Happy Anniversaries
Necessity is the Mother of History dept.
This week, we’ll be attending the 50th year annual convention of Iowa Citizens For Community Improvement a gathering of the decidedly liberal, activist tribes from around the region. The convention, held at the Iowa Events Center this coming weekend will be attended by hundreds of Iowans from Urban and Rural communities across the state harvesting the news of what the previous year of work has brought us.
Of course a topic uppermost in the minds of the CCI constituents will be issues of Racial Justice, Environmental sanity as well as a wagonful of political and Economic issues. Since 1975 CCI has been fighting the good fight for those Iowans that big money interests always seem to have forget about.
Where CCI started:
The next year 1976, CCI was (successfully) tangling with those seeking to exploit vulnerable communities…
In succeeding decades CCI, no longer a young colt on wobbly legs was “afflicting the comfortable,” forcing the State of Iowa to recognize the constitutional rights that are supposed to protect us all. (I know, I know…still a dodgy proposition here in 2025)
But that’s why I’ll be attending CCI’s 50th anniversary convention this upcoming weekend. The work continues and, hallelujah, new faces and new leaders are stepping up beside the veterans, putting their shoulder to the wheels of justice.
Witness Public School Strong..
Thanks to Tim Glaza, CCI’s educational issues organizer for compiling the above information.
Some Iowans thought they could vote for the “I love the Poorly Educated” guy and still come out of this with a world-class educational system. How’s that working for you?
Be that as it may, I’ll see you at the Iowa Events Center on Friday and Saturday July 26-27 to join with Iowans who know darn good and well that “that ain’t right!”
Kim Reynolds bait-and switch’ on pipeline and eminent domain issues Ain’t Right either.
You’ll hear from CCI’s Racial Justice Team led by Sharon Zanders-Ackiss, Movement Politics News from Katie Biechler and special envoy Misty Rybeck, a savvy Iowan if ever there was one, is coming back from Washington in her position within the Bernie Sanders Campaign. We know that politics ain’t beanbag but we’re bringing our own beans to this yearly shindig.
Being surrounded by some of Iowa’s most courageous, hardworking and devoted civic activists is just the thing you’ll need to resist the inertia of the “it doesn’t matter” syndrome.
It does matter. The results of unchecked legislative and executive branch hubris are only invisible if you choose to turn your face away. There is nothing to do but put your shoulder to the wheel where it really counts the most. Building community, by building trust, by strengthening the capillaries of humanity that hold us together regardless of those with malignant, self-destructive tendencies.
Sitting with, learning from and working with some of the wisest Iowans I’ve ever met certainly maintains my faith in a process, which like the land we stand upon, blooms with renewed purpose in its season.
Please consider taking part in the 50th Anniversary of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. (iowacci.org)
Speaking of Anniversaries… Happy 52nd Birthday to…RAGBRAI
*Good luck and good riding to all the bicyclists out there on RAGBRAI this week. I have never even been tempted to try such a thing but I do remember how it all started because I was always just a few feet from the scene of the crime back in the Des Moines Register and Tribune newsroom of the late 60’s and early 1970’s. You can read here about how I came to ‘walk into’ what was then my dream job at the R&T but here, briefly, I’ll recount the events I witnessed: (There are much more granular histories of this event out there but these memories are mine)
Register columnist Donald Kaul and Copy chief John Karras were bike riders who more often than not, rode their two-wheelers to work from their respective homes on the West side of town. Bike helmets (thankfully) and those shoes that gripped the bike pedals were standard with these two. Rain or shine, heat or chill Kaul and Karras would bike in, duck into the men’s room to clean up a bit and then begin their respective jobs. Karras joined Howard Kluender as king copy chiefs of the DM Register commanding a ring of editors including Larry ‘Laddy’ Paul, Bill Dwyer, Phil Malley whose brother Ron, another great sports writer who sat a few desks away from the legendary Bill Bryson.
Bill Bryson Jr. (whom many here know as the celebrated author of The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid) was, like me and our IWC Den Mother Julie Gammack was just beginning his career as a copy kid running page proofs up and down the back stairs to the composing room as the copy editors finished marking them up.
There was no RAGBRAI yet, but as the old saying goes “Boys will be boys” and over the months Kaul and Karras would challenge each other as to who could get downtown the fastest, or find the neatest new route into town or other such “boastfully macho mutterings.”
I guess it was inevitable that one day these two would pretty much goad each other into an “I can ride farther than you” kinda deal and before you know it the gauntlet was thrown and the seed of The Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (GBRAI) was planted.
I remember Bill Bryson Jrs mom and features writer Mary Bryson shaking her head with an amused, but concerned wrinkle in her brow wondering “are these two boys crazy enough to do such a thing?” Well, sure as shite, they were and after getting their 10-speeds in shape for the task, off they went on a road that no one but them saw necessary to take. On the way though, they road into history causing such a stir that GBRAI became The Register’s Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) as the company, always ready to capitalize on something fun, interesting and Iowan decided to sponsor the madness which continues to this (hot, or rainy or bug infested or even dangerous) day.
Good luck riders, good luck crew, good luck small town Iowans RAGBRAI is coming (but you still won’t find me within miles of the fun.) My loss.
If you haven’t signed up to reserve your spot at this late Summer’s Okokboji Writers and Songwriters Retreat..it’ll be your loss. Get with it and please get on board.
Thanks for the notification of the ICCI meeting this weekend. I plan to attend on Saturday as a returned (recovering) Iowa citizen who has been committed to these many causes for these many years. I also enjoyed your description of the newsroom and the beginning of RAGBRAI.
The more you write in this era, the more I feel its importance. There are many here among us who feel history is but a joke and should be eradicated so they can control the populace even more.
We salute you and the IOWACCI.