Category: Dakota Times (page 2 of 2)

Fargo, North Dakota – once named Centralia, former divorce capital of the Midwest, it is a city of snowballs, spring floods, odd crimes, the focal point for movies and television series. They call it The City of Parks, for no worthwhile reason, and yet if ever Santa immigrated to the United States, Fargo would be his home. Bring a warm coat, and step inside, careful of the oil slicks. Read these true stories. In this ever changing world Fargo and North Dakota are hurrying to catch up.

“Cannot Hate Without Love”

Nazis, racialists, and “alt-right:” Peace Garden State a perfect place for white supremacists 

Alt-White: The Siege of North Dakota. Part One in the series of racism in North Dakota, how Nazis plan to infiltrate the state and are being bolstered by Trump’s Administration policies. Hate crimes are not on the rise, but the state ranks high for intolerance to multiculturalism. Today, white supremacists are rarely dressed in white robes or swastikas, but are “Guccified.” 

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – Nick Chappell no longer resembles the American Nazi he was 10 years ago during a recruitment drive to Fargo. He’s forgotten where he last put his braunhemden, or brown shirt, his black tie, and Nazi pin. The imperious swastika armband once wrapped around his left arm has also been packed away. 

“Not the best way to convert people, I believe,” Chappell said. “The purpose was to grab attention, which it did.” 

Once a rising star in the American Nazi party, he left the Nationalist Socialist Movement as director of the Viking Youth Corps during a “Soviet-style purge of its ranks,” according to Nationalist Socialist Files. Eleven months after his visit to the Peace Garden State, Chappell was ranked high on a confidential Nazi blacklist. American Nazi Party Commander Jeff Schoep labelled Chappell an “oath breaker” and “race-traitor.” 

Now, Chappell, 28, of Irish and English descent, makes occasional trips to Fargo from his home in South Dakota to help organize and educate groups of people involved with the Creativity Movement, which believes race, not religion, is absolute truth and that the white race is the highest expression of culture and civilization. The Creativity Movement rose from the ashes of the Church of the Creator founded in 1973. The organization’s colors evoke the swastika: red, white, and black; its logo is a large “W” representing the white race topped by a crown and a halo. 

2007 Nazi party presidential candidate (center) John Bowles, (left) Nick Chappell and Kevin Swift – photo by NSM International

Chappell prepares for RaHoWa, the acronym for an inevitable racial holy war, he said, which is coming soon. 

“I do believe that eventually this will boil down to a race war as we have already seen with the riots in cities like Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore,” Chappell said. His family doesn’t share his views. 

“They are in denial over what I see as an inevitable war brewing.”

A reverend, also known now as a “creator” for the Creativity Movement, Chappell has been targeted before while he was a Nazi. In 2007, he was attacked by non-racists in Columbia, Missouri; suffered a busted lip.

Hate and love are both parts to his nature, he said. He didn’t learn racism from his parents, but from attending a primarily black school in Edenton, North Carolina. “There were fights on a weekly basis. I tried to avoid them but I got suspended about once a year for a fight. 

“If you were white you had to travel in a group or you would be attacked and picked on for being white.”

When he left the Nazis – a time analysts describe as the most recent resurgence of white-power – smaller groups splintered from larger organizations. After the American Nazi party’s troubles of 2007, Chappell formed a new group called the Nationalist Socialist Order of America, and based it out of “The Redneck Shop,” a memorabilia store in Laurens, South Carolina. It was known as the “site of many NSM gatherings,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate group watchdog and nonprofit civil rights organization. 

Marriage to a woman who shares his beliefs brought Chappell from North Carolina to his current home in a small town in South Dakota. He leads a normal life; has a full time factory job and fathered four children. He purchased a house, invested in four other houses for like-minded people in need, he said. As a reverend in the Creativity Movement, he holds regular weekly meetings for study and discussions, all open to the public. 

The Creativity Movement is a four-dimensional religion, Chappell said, focusing on a “sound mind, sound body, in a sound society, and sound environment.”

Nick Chappell (right) before a vending table in Illinois – photo provided by Nick Chappell

“Our organization is not afraid of confrontation, so if anti-racists wish for a confrontation our meetings are always open to give them that,” Chappell said. “We want a white-only society so it has to begin locally with white racial loyalists congregating together, helping each other. Where I live I purchased a few homes for those facing hard times…brings in people where we can get them jobs, and provide a roof over their heads.” 

He and others fight to protect white culture. They’re persecuted, rejected by many; small town governments fight against their plans at creating white enclaves.  

The current problems in the USA began in the 1960s with the civil rights movement, he said. 

“When we desegregated schools people were forced to intermingle, circles of friends began to blend, and with that black culture injected into ours.” If ethnic minorities can cling to their cultures with pride, whites can do the same, Chappell said. 

Hatred towards ethnic minorities in the USA is not blanketed, but pointed. 

“Do I hate all non-whites? No, but I would hate every single one that is a threat to my race,” Chappell said. “Yes, I hate black and Mexican gang bangers, and I hate drug dealers, and I also hate degenerate whites who do drugs and have been completely obsessed with non-white culture.

“But you cannot hate without love.” 

 

Another white power resurgence

Chappell doesn’t believe Donald Trump’s successful run for presidency is going to help his cause. “I am still waiting to see what he does, instead of what he says.” 

Others disagree. 

White supremacy, in its many forms, sects, and organizations, has been given new life with Trump’s presidential campaign and election, according to The New York Times, the Huffington Post, and AlJazeera. Additionally, nationalist groups like France’s National Front led by Marine Le Pen, and Golden Dawn in Greece led by Nikolaos Michaloliakos, are growing in numbers, threatening power balances, effectively tipping international scales.

Tensions between races are escalating on all sides. Violent crime and hate crime numbers are up, and not specifically white targeting black, but blacks also targeting whites, including the recent kidnapping and torture of a mentally-challenged white person by four young black people in Chicago. 

Or when the Tinsley Park 5 ambushed white supremacists in 2012, injuring ten in Chicago, or more recently the racist and anti-racist stabbings during a Ku Klux Klan rally in California in June 2016, the Neo-Nazi rally in Washington DC in November 2016… or the post-election celebratory “alt-right” Hitler salute hailing President-elect Trump during Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute meeting. 

Hail Trump. Hail our people. Hail our victory,” Spencer said during the meeting. “For us it is conquer, or die… To be white is to be a striver, a crusader, an explorer, and a conqueror. We build, we produce, we go upward.”

Criticism against Spencer’s speech in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana, has caused his family financial suffering, The Daily Stormer reported, forcing his mother to sell property. Neo-Nazis have struck back, announcing plans for an anti semitic “Troll Storm,” in the ski resort town on Sunday, January 15, according to The New York Times, Huffington Post, and The Daily Stormer

Across the racial aisle in June 2015 Dylan Roof, a white supremacist, admittedly fired 70 rounds, killing 9 black people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

“Somebody had to do it,” Roof said in a video released in December 2016. “Black people are killing white people everyday… What I did is so minuscule compared to what they do to white people every day.”

Closer to home since 2004, hate crimes in the Peace Garden State range from threats to explosives, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

  • 2004, feces was spread across a mosque’s doors in Fargo 
  • 2005, at least five swastikas were drawn in the University of North Dakota’s campus in Grand Forks
  • 2008, a Jewish student at the same college was harassed 
  • 2011, a monkey-like figure attached to a large inflatable rat was hung from a noose outside an American Crystal Sugar plant in Grand Forks during a labor dispute in an attempt to intimidate minorities working at the plant
  • 2011, racist quotes, swastikas, and anarchy symbols were written on the city hall, residences, cars, street signs in Harwood, North Dakota
  • 2012, a threatening anti-gay epithet was written on the back window of a car that had rainbow bumper stickers – a symbol of gay pride – in Grand Forks
  • 2013: a man impersonating a Hamas agent threatened a Jewish synagogue in Fargo
  • 2013-2014, Craig Cobb and other white supremacists tried to take over the near-ghost town of Leith, North Dakota, and turn the hamlet of 16 people into a white-only enclave, Cobb plead guilty to terrorizing inhabitants with guns
  • September 2016, Matthew Gust plead guilty to firebombing Fargo’s Somali restaurant Juba Coffee & Restaurant with a Molotov cocktail 

Fargo Police Department reported 48 hate crimes in the city since 2012, which involved 13 assaults, eight threats, and three harassment cases that occurred in 2016. 

Fargo Police Deputy Chief Joe Anderson said his department is aware of Nazis in Fargo. 

“We are aware there are people in our community who have those biased beliefs,” Anderson said. “As far as I am aware, we don’t have any active criminal cases involving their participation or rhetoric.  When a suspected hate/biased crime occurs we investigate the incident as thoroughly as possible, just like any other crime against a person or property.”

 

The Nazi vogue

Not unlike Adolf Hitler’s hiring of Hugo Boss, American Nazis are attempting a makeover, according to the NSM Magazine. Nazis focus much of their resources on external image, rallies, and direct action, while the Creativity Movement attempts to nurture their members. 

Nationally, supremacist leaders are now “Gucci-fied,” dressed in name brand suits and ties, as even the Ku Klux Klan, America’s most infamous and oldest hate group, has recently realized old ways of cross burnings, lynchings, and violence are “out of style.” They now speak from behind platforms; make runs at national office.

Lingo is changing. 

  • Racialist – is the most correct term “with regard to accuracy of implied meanings,” an article in the magazine reported. A racialist is pro-white, and does not hate people or other races. 
  • Neo-Nazis – a term “used by Jewish people as a way of demonizing white people who are decidedly pro-white.”
  • Antifa – a semi-organized group of anti-racists who consider using anti-white actions. 

Uniforms and formal dress for the Ku Klux Klan and for Nazis remain stubbornly unchanged. Nazi patches, “No Mercy” sweatshirts, “100% Politically Incorrect” t-shirts, Skinhead music, and a video game named Zog 2, a first-person racialist shooter game, were for sale on NSM88records.com.

Nazi uniforms were made a requirement at all public functions in July 2008, Shoep wrote to party membership, adding all items must be purchased through Nationalist Socialist Movement website. The style closely resembles those made by Hugo Boss during the 1930s. 

  • Shirt – black BDU (battle dress uniform)
  • Pants – black BDU style or Dickies black slacks (pants should be bloused into boots) 
  • Boots – black military style (black laces only) 
  • Belt – black belt with silver buckle or Stormtrooper buckle 
  • Cap – (optional) black SWAT style cap 
  • Rank insignia – to be worn mid chest along the button line in keeping with current US military standards, sewn on with the upper edge even with the upper pockets, directly on the fabric covering the buttons on the BDU.
  • NSM patch – on left shoulder one inch below shoulder seam 
  • State patch – (optional) only official approved State patch, on right shoulder 1 inch below shoulder seam. 
  • Party pin – one party pin may be worn over the left pocket. 

Most supremacists seek what they call equality, as the white race is in danger of being eliminated while African Americans are being “radicalized and emboldened by the Obama Administration,” according to Shoep. 

Activists argue if Black Pride, Black Power, and Black Lives Matter movements are considered acceptable, so too should White Power and White Pride. American Nazis are fighting to raise awareness of the “plight of whites,” according to the NSM Magazine. 

Chappell offered an example. “A few years ago in Kansas City there was a kid chased home from school by blacks, lit on fire on his front porch,” Chappell said. He referred to the February 2012 incident when a 13-year-old white child was doused in gasoline and lit on fire on mother Melissa Coon’s front porch. 

“The blacks were never charged with a hate crime. If a group of whites did that do you think they would be as fortunate? It is actions like this that influence people to joining organizations like mine. We are a reaction to society’s inaction.” 

The incident has been called a hoax citing the “black boogeyman” by some media outlets and activists, and a hate crime by others. To this day, no one has been reportedly arrested for the crime.

 

“Arks of survival”

Some in the Peace Garden State believe the movement in North Dakota took root in 1983 with Gordon Wendell Kahl, aka Sam Louden, a leader of the militant group Posse Comitatus, an early anti-Semitic, white supremacist organization. After refusing to pay taxes and garnering some local support, Kahl shot and killed two federal marshals at a roadblock outside of Medina, North Dakota, then led federal investigators on a four-month-long manhunt, which ended with the death of a sheriff and Kahl’s own life in Arkansas. 

Gordon Kahl’s Wanted poster – provided by U.S. Marshals

Militant and racist groups have hibernated quietly in North Dakota, but are growing, according to analysts. White-supremacist and now Creativity Movement member Cobb’s attempted takeovers of Leith in 2012, and Antler in 2015, are only a handful of recent endeavors. 

White supremacy’s bite is easily found online; its presence in the real world comes in black, a light shade of brown, in jackboots with white laces, and swastikas. In letters, chats, or emails – 88 – stands for HH, or “Heil Hitler.” Wolfsangles and Odin’s hammers have been taken from Nordic culture to stand as Nazi signs. Another slogan, “14” signifies Adolf Hitler’s 14-word phrase: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” 

A newer campaign known as Pioneer Little Europe has recently spread throughout Facebook. Pioneer Little Europe North Dakota has received 1,080 likes, compared to Georgia’s page with 447 likes. During a recent blizzard, page organizers wished its followers Happy Yule, and “may the leftist terrorists freeze.”

Pioneer Little Europe North Dakota page organizers promise that a return to Leith and Antler is in the future, because “there are more of us.” Instead of targeting one specific city, page organizers plan to expand across the state pinpointing cities of Leith, Underwood, Washburn, and Antler. Advertisements for available homes in Sherwood, ND, where Cobb is currently reported to be residing, are listed.

Craig Cobb – photo provided by Southern Poverty Law Center

Cobb, 65, is listed as a sustaining member of “Friend of Stormfront,” and is active in the Stormfront.org website. According to his posts on White Pride Worldwide chat in Stormfront, he attempted a second takeover in Antler, North Dakota, buying a 111-year-old bank, a septic, and two residential lots in July 2015. He made payments from the Creativity Movement of USD 10,000 to Skywalker Enterprises LLC. 

“Creativity Movement owns the bank, lock, stock and barrel,” Cobb wrote. “Why, I even have the key to the bank.” 

After taking control, Cobb wanted to rename the town of 28 to “Trump Creativity,” or “Creativity Trump” in honor of Trump, whom he admires deeply, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

City pressure on the real estate company’s president left the man in “sheer terror,” Cobb said, and the company promised him a full refund. The building was torn down in February 2016, its debris buried in a hole.

On January 9, Cobb told WDAZ News that he planned to file a racial discrimination lawsuit after verbally agreeing to purchase a home for himself and his girlfriend in Bottineau County city of Landa, population 40.

Because of a DNA Diagnostics test in 2013, which proved Cobb was 14 percent Sub-Saharan African, Cobb claimed the homeowner must have thought he was a mulatto-Nazi, and refused to sell him the house on the grounds that he was part black, WDAZ reported. 

“We the European-American people, and the European people in general have had enough, and if a little civil disobedience and direct action are needed – we are willing to do it,” Pioneer Little Europe North Dakota page organizers wrote. “We will not give in to the genocidal demands of the Antifa terrorists, the corrupt anti-white government bureaucrats, and their diminutive sycophantic yokels, their boot-licking thugs.”

Those that oppose supremacists are brainwashed. They cry out to bankrupt anti-white cities. Anyone opposing them, no matter their skin color, is listed as an “anti-white.” Page organizers also report that Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota is trying to fill the Peace Garden State “with invaders.” They make fun of Standing Rock; call DAPL supporters “Marxist savages.” On October 10, 2015, they also take credit for forcing the city of Antler to spend USD 35,000 in thwarting Cobb’s second attempt for an all-white enclave.

Page organizers also exulted in the fact that Congressman Kevin Cramer R-N.D., beat long-time attorney, activist, and Standing Rock resident Chase Iron Eyes for the position earlier this year.

Pioneer Little Europe, or PLE, is an idea developed primarily in the 1990s by Hamilton Michael Barrett and Mark Cotterill, two white supremacists from British and American connections, according to Mark Pitcavage, director of investigative research for the Jewish human rights group Anti-Defamation League. 

In South Dakota, Chappell has met with more success than Cobb. The Creativity Movement there steers away from political rallies. “They create a mob atmosphere and people don’t listen, they just do what the mob wants when it’s worked up in a frenzy. You get far more accomplished one-on-one and in smaller meetings.” 

During meetings, some members come in from elsewhere and stay in local hotels, fill tanks with gas from stations down the road. 

“Thanks to us, we have created business in the area to improve the local economy in this town,” Chappell said. His organization owns a restaurant, a gym, and a banquet hall, to which they frequent for meetings or for socialization. 

“Less risk of getting booted out last minute or having our food spit in at restaurants,” Chappell said. “Can’t prove people spit in the food at restaurants, but it’s a safe bet.” 

Persecution has made Chappell stronger, he said. “It’s made us more independent, and inspired many to own their own businesses so you’re not fired for your beliefs. 

“We live in a society so concerned about the equality of non-whites, it has been completely unequal to whites. The Constitution doesn’t apply to us anymore.” 

Americans have a long history of “fringe groups trying to form communities of like-minded people,” Pitcavage said. “One can think of Puritans coming to America to escape hostility in Great Britain, or Mormons trekking to Utah to escape aggression from non-Mormons.” 

Two events after World War II heralded white supremacist cloistering: the Cold War and fear of nuclear holocaust, and the success of the civil rights movement in the 1970s. Since desegregation, die-hard separatists and supremacists have called upon followers to travel to states like Oregon and Utah under the auspices of the Northwest Territorial Imperative, also known as the White American Bastion, Pitcavage said. 

Although Cobb’s Leith and Antler projects failed, Cobb and his followers have not given up on the Peace Garden State, according to Pioneer Little Europe North Dakota Facebook page. Cobb could not be reached for comment. 

Historically, most cloistering attempts met little success due to infighting, crime, or lack of followers who were willing to give up their lives, Pitcavage said. The PLE campaign recognizes that such massive dreams are doomed, and believe that whites should form communities within communities as “arks of survival,” in order for racially conscious whites to survive. Their presence would “theoretically force non-whites to depart, leaving white supremacist enclaves whose members would aid and assist each other.”

In Grand Forks, Jamie Kelso, director and membership coordinator for the American Freedom Party – formerly known as the American Third Position, a political party initially established by skinheads, is a well-known figure with political ambitions. In 1976 he ran for Missouri’s House of Representatives as an independent, running a platform to abolish income tax, end Social Security, terminate government control of education, and pull the United States toward withdrawing from the United Nations. 

Kelso is a bullhorn for white supremacy ideals. He claims he is not a racist, but a “red-blooded American,” and he hosts “The Jamie Kelso Show” for the American Freedom Party. He was once the personal assistant for Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and served as a moderator for hate-web guru Don Black’s forum Stormfront, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Under Kelso’s supervision, Stormfront grew from 5,000 members in 2002 to 203,000 members in 2010. 

From 2007 until 2010, Kelso became active helping to promote Republican Presidential candidate Rand Paul. On his radio show on the Voice of Reason Kelso said North Dakota is “an optimal place to live as a pro-white activist,” and further claimed the Peace Garden State is full of opportunities for like-minded people. The American Freedom Party is considered “the most serious nationalist organization in the U.S.” by Southern Poverty Law Center.

Kelso refused to comment when contacted by telephone. 

“I am not interested in your questions at all,” Kelso said.

 

A double-edged sword

Fargo’s countermeasure against racism, classism, sexism, and hate, is Unity-USA. As a nonprofit organization, its directors are educators and watchdogs. One of the organization’s jobs is to stop Nazis and other hate groups from unifying in North Dakota and elsewhere through direct action and strong opposition, according to Kade Ferris, Unity-USA’s social media director. 

“There is a Nazi movement totally under the radar in eastern North Dakota,” Ferris said. “These Nazi groups, they flourish when they’re the only horrid voice in this sea of discourse. The discourse has changed in the last year so that more and more people feel free to spout hate and racism. Your neighbor down the street could be saying more horrifying things than any Nazi would ever think to say. In that sense, this nativist movement that Trump has created is not a movement because the average guy down the street who said something horrible and racist is the same guy who would deny that he would ever join a hate group because he thinks hate groups are for horrible people.” 

Trump’s election is a double-edged sword, Ferris said, as hatred’s wave sweeps the nation it is also drowning out the Nazi’s voices.

“More people will be horrified who would have normally been silent,” Ferris said. “People are standing up and opposing racism as well too. In a way, this discourse had to happen because when racism hides, when it’s quiet, when it’s under the surface, it grows and flows around, but the second it comes out into the open people become horrified by seeing that. I think that is a positive. The more people say horrible things, the more people are taken aback by it.

“When people are silent about racism, racism festers.” 

Racial issues do not rest solely with people like Cobb, or Kelso, but is deeply-rooted within the Peace Garden State. 

“Many people in North Dakota share many of the same views as Cobb and the Nazis, but they don’t see themselves that way and would be offended if you pointed that out. They hate Nazis, but are so similar in so many ways.”

Three years ago, few people were vocal about their own prejudices, Ferris said. Supremacists like Cobb shocked North Dakota, sent international hate group watch dogs and activists into a frenzy of activity. More than 400 anti-racists traveled to Leith in 2012 to face down a few dozen Nazis and supremacists. 

“Now, everyone is a Craig Cobb. They all say what they want to say, they are free with their hate, and they’re proud of it. That right there makes people like Cobb irrelevant. There’s more hate being spread on the local news Facebook page than there is on Stormfront. And that in a way is both a bad thing, and a good thing, as it opens people’s eyes and they see themselves, and they see racism is growing.

“But racism was already there.”  

Founder of Unity-USA, Scott Garman, said he’s been fighting racism and fascism nearly all his life. He and his family have been targeted by Nazis with threatening emails, telephone calls, online “doxing,” when a person’s personal information is released to the public.

Trump’s rise to power has fed hate groups courage, Garman said. 

“For the last five or six years there’s been an increase in Internet chatter,” Garman said. “White nationalists are breaking through the surface now, showing themselves. They’re doing much more, they’re much braver with the election of Trump. Now we’re seeing they’re no longer below the radar, and they’re feeling much more comfortable speaking out, which is frightening.” 

Nazis, skinheads, clansmen, creators, separatists, all come from the same mold, Garman said, the differences are minimal, almost interchangeable. 

“They are all of the same pot. You can’t separate them out. They’re all so full of right wing and nuts that it doesn’t do any good to keep them apart. They are all the same people just in different clothing, or different haircuts, or one is wearing boots and one isn’t. They will constantly change clothes, names, just when they’re being discovered for who they are. They will all of the sudden surface somewhere else under a different name, or under a different group’s name.” 

Most hate groups target the elderly, because they have money, or young people with malleable minds, Garman said. Shared religious beliefs is another tactic hate groups use to entice people to their ranks. 

“It’s just like drugs, once you get a taste, once you show up at a rally with a bunch of shave-headed dudes preaching this tough guy stuff, there’s a feeling of camaraderie, a feeling of belonging,” Garman said. “That’s a huge deal, it’s really powerful, but once you have that taste, maybe later on you do some research, but you’re already hooked.” 

Another reason hate groups are stepping into the light is because people are sipping their “Cool-Aid” for finding scapegoats for their own problems, Ferris said. 

“If you’re down in the dumps how do you push yourself back up? You either work really hard, or you push someone below you. They’ve created these scapegoats, first it was the Mexicans, then it was immigrants, now everybody. I think the people are going to start to see that there is an inherent problem with that. They’re not going to become instant millionaires, and they’re not going to become famous politicians. They’re going to wake up January 22 as refrigerator repairmen, or whatever. They will wake up and their lives won’t be better, but they will be filled with hate.”

Scapegoats are primarily fingered by the elected few, or by organizations such as the American Freedom Party or the benign-sounding National Policy Institute, an “alt-right” think tank, as ways to pass the buck or trigger anger.  

“They play to identity politics,” Ferris said. “They play to the ‘us-and-them’ binary, and in a way it has come down to that, and it’s a bad thing for America. They’re job in their mind is to elect people into power who are of the same mind. They are a dangerous hate group because of that.”

Instead of striving toward a better life, scapegoating onto immigrants or Muslims is the same tactic used by Hitler against Jews before World War II. 

“The poorest of the poor white person has more in common with the poorest of the poor black person, or native, or Latino, than they do with these wealthy, rich businessmen and oligarchs who are running the world. But they’ve been told differently by these very people who don’t have their best interests at heart.” 

Those involved in the Creativity Movement are Nazis who believe white man is God’s number one achievement, Ferris said. He is constantly harassed by Nazis and racialists. On January 7, Pioneer Little Europe Florida issued Ferris a death wish: “This is 2017 and Fidel Castro is dead. The best thing you can do is join him.” 

“My address, workplace, and my family’s pictures were shared all over Stormfront,” Ferris said.  He paused long enough to answer a young Nazi from Florida who believes he has a chance for state office since Trump won the US Presidency. 

“That’s not too nice I guess, but you can’t live in fear of these deplorables.”

 

Preparing for racial holy war

The Nazi party was established in Fargo in 2007, according to the Nationalist Socialist Movement’s NSM International blog. 

“The NSM Hotline was also packed almost to capacity with calls from around the nation asking about joining or supporting the NSM, so you, the members, activists, and supporters of the Party are doing your part in getting the word out about our cause,” Shoep said after Fargo’s Nazi party was officially formed.  

In 2009, secret Nazi emails were leaked onto the Internet by Wikileaks. The Nazi correspondence provides a small glimpse into the shadow world of Nationalist Socialism. More than 600 messages between July 2007 and August 2009 depict Nazis spending as much time pointing fingers, complaining of hard times, and threatening to expose internal fiscal problems as they do at talking about protecting the white race. 

Shoep frequently admonishes members, ordering them to stop squabbling, and in one letter he took a threatening tone.

“The NSM does not operate as a democracy, your Pledge of Loyalty is to the party and its leadership. Honor your oath, and your Pledge of Loyalty to the party, or get out of our ranks now while you still can.” 

William Herring, a staff member and Fargo’s Nazi contact who handled correspondence for the group in 2008. Herring reports his handle in other online chats is odinn88 in the Vanguard News Network, and describes himself as a Nazi skinhead with a satanic temper who has spent eight years in prison. These days, however, he “likes to stay on the right side of the law.

“Law and order are essential or we have chaos,” Herring said in October 2007 on the Vanguard News Network. “I live a clean, honest life now and I obey the law… Make no mistake, I am one crazy, violent mother f*cker. But I choose to stay free and outside of a cell by using reason and logic and following the law – until such time when there is no longer law or order. Then I will cheerfully and enthusiastically pick up a chainsaw or axe and seriously go to town on the n*ggers and Zionist swine. When that horrible day comes, you will see me on the front lines laughing my ass off and taking off heads. Until then, I just want a quiet little life with no mayhem or bullsh*t.”

According to the emails released by Wikileaks, Herring was in contact with Shoep in 2009, apologizing for not paying annual party dues, and saying he values his position with the Nationalist Socialist Movement and with the SS. 

While in Fargo, he described personal struggles to the Nazi commander, writing about a cheating girlfriend, a battle with pneumonia, being free from alcohol for 75 days. When he hit bottom, he began using toilet paper as coffee filters, and was forced to live in a homeless shelter. To friends outside the Nationalist Socialist Movement he wrote his name as Bill; to Shoep and other party members, he was SS Mann Herring. 

The Nazi party’s goals in Fargo are to engage in public speaking events, participate in local and state elections, and to distribute information and literature, according to Herring. 

“Our plan is to convince others that this system is broken beyond repair and that the principles of National Socialism are superior to this ‘democracy’ we find ourselves in.”

Toward the end of 2008, Herring wrote that his office was overwhelmed by the influx of new membership applications. In July the same year, Herring wrote he moved from Fargo to Springfield, Missouri. “I really didn’t have much left for me in North Dakota and I missed the hell out of my girl, so I moved to where she lives.”

By October 2008, Herring’s tone became calmer, telling applicants that the Nazi party doesn’t hate Jews, but is adamantly against Zionism and the dangers of multiculturalism. In 2009, Herring stated he was preparing to move to Oregon. 

“At the same time, we must admit to and report on the terrible crimes that many whites commit in order to show that our race is falling into decadence and that this behavior is further destroying us.

“We are not so one-sided as many think.”

The Nazi party has divisions applicants can apply to, including the Skinhead Division. For those who aren’t keen on wearing the uniforms, support divisions are available. Stormtroopers are the Nazi party’s “fighting force.” 

In addition to Fargo’s Nazi party, nearby Grand Forks has the American Freedom Party spearheaded there by Kelso, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The organization’s mission statement is mellow, citing concerns over the economy, well-armed borders, freedom from foreign ideologies, and fiscal mismanagement. The organization’s leaders, however, include a wide range of white supremacists, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

White nationalist corporate lawyer William D. Johnson practices out of Los Angeles, and is the chairman of the American Freedom Party. In 1985, Johnson proposed a constitutional amendment that would revoke the American citizenship of every non-white inhabitant of the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

An excerpt from the “Pace Amendment” to the Constitution proposed by Johnson in 1985: “No person shall be a citizen of the United States unless he is a non-Hispanic white of the European race. … Only citizens shall have the right and privilege to reside permanently in the United States.” 

In 1985, under the pseudonym James O. Pace, Johnson wrote the book Amendment to the Constitution: Averting the Decline and Fall of America, where he advocates for the deportation of anybody with any “ascertainable trace of Negro blood” or more than one-eighth “Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern, American Indian, Malay or other non-European or non-white blood.” 

Johnson was also selected as a California delegate by Trump. 

Both Johnson and national radio host James Edwards, one of six directors for the American Freedom Party, have also been in contact with one of Trump’s sons. Edwards, a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, reported on his show “The Political Cesspool” that America is on the verge of becoming a third-world nation because of its immigration policies. Edwards’ three-hour weekly show can be heard on its flagship station, the Christian station WLRM-AM in Millington, Tennessee, just outside of Memphis, on stations affiliated with the Liberty News Radio Network, and on the Internet.

“The Political Cesspool” says in its mission statement that it “stands for the Dispossessed Majority” and is “pro-white.” It says the show rejects “homosexuality, vulgarity, loveless sex, and masochism” and believes “secession is a right of all people and individuals.”

“The show has become the nexus for radio-based hate in America,” the Southern Poverty Law Center reports. 

Kevin MacDonald, a former professor of California State University Long Beach, is also a director of the American Freedom Party and has been accused of being an anti Semite by the Southern Poverty Law Center. His Twitter account tweets have been retweeted by by the Trump family, and he was quoted in 2010 by the Long Beach Press-Telegram saying white people have the right to organize to advance their interests, like everyone else. His writings on Jews have also been called anti Semitic by the Anti-Defamation League, and have been quoted approvingly by Duke.

Kelso, also a director for the American Freedom Party, was awarded “nationalist comeback player of the year” in 2014 by Jack Ryan, a writer for Occidental Dissent, an “alt-right” online publication. 

In South Dakota and across the world, the Creativity Movement is preparing for a racial holy war. 

“I am an ordained reverend within the church and it is my duty to educate those in my area on our teachings,” Chappell said. “We prepare for RaHoWa by stockpiling food, water, and protective gear in case riots happen in our areas.”

Creativity Movement gathering in South Dakota – photo provided by Nick Chappell

Leader of the Creativity Movement, Reverend James Logsdon, said in a 2013 interview with Vice, no matter his personal struggles or society’s ostracism, his racist choices are worth his cause. 

“Believe me, things are going to get very, very ugly,” Logsdon said. “You just look at the common decline of society; you’d have to be blind to say that doesn’t exist.” 

The Creativity Movement is gaining ground in Fargo, and across North Dakota, Chappell said. “We have had ups and downs like any organization, but we are making progress.”

The Creativity Movement’s enemies are the fear mongers, Chappell said, and for 14 years – as long as he has been a racial loyalist – only federal informants have tried to incite violence. Most groups are focused on growth, recruitment, adhere to strict legal means and ideals such as creating white enclaves. 

“Should people fear us? No, they shouldn’t, but the should definitely fear for their children’s safety, not from us, but from the society they have created.” 


Only non-whites, or non-racists, should fear them. “You can only push a man so much until he begins to swing back. Even the atrocities of Adolf Hitler were petty in comparison to America’s allies at the time of Stalin and Mao Zedong of China.  Stalin killed 40 million Ukrainians and and Mao killed 90 million Chinese. As far as people using the actions of Hitler and the KKK to justify antifascist actions, I would say unless they want to see atrocities on a greater scale than Stalin and Mao Zedong, they might want to find a better way to take action. Eventually people are going to snap, and it won’t be pretty.” 

In the meantime, white supremacist projects like Pioneer Little Europe and other white enclave endeavors are expanding in North Dakota. 

“I prefer a quieter approach,” Chappell said, referring to Cobb’s two attempts in North Dakota. Nazis also helped hurt the cause at that time as well, he said. “There is no need for so much attention. The economy is good and can attract people with lots of small towns and relatively cheap land. Jews believe in racial loyalty and help each other succeed, so they rise in society easier. That’s something whites should do as well. 

“It’s a successful business model. Why not?” 

Days after the Nazi salute to Trump, which was performed in public, in the nation’s capital, Dan Rather, former reporter for CBS 60 Minutes and the current president of News and Guts, issued a statement

“Now is a time when none of us can afford to remain seated or silent. We must all stand up to be counted. History will demand to know which side were you on. This is not a question of politics or party or even policy. This is a question about the very fundamentals of our beautiful experiment in a pluralistic democracy ruled by law.

“We are a great nation. We have survived deep challenges in our past. We can and will do so again. But we cannot be afraid to speak and act to ensure the future we want for our children and grandchildren.”

Fighting back tears, First Lady Michelle Obama gave her final address to young people from inside the White House on January 5. “It is our fundamental belief in the power of hope that has allowed us to rise above the voices of doubt and division, of anger and fear that we have faced in our own lives and the life of this country. Lead by example with hope, never fear.” 

“Death by Oil” Remembering the Dakota 38 for Christmas

Looking back 154 years, little has changed in the Peace Garden State

By C.S. Hagen
BISMARCK
– The same prejudices that sent 38 Dakota Native Americans to the gallows in Minnesota 154 years ago still exist in the Peace Garden State today. Parallels between the broken treaties that sparked the six-week US-Dakota War of 1862 and the current fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline contain undeniable similarities, red man and white man say.

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II has repeatedly stated the Sioux tribe is not only fighting water and land rights, but also defying hundreds of years of broken treaties and oppression.

Little has changed since the day after Christmas 1862, the day of the U.S. largest mass execution in Mankato, Minnesota.

“Death by Oil” – wet plate by Shane Balkowitsch

“The overt racism that exists here in North Dakota is something that shocked me,” retired rancher and former candidate for the North Dakota House of Representative Tom Asbridge said. His family has lived in or near Morton County since the late 19th century. “It is North Dakota nice. During holiday times we pride ourselves for handing out turkeys to poor kids, but the rest of the year we ignore what is going on. There’s a lot of self-delusion here about who we are, and people who are smart prey upon that. We shouldn’t blame them, but blame the people who are too dumb to know the difference.”

Bismarck native and wet plate artist Shane Balkowitsch decided to commemorate the 154th anniversary of the Dakota 38’s mass execution with a wet plate featuring renowned flute player and writer Darren Thompson.

“I made this wet plate in the historic wet plate collodion process to remember and pay respect to the 38 Native Americans that we executed a day after Christmas in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln,” Balkowitsch said. “The oil dripping down the rope symbolizes the current protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Have we learned nothing from past historical tragedies?”

Thompson, the subject in the wet plate, is an award-winning flute player and a journalist who lives in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Growing up on the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe Reservation in Northern Wisconsin, he didn’t hear about the Dakota 38 until later in life. The story upset him, and he recently stepped from behind his role as a journalist to help Balkowitsch with his wet plate “Death by Oil.”

“It was difficult because originally I was planning on covering it as a journalist, and not being in the photo,” Thompson said. “It was difficult especially in terms of how can I explain this story.

“But he said ‘you have a voice that I don’t have, you can make this image reach to larger masses of people than I could.’ It would be a modern look of a Native American man.”

 

The Dakota 38: “It is a good day to die.”

Little by little, through trick and by trade, the federal government ate away at Dakota lands in southern Minnesota. Starting in 1805, the nomadic Dakota people were forced into smaller and smaller areas surrounding the Minnesota River, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.

In 1819, the US Army began building forts, settlers soon followed. Animals the Dakota depended upon for survival vanished from the forests. Missionaries promised education and farming assistance. Politicians threatened reprisals if treaties weren’t signed. Eventually, 35 million acres were exchanged for a promised USD 3 million, which the Dakota never received in full. Despite disagreements within the Dakota tribe, treaties were signed, but the translations were false.

Battle of Wood Lake sketch

The Dakota were tricked, lost half their land, and now owed fur traders in excess of USD 400,000. Those that refused to change their ways were threatened with more reprisals, and were not allowed to return to their homes. Annuity payments were late.

In 1862, the Dakota had enough. War began.

Settlers in Renville County lived opposite the Dakota, three days after the attacks began the county was abandoned, as most had been killed, wounded, captured, or had fled, the Minnesota Historical Society reported. The attacks took settlers by surprise. Those that escaped fled to Fort Ridgely.

General Henry Sibley led the U.S. Army against the Dakota. Sibley was no Indian hater; he spoke the Dakota language, and was well acquainted with the four tribes, according to historian William Folwell.

He was frequently opposed by General John Pope, who subscribed to a Three-Alls policy: kill all, burn all, loot all. Sibley resisted.

“It is my purpose utterly to exterminate the Sioux if I have the power to do so and even if it requires a campaign lasting the whole of next year,” Pope wrote to Sibley in 1862. “Destroy everything belonging to them and force them out to the plains, unless, as I suggest, you can capture them. They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made.”

Prairie on Fire

The campaign against the Native Americans ended at the Battle of Wood Lake on September 23, 1862. Dakota warriors lay in ambush against Sibley’s forces near Lone Tree Lake, while soldiers broke camp. They attacked as Sibley’s forces marched. Sibley won the battle, but not without casualties to both sides: seven white soldiers were killed, 33 wounded, 15 Dakota, including chiefs Makato and Mazamani, were killed.

A total of 152 civilians were killed, 48 soldiers or militia killed, 113 settlers and soldiers were captured, and 201 people escaped, according to some estimates. Other historians report more than 600 people were killed in total. Only 24 percent of the survivors returned to Renville County after the war.

The numbers of Dakota killed during the war estimate from 75 to 100, and by some reports much higher, but more than a fourth of the Dakota people who surrendered in 1862 died the following year. More than 1,000 Dakota were captured, and were forced into concentration camps on reservations, pressured to assimilate, and their lands were taken by white settlers, according to the Minnesota Historical Society. Eventually, all Dakota were forced from Minnesota; all treaties were destroyed. Many fled to North Dakota and Nebraska.

The U.S. Military Commission convened at Camp Release to try 392 Dakota prisoners. Proof of crimes was difficult to obtain as President Abraham Lincoln’s criteria for capital punishment was to sort out those who had committed rape and murder from those who participated in battles.

The trials were known as a mockery, both blind and ignorant, according to the Family and Friends of Dakota Uprising Victims. Language barriers, lack of proper translations, and local hatred against the Dakota spurred judges to quick determinations. A total of 303 people were originally sentenced to death, and 16 were given prison terms. President Lincoln shortened the list to be executed to 39, and one elderly man was spared minutes before the execution by Sibley.

Under orders from President Lincoln, the U.S. Army carried out the largest mass execution in U.S. history in Mankato, the word for Blue Earth in the Dakota language.

Abraham Lincoln letter and signature regarding the Dakota 38

The day before the mass execution, Reverend Stephen Riggs said some of the condemned “availed themselves of the opportunity to receive the Christian rite” of baptism. The prisoners were chained in pairs and to the floor.

“It was a sad, a sickening sight, to see that group of miserable dirty savages, chained to the floor, and awaiting the apparent unconcern the terrible fate toward which they were then so rapidly approaching,” Riggs wrote for newspapers in 1862.

A man identified as Father Augustine Ravoux, a noted Catholic patriarch of the Minnesota church, addressed the condemned, but was interrupted when an elderly Dakota “broke out in a most lamentable and unearthly wail; one by one took up the lay, and ere long the walls resounded with the mournful ‘death song.’”

When a second missionary began his address, the Dakota once again began singing.

Soon after, the condemned were bound, hands behind their backs. Many dressed in traditional blankets, white muslin hoods were slipped over their heads.

At precisely 10 a.m., the condemned were then marched to the gallows, a square structure on Main Street, between the jail and the Minnesota River. “The mechanism of the whole thing consisted in raking the platform by means of the pulley, and then making the rope fast, when by a blow from an ax by a man standing in the centre of the square, the platform falls; the large opening in its centre protects the executioner from being crushed by the fall.”

They wore war paint, and hopped on one foot to the gallows. Some of the condemned who had been “Christianized” sang “I’m on the Iron Road to the Spirit Land,” while others sang a native war song. One person among the condemned yelled out, “Hear me my people, today is not a day of defeat, it is a day of victory. For we have made our peace with our creator, and now go to be with him forever… Do not mourn for us, rejoice with us, for it is a good day to die.”

The spectacle drew people by the thousands. “Every convenient place from which to view the tragic scene was soon appropriated. The street was full, the house tops were literally crowded, and every available space was occupied.”

More than 1,500 soldiers also were present to keep the peace.

“Instead of shrinking or resistance, all were ready, and even seemed eager to meet their fate. Rudely they jostled against each other, as they rushed from the doorway, ran the gauntlet of the troops, and clambered up the steps to the treacherous drop. As they came up and reached the platform, they filed right and left, and each one took his position as though they had rehearsed the programme.”

Three taps of the drum signaled the executioner.

Upon the first tap, the condemned reached for each others’ hands, and shouted out their names to watching relatives.

The second tap followed. Stillness descended upon the scene.

“Again the doleful tap breaks on the stillness of the scene. Click! Goes the sharp ax, and the descending platform leaves the bodies of thirty-eight human beings dangling in the air.”

Most died instantly; some struggled. One rope broke, and a new length was quickly tied and the condemned hung until he was dead.

“Thirty-eight human beings suspended in the air, on the bank of the beautiful Minnesota; above, the smiling, clear, blue sky; beneath and around, the silent thousands, hushed to a deathly silence by the chilling scene before them, while the bayonets bristling in the sunlight added to the importance of the occasion.”

Their bodies were buried in a large hole in a sandbar in the Minnesota River.

President Lincoln later explained the mass execution to the U.S. Senate.

“Anxious to not act with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak on one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real cruelty on the other, I ordered a careful examination of the records of the trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females.”

Many local politicians and military personnel sent telegrams to the President to execute all 303 prisoners.

Sibley sent a telegram to President Lincoln the day after the executions. “The 38 Indians and half-breeds ordered by you for execution were hung yesterday at 10 a.m. Everything went off quietly.”

Hanging of the 38 Sioux at Mankato – sketch by W.H. Childs

Racism today

Thompson began teaching himself the flute while in college and now tells native stories with his songs, frequently in the Black Hills at the Crazy Horse Memorial, the world’s largest stone carving, which is not yet finished. Many of his tribe’s old songs and traditions are gone, but he’s discovered a few songs Jesuit priests recorded years ago, and he creates his own music.

Darren J. Thompson “Pipigew” or flue player – wet plat by Shand Balkowitsch

He plays prayer songs, songs for nature, songs to honor corn grinding, which he described as experiences for people to be baby fed native trauma and culture. Before Europeans “discovered” America, estimates put 50 million natives north of the Mexican border. By 1900, less than 100,000 remained, he said.

“With that comes an immeasurable loss of a people, languages, knowledge, their history, and their culture, and one of the ways I try to emphasize that particular fact is explaining this music is a part of who we are and it’s a very pleasant thing to listen to.”

Thompson has seen racism up close and it has been personal. As an Ojibwe, his tribe had issues over hunting and spear fishing rights, a fundamental part of their original treaties with the U.S. government. One of the ideologies he faced as a child was the “Save a walleye, kill an Indian” slogan. He has brown skin, and was called a “timber n*gger.” He received death threats in college, and close friends were also threatened.

The dangers Native Americans face today are just as real as they were in 1862, he said, although this time perhaps not at gunpoint, but with the burning of fossil fuels. Communication and mutual understanding could ease the months-long standoff.

“If somebody is wanting to understand, they need to specifically go in to speak with the people of Standing Rock,” he said. “It’s going to become too late if we don’t stop being so reliant on fossil fuels.

“What’s really challenging for an entire community is to have to swallow the inability of this company to consult, to invite the community to the table to have significant contributions. In the lack of doing that 86 burial sites were desecrated or harmed because of their inability to consult or to invite the community to the table.

“The people there are not anti-white, they’re anti-greed. They want a clean environment for everybody. It’s not that they want to harm the police or harm the pipeline workers. The people that want the pipeline want it built only because native people don’t want it built.”

Asbridge said racism is deep-rooted in the Peace Garden State, frequently reminding him of the days in the deep south when white people believed they had a moral right to go so far as to have white-only drinking fountains.

In coffee parlors and coffee shops around Bismarck he’s heard people say “we ought to go kill those damn Indians that are protesting.’

“Makes you wonder. When you hear it, it’s just really startling, do you really know what is coming out of your mouth? We’re being guided here without us thinking very clearly.”

Racism dates back to 1862 and beyond, Asbridge said.

“It’s kinda cultural, it goes back to the Scandinavian and the German roots – we got that built into us, instead of questioning government, we defer to it. An example is the response of police to the pipeline, they’ve been the aggressors in my mind, no question about it. I think they were sent there to antagonize the Natives.”

Early on, someone should have went down, rolled up their sleeves, and over pots of strong coffee discussed plans, man to man. “That to me is a crime, it’s a criminal activity to do that. The dogs, the rubber bullets, the water hoses, what the hell is the purpose of that?

“It’s an indicator of the culture here. Fighting the culture is a tough job.”

As Jack Dalrymple prepared to step down from the governorship, he received a standing ovation after he praised law enforcement and National Guard efforts during the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy. “Many of our people have gone months without a day off, ably managing the onslaught of out-of-state agitators in a situation that could never have been anticipated.

“The people of North Dakota can take satisfaction in knowing that the financial strength of their state is among the best in the nation,” Dalrymple said. He left a financially stable state to the newly elected 33rd governor, Doug Burgum.

The state may be financially secure, at least for the time being, but many agree the Peace Garden State’s spirit is sick. The symptoms are evident; the disease is contagious. From state politicians accepting big oil bribes during election races, to ignoring its first citizens, to not consulting appropriately with sovereign nations, to repressing the collective voices of North Dakota’s original peoples, racism is still alive and well, and living in the Peace Garden State.

Downtown Gentrification, the Good, the Bad, and the Unaffordable

Artists face difficulties as Fargo’s Downtown grows 

By C.S. Hagen 
FARGO – The art trade in Fargo is a cutthroat business. Photographers, painters, potters struggling for local sales are now also fighting for spaces in the downtown area.

Recognized by many as the cultural avant-garde of downtown’s awakening and current revitalization programs, some artists are being forced out, others are fearful of what future gentrification programs will bring.

Change doesn’t come without casualties, artists recognize, they’re simply asking not to be forgotten. The city has answered, but artists aren’t sure it’s enough. They describe a Cartesian Circle of artists bringing life back into rundown blocks, which spark investments, which then raises rents effectively kicking them out to start over again in a space they can afford.

Fargo’s downtown, once filled with brownstones and brick and mortar, grocery stores, taverns, and a sprinkling of brothels, fell prey to fires over the centuries and received a near-lethal blow during urban renewal programs of the 1950s. City policy makers offered incentives to landlords to tear down old buildings to pave parking lots, Kilbourne Group General Manager Mike Allmendinger said. And the mass exodus to the suburbs began.

It was a time many in Fargo wish never happened.

Now, as city investors and entrepreneurs turn their eyes once more to city center, rents are increasing.

“It happens in the Renaissance Zone, we’ve had buildings downtown go from a total of USD 150 million to over USD 600 million right now,” Mayor Tim Mahoney said. “It’s almost by association that we have that going on. The problem that we have is buildings in the center core that have not had a lot of changes or any money put into them, and they want to take a higher rent, and yet they haven’t improved the building in any way.”

He’s in the process of figuring out spaces where lower income rental spaces can be made available. One suggestion was to move across the Red River into Moorhead, but it doesn’t have the space, Mahoney said.

“We’re one of the top ten cities in the United States, and the arts is a very critical part of that,” Mahoney said. “You have to have things that interest people. It’s not the big chain stores. More often than not it’s the smaller shops and stores for people to look at. That’s what keeps us viable. We’re going to try and do that.”

The Downtown Study, an evaluation Fargo paid USD 400,000 to conduct and will be finished early 2017, will help redefine what the downtown area should be in the future, including issues of retail, parking, and housing for peoples of all incomes, Mahoney said.

Mahoney spoke of one instance where a Microsoft employee was on the verge of leaving Fargo, until the individual moved downtown. The healthy interaction with different people and the downtown improvements helped make him stay, Mahoney said.

“He hated Fargo before, now he loves it,” Mahoney said.

Fargo’s City Deputy Assessor Rob Harshberger said the practice of landlords increasing rents because adjacent buildings have increased in value is inescapable and normal, and there’s little his department can do about the situation.

 

Meg Spielman-Peldo

In recent years downtown areas across the country have demonstrated renewed interest as social and cultural centers vital to a city’s healthy growth. Meg Spielman-Peldo, a Fargo artist, potter, and photographer who focuses on newborns, children, and weddings, shares the space along with other artists next door to the Red Raven espresso bar on Main Street, and although she has just signed a new lease, she worries gentrification will catch up to her.

“For one thing, the city is assessing buildings to standards of newly remodeled buildings when they’re not,” Spielman-Peldo said. “They’re basing their assessments on costs per square feet, when my building is not anywhere near the level of a Kilbourne building. If the rent goes up, I will have to give it up. We would have to get rid of one studio, and that would probably mean we would lose one of our photographers, at least.”

For her current lease, her landlord didn’t raise her rent. “I’m really fortunate, but it’s not going to stay that way.”

The building where her 3,300 square foot studios are located have character, but also have issues. In some places the floor is uneven. “It’s a nice, old building, but the bathroom is in the furnace room. It’s very beneficial to have other people to talk with. It’s really great to walk down the hall and have a conversation. It’s nice.”

To prepare for the future, she has looked at other downtown locations, but the rents are ridiculous, she said. Gentrification has sent rents into orbit, even if a building has not undergone renovations.

“I value what Kilbourne has done downtown, and they’ve heard us talking about this, and are doing what they can,” Spielman-Peldo said. “It’s unfortunate, and I know it happens in cities and everywhere, but just because gentrification is happening everywhere else doesn’t mean that it has to happen here.”

 

Kevin Taylor

Art runs in Kevin Taylor’s family. He’s a photographer who has recently stopped renting in downtown Fargo and purchased an old grocery store built in the 1920s a few blocks north. His son is a ceramic artist, who digs his clay from the Red River banks.

Photographer Kevin Taylor in his studio displaying an old Polaroid camera – photo by C.S. Hagen

Before his purchase Taylor weighed the pros and cons. Rent had just gone up at his photography studio Taylor Made Photography near NP Avenue, and because he works full time, his chosen career demanded he make a tough decision: leave or stay.

“It is important to have an office and storefront so you can walk in and really see the work and the place,” Taylor said. Old cameras hung from the walls. His studio is well lit with natural light streaming from two large windows at the front.

Taylor Made Photography on 10th Street North was originally built as a grocery store in the 1930s. He tore up three layers of old linoleum to rediscover the floor is made from maple; ripped out a drop ceiling and found extra space.

Taylor and the photography business have both changed since the invention of iPhones and digital cameras, he said, and the price for photography services has gone up. Before digital photography, Taylor was a self-described “gigantic nerd” sporting a ponytail and wearing a photographer’s vest filled with rolls of film, light meters, and filters. Twenty years ago he charged between USD 800 and 1,000 to shoot a wedding, now, he can’t charge less than USD 2,000. He once used television and radio advertisements to find customers, today, he relies on word of mouth and referrals for business.

The rise of digital photography in all its forms has heralded a rapid rise of “hobbyists,” or people with little training and others who do not need to work full time, Taylor said.

“To tell the story you have to have experience,” Taylor said. “Anyone can put pictures up on a website and say ‘Hey, look at me.’ When I started in town there was probably a dozen studios, now you can’t tell the difference between a hobbyist and a professional.” The difference though, is enormous, and most people can see the hobbyist’s facade. He finds light in all his frames, focuses on time efficiency and learned documentation for weddings, which make up a large portion of his business.

“I have to make a living, and I have to price accordingly,” Taylor said. His studio is grandfathered into North Fargo’s residential district as a commercial building, he said, which is an idea he hopes city leaders plan for in the future. The downtown area should expand, mixing residences and commercial areas.

“We looked at places on Broadway, and it was really apparent really quickly that it wasn’t going to work,” Taylor said. “All over downtown there are empty buildings.”

His old studio wasn’t the perfect working place for him, it was narrow, and was once a simple storage area. “It was literally the only place that worked for me downtown because it was all we could afford.”

Now that his studio is only half a block from Broadway, he still considers the area as a part of downtown. “I love walking downtown, I love living near downtown, it’s really my favorite part of Fargo, so I wanted to be here, and I didn’t want to be in a strip mall. I would rather operate out of my home than in a strip mall.”

 

Steve Revland

Former owners of the Uptown Gallery, Steve Revland and Maren Day Woods, left their South Broadway studio due to burdening overhead costs in April 2016. They chose the old Goodyear Tire building further north on Broadway to open the Revland Gallery, a “pop-up” studio and in September initiated the START Project, an arts program designed to help students find confidence in their art.

The name START is a play on the words, combining student and art, Woods said. The gallery won’t last long. The Kilbourne Group, the biggest revitalization company involved in downtown gentrification work, plans to tear the building down this upcoming spring, making room for tiered “Dakota skyscrapers.”

Steve Revland talks about the START Project at his studio on Broadway called – photo by C.S. Hagen

“We wanted this to be the first place where they sold their work,” Woods, the gallery’s executive director, said. The idea isn’t lucrative, but it isn’t about the money. “We want them to feel the galleries are approachable, and they’re good enough. We’re trying to build confidence.”

New artists entering the Fargo art scene can feel intimidated, Woods said. Students chosen to participate in the START program currently have their pieces displayed outside the building, and their works will be auctioned off at a later date.

Revland’s formative years as an artist were bittersweet; he survived on microwaved Prego and pasta, drank beer by the case, had a penchant for marijuana. He traded his first handcrafted chair for a root canal.

Revland’s favorite medium is wood – curly sequoia – from which he designs tables, vases, and at one time chairs. Surprisingly, Revland flunked woodworking class twice in high school. He began work as a musician, singing and strumming 30 songs a night, but as a soloist his performances demanded perfection, and he grew weary of the stress. He bought a book on building birdhouses, which piqued his interest into woodworking.

Like Fargo’s young artists today, Revland, now 64, said his early years were not without challenges.

“If I had a nickel for every time I heard of a complaint, I’d have about five dollars,” Revland said. He’s not an engineer, but a businessman who happens to be an artist, and knew from a young age that he would have to blaze his own trail.

Fargo’s downtown renewal projects have already forced him to move once, and although he walked eyes wide open into the Goodyear Tire building site, if he cannot find a third gallery next year in the downtown area his storefront may go digital, or he’ll work from his home in North Fargo.

Currently, art sales are down, Revland said. Although his rent has gone down from more than USD 7,000 to less than USD 2,000 per month, business is tough.

Lack of adequate support for local artists drive many by necessity into commercial trinkets, or daytime jobs.

 

James Wolberg

Roberts Street Studio on North Broadway is an artist’s dream, smells of fresh paints and wet clay. The 2,000-square-foot studio’s floor is cracked cement. Paintings, ceramic hands, years of artwork are piled high to the studio’s lofty ceiling. It’s warmed by a wood fire stove, is unfettered by creature comforts. A peacock decorates the front entrance.

“It’ s not guaranteed, it’s a lot of stress,” James Wolberg, one of the owners, said. “Everybody is like ‘if only I could make art all day and make my living off of that, it would be so relaxing. Life would be great.’ Even if you go to school for whatever it is, it’s a creative craft or art, and you’re not required to take any marketing classes, and then they kick you out into the real world. Then you go get an application for Starbucks.”

James Wolberg, long time ceramic artist in Downtown Roberts Street Studio – photo by C.S. Hagen

Wolberg’s day job is as a studio manager for the Katherine Kilbourne Burgum Center at Plains Art Museum. He enjoys the work, considers himself fortunate, but to pay costs at his studio he makes sinks for companies, coffee cups for Christmas presents. A lone concrete sculpture stands behind him – a work in progress he sculpts when he has the time. Fargo is not a city that can fulfill an accomplished artist’s dreams, but it’s not entirely impossible either, he said.

Ten years ago, Wolberg used to run the Upfront Gallery, where the gold exchange currently is. It was an experimental gallery where artists displayed everything from erotica to pottery.

“We made quite a bit of noise, but it’s expensive. Everybody also needed to be doing their own jobs as well as making their art.”

After five years, he shut the gallery down.

He pays approximately USD 1,300 for rent and utilities he said, which is fair, and split between the artists working inside. He’s safe, for now, nobody is looking to purchase the building as he says most investors want historical buildings.

“A lot of them that have been taken over were fairly dilapidated and not taken care of by their previous owners.”

Some buildings downtown used to be considered nightmares, he said, like the Black Building.

“I think it’s necessary if we want to maintain the historical presence of the structures, which I think it brings enormous character to the place. But once you put a lot of money into a building, they’re not just out for to fix buildings and make things nicer, they’re also out to make money. Obviously, it’s a business. Can’t throw a bunch of money into fixing a building and not expect rents to jump.

“It’s jumping to a place where a lot of people cannot afford the place they’ve always inhabited.”

At a projected price of USD 25 per square foot per year, Wolberg says the price is insanity.

The downtown area is the cultural and musical scene of the city. With the exception of missing a grocery store, most amenities can be found in the downtown area. Aesthetically, the area is pleasing; making new friends is easy.

In the suburbs, most people stay in their “boxes” and shop at chain stores, he said, but not downtown residents. Since his studio’s inception 10 years ago, Wolberg has seen huge changes to the area.

As a ceramic artist, Wolberg’s needs aren’t cheap. He needs 220v electricity to run his ovens, vacuum chambers, and space to store his supplies.

Fargo’s market depends on the medium, Wolberg said. Usually, the arts are the first to go when a city is experiencing difficulties, especially during election years. The price point for doing business is directly related to size and price.

“We’re doing okay. The smaller items are doing well, but larger paintings and such are really difficult to place.”

Most galleries in Fargo don’t charge for an exhibit. Artists receive a portion of the sales and a commission or show fee goes toward the studio. He doesn’t depend on social media for advertising, and his website is “lame,” he said.

“It’s good to see this in a way, because it is driving in people who can afford luxurious items, if you can afford a USD 250,000 condo in the sky, you can probably afford to furnish it, and spread the money around a little bit. It’s good to see the money coming in, but it also it raises everybody’s rent. I think what has happened in a lot of different communities is that it ends up pushing the artists in different directions. Maybe it’s got to be the industrial district next.

“That’s the whole reason a lot of these downtowns get their flavor back, because it’s been rundown for years and years and years, the rents are cheap, they don’t care about the buildings, you can do anything to them you want.”

If his rent increases beyond his price range, he will have to “roll with the punches.” He would look into an industrial building, he said.  

 

Dawn Morgan

Never judge a book by its cover or a storefront by its original red wood door, or so the ancient sages say. The Spirit Room in the middle of downtown on Broadway is a labyrinth for yoga, meditation, line-dancing, ballroom dancing, and cozy, individual studios rented by local artists.

Dawn Morgan, the owner, said the building was vacant for 30 years before she moved into it; a city rule would not allow upper floors to be rented if the company did not have proper access to the first floor, she said.

The Spirit Room owner Dawn Morgan talks about the arts in downtown Fargo – photo by C.S. Hagen

Built in 1904 as a general merchandise store by the Hancock Brothers, it was also home to photography studios and architects, and was “too far gone” by the time Morgan rented it approximately 20 years ago. She’s fixed the place up, expanded, and renovated the additions, and has kept a close eye on Fargo’s growth over the years.

“Everybody knew each other in those days,” Morgan said. “The city was big enough where you didn’t know everybody, but you knew families. When you come to downtown Fargo talking about that [gentrification], there’s a lot of interaction of people who know a lot about downtown Fargo. There’s a long history of almost like a large family, extended family, in downtown Fargo,” she said.

Locals want the family traditions to continue, which can differ from the corporate blueprints, she said.

“The gentrification can be one part, but it cannot be the whole. The whole belongs to the people.”

She has been involved in focus groups for years offering suggestions to the city for what the Fargo’s downtown should be like. Places like the Plains Art Museum, the Fargo Theater, Theater B, and the Spirit Room are now household names, and have been vital to downtown’s growth, she said. Downtown should be a place for rich and poor, for artists and businesses, for singles and for families.

“How can we weave this all together?” Morgan said. “It’s like an intricate fabric.”

Although downtown has improved in the last 10 years, there still isn’t enough change yet. Why would someone want to build a million-dollar condo for a view of the sugar beat plant? Morgan said. “There is a misconception about what downtown Fargo is, and what it wants to be. With the developers that are coming in, we want to make sure they’re included in the view with the people who are here and have been here and what they want for their downtown.

“It isn’t right that one group of people should have an overwhelming say in what happens. I like to think the downtown as being a hologram of all these luminesce being interacting with each other, and that one individual isn’t better than another.”

Morgan is a self-described project oriented person, and guides her non-profit company through creativity and determination. Times have not always been easy, but entrepreneurs find a way, she said. For the first eight years of business she didn’t pay herself. She works on projects ranging from Sanford’s cancer patients to nationally organized “Listening Room” performances. Art bedecks her walls as well, but her company’s survival doesn’t depend on the sales.

“Don’t be dependent on one single thing – diversify,” Morgan said. “It’s challenging to figure out how to make it all work, and really important to the long-term vibrancy of downtown Fargo.”

 

The Kilbourne Group and the Arts Foundation

The Kilbourne Group, founded by Governor-elect Doug Burgum, cut its chops on the Renaissance Hall, a building was once slated for demolition, Allmendinger said. The company’s dream is “vibrant downtowns create smart, healthy cities,” and so far, it is only investing in downtown Fargo.

Urban renewal programs were still in effect in the 21st century, Allmendinger said. “Believe it or not as late as 13 years ago there were still buildings being torn down,” he said. “The attitude was for these downtowns to remain viable was that they needed surface parking lots to sustain them.”

Art Partnership Executive Director Dayna Del Val in the APT building – photo by C.S. Hagen

Old saloons and buildings along both sides of the Red River, brick houses surrounding city hall, and even where the Frying Pan family restaurant currently is were bulldozed to make room for development, Allmendinger said.

“Today that would never happen. Ten years ago when the Kilbourne Group was starting out nobody else was involved because it was considered too risky. Now we get excited when Broadway, our seven blocks of it, tells a story along the way.”

During the company’s research into downtown’s history, they’ve discovered interesting stories behind the sites. The building where Halberstadt’s Men’s Clothiers now stands, was destroyed by fire in the late 1960s when a devious previous owner burned the building down to escape an inventory check.

“We certainly feel that the best impact we can have in this region is to focus on projects in downtown Fargo.” Such as the Renaissance Hall, the old Woodrow Wilson School, the Roberts Street site, the area surrounding the Goodyear Tire building, the old MEPS building, and more. The company’s project on Roberts Street is built on land that was once the Columbine Hotel, then turned into Carnegie Library, which was torn down in the 1970s due to urban renewal programs. During excavation, the company discovered six fuel tanks buried in the ground, and other treasures, such as soap dishes, teacups, and cigarettes wrapped in a cigar box.

“We start off from a spot that we value and recognize that having a diversity of people living and working in downtown Fargo is really important to long-term vibrancy,” Allmendinger said. Community planning began more than 20 years ago, he said, when the downtown area was falling apart, both physically and financially. The average price for commercial areas per square foot will rise from an average of USD 10 to approximately USD 20 per year, he said.

The building, when finished, will be more than a parking ramp; it will offer affordable apartments and commercial storefronts as well.

“Broadway is the downtown for Fargo, and there are many different groups of people that want to have experiences down here. Those experiences may be living, working, retail, food and beverage, parades, community gatherings… when we think about projects and renovation of them, we must think about who wants to be down here.

“Artists are a group that are experiencing changes down here, we do recognize that. We’re looking for ways to partner with other organizations to find solutions to have spaces down here and be an active part of downtown Fargo.”

The Arts Partnership, a non-profit organization and an advocate for arts and culture, is one company the Kilbourne Group has partnered with to help local artists.

“The Arts Partnership is collaborating on a demonstration art incubation space with the Kilbourne Group for two years to just see what happens when we create a collective of makers and creators in one space,” Art Partnership Executive Director Dayna Del Val said.

The Kilbourne Group recently purchased the old MEPS building for the experiment. No longer a site for military enlistment tests or urine samples, the building will be known as APT, which is short for “the idea of being able, and coming together, and having an aptitude for something,” Del Val said.

Prices vary from $137.50 to $350 per space per month, which will range from approximately 200 square feet to 500 square feet spaces, Del Val said. Larger rooms will be available for galleries or small-scale performances, she said.

“Artists create the culture that make us want to live where we live. They’re just a really important part of the economic and cultural piece that makes a community valuable. Mostly people can choose where they want to live today, and the arts are often what make anybody decide to either stay in a community or move to a community.”

In two years the building will be torn down, but depending on the success of the experiment, Del Val and Allmendinger may have an idea for the future.

“Our hope is that this is so successful that we’ll have a permanent home two years from now,” Del Val said.

Wolberg said the experiment is needed, but might not be enough for local artists.

“It’s kind of an experiment to see what you can do with a multi-use building,” Wolberg said. “It’s a cool large maze of areas, which can be split up into nice-sized studio spaces.”

“Their idea was you can come in and rent this space and we’ll give you two years, you can do whatever you want with this space. It’s not bad if you think about it from certain perspectives, but if you think about it from a perspective where a lot of people practicing artwork, it could be out of range for a lot of people. Unless you have a really good professional job, or you’re working a normal labor job, that’s like a 150 bucks for a tiny little room. If you have to invest in infrastructure, it gets complicated.

“There is a lot of excitement about that development, but what they ended up doing was bringing their price down.”

If the downtown revitalization programs stumble, Taylor’s worried that chain stores will walk in offering twice the price for commercial spaces. “That was one of the choices we had to make. We could be in this prestigious building so you could charge more or you don’t have to charge more. Wedding photography is expensive, it costs a lot of money to be in this business. I’m not a wealthy guy by any stretch of the imagination, and if you double my rent, I will have to double my prices. And I don’t want to do that.”

Taylor also hopes downtown planners will cater to local entrepreneurs and small businessmen, and not chain stores like Walmart or Starbucks. Allmendinger agrees.

“The more projects there are in downtown Fargo, the less the rents will increase,” Allmendinger said.

Taylor believes in supporting local artists, no matter the cost. A coffee mug might be more expensive than a cup made in China and sold at Targets, but the extra spent is valuable, not only to the artists, but to the spirit.

“It’s an important part of my life and makes my life more whole and more complete. At a certain point in time – we’re fortunate people and we all live in a beautiful city with beautiful things – and after you get to the point where you’re feeding yourself, you find your soul. That’s what art does for me: it fills in a gap where you can put things of beauty in your life.”

Revland Gallery, slated for demolotion in 2017 – photo by C.S. Hagen

 

 

Former Cass County Sergeant Accuses Sheriff of “Double Standards”

Retired employee of Cass County Sheriff’s Office goes before County Commissioners to accuse the sheriff of favoritism and sexism

By C.S. Hagen
FARGO – A recently retired employee of the Cass County Sheriff’s Office criticized Sheriff Paul Laney before the Cass County Commissioners meeting Monday, threatening lawsuits on the horizon due to the sheriff’s favoritism, sexism, and double standards.

Gail Wischmann, a 34-year-employee of Cass County Sheriff’s Office, left the career she loved early and retired due to Laney, she said, after presenting a list of allegations attacking the Sheriff’s Department.

Retired Cass County Sgt. Gail Wischmann speaks before Cass County Commissioners Board - photo by C.S. Hagen

Retired Cass County Sgt. Gail Wischmann speaks before Cass County Commissioners Board – photo by C.S. Hagen

“I could not continue to work under the leadership of Sheriff Laney,” Wischmann said. “To do so would compromise my values of fairness and honesty. What I find amazing is that no one before has done this, I can’t walk around with this on my shoulders.”

She said Laney’s management style is dictatorial, micromanaging irrelevant issues while ignoring more important problems.

Wischmann knew she made the correct choice to retire after her final meeting with Laney. “I was blindsided by a verbal assault, it was just him and I, in which he threatened me with reprisals if I dared say anything negative about him or the department. He informed me, ‘people don’t like me, they actually even hate me.’

“It makes me angry that someone like him threatens me or any other employee should I come and speak. With his finger pounding on the table, he wanted me to know he had documentation on me.

“I view that as a threat.”

Wischmann didn’t know what documentation the sheriff was referring to, she said. She used to have a sign hanging in her office that read, “Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.” Wischmann’s voice shook as she strongly criticized the Cass County Sheriff’s Office before the Cass County Commissioners.

She accused the office of not performing an internal investigation after a jail officer addressed male and female staff as “penises and vaginas.” The sheriff’s office acknowledged the incident, saying they took action and used it as a learning experience of inappropriate behavior, Cass County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Sgt. Kim Briggeman said.

“It is inappropriate, but we dealt with it as a learning experience,” Briggeman said. “Not every incident needs to be turned over to OPS, but there was action and it was dealt with swiftly. And to my knowledge it has not happened with that officer again.”

Wischmann also stated that Office of Professional Standards, or OPS reports, are frequently not performed. When a deputy once came to work smelling of alcohol, the sheriff did not perform a breath test, she said. Instead, Laney denied the captain had been drinking, she said.

Briggeman heard about the drinking incident for the first time yesterday, but said that any officer under the influence of a controlled substance would be dealt with accordingly. “It would be something that we would absolutely review and look at it immediately.”

Current proper procedures for in-house management are in the process of changing over from general orders to a program called Lexipol, he said. Lexipol is a provider of risk management policies and training for public safety organizations, according to Lexipol’s website.

“The liability of a law enforcement officer being under the influence at work is completely unacceptable and it would be an intolerable act to allow them to continue to work,” Briggeman said. “There would 100 percent absolutely be an intervention.”

Laney has created an office where sexism abounds, Wischmann said.

“There are double standards within our department, favoritism, sexism, within the sheriff’s office, such as females not allowed to be a roller derby girl, yet allowing a male employee to practice amateur boxing.” Female deputies are also overlooked for assignments because male supervisors believe that males perform better, she said.

Briggeman said the incident was true, but that the sport was hindering the female officer’s work performance.

“As far as that roller derby stuff goes, he’ll absolutely acknowledge the fact the female deputy did hold a conversation with him, and the reason why that conversation took place was because that female deputy was getting hurt and she was missing work, it was obviously having an effect on her professional life. The male deputy was cautioned just the same about the dangers of boxing.”

The male-to-female ratio in the department’s command office is approximately fifty-fifty, Briggeman said.

“If you’re not the right fit you’re not it, if you’re the right fit, you’re it,” Briggeman said. “At one point four out of seven of his command officers were females. There isn’t any merit behind it.”

Wischmann admits she was a challenging employee. “I speak my mind, and sometimes, most times, it’s not well filtered. I don’t ever sugar coat anything, good or bad, I believe honesty is my strongest value.”

Wischmann also stated she was appalled that the meritorious award was given out to everyone in the department, approximately 160 employees, even if the deputies were on sick leave or on vacation the night Office Jason Moszer was killed by Marcus Schumacher. “As long as you were employed by a certain date you received this award. And to me this is a disservice to those people who were actually on the line being fired at that night. Those are the deputies that should have been recognized. You don’t give me a meritorious award because I worked the night shift that week.”

The awards were given because during that time nearly everyone in the sheriff’s department, no matter their roles, was called upon for extra duties, Briggeman said.

“He took it upon himself, when Chief Todd reached out to us that it would be an absolute honor to ensure that Fargo police department would be able to honor and pay respects to an officer who fell in the line of duty,” Briggeman said. Administrative assistants during that time answered more phone calls, patrol staff worked longer hours to assist the Fargo Police Department.

“To be honest, I, on the other hand, am upset that a former sergeant would have felt appalled to the fact that a majority if not all the sheriff’s office personnel stepped up to ensure the police department had that opportunity. It was an undertaking, it was absolutely an undertaking, it was something I hope I never have to do again, but I would do again tomorrow if called upon.

“I wear that meritorious award on my shirt.”

Staffing inside the county jail is an ongoing problem, Wischmann said, but the department does not need more patrol officers. “I know he has given you some numbers and I don’t… let me just say they are not truly what they are,” she said to the county commissioners. “They’ve come up with a system to inflate a documentation to look, to inflate the numbers larger than what they are for service of calls.

“I don’t appreciate his comments to administrative and a command staff that a request for another school officer is a good way to back door another patrol officer into the budget.”

Briggeman stated it is no secret that there is necessity for more patrol officers in the sheriff’s department. He has gone alone on assignments numerous times when a second car should have been involved. Doctoring paperwork, however, is impossible, he said.

“Everything is documented, every call for service, every run, whatever it may be it is clearly documented,” Briggeman said. “How you would doctor those reports? I don’t know.”

Wischmann said she has no other agenda other than to alert the public and the Cass County Commissioners on “what he [Laney] truly is,” she said. “They don’t see behind the scenes.”

Laney’s treatment of private citizens was also recorded on November 21, when Laney and Mandan Police Chief Jason Ziegler called Dakota Access Pipeline activists Liz George and Kana Newell over to their table while eating at the Rice Bowl. Within minutes during the conversation, both chiefs told the women to leave the restaurant, threatening arrest.

The sheriff’s department had no response to the video, according to Briggeman.

Wischmann also accused the sheriff’s department for paying two commanders to attend Laney’s graduation ceremony from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Academy in Virginia.

The department said the accusation was true, but that the two commanders were former FBI academy graduates, and the bureau encourages co-workers to attend graduation ceremonies.

Laney is a Cass County hero, according to his police biography. Originally from rural Cass County, near Horace, he served four years in the Marine Corps before becoming a Fargo police officer. He served as a lieutenant and commander of the Red River Valley SWAT Team, and was sworn in as Cass County Sheriff in 2007. He is president of the North Dakota Sheriff’s and Deputies Association, serves on the board of directors for the North Dakota Association of Counties. Laney is decorated, heavily, including the 2011 winner of the “Government Leader of the Year” award and in 2012 the “National Sheriff of the Year” award.

Laney has also been serving as Morton County Sheriff’s Department operations chief since mid August.

Wischmann served 34 years in the sheriff’s department starting in 1982 in the jail. She then moved into the warrants division, and became a sergeant working the streets, she said. When Laney took office, she created an office of internal affairs where she worked for seven years. Two years before retiring she became an administrative assistant, and continued working with the sex offenders’ office.

“I’d like to suggest that Cass County Commission, that you consider more vigilance on monitoring the sheriff’s office,” Wischmann said. “There are serious problems going on in the Cass County Sheriff’s office.

“I have no reason to make this up. One of these days Cass County is going to get hit hard with a lawsuit, and more than one lawsuit, not only from employees but from the public as well.”

White Cloud: More Than A Tourist Attraction

Old albino buffalo dies in its sleep of old age, but her legacy signifies the world is at a crossroads

 By C.S. Hagen 
JAMESTOWN – The day White Cloud was born on July 10, 1996, ranchers thought she was a trash bag.

“They thought it was a grocery bag lying out there,” Ken Shirek said. Shirek is the owner of Shirek Buffalo Farm in Michigan, North Dakota, and also a director of the North Dakota Buffalo Association. “And they were going to go pick it up and then it took off. It looked way weird.”

White Cloud lived 20 years, passing away quietly in her sleep Monday, November 14, 2016, the morning of the supermoon, or in native terminology, the full beaver moon. This year’s supermoon was rare, and the largest since 1948, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. She was a rare albino bison drawing many visitors to Jamestown, where she spent most of her grazing days. Her birth was also a herald of troubled times for the Great Sioux Nation.

Albino buffalo have poor eyesight. Their pale coats offer little protection from extreme heat and cold. When she was returned to her birthplace at Shirek Buffalo Farm last spring, her health was failing, Shirek said. He fed her corn, allowed her to stay indoors with fly protection, but her age had caught up with her. Bison typically live 20 to 25 years.

Growing up, White Cloud was standoffish, basically an outcast, Shirek said. “All the white ones stay away from the herd, especially the females. The bulls fare a bit better, but they do get picked on. They’re different.”

In the wild, White Cloud would have been a tasty meal for a wolf pack or bears, because her fur coat “sticks out like a sore thumb,” Shirek said, and the herd instinctively knew the risks of keeping close to such a target.

Although White Cloud no longer roams the Dakota prairies, her body is being sent to a taxidermist and she will soon become a permanent full body mount display at the National Buffalo Museum, Shirek said.

“White Cloud and her calves had been a big attraction for the museum not only because of the rarity of an albino buffalo but also because of the sacredness that some Native Americans place on a white buffalo,” the National Buffalo Museum stated in a press release.

White Cloud sired 11 calves, one white buffalo which later died, and currently has one son at the National Buffalo Museum in Jamestown named Dakota Miracle, who is a white buffalo, technically different from an albino. Dakota Miracle does not have the same poor eyesight or sensitivity to extreme weather as his mother.

Ilana Xinos, executive director at the National Buffalo Museum said White Cloud will be missed. She recalled days when she accompanied White Cloud’s longtime caretaker, Arnie Becker, into the field with a bucket of treats, such as corn on the cob.

“He would call her name and she would just come straight over,” Xinos said. “She was special. Most people who have seen her and many in our community would say yes, she was special. Buffalo are majestic creatures, and even more with White Cloud. Maybe she was not the most beautiful of the buffalo. She had crooked horns and was always off by herself, but I thought of her as having some kind of sensitivity to things.”

“To me, White Cloud was more than a tourist attraction,” President of the National Buffalo Museum’s Board Don Williams said. “She drew many, many people to the community, but more than that, she brought the community together with White Cloud days, parades, and special Native American events. She will be missed by the museum, our city, and by all the travelers that could visit the north and view her as they drove along the I-94 interstate pasture.”

Arvol Looking Horse, chief of the Great Sioux Nation, 19th generation holder of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, April 9, 2017 – wet plate taken by Shane Balkowitsch

The white buffalo’s significance to Native Americans, especially to the Great Sioux Nation, cannot be overstated, Chief Orval Looking Horse said in a 2014 interview archived in the World Peace Library. Looking Horse, 62 years old, is the 19th generation holder of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, and is considered a chief and king by the Sioux tribes.

He predicted White Cloud’s birth four years before she was born. People frequently came to Looking Horse telling him of visions of the white buffalo. Soon after, White Cloud was born, and he knew the prophecies were coming true.

“I knew a beginning had come when the white buffalo was born,” Looking Horse said. “Then it [Earth] will be at the crossroads, and this started with the prophecy from the White Buffalo Calf Woman.”

The belief in the White Buffalo Calf Woman started in South Dakota at what is now known as the Devil’s Tower in the 15th century. A beautiful young woman wearing a fine white buckskin dress approached two Lakota men out on a hunt. She came at a time of great turmoil, when the sun shone constantly, but no game could be found. One of the men, a man with an evil mind, desired her, and he said so. The other man said they should not say such things. She was wakan, or holy.

When the first man attempted to embrace the White Buffalo Calf Woman, they both were enveloped in a cloud. When it lifted, she stood alone. A pile of ash and bones slithering with snakes lay at her feet. She then told the man with the good mind to return to his people, and tell them she was coming.

When she arrived, she carried a bundle wrapped in sage. She taught the Sioux the Seven Sacred Rites, and brought them the sacred buffalo pipe.

From her, the Sioux learned to respect the Earth, for she taught them the Earth was their grandmother and mother. Every step they took upon the Earth should be prayerful, and with a good heart.

On the day she left the Sioux, she first reminded them to cherish the sacred pipe, and then issued a warning. In the end, she would return at a time of great peril. Her arrival would be preceded by the birth of a white buffalo. As she rose to leave, she transformed into a white buffalo, walked a few steps, rolled over, and her fur turned black. She then walked a few more steps, rolled once again and became a red buffalo, then disappeared over a hill.

“We are at the crossroads, at a time of great chaos,” Looking Horse said. “All nations, all faiths, one prayer, that must happen to create an energy shift. When the white animals are being born, people will be spiritually disconnected, man has gone too far… so we talk about the prophecy.”

White Cloud’s birth was the White Buffalo Calf Woman’s signal to the Sioux that great change was coming.

“Someday when nothing is good, she will return.” Every year since White Cloud’s birth, a white buffalo or white animal has been born, Looking Horse said. “It’s coming soon, these changes are coming quick. Today we are faced with a lot of global challenges. The spirit of the buffalo is really showing itself in a lot of different ways.”

Arvol Looking Horse – wet plate taken by Shane Balkowitsch

Looking Horse received the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe when he was 12 years old, and is known as the youngest Sioux ever to receive the honor. He is considered a spiritual leader among all the Sioux, has received numerous international awards for his work with the Society of Peace of Prayer.

The only way to heal the earth is to pray for peace and harmony, Looking Horse said, and to return to native roots. “And we speak about that at the United Nations in the early 90s, that the Grandmother Earth is sick, she has a fever. As soon as we made that statement in the early 90s, the scientists then came up with a statement called global warming.”

Another crucial aspect of healing comes from tribal leaders, he said.

“You take care of your grandmother… never have bad feelings toward your mother or your father. In this world today, they bottle feed their children, and that’s where they start in the wrong way. Today the man and woman, they work, there’s no love. People without spirit are very dangerous, and someday they could be leaders in the wrong way.

“Among our buffalo teachings, only the strongest will lead our people. The leaders cannot use drugs, alcohol; they have to be raised in honor and respect, and to live in that tradition. The leader represents the health and well being, and has to think about life, good life. Today, we are trying to bring back those sacred teachings of the buffalo.”

Today, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their supporters are striving for prayerful change against the Dakota Access Pipeline. White Cloud, the white buffalo, can at times be a rallying cry for elders to call upon the youth to return to the White Buffalo Calf Woman’s teaching. Looking Horse predicted the pipeline’s arrival in 2014.

“Seems like today, those are things that we are lacking because… it’s all about money. We’re faced with this pipeline coming down, and the elders spoke about that. There’s a prophecy about the black snake, when that black snake is really going to affect the people in the worst way, and sickness would come to this land we hold sacred. It’s going to cross sacred sites that have been there for generations, and then it’s not going to respect our sacred sites.

Looking Horse is also involved in negotiations with Morton County officials during the DAPL controversy. When he speaks, everyone is silent.

“They’re not going to back down, and we’re not going to back down either,” he said to a large crowd on Highway 1806 in late October.  “We know that the spirit is here with us, that the buffalo tatanka oyate is here with us. We have lots of people, not only here, but all over the world praying with us right now, because water is life.”

“Pray for peace and harmony and take care of Grandmother Earth. Then the buffalo come back, the horses come back, the animals come back, there will be peace and harmony, for they are the ones that bring the Sacred Beings back to Turtle Island [the U.S.].”

Among other awards, Looking Horse was honored by the city of New Orleans in 1996 when the city proclaimed August 27 as “White Buffalo Day.” On May 9, 2016, President Obama signed the National Bison Legacy Act into law, making the bison the national mammal of the United States. National Bison Day is celebrated the first Saturday of every November.

“On the Backs of Our Children”

Children’s Care in North Dakota Cut for Oil Interests

By C.S. Hagen 

FARGO, ND – Oil, not the state’s children or the elderly, is North Dakota’s primary concern, according to North Dakota legislature and mental health advocates.

Anger against recent budget cuts, despite fierce resistance during the state’s 15th special session of the legislature in August, prompted The Consensus Council, Inc. to arrange a meeting with therapy workers, advocates, mental health professionals, state politicians, and parents. They’re preparing to fight, once again, sweeping budget cuts passed by North Dakota’s legislature, which have taken millions of dollars in government support from the state’s most vulnerable.

“In the last week what the majority party shoved through circumventing the normal processes was a 23 percent oil extraction tax cut, 80 percent of which goes out of state to businesses who are not connected to North Dakota in any way other than a profit way,” Representative Mary Schneider, D-N.D., said.

“It’s millions and millions of dollars that we gave away that we could have been using to help our own people,” Schneider said. As of August, North Dakota has lost USD 13 million per month and an additional USD 51 million in federal matching monies because of the oil extraction tax cut, which could have been directed toward health issues, Schneider said. The oil extraction tax incentive is in addition to the 4.05 percent budget cut allotment passed in February 2016, after projected general fund revenues fell USD 1.074 billion short of forecasts, affecting children and nursing homes across the state.

“And oil companies were not even pushing for this.”

North Dakota Department of Human Services’ budget, the state’s largest agency, had its budget reduced by USD 54 million in general funds, and a matching USD 61 million in federal funds, Executive Director Maggie Anderson said.

“No autism services have been affected through the second round of budget cuts,” Jeff Zent, the communications director and policy advisor at the State of North Dakota Governor’s Office, said. “And I believe that we’re getting a million dollars a month more now because of these legislature changes. They’re paying more today than before.”

The oil extraction tax break was part of a plan under House Bill 1476 to find savings for the state. “They aren’t reductions to existing services, they are eliminations to appropriated expansions,” Zent said. “The governor has always considered this as short term adjustments meant to get us through the current budget cycle. During the next legislative session and two-year budget, there are going to be challenges, no doubt about it.”

In what Schneider described as a “sneak attack,” Governor Jack Dalrymple, R-N.D., and the dominating Republican Party circumvented the normal processes and balanced the oil-company tax incentives “on the backs of our children,” without changing “one word or one comma with the bill they walked into the session with,” Schneider said.

North Dakota’s children – the autistic, the mentally ill, and the mentally challenged – their parents, their doctors, and therapists, are being hit – hard – by budget cuts and the tax-cut incentive, Executive Director of Mental Health American and the North Dakota Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health Carlotta McCleary said.

“We were in a crises and now it is worse than a crime,” McCleary said. “Typical situation is that for those with chronic illnesses are now not going to hospitals but to jails, in handcuffs.”

A woman in northwestern North Dakota committed suicide because she could no longer pay the fees to help her troubled child. Teenagers with mental health issues are being dragged to jail in handcuffs instead of being treated properly at hospitals. Hospitals are refusing to take troubled children. Insurance companies, as North Dakota is one of five states in the nation that doesn’t require insurance companies to cover those with special needs, are refusing coverage. Waiting lines for mental assistance have grown longer, making acceptance nearly impossible. Skilled therapists are living paycheck to paycheck, therapist Stephen Olson for Pediatric Therapy Partners said, and some are beginning to look for work elsewhere.

The North Dakota Department of Human Services was excluded from the second round of allotments assigned during August’s special session of the legislature, Anderson said. Although the original 4.05 percent budget cut is in place, an additional 2.5 percent cut was not enforced, she said.

The North Dakota Department of Human Services is funded primarily through the federal government, and although their budget shrank, no one will be losing their jobs, Anderson said.

“We’re listening to what people are saying, but funding and appropriation decisions are with the legislature and what they’re able to do,” Anderson said.

Automatic oil triggers, set by law for decades, would have further reduced funding to human services and other state agencies if Dalrymple had not called the special session, Ryan Rauschenberger, the state tax commissioner said. According to law, when oil prices drop below USD 55 a barrel, the oil extraction tax would have dropped to one percent.

“Had the law not passed we would have collected USD 300 million less,” Rauschenberger said. “Only for the last 12 years did we have the top rate. What we saw is that the triggers were going to come on again, and we said we got to do something.”

Most oil extraction taxes are dedicated solely to constitutional funds, such as the general funds for human services, for school, for legacy funds, which are voted in by the people of North Dakota, Rauschenberger said. State legislature meets again in January, and will be reviewing – once again – the impacts of recent budget cuts.

Mental health services in North Dakota were not perfect before, but with one in five families in North Dakota who have children with special needs – enough to fill the Fargodome – the situation is now dire, Director of Family Voices of North Dakota Donene Feist said.

“There’s nobody this will not affect,” Feist said.

“The long term impact on our state will be tremendous,” Tricia Page, a parent said. Her oldest son has autism, and she isn’t sure how her family will continue. “This will affect families and eventually the taxpayers.” Children in need of special services have the capability to learn to read, to speak, and to practice social behavior, basic functions of life taken for granted by most, and these services, difficult to obtain before budget cuts, now border the impossible.

Nicole Watkins, a mother of a child with mental health issues, broke down in tears during the September 28 meeting while describing how her son took a golf club to her house, and how hospital personnel actively tried to push her to press charges and send her son to jail, instead of being admitted.

“There was nowhere for him,” Watkins said. “And that can’t happen, not in our state.”

The lack of services for children with special needs will one day increase the risk for long term hospitalization and assumedly without insurance, jail times for soon-to-be unavoidable crimes. Lack of funds now will force skilled therapists and doctors to leave the state, all of which will burden the taxpayer in the long term, McCleary said. In Minot, a hospital lost its permission for a 10-bed increase. Mobile Crisis lost USD 250,000 in support, recovery centers are losing slots for patients, and some are contemplating closing down.

Senator Tim Mathern, D-N.D., and Schneider attended the meeting sponsored by the North Dakota Autism Spectrum Disorders Advocacy Coalition and held at St. Genevieve’s in Fargo. The Consensus Council, Inc., a non-profit, private disagreement facilitator, organized the meeting. As an advocate herself, Executive Director Rose Stoller said funding could come from any number of the state’s 200 special interest accounts – or perhaps even funds from the governor’s new USD 5 million mansion – to help ease with the situation.

“They really need to choose wisely,” Stoller said. “There should be more work done in earnest to meet these very basic needs. People in North Dakota really care about these issues.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure that everyone has the best interests in mind for protecting vulnerable citizens,” Schnieder said. “We had a lot of resources, and we still do have resources, rather than cutting child care, behavioral health autism, and other people projects. The reason we’re not doing it is because of an imbalance of power and the wrong values controlling the government of this state.”

Commodity prices are lower than previous years, oil prices also are lower, but Schnieder believes the move to be an intentional shrinking of government agenda.

“It makes me sad, and it makes me angry,” Schneider said.

Surviving the Nazis

By C.S. Hagen

JAMESTOWN – A local news broadcast finished with a clip of US presidential nominee Donald Trump standing before a giant NRA poster. The 2016 Republican candidate gripped a podium’s sides tightly, raised a bushy eyebrow before promising to bring back the American dream.

Lore Hornung recounting her days in Nazi Germany

Lore Hornung recounting her days in Nazi Germany – photo by C.S. Hagen

Lore Hornung set her liverwurst on rye down, and pointed excitedly at the television set.

“The names we had for Hitler are like what we have for Trump,” Hornung said. “Names that I won’t repeat.”

Born in Bad Rappenau, Nazi’s Germany, the 84-year-old woman recalled the day Adolf Hitler declared war on Czechoslovakia in 1939. Huddled around the “people’s receiver” radio with her four siblings and parents, Hitler’s rhetoric then reminds her of Trump’s promises today to make a country great again.

“The hateful rhetoric is what is frightening,” she said. “At first we thought Hitler was a clown, and then he became real.”

Using words like fear, self-protection, power, national pride interchangeably with broken dreams, Hitler stirred a nation to hatred. At only 10-years-old when World War II began, Hornung had no choice but to don the navy blue dress, white shirt and necktie, and the brown Hitler jacket emblazoned with the Nazi badge. The only gifts she says she ever saw from the Nazi regime.

Lore Hornung (left) at the beginning of World War II in Nazi Germany

Lore Hornung (left) at the beginning of World War II in Nazi Germany

“We had a good life before the war and could even afford a maid and a cleaning lady,” Hornung said. The day after Hitler’s declaration of war against Czechoslovakia, her father, a railway freight manager, fanned local stores hunting salamis and storable foodstuffs. “I was 10-years-old when the war began, and for the first six months everything was quiet.”

And then the changes began.

Shoes became a luxury item, one new pair every two years. “You would be lucky if you got one pair of shoes a year.” Additionally, new clothes disappeared from store racks. Many goods, including coffee and chocolates, required ration tickets, which were issued by the government. At her young age, she received a small box of chocolates, also government issued, at Christmas. Older children received real coffee, a welcome break from the muckefuk kaffee, roasted corn and chicory sweetened with beet sugar. “To this day I put no milk in my coffee, and no sugar in it,” Hornung said.

Stylish new clothes were impossible to find. International radio broadcasts were replaced by propaganda and speeches by Hitler and party propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, as the Nazi juggernaut conquered one sovereign nation after another.

Lore Hornung as a child wearing Nazi jacket

Lore Hornung as a child wearing Nazi jacket.

The paramilitary wing of the Nazi party marched into town.

“First, they came in uniforms, brown shirts, and riding boots,” Hornung said. “My dad even had one. They came marching into town singing. It was so stupid.”

Young teachers were drafted to the frontlines. Older, stricter teachers wielding bamboo sticks for punishment replaced them. The school’s new headmaster was a fanatic, but mostly avoidable. He walked into school in the mornings with a Nazi salute. Living in a town of 2,500 people, a tourist spot for its brine hot springs, Hornung wasn’t subdued to the brainwashing techniques many other students her age in larger cities endured. Her years in the Hitler Youth, known as Jung Mädel for children up to 14, and later in the League of German Girls or the BDM, were spent primarily crafting wooden elves as Christmas presents, marching in formation on Sundays, listening to speeches, helping workers in the field, and singing nationalistic songs such as the Horst Wessel. Once a month her entire school of 18 students – four girls – watched a motion picture featuring German victories and the ever-present propaganda.

French prisoners, bedraggled and under guard, began appearing in town. Many were assigned day duties in the fields before returning to a nearby prisoner of war camp, she said.

Lore Hornung and her father pre World War II

Lore Hornung and her father pre World War II

One night, a nearby commotion piqued her interest. Her father rushed to discover what was happening. He returned with frightening news.

“I had never seen my dad so mad,” Hornung said. “And dad almost got into trouble. He said three Jewish families in town were attacked. Windows were smashed in, and rocks were thrown at them.”

In 1933, ten Jewish families lived in Bad Rappenau, according to the Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust. In 1938, four Jews were killed and a Jewish shop was destroyed in Bad Rappenau, according to the Jewish Cemetery Project. By October 22, 1940, no Jews remained; all were deported to the Gurs Concentration Camp in southwestern France, according to the Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust.

At a time when anything but mass conformity was persecuted, she wore a bikini to practice diving. “I was a tomboy,” she said. Chuckling at the memories, she said she used to climb cherry trees for a snack, stole away from Hitler Youth duties to swim. To Hornung, the Hitler fanaticism passed her by.

“Once I had made plans to swim,” she said. “Diving was my favorite sport. I could do flips even, but this night, my classmates tried to pressure me into going to help pick peas. I had already made my plans to go swimming, and I told them no.”

She was worried what her father would say, but his response surprised her.

“Never lie,” Hornung said her father told her. “Hitler says don’t lie, so you do not lie. If you made plans to go swimming, then you need to stick to those plans.”

Her father was a member of the national socialist party for the first year after war broke out, Hornung said. “For the first year or so my father supported them, and then he left the party and refused to wear his Nazi pin.”

When the Allies began bombing campaigns in Germany, Hornung and her sisters refused to leave the upstairs open window. They knew their small town of 2,500 would be of little interest to the invaders.

“We would open the window up and start counting how many airplanes. When they left we also counted, and sometimes as many as 60 or 70 were missing.” Her father would encourage them to go downstairs into the basement for safety, but usually end up watching the spectacle with them, Hornung said.

Her town was hit once by Allied bombs, forcing her and her family to spend the night in their basement. Little damage was caused however, but she worried, as everyone knew an armaments factory was nearby. The nearby city of Heilbronn, however; was devastated by bombing raids. On September 10, 1944 Allies dropped 1,168 bombs on the city, killing 281 residents, according to the World War 2 Database. Within one half hour on December 4, 1944, more than 6,500 residents died during a second bombing raid, most of whom were buried in mass graves, according to the World War 2 Database.

The Americans invaded Hornung’s town first, she said. From her kitchen window she watched as a tank parked into her front yard. A large man asked for English speakers, of which she was one.

Neiboring city of Heilbronn after Allied bombing and during invasion of US troops

Neighboring city of Heilbronn after Allied bombing and during invasion of US troops

“He asked me if there were any German soldiers, and I said no,” Hornung said. “Then he filled his steel helmet with potatoes, and that just didn’t go well with me. I said ‘you potatoes, me meat.’ And then he spoke a lot of English I didn’t understand and took me toward another tank. I thought, ‘Oh no, they are going to take me away,’ but he gave me a large tin of ham.

Once, while riding her bike she came across chickens, and in her hurry to stop her chain broke. She crashed in front of a group of US soldiers.

“I was so afraid they were going to hit me for running over a chicken,” she said. “I was afraid the Americans would kill me, but instead they helped bandage my scuffed arm. They were good to us.”

The tomboy in Hornung refused to let the US soldiers have free reign with local swimming pools, which, according to Hornung, became property of the US Army and local residents were not permitted to swim. She defied the rule, however, and went swimming anyway.

Heilbronn destruction

Heilbronn destruction after World War II

“I said come and get me, and he did not. Maybe he couldn’t swim, I don’t know.”

German surrender on May 7, 1945 brought inflation, a scarcity of food, and horrid revelations to Hornung. She and her family had no idea of how Jews had been treated across Europe. “We did not know about it, not until the newspapers began reporting on it and then we saw the people coming in. Some of them walked for two weeks surviving on what farmers fed them.”

“We were so glad when it was over, we hardly kept anything to remember those days,” Hornung said. “I did not live in a big city, just in my hometown with two thousand or so people.” The majority of Germans in her area shared her relief, Hornung said. “But there were some then who were like those today crazy about some politicians,” she said. Small gangs formed. Some took advantage of the lack of a functioning government, looting and robbing. Devastation in nearby Heilbronn, was difficult to imagine, she said.

Hornung and her mother, a Swiss national, escaped some of the post war hardships by traveling to Switzerland, and did not return until they heard father was seriously ill. He died soon after they returned home. Nearly seven years after the war ended, Heilbronn still resembled a war zone.

Private Glen W. Hornung, now a staff sergeant, in Germany after World War II

Private Glen W. Hornung, now a staff sergeant, in Germany after World War II

She met her future husband, Jamestown native Staff Sergeant Glen W. Hornung, at Café Mayer, in 1952. “A most beautiful café,” Hornung said. At the time Glen was sent to West Germany as a Jeep mechanic.

“It was all rubble,” Glen, who was a private when he set foot in Germany, said. “The houses were bombed out, streets were full of rubble ten-feet high. People had nothing to work with.” He too was a self-admitted ‘outlaw,’ and spent his first years in the military drinking, and chased Hornung for nearly two-and-a-half years before she agreed to marry him.

“I lost more stripes then than most people ever make,” Glen said. After a night with bad Thai whiskey however, he decided the drinking must end, and has never taken another sip of alcohol since. The gangs, or “local yokels,” as Glen described them, frequently created mischief. Fistfights with them were common, he remembered.

The Hornungs boarded the USS Upshaw from Bremen to New York City in 1956. From there, they moved their family around the world until eventually resettling into Glen’s hometown, Jamestown, not far from where his German ancestors, immigrants of more than a century ago, homesteaded.

Lore Hornung, German born survivor of Nazi Germany, and her husband Staff Sergeant Glen W. Hornung, in their Jamestown home

Lore Hornung, German born survivor of Nazi Germany, and her husband Staff Sergeant Glen W. Hornung, in their Jamestown home. – photo by C.S. Hagen

 

Nothing to fear, but fear itself

By C.S. Hagen 

FARGO – Under the shadow of KVLY’s towering signboard approximately 200 protestors rallied Sunday demanding a change of what they call the Fargo television station’s recent fear-mongering agenda.

It was the fourteenth of such broadcasts in as many months.

“These guys are spreading lies and creating animosity between the mainstream and ethnic communities,” Hukun Abdullahi, organizer of the rally said.

Hukun Abdullahi welcoming the protestors

Hukun Abdullahi welcoming the protestors. Photo by C.S. Hagen

Abdullahi, originally from Kenya, arrived in Fargo in 2014. He referred to a Valley News Live May 16, 2016 report entitled Could Kindness be Bad for Your Health, a controversial broadcast stating 22 percent of Fargo refugees are health risks and carry latent tuberculosis.

“What Valley News did is not acceptable,” Abdullahi said in his welcome speech. “They violated their basic journalism principles and any journalistic integrity – if they had any left – to go one step beyond to classify us as a vector for disease.

“We are not mosquitos. We are survivors with families and children, who fled violence, persecutions, wars, and death.”

The broadcast wasn’t the first time the local television station turned to fear-mongering tactics to boost its ratings, said Hamida Dakane, a co-organizer of the protest. In December 2015 the television station reported the story of an assault case in Mapleton when a Somali man named Abdulrahman Ali allegedly attempted to rape a gas station attendant in the bathroom while repeating the words “Allah Akbar,” or God is great. The television station later changed the story reporting that officers heard Ali say “Allah Akbar” before his arrest, according to a column written by Mike McFeely on Inforum.

“We condemn the Valley News attempt to target us, and their attempt of fear-mongering by framing us,” Abdullahi said. “We are no Trojan horses bringing disease or are a ticking bomb.

“We are here… to stand against a bully, and clarify that we are not the threat. News outlets like Valley News are the ones that are a threat to any community like ours, who would take advantage of their user base to spread false rumor, accusations, and promote xenophobia.

“We are better than this.”

The protest, which was peaceful, lasted from noon until 2 p.m., and brought nationalities from around the world. A verifiable melting pot of African-Americans, Caucasians, Asians, Middle Easterners, and Latin, joined together to demand fairness and change from the television station.

“This is about discrimination,” Harka Subba, an immigrant from Bhutan, said. “People have been here for two centuries before, but in the end we are all immigrants.” As president of the Bhutanese Community in Fargo, Subba said that until the television station’s broadcast he felt accepted by the Fargo community. Work has not been typically difficult to find. Many in the Bhutanese community have become entrepreneurs, and have created jobs, paid their taxes. Life in Fargo was good when compared to the Nepalese refugee camp in which he stayed in for eight years.

“I’m here to stand up for the rights of immigrants and for the truth,” Grace Mbuthia said. She is originally from Kenya. “What they’re doing separates people.”

All Fear wordsA protestor pointed to a Marine Corps billboard next to the television station. “For our Nation For Us All,” the billboard read.

“The way the news is working, we need to be sure that they try to get it right,” Fargo Deputy Mayor Mike Williams said. Amidst much cheering, Williams disputed the television station’s report calling it slanted. “This sensationalistic report that tuberculosis is out of the normal for our area just isn’t so.

“North Dakota has one of the lowest rates of tuberculosis in the country, just over 1 percent of 100,000 population actually has active tuberculosis… but our health officials in Fargo, in Grand Forks, and in the state say it’s not an item that is not treatable.”

“Our community has become more diverse since 1997,” Williams said. “And it’s made our city better. Our food is better, our culture, our art. We were losing our population until 2000, but now we are a stronger city and state because of our immigration policies.”

Morehead Mayor Del Rae Williams denounced Valley City News reporting tactics.

“This is something we do not want happening in our community,” Williams said. “For a mayor it is not the easiest thing to stand up against a media group. Let me tell you that when it needs to be said, it needs to be said. Our community cannot be at risk by journalism that is false.

“We wont stand for this kind of abuse in our community. We will stand for things that are true.”

Barry Nelson of the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition also stepped up to the bullhorn. Surrounded by minorities from around the world, he said the television station’s agenda was sparking fear in the community.

“I am disturbed by the fact that some in our community seem to have an agenda,” Nelson said. “I am very disturbed and angry that some members in my community are being targeted, targeted with misrepresentation, fear, and hate.”

In addition to elected leaders, two former employees of the station joined the protest. John Rodenbiker, who is running for the Fargo School Board said he was embarrassed of his former employer.

“I’m out here standing in solidarity with all of our residents of Fargo and standing against ignorance and hatred,” Rodenbiker said. “I’m ashamed that news media in our community would do the kind of reporting that we’ve seen over the past weeks and months.”

Another former employee, Paul Leintz, expressed frustration with the station.

“I used to walk the halls of Valley News Live,” Leintz said. “I was an employee here and the change I’ve seen over the years is the reason why I’m not working here anymore. Look at our numbers. And look at the numbers against us.” He pointed to a lone counter protester across the street.

“You guys make me proud to be an American with all of you.”

Another former employee of KVLY, who wished to remain anonymous expressed some fear at being spotted at the protest, but admitted they “had to be there.”
Protestors cheered after the speeches were given, and then they prepared to march. Across the street under the shade of a young maple tree, the lone supporter of the television station’s broadcast sat. He wore a blue “Trump, Make America Great Again” t-shirt.

“I believe Valley News was correct with the exception of active and passive tuberculosis,” Deven Styczunski, Fargo resident and a grain inspector said. “Their data is solid. These people should be protesting the Center for Disease Control and the North Dakota Department of Health.”

He said many others in Fargo were debating the issue in online platforms, but were too busy to join his side of the street during the protest. “I have no problem with people coming to the USA, but they’re claiming xenophobia, and I don’t think this is what it was about,” Styczunski said.

A protestor handed Styczunski bottled water. He refused. “I’ll just stay on this side of the street by myself,” he said.

In a Valley News Live Facebook post pertaining to Sunday’s rally in the comment section, Adam Hewson, a self-declared white nationalist said, “We in Fargo never got asked to be a resettlement community. We don’t want them, the diseases, drugs, and crime they bring into our town. If they don’t like it Somalia is only a plane ticket away.”

His initial post received 206 replies within 24 hours, but no “like” buttons were pushed.

“Okay, looking at everything, I love how the race card gets thrown so easily,” another comment on Facebook from Fargo resident Dan Gunderson said. “Some refugees come here and actually take advantage of what we give them. Those types of refugees are a small, small percentage. Then you have the rest that sit on their asses and collect the government’s money and walk around like everyone else owes them something.”

When asked for a comment on Valley News Live recent coverage of immigration issues, Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota CEO and President Jessica Thomasson said their focus is on assisting the families they serve. A total of 85,000 immigrants will be relocated in the USA in 2015, Thomasson said, of which approximately 506 will arrive in North Dakota. From that number 70 to 80 percent, mostly from Bhutan, Iraq, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, will find new homes through Lutheran Social Services in the Fargo-Morehead area.

All immigrants, Thomasson said, are carefully screened before they board the airplane to the United States.

“All refugees who come to the USA are screened prior to leaving, and it is overseen by the Center for Disease Control and the State Department working with a panel of physicians. If they identify anything that needs to be treated, they deal with that overseas. They don’t have the right to come to the US until it is taken care of.”

Active tuberculosis is a red flag for health officials, but more than one third of the world’s population has latent tuberculosis, Thomasson said, a disease that is not transmittable.

Deven Styczynski, Fargo resident, lone opposition to the protestors

Deven Styczynski, Fargo resident, lone opposition to the protestors, rests beneath a maple tree. Photo by C.S. Hagen

Fauzia Haider, a doctor of medicine and surgery from Khyber Medical College in Peshawar, Pakistan in 1987, said even those who were immunized against tuberculosis as a child can test positive for latent tuberculosis.

“And it is fully treatable,” Haider said. “Even latent tuberculosis is treated by health officials. This disease does not discriminate or limit itself to one group of people. It’s not only refugees that carry it. To contract it, however, you must have prolonged exposure to it. It’s not like influenza where someone sneezes and you catch it.”

Bad hygiene, lowered immunity, and overcrowding – the conditions in a refugee camp – are ideal breeding places for the disease to manifest itself, not in cities like Fargo, Morehead, Grand Forks, or Bismarck.

Valley Community Health Center Dr. Marsha Lange wrote to the Grand Forks Herald on May 20, 2016, urging readers not to worry about catching tuberculosis from recent immigrants and refugees. Being in charge of ordering tuberculosis tests at the Valley Community Health Center in Grand Forks, Lange wrote that no refugees so far have tested positive, and that local residents should be more worried about the ever-growing problem of obesity from delicious food newly-arrived immigrants are cooking across North Dakota, rather than tuberculosis.

Health Officer at Fargo Cass Public Health Dr. John Baird said cases of tuberculosis have arisen in Fargo during the past few years, both from refugees and long time residents alike, but that there is no reason for worry.

“From every standpoint I look I do not see that refugees are a risk to our community,” Baird said. “The individuals that come here as refugees come from difficult situations. They’re screened when they leave, and checked when they arrive.”

Latent tuberculosis has a ten percent chance during a person’s lifetime of ever becoming active, Baird said. “And there are antibiotics that can treat it,” Baird said.

Long time Fargo resident and owner of the Discount Market, Sharif Mohamed, spent 12 years in a refugee camp in Kenya before he was able to bring his family to Fargo. “I was thinking to myself last night about the name United States,” he said. “United States. Dividing people is not the right way.

“We are scared now because they deliver the wrong message,” Mohamed said.

The protestors, many wearing surgical masks, marched one block south on University Drive waiving banners that read “Stop labeling,” “My wife was killed by terrorism,” “I was a refugee,” and “Tell the truth.”

As director of the Afro-American Development Association, Abdullahi led the marchers speaking into a megaphone.

“Valley News,” Abdullahi said.

“We are one,” the protestors answered.

“Valley News,” Abdullahi said.

“Stop the hate.”

Protestors along University Drive 2

Protestors along University Drive – photo by C.S. Hagen

A taxi driver halted in a nearby parking lot to give the protestors two thumbs up. More than a few passersby honked while the protestors marched. One unknown driver of a SUV pulled out of the television station’s parking lot, rolled down the window, and gave the protestors the middle finger symbol, according to onlookers.

Haider said her family has felt welcomed by the Fargo-Morehead community since her arrival 20 years ago. Her goal as a leader and frequent speaker for the Center for Interfaith Project is to bridge the gap between immigrants, new and old.

“We deal with misconceptions,” Haider said. “And try to educate people, create harmony and learn to live together. It doesn’t help that the media is fanning the flames that separate us.”

In a letter delivered to KVLY Fargo, the Afro-American Development Association, the Somali Community Development of North Dakota, the Bhutanese Community of Fargo, and the Buddhist Community of North Dakota demanded an official apology and the immediate resignations of Valley News Live Reporter Bradford Arick, News Director Ike Walker, and Jim Wareham, the television station’s general manager.

“We will need additional encouragement, a sense of acceptance, and motivation so that we and our families can actually feel that we belong here,” the letter stated. “After all, we believe this is the only nation and the only home known to us, where we can be safe, be heard, and be a productive member of the society.”

The Fargo Human Relations Commission also sent a letter addressed to KVLY and to Ike Walker, Jim Wareham, Gretchen Hjelmstad, Bradford Arick, and all other KVLY anchors, reporters, and staff.

The letter challenges KVLY and its staff to “heighten its awareness, sensitivity, and standards for fact based reporting,” The letter further admonishes that “the damage from false and irresponsible journalism, compounded with intolerance of people based on religion, race, and ethnicity, damages lives and affects real people,” which the Human Relations Commission opposes.

The Fargo Human Relations Commission also made references to the values espoused by NBC Universal, the parent company of KVLY, saying that the local affiliate station should strive to adhere to those stated values of celebrating “diverse cultures and backgrounds by presenting positive role models, telling diverse success stories, commemorating heritage and fostering dialogue on a variety of platforms.”

The protestors’ fight, according to the Afro American Development Association, has only just begun.

On Monday, the Afro American Development Association began contacting local KVLY advertisers and sponsors, including Sanford Health, Corwin Auto, North Dakota State University, among others, to pull their advertising spots. They’ve also started a #DropKVLY campaign on the association’s Facebook page urging sponsors to join the fight against Valley News Live apparent anti-immigration agenda. The group is also asking community members to check back on their Facebook page for updates and opportunities to circulate letters, sign petitions, and join future actions against KVLY.

Harka Subba, 28, holds sign with friend Madan Rana. Photo by C.S. Hagen

Harka Subba, 28, holds sign with friend Madan Rana. Photo by C.S. Hagen

“We value you, we support you, you are one of us,” Nelson said when he ended his speech to the protestors. “Fargo has become a place for people to begin new lives. Together, Fargo has become a world-class city.”

“Some of you didn’t choose Fargo,” Mike Williams said. Protestors chuckled. Many of the recent immigrants come from south of the equator, where snow appears only in the movies or in dreams. “But we want you to stay here.”

Grace Mbuthia, right, with Jonix Owin

Grace Mbuthia (right) with Jonix Owin, protesting. Photo by C.S. Hagen

Requests for a response from Valley News Live management were ignored. Emails and telephone messages sent to KVLY News Director Ike Walker were not returned. Nate Bakke, who works in the station’s production department, said employees were not allowed to speak to the press on the issue.

Bonanzaville – Fargo’s Haunted Mansion

By C.S. Hagen

FARGO – Late at night, the north wind whistles through the Houston House cracks. Raindrops – tiny footsteps to the imagination – flick against the 135-year-old frame, now fitted with aluminum siding.

Darkness retreats reluctantly under a lantern’s light revealing Victorian opulence: fine lace curtains, a dusty gilt leather bound Bible, thick as a set of encyclopedias, an Art Deco mahogany bookshelf towering above parlor chairs, a pump organ sitting silently and opposite a medieval hunting tapestry. A once plush couch hugs a polar bear rug, its death grin sparkles before slipping back into the shadows.

Above the ornate walnut staircase from a second floor bedroom, a floorboard creaks. Rumors the Houston House, built by David Henderson Houston Sr., is haunted become momentary fact as breath mists before the eyes.

The Houston House - photo by C.S. Hagen

The Houston House – photo by C.S. Hagen

Some of the legends emanating from the Houston House are undeniably strange, although proof the old homestead is haunted has yet to be found. Workers and visitors to Bonanzaville Village, a sprawling museum dedicated to North Dakota history, have reported instances of hearing children laughing inside the Houston House, in the middle of winter, when no children were anywhere near. Ghost hunters visited the house three years ago and found evidence the homestead and a nearby tavern and one-time brothel named the Brass Rail Saloon, possessed paranormal activity, according to Brenda Warren, Bonanzaville’s executive director.

“In the upstairs southeast bedroom of the Houston House there is always an indentation in the pillow,” Brenda said. She has worked at Bonanzaville for three years. “And I always fluff it back up. When I come back to check on things there is always the same indentation in that pillow.

“I’ve never really believed in the paranormal, however, this keeps happening over and over again,” Brenda said. “So it makes me wonder if maybe there might be something there.”

The room where Houston, a former inventor, farmer, and poet, and hailed as one of Cass County’s most remarkable citizens, died from a brain hemorrhage after becoming lost in a blizzard in 1906, museum records report. Mental torment, which stemmed not only from the blizzard, but also from watching his life’s work ripped away from him by corporate giants, attributed to his death, according to museum records.

Reoccurring pillow indentation inside Houston's bedroom where he died - photo by C.S. Hagen

Pillow indentation inside Houston’s bedroom where he died – photo by C.S. Hagen

Missy Warren, Brenda’s daughter and the special events and wedding coordinator at the museum is fascinated with the Houston House. “It’s my favorite structure on the premises, hands down, because of all the beautiful pieces in it. It adds a lot to the ambiance to the house to know that people have heard of and seen things in that house. I really do believe that if there is a spirit, there is a very kind and patient spirit.”

Missy once heard a loud noise inside the Brass Rail Saloon, which to this day gives her the shivers. “There is something in the saloon, and everything that has been heard has come from the upstairs, where it was most likely once a brothel.”

If ghosts exist, and return to the land of the living because of unfinished business, then the Houston House is at the very least a viable setting, both Brenda and Missy agreed.

 

Houston, the Man

Houston was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1841, and immigrated with his family via New York City to Wisconsin in 1841 when he was three years old, according to a 1900 edition of the Compendium of History and Biography. Houston moved to the Cass County area, outside of Hunter, North Dakota, alone when he was 38 years old and fell in love with the windswept Dakota Territory plains. A time when buffalos and Native Americans still roamed freely, according to his niece-in-law Mina Fisher Hammer in her 1940 book The History of Kodak and its Continuations.

A diminutive figure, bespectacled and bearded, a reader of the classics, studious and borderline recluse, he never attended church, but took pleasure in long walks at dawn, and working not only with the earth and his skills at farming, but beneath it, in a cyclone shelter, to further his photographic inventions.

Houston’s first patent was filed in 1867 for a camera invention. Throughout his life a total of 21 patents including the roll-film mechanism, which was to become the heart of the Kodak camera, were also invented and patented by Houston, according to patent records available at Bonanzaville. He sold the roll-film mechanism patent to George Eastman, the controversial owner of the name Kodak, for $5,700, according to patent records.

Neighbors thought Houston a “little funny,” according to a 1987 edition of The Highlander, but he was soon to become the envy of the land. Preferring quiet to satisfy his curious mind, he didn’t marry until he was 47, after his growing fortunes allowed him to build the Houston House, half of which was moved to Bonanzaville in 1971. He married 23-year-old Annie Laurie Prentiss, a longhaired beauty with flashing black eyes, perfect features, vivacious and daring, according to museum records. Annie was his exact opposite in every way. She was a music teacher, loved the most modern fashions, the piano, and was seen frequently racing trains with her buggy and pair of Hambletonian horses, according to museum records.

pictures houston2

David and Annie Houston – photo by C.S. Hagen

Life for the newlyweds was merry the first years, and became even merrier after Annie gave birth to a son, according to Hammer. The house was filled with parrots, sparkling kerosene lanterns, servants and maids, and was heated with the area’s only known furnace heater. Houston’s inventions, however, including farm plows and high-yielding grain seed, but most importantly his camera equipment, were never far from his mind.

“Hours, even a day and a night, would pass when one saw nothing of him,” Hunter wrote. “He was a dreamer, a seer.”

Houston House main living room - photo by C.S. Hagen

Houston House main living room – photo by C.S. Hagen

“All of the Houstons were spiritualists,” the article featuring the Houston family in The Highlander reported. “One room was used for séances. Mrs. Houston devised a type of short hand to record words for the “other side,” which she claimed came too rapidly for shorthand.” Many of the slats used to record such messages were reportedly from Houston’s favorite poet Robert Burns.

Annie began taking frequent trips into Fargo, where she was always bejeweled with diamonds and wore the most recent fashions, according to museum records. She wintered with their son, David Houston Jr. in Miami, Florida, leaving her husband alone, as was his wish, to continue his studies and inventions.

“She was lonely,” a neighbor was quoted saying about Annie in museum records. “Her days were awfully dull.”

 

Houston, the Forgotten Inventor

As photographers, called Kodakers after Houston’s inventions helped spur the Eastman Kodak Company to international fame and fortune, became a portable device available for $25, Houston continued improving on his inventions.

Much like the dragon and its soft underbelly, genius always has an Achilles heel. Houston could invent revolutionary equipment, but he could not control the entrepreneurs who sought to entrap him, and had no desire to manufacture for himself, according to Hammer.

During the following two decades, Houston became Eastman’s gadfly.

A patent document in museum files

A patent document in museum files

By 1886, Houston had sold all his patents to Eastman, for a collective total of $48,000, according to museum records. Eastman, on the other hand, created a monopoly, eventually wiping out all major competition through shrewd business deals and strong-armed lawsuits, according to Hammer.

Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb among other equipment, tried to take credit for Houston’s inventions, according to Hammer. Edison and Eastman worked closely together, and to this day Edison is still accredited with the invention of the moving camera, the forerunner of modern movie equipment and a giant leap from what was then known as the magic lantern. Without Houston’s roll film apparatus, however, there would never have been any portable or moving camera invented, at least, for some time.

“The roll film mechanism solved the magic lantern quest for animated photograph, but contained the basis for the moving picture as well,” Hammer wrote in her book. Houston’s soon-to-be controversial invention was designed to utilize a strip of film wound on a roll, which was then fed into an opposing spool as exposures were taken.

“He had the most uncanny genius for camera inventions that I have ever known,” Eastman said about Houston, according to museum records. And yet, despite owning Houston’s patents, Eastman refused to give Houston even partial credit for the invention that transformed the bulky cameras into handheld devices. According to a March 15, 1932 Minneapolis Tribune article on Eastman, Houston’s roll-film apparatus was considered “one of the company’s most valued assets.”

Houston’s loss of recognition for his inventions was also due in part to imperfect patent legislation, which protected the patent owner and not the inventor, according to Hammer.

Additionally, the origination of the name Kodak has been under debate since it was trademarked in 1888. Eastman refused to admit the word Kodak was Houston’s brainchild. Instead, Eastman said the word meant nothing, and that he had “pulled it out of thin air,” according to museum records including official press releases from the Eastman Kodak Company. The name was patented under Eastman’s name before Houston sold his patents, according to museum records.

“Houston named the invention [his first camera] Kodak, after the state of North Dakota in 1880, then patented the device,” Hammer wrote. Hammer was witness to Houston’s mental anguish toward the end of his life, according to U.S. Patent Office records. “But because it is not permissible to patent the name of an invention, it was agreed that Eastman, after he took over Houston’s patent output, should register Kodak as a trademark – making him heir to the name.

“Mr. Houston, of course, during the 1880s, realized that he was engulfed by forces beyond his control,” Hammer wrote. “He was not a fighter in such a sense. It was apparent to him that two course lay open. He must fall in line, appease, or cease inventing.”

Invention was his life. He could not choose the latter, and eventually his patents were swallowed by Eastman’s ambitions to combine the portable camera and the flexible film concepts.

By the winter of 1906, Houston had already decided to end his camera inventions.

“Houston was so disillusioned over his treatment by Eastman that he ordered all his photographic inventions and cameras destroyed,” museum records report.

Houston died in his bed in the room open to tourists inside the Houston House at Bonanzaville. He left behind a modest estate, which was quickly divided up according to his wishes. The Houston House was split in two, passing through different owners until it eventually arrived in West Fargo’s Bonanzaville Village.

Eastman went on to create a company worth $200 million, according to the Minneapolis Tribune. He committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart on March 14, 1932.

 

Houston, the Ghost

As of April 26, 2016, a pillow inside the southeast room had a perfect human head’s indentation, as if someone taken a nap on it. Could it be Houston, the inventor, or his son’s spirit who died young while at sea? Or could it have been Annie Houston, the beautiful woman who unlike her talking parrots proved difficult to cage?

“If I had to choose anyone it would be Mr. Houston,” Missy said. “I feel he was ripped off to a certain extent. All the accusations came out and said he didn’t invent these things, but there is no solid proof that he didn’t’ invent.” Some newspaper and magazine articles attribute Houston’s inventions to a brother in Wisconsin, claiming that David Houston was only the patent lawyer.

“But I feel he was ripped off,” Missy said. “His inventions should be attributed to him. He should be recognized.”

The Eastman Kodak Company did not respond to requests for a response, but according to recent press releases the company’s official position had not changed. Houston was not recognized officially for his inventions or for creating the name Kodak. Patent paperwork dated from the 19th century disagrees with the Eastman Kodak Company’s position.

“They were kind and giving people,” Missy said of the Houston family. Once, when a fire broke out in Hunter, North Dakota, Houston rushed to help, and being a landowner assisted anyone whose assets were harmed during the conflagration, museum records report.

“If David and Annie are still there,” Missy said. “So be it.”

Bird cage

A bird cage inside the Houston House – photo by C.S. Hagen

Twin Sisters Recall 1990 Armenian Pogrom

101 years after the Armenian Genocide began, the world still refuses to recognize the atrocities

By C.S. Hagen

BAKU, SOVIET UNION  – An angry humming noise kept Karine Eloyse Pirumova from her windows. Curtains drawn, she knew the cacophony was heading her way. Despite the fact her husband had begun sleeping with a knife under his pillow, she refused to believe the rumors, until her telephone rang one afternoon mid January 1990.

“We need to flee the city.” Karine’s twin sister’s voice was panicky. “I’ve just been let go. It’s not safe for Armenians in Baku any longer.” They hurriedly agreed to meet at Karine’s apartment.

The line fell silent. Her sister, Marine, was let go? She had a good job working as a communications specialist with the Caspian Shipping Company. She glanced around her government-supplied apartment. Where to go? What to take?

Pirumova sisters looking over a recently-published Russian book about their family history - photo by C.S. Hagen

Pirumova sisters looking over a recently-published Russian book about their family history – photo by C.S. Hagen

Andrey and Genna, her young sons, played contentedly with their toys. Supper simmered on the stove. Pictures of the Pirumova family, once Armenian generals and nobles, hung from her walls. Karine had heard the news of lootings and beatings, not through heavily censored Soviet news broadcasts, but through her Russian husband, who spoke the local Azerbaijani language. She never dreamed the violence could reach their doorstep.

Hands trembling, Karine packed a small suitcase. Her father’s nearly forgotten stories sent chills down her spine. As a child, her father, Abesalom Pirumov, had seen his mother gunned down in the streets. Her dying words to him were, “Run, my children,” Karine said.

“It was the first thing I thought of. And after 70 years it was happening to our family again.”

“Life was getting hard in 1988,” Marine, Karine’s sister, said. Her hometown, a seaside port in the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, was relatively peaceful until the unrest began. Muslims and Christians lived as neighbors with few incidents. “But we kept living our lives. Baku was an international city. We could not believe that in modern Baku this kind of thing could happen again. Just like in 1915. Killing people. Robbing. Raping. It was the same story.”

Karine could almost decipher a chant coming from the rioters in the streets below her apartment. What was to become known in history as “Black January,” Baku city’s Muslim-led pogrom to eradicate Armenians due to ethnic tensions over land claims, had begun.

Bones from the Armenian Genocide, circa 1920s, from The Commentator.

Bones from the Armenian Genocide, circa 1920s, from The Commentator.

No time to pack pictures or jewelry. Food was important. They would need water, and money. In those days, and in the Soviet Union, no one had bank accounts. Cash was the only recognized tender, something of which she had precious little.

Karine stiffened. The chant became clear. “Out! Armenian Christians. Out!” Karine, pronounced Ka-ree-na, told her boys to start calling her Katia, a Russian name, instead of her given and easily recognizable Armenian one.

Marine traveled fast as she could to her sister’s apartment complex. The roads teemed with people. She kept her face lowered to hide her white complexion.  She said there was no time for her to return to her apartment to pack a suitcase.

“I heard screaming,” Marine said. “It was a woman’s voice. And this time I was scared. I asked myself why hadn’t I left already?”

Twin sisters, Marine and Karine Pirumova, with father and brother

Twin sisters, Marine and Karine Pirumova, with father and brother

X Marks an Armenian

The systematic destruction of anything Armenian left approximately 300 dead, and forced 250,000 Armenians into exile in January 1990, according to a 2010 conference made public by the Armenian National Academy of Sciences. From the South Fargo home of Jim and Eloyce Kenward, Karine’s sponsors, the sisters spoke of a secret list marked with X’s for every Armenian in Baku.

News was heavily censored. Information was blocked. The pogrom was a direct response from Soviet Azerbaijan to the Armenian demonstrators urging the Kremlin to allow Karabakh back into Armenia. Both Armenian and Azerbaijani held claims to the area, which had long before belonged to Christian Armenians.

“In 1923, Stalin gave this land to Azerbaijan, and under Gorbachev, Armenians decided to take this land back,” Marine said.

The protests sparked Azerbaijani hatred, long simmered to coals during Soviet occupation. In an attempt to quash the Armenian movement, special forces called Azeri Omon initiated the pogrom in Sumgait in 1988, and later in similar assaults in Kirovabad, Baku, and in Karabakh, according to the Armenian National Academy of Sciences.

Exact numbers of Armenians killed in 1990 are still a mystery. In 2010, the director of the Center for Caucasus Studies at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Vladimir Zakharov, said xenophobia was always a problem, even under Soviet rule.

“Hatred against Armenians passed on from generation to generation and today the image of Armenians as an enemy to Azerbaijan is propagated at the national level,” Zakharov said.

Abesalom Pirumov

Abesalom Pirumov

Hatred, Karine said, that her father knew well. Despite the fact that he watched his mother gunned down, that the family mansion and surrounding city was burned to the ground in 1920, and that he was forced to flee to Baku, her father did not reciprocate the hatred.

Once nobility, and at the tender age of 13, he fled the family’s grand ancestral home in Shusha, Nagorno-Karabakh, with nothing but the clothes on his back. He survived, and later married a tailor’s daughter, Evgenia Pirumova, and raised twin daughters and one son. He rarely spoke of the troubles of 1920, except to weep openly when he spoke of his mother. He never uttered a harsh word against the Soviet Union, even after his brother was imprisoned for 17 years under Stalin’s regime for crimes against the communist state. Like the Pirumova sisters, his family in 1920 never expected the violence to reach such a crescendo. A recent book published in Russian entitled Pirumov and Pirumova by Yuri Pirumov, shows pictures of extended family, once generals, intellectuals, and revolutionaries, and the family mansion, now in ruins.

Destitute and orphaned, Abesalom survived the 170-mile journey from Shusha to Baku.   Other family members, including the Pirumova’s maternal grandfather, was forced into the death caravans and into the Syrian Desert. He too survived, but rarely spoke of the ordeal while Karine and Marine were young.

A bookkeeper by trade, Abesalom’s aspirations in life were to sleep peacefully at night, and never overstep his bounds. He was an honest, hardworking man, who sipped a little vodka to calm his nerves at night.

Pirumov family mansion ruins1920s

Pirumov family mansion ruins 1920s

During the first pogrom against Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire, which began on April 24, 1915, more than 1.5 million Armenians were massacred in what most historians now call the Armenian Genocide, according to the New York Times and the Armenian Genocide Museum. Some scholars claim the “Great Crime” was the first genocide of the 20th Century, even though the word genocide was not coined until after World War II.

During the first phase of the organized extermination, young men were conscripted into the Ottoman army, then forced to give up their weapons, dig their own graves, and face firing squads, according to the Armenian Genocide Museum. The second phase began with the arrest of several hundred Armenian intellectuals and elite, who were summarily beheaded. Mass exile began the third phase. Thousands died from organized attacks along the way, epidemic disease, and starvation, according to the Armenian Genocide Museum. The forced marches, nicknamed “Caravans of Despair” sent thousands of Armenians into the Syrian Desert, only to be attacked by Sultan-backed bandits, according to the Armenian National Institute.

Pirumova sisters' grandparents - seated (pre 1915)

Pirumova sisters’ grandparents – seated (pre 1915)

American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire before and during World War I, Henry Morgenthau, reported on the widespread slaughter vigilantly, and later wrote a book called Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story.

“Cold-blooded, calculated state policy,” Morgenthau wrote. “I am confident the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this.”

Escape to Moscow

Under cover of night, the Pirumov family piled into a Lada taxi. The driver was a friend. Streets teemed with rioters. Men with clubs banged on the taxi’s hood, peering inside, asking if Armenians were inside.

The twin sisters crouched low, covering their dark hair and faces as best they could. Andrey and Genna clung to their mother’s waist.

“No.” The taxi driver waved the rioters away. “There are no Armenians in here.”

The drive to a Russian friend’s home was tense, Karine said. “I don’t know if she hadn’t heard the news, or if she was a hero, but she rescued us.”

Despite the growing violence, family friend Marina Korchazhkina endangered herself by giving food and shelter to the Pirumov family for two days, Karine said, until she received word a ship from her trading company could ferry them across the Caspian Sea to Krasnovodsk. During the wait, the sisters learned both their houses had been burgled.

“The very next day men in leather jackets robbed my house,” Marine said. She was single when the troubles began. “If I had been there, I would have been killed.”

While in hiding, the sisters’ also discovered their cousin, Melik, was attacked and nearly beaten to death inside a public bus. If the driver had not taken pity, he might have died, Karine said.

At the shipyard along the Caspian Sea, however, the Pirumovs and thousands of Armenians found some semblance of safety. The growing crowd pushed and shoved. The winter cold was bitter during the hours long wait. Azerbaijani ship crew teased the crowd, lowering the narrow gangplank to arms reach before hoisting it back up, Marine said.

“And we still weren’t sure if we would have been thrown off the ship,” Karine said. But the Pirumovs had no other place to go.

Soviet troops made their presence known throughout Baku, Marine said. “But it seemed they were waiting around for orders. Eventually, some soldiers started to help, like when we were at the shipyard they surrounded us. They were controlling so it was good.” Their encirclement kept rioters at bay, Marine said.

At midnight, the gangplank hit the dock. The crowd jostled forward. Marine screamed at the crowd to board slowly, for the walkway was narrow, and the icy seawaters below would surely swallow anyone who fell. Once on board, Marine found the captain, a former co-worker, who gave them a cabin.

“There were hundreds of people sleeping in the hallways,” Marine said. “We were very fortunate.”

From Krasnovodsk the Pirumov family traveled by plane to Moscow, at one time sneaking Karine’s two sons on board while Marine asked the captain for assistance, which was given. “The Russians were sympathetic,” Marine said. “But the Soviet government did very little to help, many times troops who were supposed to be protecting us turned their backs on us or stood there and watched.”

In Moscow, they stayed with their brother until kindly villagers accepted them in. Karine remembers being treated as an outsider because of her black hair. When her family was given an apartment with two rooms, neighbors bickered. She responded by telling them hard work, and no vodka, was her secret.

Refuge in Fargo

Marine was the first to see the Statue of Liberty from an airplane. Months of waiting in lines, bribing Soviet clerks, procuring the proper documents as a refugee took its toll, but when she landed with twenty dollars in her pocket, she felt happiness, and peace.

Marine's Soviet passport - photo by C.S. Hagen

Marine’s Soviet passport – photo by C.S. Hagen

Her sponsor, Lutheran Social Services, had arranged for her to travel to Fargo, North Dakota. She had never heard of the city or the state before, saw on a map it was close to Canada and wondered if Fargo was cold.

“But I was so happy I was going to the United States, I didn’t care where I was going.” Marine laughed. “I wondered if I could go to South Dakota because it sounded warmer.”

Lutheran Social Services offered Marine a job as a butcher, but she refused, saying she needed to learn English. Her first job was at Kmart, and although she wanted to work in the back, away from people, Kmart managers placed her at a cash register.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t understand,” Marine said. Both sisters no longer have English problems. Their Slavic accents are a delight to the ear. “And I learned quickly when I was on my break to take off my work vest, or customers would ask me questions I could not answer.”

She met the Kenward family through Olivet Lutheran Church, who agreed to become her sister’s sponsor.

“We met 24 years ago,” Jim Kenward said. “And since then we haven’t broken ties. Their family is our family.”

“I am so thankful to them and to the United States,” Marine said. “Our father lost everything, and we lost everything.”

Karine and her two sons arrived in Fargo years later and because they no longer held the status of refugees they arrived as “Privileged Immigration Parolees,” Karine said. She held up the documents proudly to prove it.

In Fargo today, the Pirumovs can find some of the comforts from their former lives. Karine cooks traditional dishes at home. Marine and her husband opened their own business, Anytime Transportation, and employed Karine as their bookkeeper.

“I am so glad I came here,” Karine said. One of her sons graduated from North Dakota State University, the other from Concordia College. She found Marina Korchazhkina, their savior in Baku, on Facebook, and is in frequent contact.

When asked about President Obama’s recent failure to publically recognize the Armenian troubles of 1915 as genocide, Karine sighed. “If genocide had been recognized by the world when this happened, maybe today would be better. Maybe, it wouldn’t have happened to the Jews.”

With the recent rise of ISIS near their home country, the Pirumova sisters are disturbed. There is little difference with the terrorist group’s systematic slaughter to the Ottoman savagery, or the 1990 Azerbaijani pogroms, they said. Armenia, ancient land of the Hittites, once the most powerful kingdom east of the Roman Empire, now a fledgling republic established in 1991, is the only Christian bastion in Central Asia.

“I am always thinking about the refugees, because I was one of them,” Marine said. “America takes immigrants, and this is what I appreciate about the United States. We are a country of immigrants.”

Pirumova sisters enjoying cake with the Keywords - photo by C.S. Hagen

Safe in Fargo, North Dakota, the Pirumova sisters enjoying cake with the Kenwards – photo by C.S. Hagen

 

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