Commentary: Women, Politics, and the Potluck People’s Party

 

 

I’d forgotten to bring a sign telling people where to park.

We were setting-up tables by the Mississippi River when I realized we really would need signs. There were going to be more women at the gathering than there are people living in the town where it took place.

Thankfully, Hallie Pond — a rural community organizer who lives in Pine River and co-leads the pro-democracy group Brainerd Lakes Area (BLA) Indivisible — had a couple of old political yard signs in her car. She went to work covering them with paper and, in block letters with a Sharpie, she wrote:

P O W E R   P O T L U C K

An arrow pointed toward the pavilion in Palisade’s Berglund Park Campground.

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Palisade is my hometown.

It is where I was raised and where my mother, her mother, and her mother’s mother were raised. The roots also run deep here for the mayor of Palisade, who happens to be my aunt, and who opened our gathering with an enthusiastic welcome. Gaylene Spolarich — an Ojibwe mother, grandmother, and family childcare advocate — was elected to lead this small Minnesota city of about 162 people in 2024 amid political turmoil and a budget crisis.

Previous leaders of this town had apparently lost or wasted a lot of money that belonged to the community. They had lost trust, because they failed to keep track of finances and hadn’t maintained basic infrastructure, like city drinking water or winter road maintenance. Government mismanagement and neglect had a real impact on the quality of people’s lives, on the town’s economy, and on the morale of residents.

Studies have shown that rural areas like ours, which struggle financially and are home to many low-income residents, are turning sharper to the right politically. It’s not only because more people are voting for MAGA candidates — it’s also because many are disengaging from politics altogether.

People in many of these towns might know politics is relevant to their lives, but can’t see how it directly connects to very local issues.

During the 2024 elections, it was not unusual to see a sign for Gaylene Spolarich planted firmly next to a sign for Donald Trump.

Gaylene is a rural working-class Democrat. She has previously run for public office as a member of the Democratic party — a party known in our rural region for abandoning local candidates and following the wisdom of outside consultants instead of listening to the people on the ground, who know and take care of their communities.

When it came to leading in her hometown, it didn’t really matter to residents if she was a Democrat or a Republican. She won because people know her and trust that she does what she says and will listen to their ideas and grievances, working together to build back community.

Like a lot of rural women, she gets shit done.

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I’m not a political organizer — not really — but I love political organizers, especially the ones working from inside their communities. I’m an artist, a single mother, and a cultural organizer.

What that means to me is that I organize around art projects and cultural change, not issues.  Usually, I don’t bring people together as a political party, or for a candidate, or as part of a campaign. I don’t organize using apps and online tools and contact lists to sign people up or turn them out.

I help other artists and community members plan gatherings or communicate their concerns and ideas using art, storytelling, and culture. Usually that looks simple: People eating together, or gathering around traditional cultural activities — expressing themselves, and feeling a sense of purpose and belonging.

This isn’t for a single short-term goal, political or otherwise. It’s just how I like to be of service to the people around me, and I’m never alone.

In a small community, no one does just one thing. If you can’t work with people who think and believe differently than you do, you won’t be able to get anything done.

 

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Much of the work I do is with my friend and collaborator Annie Humphrey, who is also an artist and cultural organizer. She is from the Leech Lake Reservation.

Annie is a grandmother, a USMC veteran, and a trained carpenter. She also makes murals and music, builds hemp houses, keeps chickens and a garden, harvests maple sugar and plant medicines, and cooks really delicious frybread and chicken wild rice soup.

In 2024 we founded a nonprofit arts collective we call Fire in the Village. Sometimes we joke that even though we’re all about the art, we probably spend 90 percent of our time harvesting, preparing, serving, and eating food with our communities.

Like a lot of women who are organizers and leaders in our rural region, we end up doing a little bit of everything. We need our families and neighbors — our village, in other words — to survive in this environment.

The name of our collective comes from several points of origin. One is the title of a book of  Anishinaabe and Ojibwe stories that Annie’s mother, Anne Dunn, authored ten years ago. It’s also the title of song by John Trudell, a Native artist and activist who inspired Annie’s creative path. To hear Annie tell it (which she does in her songs and stories), John was a friend, collaborator, and supporter of her art and community work on and off the reservation.

Annie creates art and tells stories to lift the spirits of the people, encouraging us to recognize and build our power together. She shares an Anishinaabe story about Aandeg, or Crow, who sacrificed his brilliant rainbow-colored feathers when he flew to the sun to grab fire and brought it down to the people, so they could cook their food, tell their dreams, and find answers to questions they couldn’t ask on their own.

In his song “Fire in the Village,” Trudell uses the image of a fire, at which the village gathers, to describe an energy or spark of awakening. As he often said in his words and his songs, cultural teachings and artistic expression are part of a full and good life.

When people live in a society in which they can no longer trust institutions to tell the truth — or to to uphold collective values — the truth must come from culture and art.

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In many of our rural communities, potluck culture is still alive and well. At our Power Potluck in Palisade (phew!), we hadn’t yet placed our handmade signs by the roadside when women began to show up.

They came from Bigfork, Hibbing, Emily, Duluth, McGregor, Crosby, Deerwood, Brainerd, Carlton, Esko, Pequot Lakes, Ball Club, Battle Point, Cromwell, Cloquet, Grand Rapids, Merrifield, Longville, Walker, Sandstone, Embarrass, Fergus Falls, Mora, Rochester, Marcell, Aurora, Aitkin, Hackensack, Bemidji, and the Twin Cities.

When I spoke with Nevada Littlewolf, executive director of Women Winning, about our idea for a rural women’s Power Potluck, she immediately asked what potluck people always ask: “What can I bring?”

Nevada is a member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe who grew up on the Iron Range. She is an organizer who believes in lifting up Native and rural women. At our gathering, she spoke to the assembled group: “If we can unlock the power of rural women, we can change not only our rural communities, but all of our communities.”

The organizers of this gathering referred to it as the “Badass Rural Women’s Potluck” and invited rural women we knew and admired across the region. It includes grassroots organizers of local Indivisible chapters and democracy defense clubs like W.A.R.R. (We Are Rising and Resisting), the Blue Brigade, Good Trouble Club, and local chapters of the DFL and other political organizations.

Candidates for public office also joined us.

Although we often hear people say that “women can’t win” in conservative rural areas, strong women have always led the way here. They rally neighbors when someone needs assistance. They activate the phone tree when there’s a threat to safety. They have eyes on everybody’s children. They strategize to fill the gaps left by a government that overlooks rural community concerns.

In our region right now there are dozens of rural women running for county commissions and tribal councils, as well as other local offices. Women are running for state senate and to represent us in Washington D.C.

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As a rural organizer, I travel to a lot of small communities. I am welcomed into community spaces by people who are working hard and facing an uphill climb. I try to listen and learn from community leaders, especially the ones who roll up their sleeves and get to work filling the gaps that come from persistent disinvestment, divisiveness, and despair.

In every space and every place there are people stepping up, taking the lead, developing strategies, and working in unlikely alliances to mend what’s been broken or what has come unraveled in the workings of our towns and governments. Often, they also are mending spirits and relationships.

Women’s leadership isn’t just about one thing. Not all women leading and organizing agree on every issue or approach, but the women who took the microphone at our first Power Potluck spoke to similar challenges and hopes. Most spoke about lack of resources, and outsiders telling them not to bother even trying to change things —the problems being so persistent, and so deeply engrained in who we are as a region.

One woman, Mary Carlson, a school board chair now running for Minnesota State Senate in District 11, said: “I am not a ‘targeted race’ by the DFL. They don’t think I can win, but they’ve never met me.”

Trina Swanson, a highly qualified candidate who was endorsed by community volunteers across our region at the DFL convention, is facing a primary challenge from an Iron Range celebrity who has never served in any office and has no political experience. The reason some say they support him? Because he is a man with connections outside our region and he can raise more money.

What these women candidates lack in donor-class connections, they make up for with grit, authenticity, and organizing ability. Even though it is an uphill climb, women already lead the work of defending and rebuilding rural communities.

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Maybe its because I grew-up in our rural region, but I love a good potluck. At small-town potlucks, we all have something to contribute, and everyone belongs. It’s not always food — sometimes it’s a presence and care for others that we bring. Any place where people gather — sharing their dreams and asking their questions — is where revolution is possible, because movement is alive and building.

That’s why some of us have started calling this phenomenon “potluck people power” — referring to our gatherings as part of a worldwide and also hyper-local Potluck People’s Party.

The potluck doesn’t simply represent a different kind of politics. It’s not merely a metaphor. 

The potluck is the organizing strategy that can move us toward the radical future we’ve been dreaming of — where we are enough and we have enough. When we gather together to share our gifts or seek the support of our communities, we know that we can win.