Wanderlust

Across the plains and into the sky

June 18, 2007 at 2:27 pm gvblog 2 comments

It’s early in the morning and I’m sitting in a beautiful old house in Rapid City, drinking coffee to demolish the cobwebs that linger in my brain and thinking about the weekend that was. First of all, the whole concept of weekends has gotten lost for me – there are just days, one after another. But nonetheless I had a weekend, of sorts, in which I did not brave a tornado warning, saw some sheep up close and personal, found a friend to ride with, and got a peek inside the politics of South Dakota.

It all started Friday when I met with Nathan Peterson, who was the Deputy Campaign Director of the Campaign for Healthy Families which came together to put the abortion ban to the voters.  What actually happened is a little cunfusing, but in a nutshell: South Dakota legislature passed a total ban on abortion – no exceptions for rape or incest. The Campaign for Healthy Families (CHF) put gathered signatures to put the issue before the voters as Question 6, which asked sometihng like "shall it be South Dakota law that abortion is illegal?" SD defeated the ban by a wide margin. 

Having worked on statewide ballot initiatives about parental notification for abortion in California, I was curious to hear what it had been like to work in South Dakota. Although I expected it, it was heartening to hear that people literally came out of the woodwork to defeat the ban. There was a middle-aged housewife from west river, college students from Sioux Falls, and a grandfather from Aberdeen all out talking to voters, explaining to them why the ban was dangerous. Nathan also said that if the supporters of the ban had had their act together at all, they could easily have won, which I thought was interesting. Apparently they had virtually no media strategy and mostly relied on churches to disseminate information and yard signs, which they took as the key indicator of their support.

There is probably nothing more irritating to campaign staff than yard signs, and here’s why. YARD SIGNS DON’T VOTE.  You can have seventeen times more yard signs up than I do, but if those people aren’t actually voters, it doesn’t mean anything.  Unfortunately, it’s really hard to convince people of this, and without fail every campaign office spends time with some regularity calming down worked up supporters who are convinced that they’re losing the yard sign battle.  The way you win elections is by talking to voters, identifying those that support you, and getting them to the polls. The supporters of the ban also evidently were sending out push polls (slanted polls designed to make you change your opinion, with questions like "if you found out the candidate X molested children, would that be okay with you?" Their push polls were going out to every number in the state, from what the CHF can determine, which means that they weren’t doing any voter targeting at all.

This is virtually the same experience we had in California – the people who put Props 73 and 85 (the two parental notification initiatives) on the ballot didn’t run any campaign at all, really, and what they did do seemed like a pretty big waste of resources, like putting up one billboard in San Francisco. Just one. This leads me to wonder why the anti-choicers are so bad at campaigns. That’s certainly not the reputation they have nationwide, but that seems to have been our experience both in California and South Dakota.

On Friday afternoon I went over to the Abstinence Clearinghouse, hoping to talk with someone who does abstinence only education in schools. Unfortunately, no one there would talk to me.  I did get copies of lots of their materials, including reports from the Heritage Foundation on how effective abstinence only education is and lots of pamphlets about the horrible, terrible things that happen to people who have sex outside of marriage. I feel like there is more to say about that, but right now I don’t feel like I have the time or the energy. 

Friday night I had the opportunity to spend time with Ky Guse, who is a native South Dakotan who I know from San Francisco, where we both worked at Law Students for Choice (at different times). She invited lots of people she knew from when she worked at Planned Parenthood in South Dakota, so I got a chance to talk to lots of volunteers, staff people, and friends. There were several women who are doing work on the reservation in public health. One facilitates a program in "self-guided change" to help women who are pregnant stop drinking in order to reduce the possibility of their child developing fetal alcohol syndrome,

I really like the idea of calling it "self-guided change", because really, that’s what all change is, if it’s real. If you’re going to change, you’re going to do it yourself. No one else is going to do it for you.

On Saturday, Ky drove me clear cross South Dakota (thanks Ky!) because I was getting nervous about being able to complete this next part of my trip by the beginning of July. (I also could live without three more days of riding through cornfields.) She dropped me off at Cactus Flats, where I climbed back on Rhonda and rode down into the Badlands.  The Badlands look like they should be in another country, not next to the rest of South Dakota.  Towering sandstone rock formations erupt from the prairie and the rolling grasses drop abruptly into deep red caverns dotted with mysterious caves.  The road wound along the edge of the prairie, dotted periodically with parking lots and signs that said ‘scenic viewpoint’ at which the tourists all trotted dutifully out of their cars to take pictures.

At one point there were bighorn sheep literally on the road, and a whole line of cars had stopped and were taking pictures. My first instinct was "oh, sheep! I should take a picture!" but as a consequence, I feel like I didn’t really see the sheep.  It made me think about how having a camera mediates experiences – dazzling views and indescribable sunsets become photo opportunities, all of nature distilled into a five by seven frame.  That seems wrong, somehow, but I don’t think that not taking pictures is the answer either. 

I biked through the park, flying in the face of the gathering thunderstorm, out to Cedar Creek campground, a primitive campground in the middle of the badlands.  I has just finished dinner and was getting my tent ready when a ranger drove up. "Just want to let you know," he said, "there’s a tornado warning in Rapid City and a tornado watch for this area, and the weather’s moving East. I’m not saying you have to leave, but you stay at your own risk."

So, I’m from California, and the one thing that really, truly scares me, weather-wise, is tornadoes. Especially when I’m out in the middle of nowhere, on my bike, with nary a building in sight (except the outhouse). I thought about staying, but I knew that if I camped, I would spend literally the whole night worried about getting caught in a tornado.  I quick skedaddled over to a van that was packing up to leave and they graciously gave me a ride into Wall, the home of Wall Drug.  I paid for a hotel room, (the first time I’ve paid for lodging on this trip – howsabout that?) and called my sister so that she knew I was safe.  (Turns out she didn’t even know about the tornado warning, so she wasn’t even worried.)

The next morning i rode over to the main drag to grab some breakfast, and lo and behold – another touring bike! and a good one, too – old, panniers falling to pieces, stuff strapped on haphazardly with bungee cords. I walked into the restaurant and immediately picked out the guy with the glove tan, wolfing down food as he looked at a map.  A kindred soul! Tom and I ended up riding together yesterday, since we were going the same way, and spent most of the day talking about what the world looks like from a bicycle. He’s crossed the country five times, and done lots of other shorter trips. He’d ridden pretty much all the places I’d ridden and then some. We’d both gotten in trouble crossing the Susquehanna bridge in Delaware (although my technique of getting out of the ticket by making the cop feel sorry for me didn’t work as well for him).

It was great to have someone to ride with for a day, to feel the common bond that links people who think it sounds like a lot of fun to ride a bike for months on end.  In the end, we arrived in Rapid City, and he pressed on, hoping to make it to Deadwood, while I opted for a warm bed and a hot shower.  I’m staying with the Murray’s, who are actually transplants from Santa Monica, a part of LA not far at all from where I grew up. 

Some people have asked me to post more about the obstacles people face, how different laws and customs impact reproductive rights across the country.  Well, a Rapid City woman recently got a crash course in what happens when you run into law enforcement that believes they’re responsible for enforcing morals as well as laws.  This woman was arrested for driving under the influence, and when she told the officer she was pregnanct, she was taken to a detox unit and held for FIVE days without a lawyer and without bond.  Normally, if you’re arrested for driving under the influence, you can be bailed out immediately. But because she was pregnant, they charged her with – get ready – "child endangerment" and wouldn’t release her (or allow her to talk to a public defender, for that matter). Now, I’m not advocating for people to drink while pregnant, or drive drunk, but to hold her without bail and without telling her what’s going on for five days is unconscionable.  Last time I checked, it wasn’t illegal to drink. It’s not even illegal to drink while you’re pregnant.  When you start charging women for crimes against the fetus, how long do you think it will be before women who have abortions are charged with homicide? Fetal homicide laws get passed every year, and so far they’re not enforceable, but if Roe v. Wade ever gets overturned…

Today I’m headed North and then west across Wyoming. This next part of the trip, across the bighorns, through Yellowstone, and up through Montana, is going to be remote, so I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to post. I’ll do my best, though!!

 

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