by Steve Timmer

Jul 16, 2018, 2:00 PM

Stamping out heretics and apostates

Here is a resolution with some explanation from Senate DFL7 that I first read at Duluth for Clean Water‘s Facebook page:

On July 10th, 2018, at its regular monthly meeting, the Democratic Farmer Labor (DFL) Senate District 7 (SD7) Executive Committee meeting, with twenty-two (22) members present, passed the following resolution, with twenty (20) in favor, two (2) abstentions and zero (0) in opposition:

“The DFL Senate District 7 Executive Committee cannot support Tina Smith, Amy Klobuchar, or Rick Nolan in the DFL primary. Our committee was elected by SD7 convention delegates who overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposed to copper sulfide mining, and that same resolution received 58% of the vote from the delegates at the state convention. These candidates have shown themselves to be staunch supporters of copper sulfide mining by voting to support the Superior National Forest land swap and authoring an amendment to list copper as a strategic metal in the National Defense Authorization Act. Both of these actions make copper sulfide mining in Minnesota more likely. As DFL party leaders from a senate district that is opposed to this dangerous type of mining, we see these candidates as out of step with the people who elected us to these positions. We strongly urge these candidates to change their position on copper sulfide mining.”

The statement was created as a notice explicitly intended for the primary election, scheduled for this August 14, 2018, and made in light of recent aggressive actions our US Senators and US Congressional Representative have taken at the behest of multi-national corporate interests, and in spite of clear opposition to copper-sulfide mining development from their constituencies. The gravity of the risks posed by copper-sulfide nickel mining to the economy, environment, identity, and way of life in SD7 are clear, and they are simply unacceptable.

The resolution passed with near-unanimous support and no votes opposed, but state DFL party leaders claimed that issuance of the statement would be contrary to the DFL constitution. State DFL leadership threatened that SD7, as a political unit, would be dissolved as a result of issuing the statement, and/or that individual executive committee members who continued to support the statement could be removed from their positions.

The threats resulted in the SD7 chair requesting that executive committee members engage in further discussion before publicly issuing the statement, and an emergency meeting was scheduled for Monday, July 16, 2018. However, shortly thereafter, a local member of state DFL leadership shared the statement with local political bodies, for the explicit purpose of requesting retributive actions against our SD7 DFL.

In solidarity with the SD7 delegates who elected us to our leadership positions, the following members of the DFL Senate District 7 Executive Committee feel compelled by conscience to notify our community of these actions. We feel that the true purpose of the meeting scheduled for Monday, July 16, 2018, is to force a retraction and silencing of our statement.

Jo Haberman, SD7 Delegate to the DFL State Central Committee (SCC)

Jennifer McEwen, SD7 Delegate to the DFL SCCScot Bol, SD7 Delegate to the DFL SCC

Mike Mayou, SD7 Delegate to the DFL SCCRich Updegrove, SD7 Delegate to the DFL SCC

Jerry Witte, SD7 Executive Committee Director, and SD7 DFL SCC Alternate

Rick Youmans, SD7 DFL SCC Alternate

Erin DeWitt, SD7 Executive Committee Director

Allen Killian-Moore, SD7 Executive Committee Director

John Krumm, SD7 Executive Committee Director

Cruz Mendoza, SD7 Executive Committee Director

The meeting, as I understand, is scheduled for 6:30 PM this evening (Monday, the 16th of July) at the DFL coordinated campaign office, shown above, in Duluth. The auto de fé will occur on the street right after the meeting.

Personally, I hope the heretics stick to their guns.

Questions they raise in their defense might include:

What is the punishment for Tina Smith for showing up at an event with the unendorsed Keith Ellison? Will she join us at the stake?

And what of Ellison himself? Will there be any party retribution for his running against the endorsed Mike Pelikan?

I mean, the rules are the rules, right? Unless, of course, Animal Farm rules apply.