Scott Jensen toured Brown County and other southwestern Minnesota locations on Monday, where he had some interesting things to say. He was so impressed with the coverage in the New Ulm Journal, he tweeted the photo at the top of this post.
At the Journal, Fritz Busch reports in ‘Last, best chance’:
Republican gubernatorial candidate Dr. Scott Jensen displayed lots of energy as he talked to several hundred supporters Monday in a campaign whistle-stop at MR Paving & Excavating Inc. in New Ulm
"When you collectively push your energy onto me, it’s humbling,” Jensen said. “I’m a Norwegian from Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. I went to Sleepy Eye High School. If you really wanted to impress your date, you took her to New Ulm or maybe Mankato.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience,” said Jensen. “It’s a new world now. Things have changed. It’s not pretty. We’re taking kids out of elementary school and denying them the opportunity to dream and learn,” he added. “School is where they learn to read, write and do arithmetic.” . . .
“Why is crime so rampant? In 2020 when the riots hit and the governor was absent, it was a problem,” Jensen said. “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice and domestic tranquility. That’s freedom. There were some demonstrators that were unfriendly. Tim Walz wanted to make sure they got a chance to vent by tearing down a Christopher Columbus statue. This is a pattern. Where did those people come from? Not Sleepy Eye, New Ulm or Brown County.”
Was that dog whistling at the whistle stop? Where did those people come from?
In February, Erin Thompson explored that issue for the Smithsonian Magazine in Meet the Indigenous Activist Who Toppled Minnesota’s Christopher Columbus Statue:
Mike Forcia had it all planned out.
His Bad River Anishinaabe relatives, along with representatives from other Indigenous groups living in Minnesota, would fill the state capitol lawn with drummers and dancers, sending song and the ringing of jingle dresses into the air around a ten-foot bronze statue of Christopher Columbus that had stood there since 1931. He would invite the Somali and Hmong communities, too—everyone living in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul as refugees or immigrants. “I wanted them to bring their drums and their outfits,” he said when describing his vision, “their dance, their food, their art and their history.”
But then, on the night of June 9, 2020, protesters in Richmond, Virginia, tore down a statue of Columbus, set it on fire and rolled it into a lake. A few hours later, police discovered that someone had decapitated a Columbus in a park in Boston. Forcia, a longtime Indigenous activist, heard through his network that someone else was planning to take down Minnesota’s Columbus under the cover of darkness.
“I just panicked,” Forcia said. “I panicked because I had plans for that statue.” The Columbus statue had been unveiled decades earlier in front of a St. Paul crowd of thousands, and he had promised himself that a monument “put up in broad daylight … should come down in broad daylight.”
So, on the morning of June 10, Forcia issued an invitation on Facebook for people to meet him at the statue at 5 p.m. Columbus’ deportation would not be as grand as Forcia had imagined, but he would do his best.
Videos of the crowd tugging Columbus off his base that day provided some of the defining visuals of summer 2020. The scene played on the news so often that you’d be forgiven for assuming that more monuments shared Columbus’ fate. In reality, of the 214 monuments that came down after the death of George Floyd, 179—over 80 percent—were removed officially, following decisions by local authorities. Protesters pulled down only 13 Confederate monuments and 22 monuments to other controversial historical figures like Columbus.
Most of these activists concealed their faces or struck at night. They likely wanted to avoid the potentially heavy criminal and financial penalties for such acts. Forcia, however, has taken full, public responsibility for toppling a monument. This means he can explain what he hoped to achieve by doing so—and why it was worth the risk.
For Forcia, toppling the Columbus statue wasn’t about the distant past—it was about the way that those changes in Indigenous people’s names and religion continue to reverberate today. “When Columbus came here, he brought with him Jesus, Satan and alcohol,” Forcia said. “And that’s what did our people in.” . . .
Indigenous Minnesotans had protested the Columbus monument since at least the 1970s. Almost every year on Columbus Day, someone would toss a water balloon filled with red paint—or sometimes their own blood—at its face. At a more elaborate protest in October 2015, dancers and drummers surrounded the monument, while members of the Ogichidaakwe Council’s elders group sang and protesters marched with signs, one reading “stop honoring genocide.” A blue sticky note covered the part of the base’s inscription that called Columbus “the discover of America,” naming him instead “the father of violence against Native people.”
Over the decades, activists circulated petitions and repeatedly asked the state to reconsider the statue. Those years of petitions weren’t rejected—they simply went unconsidered.
On the day of the statue’s removal, Forcia told Roeske, “We’ll help you pick him up, we’ll help you carry him into the capitol. We’ll make sure we don’t get hurt. We’ll pay for any damage … but he has to go.” . . .
Roeske walked a short distance away to contact his superiors. The 35 troopers already mobilized for the event began to move in, but without urgency. It was as if they were convinced that the thin ropes Forcia began to prepare wouldn’t be enough to take down a figure supported by centuries of adulation. Forcia tied slipknots and tried to toss loops of rope over Columbus’ head before another man scaled the statue’s base to help him. Then Forcia put one of the most important parts of his plan to work: “We have so many missing and murdered Indian women,” he shouted to the crowd. “And [Columbus] was the start of it all. I think our women should be in the front of that rope.”
Around 20 women, mostly Indigenous, grabbed each rope. Most were dressed for a summer afternoon in shorts and slip-on shoes. They did not come expecting to do the work of taking down Columbus. But after just a few heaves, the blocks of the pedestal slid apart, and Columbus tilted downward. The statue twisted as it fell. Columbus’ right index finger pointed toward the spot where he would soon land, then bent inward when it hit the pavement. Columbus had finally discovered the ground.
“It’s a beautiful thing because we have suffered from what [Columbus] did to us,” said Dorene Day, an Ojibwe woman who brought several of her children and her grandchildren to the protest. She understood what Forcia had dramatized by asking women to take the ropes. In Minnesota—and across North America—Indigenous women, girls, and transgender and two spirit people experience disproportionate violence that often goes unreported, uninvestigated and unprosecuted.
“Traditionally, they are our leaders,” Forcia explained when asked him why he invited women to take the ropes. “I want to make sure they retain and resume that role in our communities.”
Several protesters unfurled a huge banner printed with “end white supremacy” behind the musicians who began to perform. Drummers proclaimed their triumph. A round dance formed, with protesters moving in a ring around the statue. Another woman danced while recording the scene on a pink cell phone, her fluffy white dog bouncing around the statue. Forcia used a pocketknife to cut the ropes into pieces, handing them out as souvenirs. . . .
As for Jensen's statement, "Tim Walz wanted to make sure they got a chance to vent by tearing down a Christopher Columbus statue," that seems based on a report by the ultra-conservative Alpha News. I'm more confident in Tom Hauser's Timeline: Columbus statue torn down by protesters 90 minutes after vow to protect.
Hauser later reported Walz promises consequences for those who tore down Columbus statue. In October 2020, the Star Tribune's Patrick Condon and Torey Van Oot reported Walz officials nixed return of Columbus statue at Capitol.
Again, we're curious where the endorsed Republican gubernatorial candidate thought those indigenous protesters came from.
Not Norway, via Sleepy Eye, like Jensen.
Those who are Anishinaabe/Ojibwe, like Forcia, would have come from communities in Northern Minnesota or Wisconsin, often via urban areas, while those who are Dakota? Jeepers, if they're anything like my beau's ancestors, they would have been living across Southern Minnesota. Dakota families are both urban and rural, but they were definitely from around there.
Not that his family participated in an earlier "unfriendly" moment in New Ulm. Golly, that word "unfriendly" can carry some historical freight. What would Gabriel Renville say? Where did "those people" come from, Dr. Jensen?
Perhaps Jensen had something more ideological in mind when he linked New Ulm with the Columbus statue over in St. Paul. Could he have been thinking of the invitation in Happy Columbus Day! Now return the statue, written by the Center of the American Experiment's Director of Marketing and Communications Bill Walsh:
Readers interested in this topic should attend our upcoming event in New Ulm titled Weaponizing History — How the Left is distorting the facts to advance a modern political agenda. Senior Policy Fellow Katherine Kersten will expose how organizations like the Minnesota Historical Society and the Minnesota Department of Education are using history as a vehicle to advance a self-interested political agenda – even when that requires grossly distorting the factual record.
What would Gabriel Renville say? Where did "those people" come from, Dr. Jensen?
Over at the Marshall Independent, Deb Gau reports that the candidate confesses he relies on the Center of the American Experiment in Jensen targets spending, taxes:
“We’ve done a lot of spreadsheet studying over the last six to eight weeks. I met with John Phelan from the Center For the American Experiment,” Jensen said. “The first step would be, reduce our spending by 10%, which would basically go back to 2019, which would put our general fund budget at $47 billion instead of $52 billion.”
At the Minnesota Reformer, Michelle Griffith reported Monday in Scott Jensen provides more details about plan to eliminate personal income tax. No mention of the Center of the American Experiment.
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Photo: The front page of the New Ulm Journal, as tweeted by Scott Jensen.
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