. These events serve as a reminder of the beauty and fragile condition of the Earth. Reflecting on how to live lighter on the planet and reduce our ecological footprint during this time is admirable and worthwhile. For many of us, it continues throughout the year, and hopefully throughout our lives. However, the emphasis tends to be on how to reduce the negative aspects of our lives, striving to do less bad rather than working to increase the positive aspects of our environmental footprint.

I think we need to do both, and it can start with one small action that excites you and motivates you to change your behavior. After all, most of what we are talking about under the topic of sustainability is awareness and behavior change. There are many reasons to take action, for some it is an effort to reduce carbon emissions that gets them to walk or bike to work. For others, it is moving away from plastic that gets them to reconsider their current use of shopping bags or new opportunities for bulk purchasing. The beauty of taking these actions is that there is no playbook or required sequence, and all of these actions reduce our demand on the earth’s natural systems. Plus, there are rewards! Saving money, enjoying time outdoors, connecting with other people, and other benefits can be realized as we work to reduce our negative impacts on the planet.

The same can be true of efforts to make positive impacts on the planet. Converting a portion of your lawn to a habitat and food producing system, starting a sustainability initiative in your community, or assisting with outreach and education on important topics all leave a positive environmental footprint that we all benefit from.

As we take on these personal challenges it is important to start with small and simple solutions. In doing so many of us have found that this is an empowering and transformative process that encourages us to consider bigger and bolder changes over time. As an example, on our property, we started by constructing a four foot by eight foot raised bed for growing vegetables. Then we added a compost bin. Years later these steps were transformed to extensive garden areas and a greenhouse that provides year-round food production, habitat, pollination, carbon sequestration, air, and water filtering, and many other important ecosystem services. The end result for this small project is tremendous positive impact as we regenerate natural systems on our small residential lot while also reducing some of the negative aspects of our ecological footprint.

Looking to the future I know I still have more changes to adopt in my life, and I hope to do so alongside all of you as we support and inspire each other. As we do let’s be sure to enjoy the journey and avoid becoming martyrs to the cause. If we do others will take notice and want to join in on this adventure of sustainable living!

“Steve Whitman is the Founder and Principal of Resilience Planning & Design, a community planning and ecological design firm located in Plymouth, NH. Steve is also a certified permaculture designer and teacher, a part-time faculty member at Plymouth State University, and an alternate on the Town of Plymouth Planning Board.”

Why I Am a Democrat

Posted on May 26, 2017May 26, 2017 by gbaldwin

Why am I a Democrat?

As I sit down to write this, we are in a moment of unparalleled Constitutional crisis. The head of the FBI has just been fired by the President in a move that can only be described as a not-so-subtle attempt to derail the Bureau’s investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia. The GOP is waging a war on women’s bodies, voting rights, education, and the environment. They are seeking to unravel the threads of democracy, restore inequality and control of the few over the many. This, friends, is a terrifying time, a waking nightmare. If you feel this way, please know that you are not alone.

Part of this crisis involves a larger philosophical question about semantics, the meaning of words, a field of study which has been uncannily politicized these days. Accusations of “fake news,” and the wielding of “alternative facts” and false equivalencies are all part of this administration’s attempt to gaslight this country into authoritarian control and submission. Words are emptied of meaning – freedom, access, choice cloak the forces of white supremacy, misogyny, bigotry, and xenophobia. It is not a coincidence that Orwell’s 1984 has returned to the bestseller’s list. Trump’s mandate, like that of Big Brother, is that we believe the party over the proof of our own eyes and ears.

Being a democrat means understanding what these words – freedom, access, choice – really mean, and what they should mean, to us as citizens of the world’s oldest democracy.

At this point, it would be useful to introduce myself and give you some background on me and my family.

First and foremost, I, Dr. Emma Van Ness, am an educator. I teach at Plymouth State as an adjunct, the exploited lower class of higher education. My specialization is twentieth century Italian studies, especially post-war Italian cinema, including neorealism. I teach Italian language and film classes, Sex and Cinema and Deviants in Cinema, classes which focus on psychos, sociopaths, Nazis, Fascists, and criminals. So as you can see, I am particularly qualified to criticize the Trump administration.

I am also a feminist. I spend most of my days talking about women, mothers, sisters,

John Anderson, 2-star General w/ Winston Churchill, Omar Bradley, Field Marshal Montgomery, and others

gender, but today, I want to focus on fathers, particularly my grandfathers and my great-grandfather. The men of the “Greatest Generation” in my family carry a special significance for me today, as a resistor.

But let me first tell you about my father. He voted for Trump. I begged him not to and laid out the issues that I found troubling, including the infamous pussy-grabbing video, and my own father refused to talk to me about it. He still refuses to address why I would find it so upsetting that my own father would vote for a man who bragged about sexual assault. He dismisses my “hysteria”, making communication with him nearly impossible. So I have looked to the older generations for guidance in the void that my father’s example has left in his wake as he abandons principle for party.

Why am I a democrat? Because besides being a “liberal academic elitist snowflake,” I have a ton of military history in my family.

My great-grandfather, General John B. Anderson, was a major general in World War II. A graduate of West Point and veteran of World War I, he commanded the XVI Corps of the Army Artillery Unit. His most significant achievement was ferrying Churchill across the Rhine, despite Eisenhower’s protestations. He fought in the Ruhr Valley and liberated Roermund, in the Netherlands, where there is a street named after him. He retired after the war since he was almost completely deaf because of the roaring of the cannons. I never knew him since he died before I was born, but his figure looms large over Van Ness family lore.

My paternal grandfather, Capt. Harper “Smiling Jack” Van Ness, went to the Naval Academy and became a naval aviator. Besides flying test planes and living on a Destroyer, where he developed a particular hatred for asparagus “because it was all we had to eat for months,” he later went to work for NASA as an aeronautical engineer. After the war, he considered being an astronaut for the nascent space program before he was told that at six foot three inches, he was too tall to fit in the shuttle. When I was a little girl, I still remember visiting him at the Air and Space Museum where he worked. He was the gentlest, kindest man, an avid athlete and runner, and me and all of my siblings and my daughter all share his broad, crooked smile.

My maternal grandfather, Dr. Humphrey “Jiggs” Cordes, was also a captain in the Navy during World War II. He was stationed in the Pacific, also on a Destroyer, awaiting the order to invade Japan when he saw a strange-looking plane, the Anola Gay, only to later discover what the contents of its belly had been. I can’t imagine what he must have felt knowing what he had been spared at the hands of nuclear annihilation, the horror he had been spared and the horror it had cost so many other innocent Japanese citizens at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He wept when he told me this story because he knew that war is horror, pure and simple, not a political chess game or a means to boost one’s approval ratings.

When Jiggs returned home, he earned his Ph.D. in Classics from University of Chicago, later to be my alma mater as well, and became a Latin teacher for more than fifty years at the Latin School in Chicago.

I most clearly followed this path, the one of education, because I have a reverence for learning and a curiosity and love for knowledge. Now, nationally and in New Hampshire, we have people running the Departments of Education who know nothing about the vocation of teaching – because it is a vocation. I am underpaid. I do not receive benefits. This is what my labor is worth under the current system, according to the powers that be. I do not teach business, accounting, or science, anything related to the STEM fields. I teach humanities.

Speaking of humanities, a field that is often dismissed, considered obsolete or elitist, I think it is worth noting what Churchill said as Prime Minister, when asked, during the war effort, if the government should cut funding for the arts. His response – “Then what are we fighting for?”

Jean Genet, the French playwright and novelist who was part of the so-called “School of the Absurd”, stated that fascism is theater. Hitler and Mussolini held rallies to consolidate power and make a show of their popular support. So does Trump. When he should be leading our nation, he is campaigning for re-election. Trump is a reality tv star from a rich family who received seven deferments from Vietnam. When I see him wearing a military jacket, pandering to veterans or the troops, he seems to me an oversize boy playing soldier. He speaks about using nuclear weapons and “bombing the shit” out of ISIS. Does he have any concept of what that means or what the consequences of those actions are? A nuclear bomb does not just hit terrorists, no matter how precisely and carefully you drop it.

Being a democrat means holding this administration accountable. When Trump dropped the MOAB, the “mother of all bombs” on an ISIS cave system in Afghanistan a few weeks ago, I was waiting for class to begin and mentioned the event to some of my students as they were milling in. One student exclaimed, “Awesome!” Later, I read that Donald Trump Jr. expressed the same satisfaction that his father had fulfilled his promise to “bomb the shit out of ISIS.”

War, to many Americans, has become an abstraction. To some, it is a burden and to some, a vocation, a career. Yet regardless of how you feel about the validity of the global conflicts we are involved in as a nation, it bears noting that we have the ability to, with our nuclear arsenals, destroy all life on the planet many times over. I do not feel safe and I fear for my family, my friends, my daughter, and humanity when our commander in chief is engaging in gratuitous saber-rattling at a country with a nuclear arsenal and another unstable, megalomaniacal leader at its helm. There is a thin line between bravery and stupidity and our President is squarely on the latter side.

So why am I a Democrat? To honor the memory of these men, my family’s Greatest Generation, who fought for democracy against the dark forces of racism, antisemitism, and authoritarian rule, but also to safeguard my daughter’s future from those who would erode her freedoms, her control over her own body, her education, her ability to have a future that is based on more than empty rhetoric.

The Neorealists, Rossellini, Visconti, and others, made films to record the consequences of Fascism and Nazism on the landscape of their cities and their psyches. Like them, we must hold these Fascists accountable through a call to realism, to reality, by not forgetting what words really mean, that semantics only allow their meaning to bend only so far, and most importantly, that in the wake of true horror and destruction, words fail and actions prevail.

I have heard my forefathers’ call to action in my own and I will not blink nor look away. It is time for us to act, to save our democracy for future generations.

That is why I am a Democrat.