On to this fantastic lunch at Darrell’s Place in Hamlin. Politics demands snackrificepic.twitter.com/SA0FBHVRQj
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Campaigning in the time of COVID. @JDScholten talking to a drive-in crowd in Carroll over an FM radio microphone. The cars honk in lieu of applausepic.twitter.com/SyOIDrndNv
Q/A is done by drivers texting questions to JD’s staffer. First question is about COVID medical costs.pic.twitter.com/ARKVXyMEJV
Someone just honked for a mention of the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act that broke up the meatpacking trusts. I wish @matthewstoller was here
Again, the reason that Scholten can pursue this mad project of visiting all 374 towns in his district (he's halfway through!) is because your donations to the Great Slate have helped free our candidates from hours a day of fundraising phone calls.https://secure.actblue.com/donate/great_slate …
In Coon Rapids, we met with Community Coordinator Katie Mason. Her job is to help revitalize the town after the loss of the Garst Seed Company, which was founded in Coon Rapids in 1931 and once employed 300. Garst was acquired and shut down by Syngenta, a Swiss multinationalpic.twitter.com/OffES5ztiP
One big project Mason is helping on is revitalizing Main Street. Already seven new businesses have opened, but three of them can only do so part time, because the local entrepreneurs need to keep their regular full-time jobs to stay on their health insurance plan.pic.twitter.com/NcjL4Xctrd
Coon Rapids is home to Frohlich's Super Valu, a family-owned grocery store that's been in business for 100 years. Dollar General just moved into town and immediately cut their business by 65%. It's only thanks to covid-19 (which has boosted grocery business) that they stay afloatpic.twitter.com/YxHB4QBIK1
A place like Frohlich's is deeply involved in the community. Dollar General is an extractive business that siphons money to Wall Street, leaving behind minimum wage jobs and food deserts. It's become a vampire sucking the life out of small-town grocery stores across rural America
This fits a larger pattern of local business being eaten by giants like WalMart, local journalism being bought up by conglomerates, and schools and hospitals being hollowed out. This is why the Democratic Party can't abandon rural America, even if it's harder to run here.
Those American Legion halls were the cradle of American punk. Just about the only place in small towns that didn't care what kind of weirdo you were as long as you paid the rental.
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