As the June 3 Montana primary approaches, the atmosphere here is electric with pro-Obama organizing. Tell us the nomination is a wrap and we don’t have to work so hard? Not a chance.
We’re taking nothing for granted. Besides, why would we hold back on this chance to help build a new and more progressive Democratic majority – in Montana, throughout the country, and in Washington, D.C. – by sitting back now? It’s full-tilt boogie from now through June 3.
Obama’s candidacy is not just generic for Montanans; he and the campaign are touching lots of us in profoundly important and specific ways. For my first DKos diary, I want to help locate you in our particular sense of place.
I’ll start with an Obama Works Missoula video, featuring just a few of the Obama supporters who came together to celebrate Earth Day 2008 by linking cleanup of the Clark Fork River to Sen. Barack Obama’s historic campaign. Salish elder and Obama supporter, Louis Adams, introduces viewers to the river.
Following the video, I describe the event in more detail and provide some context on why the river is such a powerful metaphor for the Obama campaign for so many Missoulians.
And, although I am no expert, I also offer a bit of information on Native Americans in Montana & the momentum that's building there for Obama because the stake Indian Country has in this, or any other, election is so seldom covered by the MSM or on the blogs.
The Salish Cultural Commitee of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes says:
Our stories teach us that we must always work for a time when there will be no evil, no racial prejudice, no pollution, when once again everything will be clean and beautiful for the eye to behold – a time when spiritual, physical, mental and social values are inter-connected to form a complete circle.
Salish Cultural Commmittee
That's a powerful vision. And I like having it mind as I go about my political work.
On Saturday, April 19, some 50 Obama supporters gathered by the banks of the Clark Fork River by the University of Montana to pick up trash and recyclables along a section of the river that runs through Missoula (though the river from the famous Norman Maclean quotation is actually the Big Blackfoot River, which I mention a bit further on). Deborah Richie Oberbillig, a respected natural history writer, served as event coordinator; I served as her trusty aide-de-camp. Here's her description of the event:
Moms and kids clambered over rocks with trash bags in hands, sorting out recyclables. University students pulled out trash with vigor, alongside people of all ages—up to 85 years old. Obama banners fluttered in the cool wind. Missoula mayor John Engen – who has endorsed Senator Barack Obama for president – stopped by with his dog, Patches (a rescued greyhound). Our voter registration table was a popular stop for pedestrians crossing the footbridge over the river en route to the Ki-Yoh Pow-Wow, and the ground-breaking ceremony for the new Native American center on campus. Our tally of tangible community service for two hours on the day that marked the start of Earth Week: 22 bags of litter, 20 bags of recyclables, and a large, damp mound of cardboard.
Follow the link here for a video of Mayor John Engen at Obama's April 5 Missoula rally.
WHY THE CLARK FORK & BLACKFOOT RIVERS ARE A POWERFUL METAPHOR FOR THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN
In our area, as in other locales throughout Montana, extractive industries like logging and mining are waning. The service industry (especially that connected with recreation and tourism) and retail trade are increasing. While the University of Montana is here, many people in these parts work two, sometimes three, low-waged jobs with no benefits just to keep their heads above water. Sometimes the food bank can’t nearly keep up with demand which is why the Obama Works Missoula now has an ongoing campaign to help keep the food bank shelves stocked.
But let’s go back to those extractive industries, or at least mining, because it has a lot to do with why we chose the Clark Fork River Cleanup as our first Obama Works project. And it helps explain why we Missoulians – progressive, liberal, moderate, centrist, and conservative – never give up on hope.
The city of Missoula, Western Montana, is located in an ancient glacial lakebed; the Clark Fork River cuts through it. For 102 years, just 8 miles upstream of us, at the confluence of the Clark Fork and the beautiful Blackfoot rivers (the Blackfoot is immortalized in Norman Maclean’s lovely A River Runs Through It. if you haven’t read it, you probably should), sat the hydroelectric Milltown Dam.
Behind the Milltown Dam a 180-acre reservoir full of 6.6 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment (produced by a century mining, smelting, and milling activities 120 miles upriver, around Butte and Anaconda at the river’s headwaters has been sitting. It's been providing a continuing-release cocktail of heavy metals (including lead, copper, and mercury) and arsenic that has poisoned local wells, contaminated the underlying aquifer, and kill and off fish and other river life during high river flows and ice jams.
Because of sustained community activism, centered mostly in Missoula, the Environmental Protection Agency added the 120-mile stretch to its National Priorities list in 1983 – the largest Superfund site to date.
It took 22 more years of sustained activism (during which authorities investigated the site, developed a cleanup plan, negotiated payment responsibility – for federal and state agencies, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, ARCO, and Northwest Energy to come to agreement on removing the Milltown Dam and most of the contaminated sediments stacked up behind it.
On March 28, 2008, engineers breached the Milltown Dam, the first time an American dam has been removed to clean up toxic sediments captured behind it, the results of upstream mining. Fish like native cutthroat trout and rainbow trout are now able to begin the first natural migration upstream to spawn in over a century.
Louis Adam, the Salish elder, was there. So was Governor Brian Schweitzer, who said, "They used to say it's jobs or the environment. Take a look at those yellow tractors. Those are jobs restoring the environment."
The cleanup continues, of course. But for the first time in more than a century, the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers are running freely.
MISSOULA FOR OBAMA
You can see why Missoulians don’t mind political struggle. We'd rather be out on the river fishing or rafting, or just taking in the sheer beauty of it all. But we fight when we have to, and when we jump in, we intend to win, no matter how long it takes. But we like to win with transformative politics. The miracle of the Milltown Dam takedown is this:
Progressives, liberals, moderates, centrists, and conservatives came together, united by our determination to stop further contamination of groundwater and the river and to help restore the life-giving capacity of the rivers for people, for wildlife, for the trees and plants, for the entire ecology.
That’s what Obama’s campaign is doing, too, helping to unite so many of us across the usual fault lines of race, class, gender, culture, and ideology.
The outlook is good; I expect Obama to win Montana, as he won in our neighboring states of Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Washington.
Yeah, Bill Clinton is showing up in lots of places, and folks are pleased to see a former president in person. But a lot of folks going to see him are wearing Obama buttons, and Bill's not exactly endearing himself to undeclared superdelegates and Democratic Party leaders. On Wednesday he spoke at the University of Montana, and today’s bold headline in the Missoulian reads: "Clinton Blasts Democrats."
And Sen. Hillary Clinton does have some serious support, I’d never suggest otherwise.
But we've got the ground game. Here in Missoula, voter registration and early voting efforts have been phenomenal. During the past few weeks in Missoula, it's been impossible to go downtown without being asked five or six times if you’re registered to vote and if you will vote early. Phone banking is well underway (my partner and I have both been called twice,once about early voting and once about volunteering. Volunteers are signing up to canvas neighborhoods. Signs, buttons, bumper stickers are everywhere (with only an occasional sign or sticker for Clinton). This past Wednesday night, more than 100 people responded to a call to attend a volunteer meeting in Missoula to kick GOTV into high gear.
I may be in the Hillary demographic, but I’m a proud Obama precinct captain.
Missoula should produce big for Obama. After all, if we could take down the Milltown Dam, we can accomplish anything.
In fact, all of Montana is fired up and ready to go, even if the Clinton campaign doesn’t think we count, or that the 88.7 percent or so of the Montana population that is white isn’t as hard-working as some other white folks. (According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Montana's demographics are: White (not Latino/Hispanic)88.7%, Black 0.4%, American Indian/Alaskan Native 6.4%, Asian 0.6%.Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander 0.1%, 2 0r more races 1.6%, and Latino/Hispanic 2.5%. Almost 14% of us are 65 years of age or older.)
A NOTE ON TRIBAL NATIONS, NATIVE AMERICANS & MONTANA
Both Obama and Clinton have strong pockets of Native support here, but the momentum seems to be mounting for Sen. Obama. You can find information about tribal chair endorsements here, and recently, the Crow Nation and the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Ft. Peck Reservation endorsed Sen. Obama. (The President of the Northern Cheyenne tribe has endorsed Clinton.)
The political, social, and economic history of what is now called Montana really begins with the First Peoples and the tribal nations/ confederations. (If you don’t know the Native/indigenous history of your area, now is a good time to start learning about it.) Native sovereignty is an issue of profound significance to us all. (Here's a good primer on American Indian sovereignty.)
For those who want to know more, here's a bit of info on the peoples and sovereign nations here; information is linked to the appropriate tribal/nation websites.
In Montana, there are 7 Indian reservations, with 12 tribal groups, each with unique cultures, histories, and traditions.
At just over 6% of the population, Native peoples are also wildly overrepresented in Montana’s prison population, constitution between 16 and 18 percent of all prisoners. See info here, here, and here. The Department of Corrections director notes that the percentage of Native American women prisoners is as high as 40 percent of all women in prison in Montana. (These figures do not include Native Americans arrested on tribal lands who are eventually incarcerated in the federal prison system.) Under Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s leadership, state officials are exploring ways to reduce the Native American prison population.
Here are the reservations existing within Montana's borders. Please note that some of the reservations are now home to more than one tribe.
Blackfeet Nation
Rocky Boy (Chippewa Cree Tribe)
Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes
(comprised of the Bitterroot Salish, the Pend d’Oreille and the Kootenai tribes)
Crow Nation
Fort Belknap Indian Community (Assiniboine and Gros Ventre)
Fort Peck Indian Community (Assiniboine and Sioux)
Northern Cheyenne
One of these days, I hope we'll actually be keeping track of First Nations voting as a matter of course.
WRAP-UP OF THE NEWS FROM MISSOULA
You know, I've been politically active in one way or other most of my life. But I can't think of a campaign that seemed as hopeful, or potentially transformative, as this one. It means a great deal to be deeply involved in the making of this particular moment in history.
Thanks, Kossacks, for reading. And keep an eye out for those Missoula returns on 3 June.