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In response to Tim Connolly,
His question regarding how many DFL'ers have
"labored" or farmed as part of their political or personal life is a valid
one. I don't know about other candidates running this year on the DFL
ticket, but my background certainly includes a lot of labor, and I don't just
mean the effort required in welcoming my 15-month old son into this
world!
I am running for Park Board in Minneapolis and
people ask me what qualifies me for such a position. First, it is a
citizen position, like all of our elected democracy, and I am a citizen.
That is my first qualification. I have the desire to participate in the
democratic process and the desire to lead. That is my motivation to run
for office.
Secondly, although I belonged to an organized labor
union for only a few years many years ago (as a public school teacher), and
although I have never farmed in the traditional sense, I have been a Democrat my
entire life (see my website for vintage 1976 photos of me with my first
Carter-Mondale sign fresh from the National Convention @ www.TracyNordstrom.com) and currently I
own a garden design and maintenance company. I spend every day from April
to November close to the soil. I plant literally thousands of blooming
plants each spring. I tend the annuals, perennials, vegetables, vines,
roses, aquatic plants, and herbs for residential and commercial
clients throughout the season. I garden as organically as I can
using all kinds of fragrant "remnants" for fertilizer, pest control, mulch,
and weed control. It is a blessed job. And very hard work. My
hands are calloused, my back aches after 15 years of being bent at the waist and
after hauling so many sacks of soil, compost, mulch, and digging for so many
months each year. My nails are short and tough, the cracks in my fingers
permanently stained the color of the earth. It is very glamorous
profession, indeed! And I wouldn't trade a minute of it (in rain, in mud,
in mosquitoes, in hot hot sun) for anything.
I also come from a long line of both farmers and
laborers. Just a quick glance at my family's history of Labor Union
participation tallies something like 136 years of combined membership in unions
representing carpenters, teachers, public employees, grocery personnel,
secretaries, school cooks, domestics, and printers. Everyone of my
grandparents, both my parents, and my in-laws, have been in labor unions at one
time or another during their varied careers. And yet I run (DFL endorsed,
mind you) without one labor union supporting me.
Everyone else in my family, back from my parents,
farmed. Mostly here in Minnesota or Iowa, and before that in Norway and
Sweden. My parents still have a 5 acre "hobby farm" where they grow
everything from rhubarb and raspberries to hundreds of blooming plants to a
small tree farm my father planted some 18 years ago.
I hope my experience with the growing world
qualifies me to run for a position that requires sound stewardship of over 6300
acres of park land here in Minneapolis. Some of that land is actually
under cultivation! My recent work in the ECCO neighborhood has put me into
a better understanding, too, of our vegetative history. If you visit the
east side of Lake Calhoun this summer, you will see a very exciting
development: the restoration of 4.2 acres of oak savanna. A very
rare plant community, indeed, and the very plant community that existed here
before settlement in 1880. I am the grant recipient and point person for
the project. It is a very exciting partnership between the neighborhood,
the Park Board, the Minnesota DNR, and various volunteers, and I would like to
see more native habitat restoration happening in our "untended" sections of park
land throughout Minneapolis.
I wish I had the backing of labor in my race this
year for Park Board, but, I do not. My opponent does. But I have the
DFL endorsement, the backing of the DFL Feminist Caucus, the DFL Stonewall, and
our neighborhood group, Citizens for a Better Calhoun. And I have many
years of labor (some hard, most absolutely glorious), behind me.
Tracy Nordstrom
Candidate for Park Board, District 6
East Calhoun
"Our native landscape is our home...It speaks of
the distant past and carries our life into the tomorrow. To keep this pure
and unadulterated is a sacred heritage, a noble task of the highest cultural
value." - Landscape Architect, Jens Jensen.
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