…it's complicated and there's no easy answer or a simple answer… I've been around the block a number of times. I remember all the stuff in the late 1960s and the early 1970s with the whole civil rights movement, the anti-war protests. Our country was on fire at that point…It was a difficult time. Many, many challenges all over our country. So, you know, my hope was that we never get to that point again.... But here we are. So I think for me, you know, and in terms of. Being out there… it was about preserving democracy… it was about reminding folks that, hey, you know, if we really, really want democracy to work, we have to be involved… there's the old cliché "democracy is not a spectator sport"…and I think that's truer now than any time in the past. – Bob Shimek on why it was important to him to attend the Defend our Democracy rally in Bemidji.
Bob Shimek attended the Defend our Democracy rally when President Trump visited Bemidji recently. He spoke on the morning show about why it was important to him.
We are at a stage in our democracy where we're driven more by fear, the politics of fear, than the politics of humanity, taking care of the environment, taking care of life on Earth…as an indigenous man, as a native man who spent the majority of his life here in northern Minnesota, you know, we have a word we use and it's about relatives. It's about relationships. You know, we use the term "gidinawendimin" … and what we're talking about here is all our relations and when we talk about our relations, we're talking about all that ever has been, is now, or ever will be in all of space and all of time. So, it goes back to our creation story and that which was gifted to us and our obligations to take care of that, you know, as native people…Was it a protest against Trump? Definitely. But, you know, there's a lot of layers to why we are where we are. – Bob Shimek
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