Todd/Wadena County DFL, 26092 County 14, Browerville, MN (2026)

09/07/2026

THE DELUSIONS OF A PRESIDENT WITH DEMENTIA
Del Moen

On Labor Day weekend
the silence breaks—

not with the measured word
of a neighbor calling us together,
not with a hand upon the gate
to ask who needs bread,
not with the patient speech
of one who has counted the cost
of keeping a household whole—

but with another picture
of a man mistaking noise
for power.

By evening
the nation is summoned
into the theater of his mind:

flags become weapons,
governors become enemies,
the earth becomes a game board,
and the moon—
which has watched the tides
before our oldest names—
is claimed as though
a signature could own the sky.

But no man owns the moon.

No man owns the river
that passes through his property
on its way to the sea.

No man owns the soil
that receives his body
when his boasting is finished.

The land does not applaud him.
The trees do not bow.
The fields do not grow richer
because a powerful man
has placed his face
upon another glowing screen.

A country is not made
by images of iron armies
marching beneath a private sun.

It is made by hands:

hands repairing the barn roof,
hands mending the fence,
hands lifting a neighbor
from the ditch after the storm,
hands planting beans
whose harvest will belong
to someone not yet born.

This is the strength
the palace cannot understand—

the strength of people
who do not need to be worshiped
in order to serve.

The strength of the nurse
who enters another difficult room.

The teacher who stays late
to help a child read.

The farmer who saves seed
for the next season.

The grandmother
who tells the truth
without needing a camera.

The stranger
who brings soup
when the power goes out.

Here is the republic:

not a throne,
but a table;

not a fortress,
but a meetinghouse;

not a golden name
shining above the people,
but many names
spoken with affection
across a fence,
a church basement,
a school gymnasium,
a line at the polling place.

The White House
is not a throne.

It is a house
held in trust—
and trust is not possession.

The Constitution
is not a hammer
for one man’s hand.

The flag
is not a license
to despise the foreigner.

The eagle
does not belong
to the loudest voice.

The future
cannot be inherited
by a ruler who believes
everything exists
for his reflection.

Let him build
his black towers in the air.

Let him surround himself
with machines
and call their shadows destiny.

Let him promise
that the world will dream of him.

We will remember
that the world is not his dream.

The world is the child
waiting for clean water.

The field recovering
from drought.

The immigrant
standing outside the courthouse.

The prisoner
whose name has been forgotten.

The widow
counting the cost of winter.

The young person
wondering whether there is
a place for courage
in a country ruled
by spectacle.

We will answer
as citizens,
not subjects.

We will tell the truth
in the places where truth
still has a human voice.

We will stand beside
the people made invisible
by cruelty dressed as policy.

We will resist
the lie that domination
is strength.

We will resist
the lie that contempt
is patriotism.

We will resist
the lie that a nation
can be healed
by making enemies
of the vulnerable.

And we will do more
than resist.

We will repair.

We will organize
the neighbors.

We will protect
the children.

We will keep watch
over the ballots.

We will carry food
to the household in need.

We will refuse
to let fear make us strangers
to one another.

For democracy
is not only a document
kept behind glass.

It is a daily practice
of mutual regard.

It is the difficult freedom
of listening.

It is the discipline
of accepting limits.

It is the humility
to know that no person—
not even a president—
can hold the whole truth
inside his own hands.

The moon is not his.

The land is not his.

The people are not his.

The office is not his.

The future is not his.

These things are held
in common trust,
as water is held
by a watershed,
as seed is held
by the dark earth,
as a child is held
by the arms of a village.

And when the rain comes,
we will hear it plainly—

not as applause
for a king,
not as a blessing
upon a throne,
but as the earth
receiving what it needs.

A daughter beside her father.
A neighbor beside her neighbor.
A porch light burning
through the storm.

No spectacle.

No empire.

Only the quiet work
of keeping one another alive.

That is the country
no tyrant can manufacture
and no propagandist can erase.

It lives wherever
people choose care
over cruelty,

truth
over theater,

community
over conquest,

and love of country
over worship of a man.

The moon is not his.

America is not his.

The morning is not his to command.

We are still here—

rooted in the ground,
answerable to one another,
and faithful to the work
of making a republic
worthy of the people
who must inherit it.

09/07/2026

DO NOT CALL ME LIBERAL AS AN INSULT
Del Moen

They say liberal
as though the word were spoiled,
as though compassion had gone bad
in the mouth of the nation.

They spit it toward the teacher,
the nurse,
the neighbor carrying groceries
to a family that has run out of food.

They spit it at the child
asking why the river is burning,
why the books are disappearing,
why the vote must pass through
so many locked doors.

So let them hear me clearly:

I am liberal.

I am the bleeding heart
that refuses to harden.

I am the hand extended
before the fist is raised.

I am the voice at the school-board meeting,
the body in the march,
the old woman writing letters
when silence would be easier.

I come from those
who crossed bridges under threat,
who sat at counters denied to them,
who marched through smoke and hatred
because freedom was never meant
to belong only to the comfortable.

I come from the workers
who demanded a safer factory,
from the elders who needed Social Security,
from the sick who needed Medicare,
from the poor who needed Medicaid,
from children protected
from the greed of grown men.

I come from the people
who said water should be drinkable,
libraries should be open,
labor should be paid,
and no child should be sent
into a furnace of profit.

Call that weakness
if you must.

I call it civilization.

Against this,
MAGA raises the architecture of grievance:

a golden throne,
a locked border,
a crowded prison,
a riot wrapped in a flag,
a Bible used as a weapon
against the people named inside it.

Liberals say:

Feed the hungry.

MAGA says:

Blame them.

Liberals say:

Protect the vote.

MAGA says:

Erase the names
that trouble our power.

Liberals say:

No one should lose a home
because illness entered the body.

MAGA says:

Let the poor learn
what they are worth.

Liberals say:

Let people love,
let people live,
let every soul stand upright
in the truth of its own becoming.

MAGA says:

Your difference is a threat.
Your joy is an offense.
Your family requires permission.

They bring a flag in one hand
and a scripture in the other
and call the cruelty holy.

But I have read enough of the prophets
to know that God is not impressed
by sanctified contempt.

I have followed the Teacher
who touched the untouchable,
who broke bread with the condemned,
who placed the despised
at the center of the story.

So if their heaven requires
the abandonment of the stranger,
the humiliation of the child,
the silence of the witness,
then let them keep that heaven.

Give me the half-lit room
where poets argue for the living.

Give me teachers with tired eyes,
protesters with weathered shoes,
drag queens making room for joy,
immigrants carrying tomorrow
across an invisible line,
and lost causes
who have not yet learned
to stop loving the world.

I was taught that decency
is not decoration.

It is what we do
when no one is applauding.

Help when you can.

Speak when it is hard.

Leave the ground
more merciful than you found it.

That is not weakness.

That is strength
tethered to conscience.

That is courage
without a uniform.

That is a country
still struggling to become
what it promised.

MAGA wants the bunker.

It wants the sealed gate,
the obedient child,
the frightened neighbor,
the billionaire above the law,
the church without mercy,
the flag without democracy.

But we are still here.

With books.

With ballots.

With clean water in our demands
and justice in our throats.

With names for the disappeared
and room at the table
for those power has discarded.

Call us woke.

Call us snowflakes.

Call us socialists,
elitists,
bleeding hearts,
educated troublemakers.

Call us liberal.

We will answer
without lowering our eyes.

Yes—

liberal enough
to believe that government
can serve the vulnerable.

Liberal enough
to believe that freedom
belongs to all of us.

Liberal enough
to choose mercy
over domination,
truth over spectacle,
community over revenge.

I wear the word
they meant as a wound.

I pin it to my chest
like a small, bright flag.

Not because the work is finished.

Because it is not.

Because the soul of the country
is still being contested
in classrooms, clinics, courtrooms,
church basements, streets,
and every kitchen
where someone says:

We can do better.

We should do better.

Then, by the grace
of our stubborn conscience,

we will try.

And try again.

And hold the line
until hatred understands
that it has never owned
the future.

09/06/2026

THE BALLOT IS A DOOR
Del Moen

They fear the ordinary hand
reaching for a pen.

They fear the neighbor
who drives another neighbor
to the polling place.

They fear the grandmother
who has outlived their slogans,
the student who has read the history,
the worker who knows
who keeps taking from the table.

They fear us
when we refuse to be divided
into the useful and the disposable,
the worthy and the suspect,
the citizen and the stranger.

They fear the congregation
that opens its doors,
the union hall that keeps its lights on,
the volunteers who carry water
and patience through the long lines.

They fear the truth
because truth does not need
a golden tower,
a manufactured enemy,
or a leader demanding applause.

Truth stands in the open
with its hands empty
and its face turned toward the people.

Let them redraw the maps.

We will redraw the future.

Let them close the polling places.

We will become the road
that brings every voice
to the remaining door.

Let them bury the air
under threats, distractions,
and the noise of grievance.

We will answer with names,
with witness,
with the patient arithmetic
of neighbors who show up.

This is not revenge.

It is repair.

Not the conquest of our fellow citizens,
but the defeat of the machinery
that teaches them to fear one another.

Not a throne exchanged
for another throne,
but a republic reclaimed
from those who mistake power
for permission.

We carry no hatred
for the people caught
inside the red machinery.

We carry a summons:

Come out.

There is room
beyond the chant.

There is bread
beyond the barricade.

There is a country
larger than the man
who keeps saying
it belongs only to him.

And when November arrives,
let every ballot become
a small act of liberation.

Let every verified vote say:

You do not own this nation.

You do not own the future.

You do not own the word
‘American.’

We do.

All of us
who refuse to surrender
the vulnerable,

all of us
who defend the stranger,

all of us
who believe democracy
is not a spectacle
but a daily obligation,

all of us
who stand together
when power commands silence.

The darkness may be organized.

So are we.

The lie may be loud.

So is the multitude
when it remembers its name.

And if they are afraid
of the people rising,
let their fear be answered
not with cruelty,

but with a turnout
too vast to erase,

a courage
too steady to break,

and a future
wide enough
for everyone
to enter.

09/06/2026

THE SABBATH OF ENOUGH
Del Moen

On the seventh day
the empire asks for more—

more hours from the tired hands,
more proof from the poor,
more gold from the wounded earth,
more fear poured into every empty room.

But the Sabbath closes the ledger.

It sets the hammer down.
It lets the field keep its silence.
It allows the river
to carry nothing but water.

A child sleeps
without earning the morning.

A widow waters basil
in a cracked clay pot.

Somewhere, an old man
sits beneath an oak
whose shade does not inquire
what he has accomplished.

This is resistance:

to eat the bread
without apologizing for hunger,

to drink the water
as a gift and not a commodity,

to mend what can be mended
and release what cannot,

to walk slowly enough
for the world to become visible again.

The Sabbath does not promise
that the tyrant has vanished.

The walls may still be standing.
The loud men may still be shouting.
The machinery of greed
may still be grinding its teeth.

But for one day
we refuse to become its fuel.

We gather with the living—
the sparrow in the hedge,
the worm beneath the stone,
the neighbor carrying grief
like a bucket from a deep well.

We say:

Here is enough bread.
Here is enough sky.
Here is enough breath
to begin again.

And if our hands are empty,
let them be empty
of the things that made us cruel.

Let them be open
for the small astonishments—

a blue jay lifting
from the fence,

light resting
on a rain-darkened leaf,

the body of the earth
still turning beneath us,

the old promise
that no life is wasted
when it is given to love.

At sundown
we sit without demanding
a revelation.

The clouds become
only clouds.

The wind becomes
only wind.

And yet the whole creation
seems to whisper:

You are not required
to conquer the world
to belong to it.

You are not required
to possess the future
to serve it.

You are not required
to become more
than the life
that has been entrusted to you.

Rest, then.

Let the heart
lay down its weapons.

Let enoughness
become a door.

Let love enter
without a trumpet,

and let the Sabbath
teach us again
the ancient art
of staying alive
without becoming
what we oppose.

09/06/2026

TRUMP’S AGENDA- HATE, LIES, CORRUPTION
Del Moen

The courthouse door opened
and the Constitution stood there—

not as a slogan
not as a flag draped behind a podium
not as a name stamped onto another monument,

but as a boundary:

You may not seize the machinery of an election
and call it administration.
You may not narrow the people’s voice
with a rule Congress never gave you.
You may not turn the ballot
into a gate guarded by your suspicion.

The judge spoke
and millions of citizens
heard the sound of a locked door
being forced open from the inside.

The states are not your property.
The mail is not your weapon.
The vote is not your inheritance.

And in Washington
beneath the patient trees
where memory has outlived presidents,

a triumphal arch waited
for permission it had not received,

while the earth beneath it
held older testimony—

the buried traces of those
whose names never appeared
on the marble,

the workers,
the dispossessed,
the enslaved,
the immigrants,
the soldiers sent to wars
described as small potatoes
by men who never carried
the weight of a body home.

Dig carefully,
the judge said.

History is under your shovel.

The dead are not decorations
for a ruler’s appetite.

Across the water
the word war was dressed
in smaller clothing:

conflict,
operation,
necessity,
one more phrase
to make grief sound manageable.

But eighteen families
do not receive a smaller silence.

The body does not care
what the briefing calls the wound.

The Strait does not belong
to the mouth that claims it.
The future does not belong
to the hand that threatens it.

And inside the Pentagon
the questions multiplied:

Who spoke?
Who warned?
Who told the truth
about the ammunition running low,
the deployments stretching long,
the machinery of war
consuming the future
while demanding applause?

So the lie detector became
another instrument of fear,

but truth has never lived
inside a machine.

Truth lives in the exhausted medic,
the analyst who keeps the record,
the officer who refuses
to falsify the map,
the family who recognizes
the sound of footsteps
returning from a war
that was never honestly named.

Let science remain science.

Do not raid the laboratories
to decorate the Pentagon’s hunger.

Pandemics do not salute.
Viruses do not negotiate
with uniforms or flags.

A nation is defended
by vaccines,
by knowledge,
by public trust,
by doctors permitted to follow evidence
instead of orders shaped
for a headline.

The river does not understand
the language of deregulation.

It carries the poison
downstream.

The wetland does not appear
on a donor’s balance sheet.

It holds the flood,
the eggs,
the reeds,
the memory of rain.

And the Earth keeps asking
the same ancient question:

Who gave you permission
to destroy what you did not create?

They spoke of trade
as though every truck
crossing a border
were a defeat,

as though tomatoes were enemies,
as though workers were numbers,
as though a nation became stronger
by pretending it needs no one.

But bread has always crossed hands.
Steel has always crossed rivers.
Ideas have always crossed languages.

The world is not a vault
filled with trophies.

It is a table.

And the table grows
when no one is turned away.

Then came the games—

bright screens,
simple rules,
children taught to chase
the vulnerable,

to make a score
of another person’s removal,

to stack division
higher and higher
until the wall collapses
under the weight
of its own cruelty.

But play is not innocent
when hatred writes the instructions.

A child can learn
to see a neighbor as human.
A child can learn
to see a neighbor as prey.

We will not surrender
the imagination of our children
to the architects of contempt.

Let every screen go dark
until the game changes.

Let the pieces become people.
Let the wall become a bridge.
Let the hand that reaches down
lift someone up.

And above the world
the map was corrected.

Africa rose
to its true proportion.

The old distortion trembled
beneath the weight of reality.

Only one nation voted
to preserve the lie.

But no vote can make Greenland larger.
No decree can make Africa smaller.
No office can command the oceans
to accept a false horizon.

The world will not remain
the shape of your ambition.

Even the absence
of those who refuse the spectacle
became a kind of testimony.

Empty chairs
speak.

A wife who will not appear,
lawmakers who will not applaud,
citizens who will not purchase
a costly ticket to decline—

these are not footnotes.

They are cracks
in the painted wall.

And when the president said
that no one would claim his work
when he was gone,

he spoke more truth
than he intended.

The nation will not remember
the name engraved
on every temporary stone.

It will remember
who defended the ballot,
who protected the water,
who told the truth about war,
who guarded the laboratories,
who refused to turn children
against the stranger.

It will remember
the people who stood
when standing was costly.

The republic is not your trophy.

The Constitution is not your stage prop.
The dead are not your architecture.
The military is not your private shield.
The Treasury is not your casino.
The map is not your mirror.
The child is not your recruit.

The nation is larger
than one man’s signature.

Larger than one family’s brand.

Larger than the hunger
to put a name on everything
because the name itself
cannot endure.

We are still here—

at the courthouse,
at the polling place,
beside the river,
inside the laboratory,
beneath the honest map,
around the table,
in every hand
that refuses to turn away.

We are still here,

not worshiping power
but practicing responsibility,

not confusing cruelty
with strength,

not mistaking noise
for greatness.

The wall will fall.

The waters will remember.

The ballot will return
to the hands of the people.

And when the false monuments crack,
when the slogans fade,
when the last screen goes dark,

the enduring work
will remain:

to protect the vulnerable,
to tell the truth,
to repair what was broken,
and to make a country
where no one must become less human
so that another person
can feel great.

09/06/2026

THE ANCIENT HUMAN GAME OF MERCY
Del Moen

They dressed the cruelty in pixels,
gave hatred bright colors
and a child-sized screen.

They called it play—
but the targets were human beings,
families moving through heat and river,
people reduced to figures
beneath a scoreboard.

Catch them.
Count them.
Deport them.

As if exile were a bonus round,
as if an orange jumpsuit
were a costume,
as if every frightened face
were only another point.

They built a wall from falling blocks
and named the people beyond it
a horde.

They taught small hands
to stack the barrier higher,
to celebrate when bodies struck it,
to mistake fear for patriotism
and separation for safety.

But children are not born
with hatred in their hands.

They learn it from the screen,
from the voice of authority,
from the government that turns
another person’s suffering
into a game.

They learn whom to fear
when the powerful call neighbors
invaders.

They learn whom to despise
when brown skin becomes
a warning sign
and human dignity
becomes a high score.

But somewhere beneath the noise,
a child still knows:

A person is not a target.
A family is not a threat.
A border is not a license
to abandon compassion.

The wall is not strong
because it is tall.

A nation is not great
because it can chase the vulnerable
and call the chase victory.

America is not made greater
by teaching children
to laugh at suffering.

No flag can sanctify cruelty.
No slogan can turn hatred
into love of country.
No game can make injustice
less real.

So let the children refuse
the poisoned scoreboards.

Let them learn the names
of those hidden behind the pixels.
Let them hear the river
as witness, not battlefield.
Let them discover that courage
does not mean hunting the powerless.

Build instead
a table wide enough for strangers.

Raise instead
a generation that knows
the difference between strength
and domination.

Play instead
the ancient human game
of mercy:

where nobody is disposable,
where nobody wins
by making another suffer,
where the final score
is measured in lives protected.

Hate will never make America great.

Only justice can do that.

09/05/2026

https://youtube.com/shorts/8kUl_fy_LPU?is=4TLTaZmk1reEE1jR

09/05/2026

ORGANIZE FOR NOVEMBER
Del Moen

While the country slept,
the interview went live—
a confession dressed as architecture,
a ruler pointing toward the future
and saying, Make it bigger.

Bigger than memory.
Bigger than sacrifice.
Bigger than Lincoln’s sorrow,
bigger than Arlington’s graves,
bigger than the living country
he was elected to serve.

Gold for the walls.
Gold for the columns.
Gold for the hand
that cannot hold enough of itself.

He calls it God’s favorite metal,
as if heaven keeps accounts
in gilded rooms,
as if the poor are not watching
their rent rise,
their medicine disappear,
their children inherit
a wounded earth.

He says,
Nobody will do it when I’m gone.

And there it is—
the frightened heart
beneath the marble:

a man who mistakes permanence
for greatness,
a man who thinks a monument
can silence history,
a man who believes concrete
can outlast the truth.

But history does not kneel
before a ballroom.

History remembers
who was shut out,
who was separated,
who was threatened,
who was mocked at the gate,
who stood in the cold
while power polished its name.

History remembers
the artists whose work was torn down,
the sacred places placed beneath
a shadow of vanity,
the institutions hollowed out
and renamed as loyalty.

History remembers
the people who said:

No.

No, you do not own the capital.
No, you do not own the flag.
No, you do not own the future.
No, you do not get to erase
what generations built together.

We are not a backdrop
for one man’s insecurity.

We are the teachers,
the nurses,
the mechanics,
the farmers,
the veterans,
the students,
the neighbors who still believe
a country is more than a brand
stamped across a wall.

We are the hands
that register the unheard,
the feet that walk the precincts,
the voices that tell the truth
one kitchen table at a time.

We are the people
who knock on doors
before the tyrant remembers
there are doors to knock on.

Organize.

Not with rage that burns itself out,
but with the patience of rivers.
Not with threats,
but with numbers.
Not with fantasies of rescue,
but with calendars,
lists, rides, calls,
child care, meals,
mutual aid,
and the stubborn discipline
of showing up.

Organize in the town hall.
Organize at the union hall.
Organize among neighbors
who have stopped speaking
because the noise became unbearable.

Find the independent voter
who is tired of paying
for somebody else’s vanity.

Find the veteran
who knows a monument
should honor the dead,
not flatter the living.

Find the Republican
who still believes
that no president stands
above the Constitution.

Find the frightened person
who thinks one vote is too small,
and tell them:

A stone is small
until it joins a wall.
A voice is small
until it joins a chorus.
A ballot is small
until millions of hands
place it together.

They have the red hat.
We have the red line.

They have the slogans.
We have the facts.

They have the spectacle.
We have the work.

They have a man
who wants to be remembered
as a monument.

We will be remembered
as the people
who refused to let democracy
become his mausoleum.

So let November come
with every bell awake.

Let the exhausted rise
without pretending they are not tired.
Let the grieving rise
carrying the names
of what has been lost.
Let the furious rise
and turn fury into labor.
Let the hopeful rise
and make hope practical.

Register.
Persuade.
Protect the vote.
Drive the neighbor.
Defend the truth.
Count every ballot.
Return every call.
Stand together
when the powerful insist
that we stand alone.

The monument we build
will not be made of gold.

It will be made of courage
shared across a county,
a city, a state,
a nation refusing
to surrender its name.

And when the wrecking crews
come for the old democracy,
when they say the damage
cannot be undone,
when they point toward the rubble
and call it destiny—

we will answer
with the oldest power
the powerful never understand:

We are still here.
We are organized.
We remember.
We vote.

09/05/2026

Eleven Wadena Indivisible members protested Trump using the US Postal Service to foul up the November elections. September 4 was our 73rd week of protesting on Hwy 10.

09/04/2026

🚪 House DFL hits the road! Join us to knock doors for Dan Mitchell (9/14, Park Rapids) and Maggie Evers (9/17, Wadena) — no experience needed, we'll pair you with a buddy. Every district matters. Sign-up links in comments!
🗓️ **Mon, Sept 14 — Dan Mitchell for House**
📍 Heartland Park, Pavilion 3, Park Rapids, MN
⏰ 5:00 PM
👉 Sign up: https://secure.ngpvan.com/1Ywm_Qew9kmZ8qLfE7naJA2

🗓️ **Thu, Sept 17 — Maggie Evers for House**
📍 Northern Pacific Depot, 100 Aldrich Ave SW, Wadena, MN
⏰ 5:00 PM
👉 Sign up: https://secure.ngpvan.com/zS3tithnY0qLdDc8U7kttg2
💙

Todd/Wadena County DFL

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

09/06/2026

09/06/2026

09/06/2026

09/06/2026

09/05/2026

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