Beyond Protests--the Importance of Building Community

A Guest Post by Jan Libbey

Protest against Donald Trump and MAGA in general in Des Moines at the Capitol this past Saturday, sponsored by Bitches Get Stuff Done. I was there.

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My friend Jan Libbey has been a subscriber to Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture since 2022, and she has been my friend longer than that, and she told me that she noticed that while I spend lots of time covering protests against Trump and the corrupt and anti-democratic efforts of those in the MAGA-verse, I might be missing something else that was important, so she asked me:

Have you featured how folks are moving/organizing/taking action beyond protesting, how they are channeling their energy to build/ hold on to ... or even more to my imagination these days ... creating anew ... the pathways to the vision of community they hold dear?

My answer to her at the time was no, but now I realize that I have featured some of the work Progress Iowa is doing, as well as Iowa CCI, the Iowa Farmers Union, and maybe more, but I haven’t done nearly enough in writing about building community.

Jan has extensive experience in rural organizing, so I asked her if she would be interested in writing a guest post. It follows a brief bio.

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BY Jan Libbey

GUEST COLUMNIST

Jan Libbey’s work has been informed by a love for the land and rural communities expressed through farming and community organizing. She and her husband, Tim Landgraf, began One Step at a Time Gardens (OSTG) in 1996, marketing fresh produce and pastured poultry for sales through their own Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and, with other producers, through North Iowa Fresh, LLC, through 2021. She helped to found Healthy Harvest of North Iowa, a nonprofit supporting local food system development, and served as Executive Director from 2011 - 2019. From 2021 – 2024, she worked alongside a broad spectrum of local food and farm leaders and helped coordinate the Iowa Food System Coalition’s development of a statewide food system plan – Setting the Table for All Iowans. Today, she is focusing on her experiences at the local level, weaving local food access and food system development, and political organizing. She’s also making more time for family and two grandchildren.

Along with Tim, she has been recognized with the 2012 Spencer Award for Sustainable Agriculture, the 2022 Sustainable Agriculture Achievement Award from Practical Farmers of Iowa, and has been featured in several books related to her vision for the critical importance of community and food relationships.

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Jan and her husband Tim in front of the Bernie Hosey Entro Metal Sculpture at TwispWorks, discussed below, and first mentioned in an email to me:

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Bob,

I’ve raised a question with you in light of your many stories about protests:

Have you featured how folks are moving/organizing/taking action beyond protesting, how they are channeling their energy to build/ hold on to ... or even more to my imagination these days ... creating anew ... the pathways to the vision of community they hold dear?

The words to describe what I’m looking for almost elude me. Let me try to give more context.

I’m concerned as time pulls us further and further down the path paved with erasure and replacement that what we recognize today as due process practices and functional mechanisms (however flawed) of democracy will become so skewed we can no longer recognize them. The proposed changes emerging from the dominant political leaders are so profound that, if allowed to be instituted, they may be very difficult to undo, and our memories of what supports justice may be foggy.

People have written, called, and confronted legislators to no avail. Elected leaders capitulate. People take their energy to the street, as you have documented. They vent, they find allies, raise awareness, sometimes they confront or are confronted. These actions are needed. However, I think they are only a hint of what’s needed.

I believe movements that have a chance of bringing about change must be intentional, disciplined, and multidimensional. And such movements must effectively integrate the three categories of activists a friend described to me years ago. This friend pointed out that there are weavers (connection makers), builders (innovative idea activators), and warriors (assertive messengers). As this resistance evolves and matures, to be effective, we need to recognize how protestors (warriors) work in partnership with builders and weavers. Along with this is the emerging reality that we can’t just pine for what we’ve known. The seismic shift underway is a call to deeply understand what it really is we envision, build shared understanding, not assumptions, and plot out how to recreate/create systems committed to shared values. We need to reimagine at a fundamental level.

Mary Swander’s recent piece, “Last Class”, gave shape to my elusive idea like tossing a blanket over a charmed invisible object to reveal its form and location. In a story about much more, Mary briefly described what happened when the Fairview country school, attended by mostly Amish with a few English students, was close to the school district and students were bused to town. The Amish built their own schoolhouse—Shady Grove—and staffed it themselves, creating a new pathway outside the dominant system. In doing so, the Amish nurtured and maintained control of core values central to the vitality of their community. As Mary described, a lively and congenial softball game and end-of-year school picnic spoke volumes about a community that held firm and created.

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The core of my question is – where do we see community commitment to reimagining in the face of lost opportunity? And more so, what will it take to build protests into possibility?

I can cite numerous examples of innovation, but collective reimagining – such as Mary’s story - I find harder to put my finger on. I believe the inspiration is so important, as resistance needs to be paired with resilience and revitalization.

I’ll share one concrete example my husband and I stumbled upon when an inconspicuous stop to change drivers opened us to a world of imagination. When we stepped out, we realized this wasn’t just any out-of-the-way pull off and that our driver change wouldn’t be a simple circling of the car. We had pulled off at TwispWorks of Wisp, WA.

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We learned, in poking around the grounds of this intriguing place, that it started first as the Twisp Ranger Station. The station, covering six acres and eventually encompassing 17 buildings, opened in 1932 and remained active through the 1980s.

The grounds had been home to the Conservation Corps during the depression, was the birth birthplace of smokejumping, a mill employing 400 folks in the area, and Youth Conservation Corps. Then it went quiet for about 20 years. With an auction of the property pending in 2008, the community leaned into the opportunity to reimagine.

The transformation is stunning.

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In the following years, TwispWorks emerged as a thriving hub for creativity and enterprise. Today, TwispWorks is a space that combines arts, culture, and business to support the Methow Valley‘s economy. The groundwork laid through its early years positioned TwispWorks to be able to support local businesses with emergency grants during COVID-19 pandemic. More support was offered to businesses in the wake of wildfires in 2022. And the latest addition in 2023 was the Auto Tech Facility - part of a broader initiative to expand Career and Technical Education (CTE) opportunities for local youth.

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I’m trying some new things around food access and food system work, around organizing, with some new friends and partners in my local community. These initiatives are, in their way, small attempts to hold firm and assert a vision of values I believe to be core to community resilience. Within these small efforts, I feel an urgency to find and center a new pathway to the vision of community we hold dear. I’m hunting anxiously for illuminating inspiration to inform these steps.

I have found that when I’m hunting for insights around naggingly present questions, I find clues all around in an amazing array of interactions. I found a clue in Mary’s story, in an interview with a pastor related to the papal conclave, in the interpretation of a musical piece, and even in an email from my brother describing a message on a pub coaster. These clues, thus far, however, are piecemeal. The full picture I’m looking for has not revealed itself. The Twisp Works hub is an example of what's possible when a community uses its agency to imagine and then create its own future. I will continue to keep my eyes and ears open, but I know you, Bob, ask good questions and listen through answers to deeper insights. So, I’m asking you (and your readers) to help in the hunt and revelation. I’m hopeful that I (and perhaps others) will find the spark of fresh, edge-pushing ideas that draw the energy and passion of street corner protests and mall-scale marches into fundamental development of strategic change-making. Write on my friend, I’ll be reading and ready to try new ideas.

Jan

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Thanks, Jan, for this challenge. And for building community whenever you see the potential for it to happen.

As I said above, I haven’t done nearly enough. The Twist Works hub and your other examples and your message are inspirational.

I know I don’t have any answers, but I think organizers like you do. Build community where you are. Any suggestions or examples, readers? Please leave them in the comments and share this post.

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Thinking back to what I have written, how I address community in these times, I belive it is best exemplified by a column I wrote in the early morning hours of November 6, 2024, following Kamala Harris’s loss to the scoundrel Donald Trump. I wrote “The Grapes of Wrath: Welcome to the Resistance.” Here is a relevant selection:

Today, I fear that anyone who isn’t a straight white male is less safe. Our wives, girlfriends, daughters, and granddaughters are less safe. Especially those of varying shades of brown. And we need to remember this really isn’t about Trump. It’s about the vision of those who created Project 2025 and the oligarchs. Trump is their tool as they seek to build a white “Christian” nationalist theocracy.

Right now I’m thinking about what we need to do. And I’m thinking about Tom Joad, the protagonist in John Steinbeck’s great American novel “The Grapes of Wrath” from 1939.

Here’s one summary:

“Near the end of Steinbeck’s novel, the protagonist Joad — inspired by the Christ-like Preacher Casy, and on the run for his life — gives a farewell speech to his “Ma.” His words go like this:

“Well, maybe like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but on’y a piece of a big one — an’ then—“

“Then what, Tom?”

“Then it don’ matter. Then I’ll be all aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be everywhere — wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’ — I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build–why, I’ll be there. See?”

Woody Guthrie put it to song:

“Ever’body might be just one big soul
Well it looks that a-way to me
Everywhere that you look, in the day or night
That’s where I’m a-gonna be, Ma
That’s where I’m a-gonna be

Wherever little children are hungry and cry
Wherever people ain’t free
Wherever men are fightin’ for their rights
That’s where I’m a-gonna be, Ma
That’s where I’m a-gonna be”

Here’s Henry Fonda’s version in the movie:

And like Tom Joad, that’s where I’m a-gonna be.

Take my hand.

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To me, that’s all I know how to build community. I’ll be there.

Side by side with Jan, a great many friends and allies, and with you, dear reader.

And here I’ll close with a protest video created by my friend Knoll Buddy, with his cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.”

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Please consider joining me and a remarkable cast of writers and songwriters at the most amazing event in the universe, the Okoboji Writers and Songwriters retreat in September! It’s a Julie Gammack production, and you will love it. You don’t have to be a writer or songwriter to come—just a reader or someone who loves music.

Which is you!

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