7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2016
Yearning for unity, enduring divisiveness
This is the final install-
ment of Divided America,
AP’s exploration of the eco-
nomic, social and political
divisions in American society.
By JERRY SCHWARTZ
Associated Press
Though they live about
1,730 miles apart, though
they’ve never met, though
they are of different races and
backgrounds, Lauren Boebert
and Dorothy Johnson-Speight
speak almost in unison when
they lament the fracturing of
America.
Americans must “come
together, be non-judgmental
about people and their opin-
ions,” says Johnson-Spei-
ght. Americans must “come
together as one,” says
Boebert.
And yet these two women
stand squarely at the epicen-
ter of American acrimony
— territory explored by The
Associated Press in “Divided
America,” a series of stories
that surveyed a United States
that is far from united.
Boebert owns the gun-
friendly Shooters Grill in the
aptly named town of Rifle,
Colorado, and wears a hand-
gun. Johnson-Speight fights
for gun control laws after the
2001 murder of her 24-year-
old son Khaaliq Jabbar John-
son, shot seven times in a
dispute over a Philadelphia
parking spot.
Their differences are stark,
but their yearning for a more
civil and less divided nation
is genuine. In that, they mir-
ror other Americans inter-
viewed over the past six
months. They are caught up
in a campaign that magnified
its disagreements, and left
them longing for harmony;
they live in a country that
cannot square its present with
its pedigree as “one nation,
under God, indivisible.”
The fact is, America’s dif-
ferences are real, and cannot
be glossed over.
In Missoula, Montana,
an effort to welcome doz-
ens of refugees — Congo-
lese, Afghans, Syrians —
was met with demonstrations
and angry confrontations. “I
didn’t do this to be contro-
versial. I didn’t do this to stir
the pot,” says Mary Poole,
one of the leaders of the ref-
ugee project — but she did.
Two patriotic visions came
into conflict: the America that
welcomes the huddled masses
yearning to breathe free, and
the America still shaken by
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, and in the years since,
insisting on homeland secu-
rity above all.
On New York’s Staten
Island, police and the policed
struggle to coexist. On an
island that is home to 3,000
police officers, a black man
suspected of selling loose
cigarettes died in an encoun-
ter with police in 2014. The
black community knows the
police do an important job,
but it is deeply distrustful
after the death of Eric Garner
and other violent encounters
with authority. Police, mean-
while, feel unappreciated,
their character impugned. “I
think the divide is worse than
it should be and more than
people think it is,” says retired
detective Joe Brandefine.
At the Christian Fellow-
ship Church in Benton, Ken-
tucky, pastor Richie Clen-
denen tells his congregation,
“There’s nobody more hated
in this nation than Chris-
tians.” Evangelical Chris-
tians’ numbers are in decline,
their political clout dimin-
ished. On signal issues —
particularly same-sex mar-
riage — they have lost, at
least for the moment. They
port for Republican Donald
Trump: “I don’t know what’s
in his head, what his vision is
for us,” said Ashley Kominar,
a mother of three whose hus-
band lost his job in the mines.
“But I know he has one and
that’s what counts.”
The recovery from the
Great Recession has left
behind a lot of rural Amer-
ica. The Washington-based
Economic Innovation Group
found that half of the new
business growth over the past
four years was concentrated
in just 20 populous coun-
ties, and three quarters of the
nation’s economically dis-
tressed ZIP codes are in rural
areas.
The recovery meant little
to workers in Hannibal, Ohio,
where Chinese competition
resulted in the loss of the
largest employer, the Ormet
aluminum plant.
And it meant little to stu-
dents in Waukegan, Illinois;
poor school districts had
no way to make up funding
losses when federal stimu-
lus money dried up. So while
the nearby Stevenson district
spends close to $18,800 per
student, Waukegan spends
about $12,600. Its students
must cope with a high school
that is often badly maintained,
where as many as 28 students
share a single computer.
That Stevenson is mostly
white and Waukegan is
mostly minority should come
as little surprise. The racial
divide endures, at least in
some part because minorities
continue to be significantly
underrepresented in Con-
gress and nearly every state
legislature, an AP analysis
found. Thanks to gerryman-
dering and voting patterns,
non-Hispanic whites make up
a little over 60 percent of the
U.S. population, but still hold
more than 80 percent of all
congressional and state legis-
lative seats.
AP Photo/Claire Galofaro
Billy Prater, 27, adjusts a Donald Trump sign on his fence
in Beech Creek, W.Va., in Mingo County in April. Laid off
from the mines, he had been out of work for more than a
year. Now he works for the railroad, but the major custom-
er is the collapsing coal industry so his work is unsteady.
He was a registered Democrat from a family of diehard
Democrats. But when he hung the Trump sign, his neigh-
bors started calling and sending him messages, asking
where he got it and how to get their own. “Everybody on
this creek wants one,” he said. “He’s honest. He says thing
that he probably shouldn’t say. We respect that, because it
means he’s not buttering us up.”
are angry and frustrated and
unwilling to surrender. “We
are moving more and more
in conflict with the culture
and with other agendas,” says
David Parish, a former pastor
at Christian Fellowship.
There’s so much more:
Americans split on climate
change, between those who
say it is an existential threat
and those who deny it is hap-
pening or at least that man
has anything to do with it.
Even as they contemplate
electing the first woman pres-
ident, even as women take on
combat roles, Americans are
struggling with a misogynis-
tic backlash, online and in
real life. Then there’s the gun
debate, which Adam Winkler,
a constitutional law professor
at UCLA says is “more polar-
ized and sour than any time
before in American history.”
There is common ground.
At the Annin Flagmakers fac-
tory in South Boston, Vir-
ginia, seamstress Emily Boul-
din says Americans “may be
divided on some things, but
when it comes down to the
most important things we
come together.” Nearly all
Americans, according to sur-
veys, believe in small busi-
ness, the public schools,
helping the less fortunate and
caring for veterans.
Some differences, though,
are profound and lasting, hav-
ing less to do with what peo-
ple think and more to do with
where they fall — on which
side of the line between pros-
perity and ill-fortune.
In Logan, West Virginia,
in central Appalachia, the
decline of the coal indus-
try has brought a population
drain, rampant drug abuse,
heightened poverty (crema-
tions are up because folks
can’t afford caskets) and
deep resentment that fed sup-
OREGON CAPITAL
Standoff: ‘It’s a stunning
victory for the defense’
INSIDER
An
example:
Afri-
can-Americans
represent
more than a fifth of Delaware
residents, but for the past 22
years Margaret Rose Henry
has been the state’s only
black senator.
“If there were more black
elected officials, we would
have a better chance to get
something done,” Henry says.
Much of this is not new.
As much as Americans like to
recall the past as a rosy Nor-
man Rockwell illustration,
they have been at odds from
the start — thousands of Brit-
ish loyalists battled their rev-
olutionary neighbors in the
colonies, North and South
went to war over race, labor
and management fought for
decades, often violently, and
the Vietnam era was awash
with vitriol.
If today’s divisiveness
is different, some say, per-
haps it is because of a lack of
leadership.
“Yes, America is great. It
could be a lot better if the pol-
iticians weren’t fighting each
other all the time,” says Rod-
ney Kimball, a stove dealer in
West Bethel, Maine.
Elvin Lai, a San Diego
hotelier, says the voters them-
selves must accept much of
the blame.
“I do believe that our
political system is broken,”
he says. “I do believe that a
person that is centered and
is really there to bring the
country together won’t get
the votes because they’re not
able to speak to the passion-
ate voters who want to see
change.”
It’s those passionate vot-
ers, after all, who cocoon
themselves with the like-
minded, watching Fox News
if they lean right or read-
ing Talking Points Memo if
they’re on the left. In their
ideological
segregation,
their minds are not open to
compromise.
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Continued from Page 1A
“It’s stunning. It’s a stun-
ning victory for the defense,”
said Robert Salisbury, attorney
for defendant Jeff Banta. “I’m
speechless.”
The U.S Attorney in Ore-
gon, Billy J. Williams, issued
a statement defending the deci-
sion to bring charges against
the seven defendants: “We
strongly believe that this case
needed to be brought before
a Court, publicly tried, and
decided by a jury.”
The Oregon case is a con-
tinuation of the tense standoff
with federal officials at Cliven
Bundy’s ranch in 2014. Cliven,
Ammon and Ryan Bundy are
among those who are to go on
trial in Nevada early next year
for that standoff.
While the charges in Ore-
gon accused defendants of pre-
venting federal workers from
getting to their workplace,
the case in Nevada revolves
around allegations of a more
direct threat: An armed stand-
off involving dozens of Bundy
backers pointing weapons,
including assault-style rifles, at
federal Bureau of Land Man-
agement agents and contract
cowboys rounding up cattle
near the Bundy ranch outside
Bunkerville.
Daniel Hill, attorney for
Ammon Bundy in the Nevada
case, said he believed the
acquittal in Oregon bodes
well for his client and the
other defendants facing felony
weapon, conspiracy and other
charges.
“When the jury here hears
the whole story, I expect the
same result,” Hill told The
Associated Press in Las Vegas.
Hill also said he’ll seek his cli-
ent’s release from federal cus-
tody pending trial in Nevada.
U.S. Attorney Daniel Bog-
den in Nevada, however,
said the acquittals in Portland
should have no effect in the Las
Vegas case. “The Oregon case
and charges are separate and
unrelated to the Nevada case
and charges,” Bogden said.
Ammon Bundy and his fol-
lowers took over the Oregon
bird sanctuary on Jan. 2. They
AP Photo/Don Ryan
Defendant Shawna Cox speaks at left as supporters hug
outside federal court in Portland Thursday. A jury exoner-
ated brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy and five others of
conspiring to impede federal workers from their jobs at
the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
objected to prison sentences
handed down to Dwight and
Steven Hammond, two local
ranchers convicted of setting
fires. They demanded the gov-
ernment free the father and son
and relinquish control of public
lands to local officials.
The Bundys and other
key figures were arrested in
a Jan. 26 traffic stop outside
the refuge that ended with
police fatally shooting Robert
“LaVoy” Finicum, an occupa-
tion spokesman. Most occupi-
ers left after his death, but four
holdouts remained until Feb.
11, when they surrendered fol-
lowing a lengthy negotiation.
Federal prosecutors took
two weeks to present their
case, finishing with a display of
more than 30 guns seized after
the standoff. An FBI agent tes-
tified that 16,636 live rounds
and nearly 1,700 spent casings
were found.
During trial, Bundy testified
that the plan was to take owner-
ship of the refuge by occupying
it for a period of time and then
turn it over to local officials to
use as they saw fit.
Bundy also testified that the
occupiers carried guns because
they would have been arrested
immediately otherwise and to
protect themselves against pos-
sible government attack.
The bird sanctuary take-
over drew sympathizers from
around the West.
It also drew a few protesters
who were upset that the armed
occupation was preventing oth-
ers from using the land. They
included Kieran Suckling,
executive director of the Center
for Biological Diversity, who
called the acquittals disturbing.
“The Bundy clan and their
followers peddle a dangerous
brand of radicalism aimed at
taking over lands owned by all
of us. I worry this verdict only
emboldens the kind of intimi-
dation and right-wing violence
that underpins their move-
ment,” Suckling said.
One of Ammon Bundy’s
attorneys, Morgan Philpot, had
a different perspective after
watching Mumford get tackled
by marshals. “His liberty was
just assaulted by the very gov-
ernment that was supposed to
protect it, by the very govern-
ment that just prosecuted his
client — unjustly as the jury
found.”
There’s another Oregon trial
coming up over the wildlife
refuge.
Authorities had charged
26 occupiers with conspir-
acy. Eleven pleaded guilty, and
another had the charge dropped.
Seven defendants chose not to
be tried at this time. Their trial
is scheduled to begin Feb. 14.
Associated Press writ-
ers Andrew Selsky in Salem
and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas
contributed.
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