All last week, images from the Red River played through mymind like a tune I know but am only somewhat aware I have been humming. Thelines of men and women and children tossing sandbags, making a wall where hoursbefore there was no wall, their feet firmly planted, their bodies bundledagainst a spring cold snap, are mythic and ancient, extraordinary and familiar.
We know them from last year and the decades before it, fromNew Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and from the towns along the Mississippi wherethe waters rose last spring and poured into the fields. These images are mythicand also, for me, they are particularly Midwestern. At least I'd like to claimfor us this sensible sense of responsibility for the group. This spirit is theonly aspect I consistently appreciate about staggering through Minnesotawinters and spring melts. We're in it together. If your town or battery needs a jumpstart, strangers putaside their normal deference to privacy and independence and join a communityeffort to help.
In the case of the Red River, I'm particularly moved by thesmall act of the sandbag being filled in a school gymnasium by one group ofpeople who are fed and kept warm by another and joined by a third who standbetween the town and the harm. Iheard a radio report from Fargo-Moorhead about the volunteers who came togetherthis weekend despite the reprieve of the slowing waters. Most had never experienced flooding intheir own homes, either this year or in the past. These citizens were not on the front lines to prevent a disasterfor themselves directly or even for their neighbors and relatives. It was neitherfear nor the memory of personal disaster that got them out of their chairs andinto their communities this chilly weekend.
These Red River heroes were serving food out of theirgarages, filling and tossing and piling sand bags in order to protect their community.They said they wanted to be a part of the effort to prevent damage to the homesand businesses of people they had never met.
At the risk of diminishing the gritty, pure beauty of theseefforts, I know why the sight of a bucket brigade of the unharmed strikes me atthis moment with such power. My life has had flood waters rise around it before,and in times when one's own life seems to teeter on the brink, it is incrediblymoving to look around and see that others are quietly filling sandbags.
I'm drawing hope from the Minnesota floodplain as the monthof April brings not only showers but also attention to the cresting harm ofsexual violence in Minnesota. April is Sexual Violence Awareness Month. There will be Take Back theNight and other events on college campuses and in communities across the state,events that are, for me, the sand bags of prevention. I will write here this month about why I'mcounting on Minnesota to stand up in small ways to make a big difference in thehealth and safety of our communities.
When prevention works, first the children will not beharmed; then the adolescents will notice: young men and women won't wonder whomthey can trust and, most especially, whether they can trust one another. Ourmost vulnerable citizens – the homeless, the disabled and our elders – will beprotected. Those who hear the call of a warm spring evening can walk freely, andwe will stop losing our women and children and men to trauma's silent flood, anundertow that haunts and harms those of us affected by sexual violence.
In the near future, I see communities ready to turn their attention to prevention – and so do the long line of sandbaggers already workingtoward a safer and more peaceful Minnesota. Join me here this month to see where the waters are risingand what we can do about it.
