Face-Off?
I write notes to myself in the middle of the night whenever stray ideas float into my head or when I see something on the internet that I might want to comment on but I’m too lazy to do so at the moment. Last night, for instance, I saw an article about the Sarah Dye appearance at a Grassroots Republicans meeting at the Ellettsville branch of the Monroe County Public Library.
Dye, of course, is the “natural” farmer who’s been outed for being connected to a white supremacist group that used to be known as Identity Evropa but is now called something else so that its members may more easily spread their horseshit without being labeled as…, y’know, white supremacists. Dye is a vendor at the Bloomington Farmers Market and protesters have been raising hell about her and her husband’s presence there this summer. There’ve already been near-dramatic confrontations including one Saturday AM when locked and loaded gun fondlers showed up to demonstrate in favor of her right to spew rhetorical emesis online.
I saw somewhere that one speaker at the Grassroots Republicans gathering suggested a bunch of them show up tomorrow morning at the Farmers Market to show support for Dye. Because it was — I think — 2:00am when I saw the tidbit, I thought, Hmm, I’m gonna say something about that when I wake up. I didn’t take a note because I was half-snoring at the time.
Of course, I couldn’t find the article or social medium post referring to the person’s call-out as I started typing this post. Did I dream it? Was it taken down? Who knows?
I do know this. I’m not feeling good at all about the prospect of scads of white supremacist defenders showing up at the Showers Common tomorrow. Guaranteed, there’ll be a hefty contingent of folks who want Dye and her like to get lost who’ll show up in response. That sounds like a recipe for mayhem
Here’s hoping I dreamed it.
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Women Talk
It’s not even 100 years since the Senate and the two-thirds of the state legislatures decided to guarantee women’s right to vote in this holy land. In fact, the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment will be celebrated next year.
Fleck
The Monroe County History Center will mount an exhibit commemorating women’s suffrage in 2020. A huge part of that will be research done by the Center’s collections manager, Hilary Fleck. She was awarded a May Wright Sewall Fellowship grant by Indiana Humanities earlier this year to compile a history of the suffrage movement in Monroe County as well as a rundown of women politicians hereabouts.
Fleck joined me on Big Talk yesterday. If you missed the show, here’s the podcast. And tune in to WFHB, 91.3 FM, Monday, at 5:00pm for the Daily Local News feature, Big Talk Extra, wherein Fleck chats with me about some notable names in the local fight to get voting rights for females.
Next week on Big Talk, a couple of dynamos behind the MidWay Music Festival — Alexi King and Rachel Glago — will join me in the studio to talk about the sound bash scheduled for Saturday, October 5th, at a half dozen venues around town. The MidWay Fest is an annual Bloomington production featuring women and non-binary folk strumming, banging, warbling, cooing, keyboard plinking, fretting, and every other kind of music-making. The MidWay people found, a while ago, that while half the audience for any given music festival is female, the vast, vast, vast majority of performers at such events is male. Natch, something had to be done so the MidWay gang cranked up a fest featuring non-males.
Wanna learn more? Tune in Thursday, October 3rd at 5:30pm for Big Talk.
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