ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Monday, February 3, 2020
Ann Arbor, Michigan
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Senator Elizabeth Warren, former Senator Nina Turner and former Vice President Joe Biden campaign around Iowa the weekend before the caucus.
MAYA GOLDMAN Daily Staff Reporter
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA — In the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucus, Democratic presidential candidates have crisscrossed the state. They’ve held rallies and town hall events and met voters in their own living rooms. They’ve mobilized voters to knock on doors. They’ve even sent surrogate supporters to energize voters in cities they can’t reach themselves. The Daily attended three rallies for three different candidates with significant support in Iowa in the weekend prior to the Iowa caucuses. Here’s what we saw. At Sanders caucus concert, young supporters “feel the Bern” More than 2,000 people gathered at the Horizons Event Center in suburban Des Moines, Iowa Friday night for the Bernie Sanders Caucus Concert, featuring popular indie folk band Bon Iver.
At the rally, a crowd of primarily young voters drank beer and ate burgers while standing facing a large stage. 22-year-old Allie Hoskins from Marion, Iowa, stood near the front of the crowd with a group of friends. She caucused for Sanders during her first election in 2016, and couldn’t wait to do it again on Monday. “It was just really fun and I’m excited for it again,” Hoskins said. “Hopefully I can instill that energy among my peers because we don’t do it as much as we should. Historically, we have the lowest turnout rates in the country, year after year, election after election. And this election is probably the most important for people our age.” Two Iowan folk bands kicked off the event, followed by speeches from documentary filmmaker and activist Michael Moore — a one-time University of Michigan student originally from Flint, Mich. — and Nina Turner, national co-chair of the Sanders campaign. Moore, who’s been campaigning in Iowa for
Sanders, spoke about the similarities he’s seen between Iowa and his fellow Midwestern home state of Michigan. “I’ve seen Flint, Michigan, all across this wonderful state. I’ve seen and talked to so many people who are struggling to get by or tired of the old way and want something new,” Moore said. “And it’s no surprise to me that Bernie Sanders, for the last three-for-two, has been polling number one here in the state of Iowa.” Sanders had planned on attending the rally himself, but was unable to leave Washington, D.C. in time after the Senate’s impeachment trials of President Donald Trump on Friday. In a phone call lasting about 10 minutes and broadcast through the event center’s speaker system, Sanders spoke to the crowd about several of his platform points, including reforming the criminal justice system, ending the war on drugs and banning assault weapons. “We will do exactly, in our campaign, the opposite of what Trump is trying to do. He is
ANNIE KLUSENDORF/Daily DESIGN BY LIZZY RUEPPEL
trying to divide the American people,” Sanders said, receiving loud cheers from audience members. “We are gonna bring our people together, Black and white and Latino, Asian American, Native American, gay and straight — we’re gonna bring our people together.” He underscored the importance of Monday’s caucus — seen throughout the world as an omen for which candidates will do well in the forthcoming primaries, and eventually, on a national stage. “On Monday night, the entire country and in fact the entire world will be looking at the great state of Iowa,” he said. “And my humble request from you is to do everything that you can to make sure that our friends and neighbors come out and vote.” Following Sanders’s speech, progressive Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib, Pramila Jayapal and Ilhan Omar, who have all endorsed Sanders as their pick for Democratic nominee, took the stage for a short panel discussion about their work in
their own communities. Later in the discussion, Jayapal brought up Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and presidential candidate, and crowd members began to boo at her mention. Panel moderator and Des Moines school board member Dionna Langford jumped in, saying, “We’re not going to boo, we’re classy here.” But Tlaib interjected: “No, no, I’ll boo … You all know I can’t be quiet. No, we’re going to boo. That’s all right, the haters will shut up on Monday when we win.” Tlaib has since apologized for her response on Twitter, writing the “movement deserve(d) better.” Following the panel discussion and a short speech from Jane Sanders, the senator’s wife, Justin Vernon, the Wisconsin-born front man of Bon Iver, took the stage for a solo acoustic set. “I was learning more and more about this caucus on Monday and it’s so important to get out the vote,” Vernon told
the crowd between songs. Enthusiastic Warren supporters admire campaign’s empathy A rally for Senator Elizabeth Warren at the Coe College Kohawk Arena in Cedar Rapids garnered about 700 supporters early Saturday afternoon. The enthusiastic crowd included one supporter, Mary Sullivan, who came dressed as the Statue of Liberty. “(Warren’s) got health, she’s got experience, she’s got humanity. She takes good ideas and gives credit to the people who came up with them. She sees the whole picture and the details of how to make it happen,” Sullivan said. Sullivan has been volunteering with the Warren campaign since this summer and will be a precinct captain for Warren on Monday. She said she felt a little burnt out the other day after so many door-knocking shifts, and was amazed when an organizer called her to check on her mental health. See CAUCUS, Page 2A
Virtual reality ‘Democracy live’: Nation watches tool exposes Iowans prepare for 2020’s first vote racism against Black people
Volunteers, community members share experiences of unique civic responsibility BEN ROSENFELD Daily News Editor
Project allows users to experience racist behavior through immersive scenarios ALICE TRACEY
Daily Staff Reporter
Your name is Michael Sterling and you are 6 years old. You are sitting cross-legged on the rug of your first-grade classroom, watching three white children play with colorful plastic blocks. One of the kids has built a wall, while the other two launch blocks — “fireballs,” in their childish fantasy — at the wall, trying to knock it over. Turning to you, the boy farthest to your right urges you to throw a fireball, one the color of your skin. “Yours would be the scariest because yours is black, and black is always the scariest,” he says. You reach down to pick up a block, then you toss it across the rug. The teacher, who is standing by a table to your left, immediately whips her head around and shouts your name. “Mike, look at me!” she snaps. “You’re being dangerous and you’re going to hurt someone.”
Michael Sterling is the central character of a virtual reality experience, 1000 Cut Journey, designed by Courtney Cogburn, University of Michigan alum and associate professor at the Columbia School of Social Work. Meant to foster awareness of the day-to-day racism faced by Black Americans, 1000 Cut Journey walks the user through three different scenes, allowing them to experience subtle and overt racism from Sterling’s perspective as a child, adolescent and adult. Cogburn discussed the project Friday afternoon at Rackham as part of the Center for Academic Innovation’s Winter 2020 XR Speaker Series, an initiative showcasing developments in the field of virtual reality. To kick off her talk, titled “XR: A Critical Analysis and Transdisciplinary
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NORTH LIBERTY, IOWA — After Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election, Ed and Jane Cranston, a married couple from North Liberty, Iowa, wanted to take action. The Cranstons decided they would begin by organizing what they call a “potluck insurgency”: a monthly get-together of Johnson County Democrats to talk about political issues and hear from selected speakers. “We didn’t know what we were going to do,” Jane Cranston said. “We were just so upset that Hillary lost that we thought we’d just keep commiserating and getting together, but then we got speakers, people really loved it.” According to Ed, who is serving in his first year as the Democratic Party Chair of Johnson County — the home of the University of Iowa and a Democratic stronghold in the state — the group was able to bring in major political figures over the course of the past year. He credited this partly to the centrality of Iowa, the first state to caucus during primary season.
ANNIE KLUSENDORF/Daily Ed and Jane Cranston discuss caucus preparation in the living room of the North Liberty, IA, home, where they’ve hosted several Democratic presidential candidates this election cycle.
The Cranstons recall one night in early January 2019, when the group had arranged for Julián Castro, former San Antonio mayor, to speak. Coincidentally, they had scheduled it the same day Castro indicated he would announce his candidacy for the 2020 Presidential race. “What happened was Julián Castro had just released that he was running that day,” Jane said. “So everybody wanted to cover him.”
As a result, what was intended to be a small get-together of Johnson County Democrats to hear Castro speak became so large that Jane likened it to the Dwarves of Middle Earth occupying Bilbo Baggins’ house in the movie “The Hobbit.” “It was just a crazy night,” Ed Cranston said. “We thought, ‘you know, maybe we’ll get a little local press.’ Well, like an hour before it starts, Fox News shows up, and we had everybody. I mean, ABC, NBC,
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in our house. CBS, AP, Hearst Papers. It was packed with 75 people. Normally we have a potluck, but that night was just going to be desserts. And it was so crowded they couldn’t even get the desserts. And then after they left, it was like we said, ‘Jane — what just happened?” “If you look up ‘Castro, North Liberty,’ all those (pictures) are at our house,” Jane added. See IOWA, Page 2A
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