BY ED FELIEN
I awoke from a horrible nightmare last week. My wife and I and Keith Ellison were walking in the dark and we were attacked by a man with a knife. I screamed to my wife to call 911 and I tried desperately to reach Keith. He cried out, “I think he’s got an artery.” I struggled to reach him and finally forced myself to wake up.
Halfway between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice is Halloween, or Samhain in the Celtic calendar, when the jaws of hell open and spirits roam the earth and wreak vengeance against the living.
Keith has been the victim of a vicious and vengeful attack. He was called abusive by an ex-girlfriend. She claimed she had proof, a video, but nothing was shown. The Star Tribune and Alpha (a right-wing news source) demanded the courts open Keith’s sealed divorce papers. They hoped it would show a pattern of abuse. What the divorce papers revealed was that Keith was the victim of domestic abuse, and his attempt to keep the papers sealed (at the risk of his candidacy) was done to protect his ex-wife.
And where have all the other DFL-endorsed candidates for statewide office stood on this? Did they stand with Keith? No. They turned away and pretended they didn’t hear. Their silence was an indictment. And they watched Keith sink in the polls.
Keith was our hope there would be a progressive voice in DFL governance. He was a Bernie Sanders radical in coalition with bourgeois liberals. But it is always the liberals that betray us. Humphrey co-sponsored every piece of anti-communist legislation in Congress. Fraser helped found Americans for Democratic Action to screen out radicals from seeking office.
Radicals have to understand this. We have no choice but to support bourgeois liberals in the DFL. We have to act in coalition with them, but we must always be aware that if the opportunity occurs, they will plunge a knife in our backs.
