Do you vote? I hope that sounds like a silly question to ask of an LWV of Roseville Area member. How do you think of voting? Is it a right...a privilege...a responsibility...a duty...an opportunity...a power...a burden? Pointless?

Minnesota is proud of its high voter turnout in general elections. (You can view lots of voter data at https://www.sos.state.mn.us/election-administration-campaigns/data-maps/historical-voter-turnout-statistics/) About 80% of eligible voters voted in 2020. But when one looks at the numbers by age, it is clear that we cannot stop promoting voting.

There are concepts that I can hear explained and accept as true, but that I do not fully understand how to apply correctly and consistently in practice. Take physics. I memorized theorems and principles and plugged-in numbers well enough for high school physics, but the concepts never came naturally to me.

Moral silhouette. Such an evocative phrase. While I quickly recall the general topic of the article wherein I saw it—the Berlin Wall—and I recall the phrase—moral silhouette—so evocative while still so malleable, yet I cannot recall the source of the article or the precise meaning the author imparted to this phrase. Was it the wall itself, the people who resisted it, the people who built it, or the Cold War in totality whose moral silhouettes the author was seeking to evoke? It could be any or all of the above. Some manifest in my mind as negative space for the harm done, some more like old-fashioned silhouette paper cuttings, for persons of courage in the face of brutality. These are events of my lifetime. How long beyond the lives of those then living will these moral silhouettes persist?

It sounds so easy, so straightforward. Give someone who could not otherwise afford college a
scholarship and you give them access to a better life. But that transition is not always so easy or
straightforward. Listen to the stories of first-generation college students stumbling through school
unaware of the unstated “rules” and expectations of college. What are office hours? Where do my
parents belong in my life now? How do I socialize with classmates who have so much money?

“How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look wrong, and wrong look right.”

—Black Hawk, An Autobiography (quote seen on plaque embedded in the sidewalk in Iowa City)

Many LWVMN and LWV of Roseville Area events now incorporate an acknowledgement that our
communities are located on the ancestral lands of Native Americans, the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples here in
Minnesota. I did not initiate this custom, coming to it after hearing it at several events. We are all aware at
some level that the entire North American continent was totally reallocated, reorganized, and just outright
taken from indigenous peoples by European colonists due to orthogonal understandings of the concept of
property and a massive power differential. The land grants from European kings to early colonies had no
ethical foundation and treaties under which millions of acres of land were ceded in the 1800s were grossly
unfair.

Perhaps you saw it—an editorial page cartoon by Steve Sack in the Star Tribune in the summer of 2020—two houses, two neighbors chatting over the fence, and two signs in one yard. The signs say “Black Lives Matter” and “We Support Our Local Police.” One man is saying to the other man “If you think they conflict maybe it’s you with the problem.” It struck a chord.

I can see why they are so often thought to be orthogonal today. It needn’t be the case.

Perhaps the crux of the conflict comes in the intent behind “support.” For me, support means willingly paying taxes; endorsing a respectful, living wage for all public employees; backing good training for all public safety employees, both before and throughout employment; treating those public safety employees with whom I come into contact with respect, courtesy, and thanks as the situation warrants; and acknowledging the value of the job and the risks it entails.