The University of Central Missouri held its Homecoming parade this morning in Warrensburg. The sky was overcast and the temperature was in the low 50s. Johnson County Democrats entered a trailer in the parade. Walkers passed out candidate literature and voter registration information along the parade route.
Before the start of the parade.
Ray James, Johnson County Democratic Committee Chair.
The weather forecast was dismal (cool, overcast, and rain), so that may have suppressed the turnout.
The Democratic Party entry received an enthusiastic response along the route.
Compared to the previous year the turnout was lower. We looked for MAGA hats.
Out of thousands of individuals, we only spotted one, near the end of the parade:
Jess Piper (D) spoke at an event in Marshall, Missouri this afternoon which was sponsored by the Saline County Democratic Committee. There were over 100 individuals in attendance.
Audio:
A partial transcript:
Jess Piper (D): ….It takes three point five percent of Americans to stand up, to get in the streets for our government to say this isn’t working, we’re going to have to do something different, the people are noticing.
We have to keep the faith. We see things bad happening all around us, but I can tell you this. The sent the National Guard and ICE into Portland. How’s that working out? They got dancing frogs standing in front of them, right? You know you can’t buy a frog costume if you wanted to right now, right? You know how many frogs are gonna be at No Kings protests on [October] the 18th? [laughter] Right?…
Jess Piper (D): …You know why this happens, right? It happens because there are people who hear three times a week that they can’t vote for Democrats because they are Christian. Because Republicans don’t have to get out in areas like mine because the churches are doing it for ’em. They’re doing the campaigning behind the pulpit. And that’s not Christianity. And that’s not what I grew up with. And I don’t even recognize some of the people I went to church with. That stuff is called Christian Nationalism and it is not representative of Christians, it is not representative of their Christ, it is everything he would have stood against. They claim to be pro-life. Really? Are you feeding kids? Are you making sure they’re housed? You make sure they can go to the doctor when they need to? Can they eat at school? Do they have a school that is open five days a week? Do their parents have affordable housing? Do they have a livable wage? Those thing are pro-life. Those people are not pro-life. And I tell them every time to their face. That is Christian Nationalism. [applause]…
Jess Piper (D): …There are teachers that were fired in this state for not grieving a podcaster well enough. The were fired. There are people who were disciplined for nor grieving a podcaster. We’re living in scary times. We know it, and you know it, too…
Jess Piper (D):…I know what I’m seeing, and so do you. They want you to be quiet because it’s scary. I want you to be louder. Louder [applause] ICE is detaining our friends and our neighbors and our families. And they are doing it masked. And they are doing it without badges and without warrants. And they are taking people on the street and they are spraying them in the face with mace and pepper spray. And they see men in collars who represent the church and they hit them and the head with rubber bullets because they don’t care. Because they think they will not face any consequences. I know enough to know they will face consequences. We know what happened in Germany to those people who did what they did to their friends and their neighbors. And the same thing will happen here, I have every hope in the world. They will be held accountable for what they’re doing [applause]…
Warrensburg, Missouri is hosting its annual downtown fall street festival – “BurgFest” – this weekend. Johnson County Democrats host and staff a street both during the daytime and nighttime hours of the event.
This morning:
At the Johnson County Democratic Central Committee booth.
Gathering initiative petition and referendum signatures.
Will Westmoreland (D): ‘….We’ve lost thirty-seven percent of our agricultural markets around the world because of these tariff wars. Thirty-seven percent. China wasn’t prepared the first time around. All their hogs were sick, they didn’t have any supplies of row crops. Well, one thing you can’t say about the Chinese is they just sit around and wait for another disaster. They don’t do that.
They went down to Brazil. They helped cut down about six percent more of the rainforest. The put in railroad tracks and better rail to the coasts and then they built better harbors for those big grain [inaudible] ships that come through there. And they went from buying thirteen percent of their row crops for Brazil to now buying forty-three percent of their row crops from Brazil.
Oh, and by the way, because he’s a Trump mini me we gave Argentina a twenty-billion dollar bailout, which they use to abolish the tax on soybean sales so that China could come in and but billions of dollars of soybeans from them subsidized by the American government.
You can’t make this stuff up….’
Will Westmoreland (D): ‘…When I talk about meeting people halfway, I’ve got a good friend in St. Louis that told me, Will, you need to add something to your speech, we don’t meet Nazis and we don’t meet racists halfway.
It’s not who I’m talking about, okay? I’m talking about like people like that row crop farmer in St. Clair County who got smacked over the head with an anvil three times and finally decided, you know what, maybe it’s not in my best interest to vote for this guy.
Those are the people we can meet halfway…’
Will Westmoreland (D): ‘…I think of three and a half more years with this guy and it just makes me break out in a sweat and I want to sit down in my recliner and just not get up again…’
‘…We’ve got Democrats running in places around this country where Trump won by twenty-five percent and we’ve got Democrats knocking off those candidates because people are so upset. He’s not above water in any single category that we measure a president under. In every single category that we measure presidential approval he’s below fifty percent. And in almost every category he’s almost down to thirty-nine percent. People do not like what’s happening.
Just because the media loves to put the little Joseph Goebbels on the TV from the Whitehouse and all the other people that you see and they give them air time and they yap, and yap, and yap….Those are not the voices of America. Thank God. Those are not the voices of America.
Those are voices that we heard a long time ago when we sent the greatest generation from this country over to Europe to fight against it and over to the Pacific to fight against it…’
‘…I hear a lot of similarities between their rhetoric and the rhetoric of Fascists that we heard back in the day.
So we’ve got to keep fighting. It feels different now, doesn’t it? For those of you who are a little gray around the ears like I am, it feels different this time. I mean, yeah, we were fighting for important causes in the eighties and the nineties, etcetera. But this time it feels different. It feels like it’s not just a policy that’s at stake. It feels like it’s our country that’s at stake. [voices] The soul of our country…’
‘…They can have our Democracy when they pry it from our cold, dead hands. And I hate to be melodramatic about it, but that’s how I feel about it. I’m gonna fight to the very end to defend this Democracy and I know you will, too.
The good news is this. The majority of people in this country are on your side…’
Around 100 individuals from counties across the district attended.
On Saturday Lafayette County Democrats held their annual fundraising dinner and pie auction in Higginsville. It’s a fun event, with a reputation in Democratic Party circles across the state for good food, great speakers, and expensive pies.
People show up. And as with the many Democratic Party events across the state this large circle of like-minded friends and familiar faces is a tribute to their sustained activism and solidarity. You always make new friends at party events, large and small.
Saturday evening Lafayette County Democrats held their annual fundraising dinner and pie auction in Higginsville. Democratic Party office holders and party officials spoke at the event.
Will Westmoreland:….There’s a cloud brewing out there. And the cloud brewing over rural America is the darkest cloud out there right now. You know, Will Rogers used to say, it’s one of my favorite quotes, and some of you have heard it before, when they asked Will Rogers, ‘How do people learn in rural America?’ He said, ‘Well, some learn by reading, some learn by observing, and the rest of them just have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.’ [laughter] And there’s a lot of peeing on the electric fence going on in rural America right now. [laughter] But we can change that….
….We only need three percent of rural America to vote Democrat and we can win the presidency, the House, and the Senate. Well by golly, I’m a rural American and I kind of want a school board that doesn’t ban books. [applause] I want a county clerk that believes in free and fair elections. [cheers, applause] I want a health department that doesn’t think vaccines were sent up from the bowels of hell by the Devil himself. [laughter, applause]….
….I don’t give a damn about what every pundit in this country says, 33% in rural America didn’t vote for this dumbass [cheers, applause]….
Will Westmoreland: ….Everything that this administration does is a grift, but when it comes to privatization, when it comes to taking money out of our rural schools and sending it to private schools where 75% of the kids that get that money are already enrolled, it’s not just about the grift, it’s about indoctrination and you can count on that. [applause]….
….Did you ever see a president when he looks at rural ag policy he looks like a cow looking at a new gate? [laughter] Some of you get that. [laughter] This guy has absolutely pulled out the rug from under American farmers and this country….
….Every time I hear somebody say there’s not a difference between the two parties in this country I tell ’em, ‘bullshit.’ [applause] When my dad died when I was five years old and we didn’t have a place to live, and the republican party said, ‘you’re a burden to this country,’ it was the Democratic Party that made sure we had a roof over our head in the form of public housing. [applause] When the cupboards in our kitchen were bare, and the republicans said, ‘go to your church or go find a family member,’ it was the Democratic Party that gave us that funny money [applause] that we could take down to the grocery store and but food to feed our family. When my mother stepped up to the plate and went back to college to earn herself a degree to support her family and the republicans said, ‘we’re not gonna pay for it,’ it was the Democrats that gave her a Pell grant to go back and get that degree [applause]….
Saturday evening Lafayette County Democrats held their annual fundraising dinner and pie auction in Higginsville. Democratic Party office holders and party officials spoke at the event.
Russ Carnahan (D): ….they’re [republicans] are on the wrong side of history and they’re on the wrong side of voters.
Now, the latest overreach, Trump is telling states they’ve got to further gerrymander their congressional districts because they are scared. They have to rig the system to hide their unpopular agenda and they are desperate. They are desperate to stop investigations into their corruption and the Epstein scandal. [voices: “Yeah.”] They are desperate.
So we are gonna fight that tooth and nail….
Russ Carnahan (D): ….This mid-decade gerrymander that can likely happen in the middle of September when the legislature is back. Listen. We’re gonna fight that in the courts, you all are gonna fight that in the legislature, citizens are gonna have your back to do a referendum if needed. But the biggest goal is we’ve got to take this to the people with an initiative petition to take this power away from the republican power grab and create citizens’ commissions to draw our districts fairly. That’s the fight….
Yvonne Reeves Chong, Vice-Chair and Russ Carnahan, Chair – Missouri Democratic Party
Yesterday evening Lafayette County Democrats held their annual fundraising dinner and pie auction in Higginsville. Democratic Party office holders and party officials spoke at the event.
Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern (D): ….It has been a very tough year for Missouri Democrats. But here’s the deal, this is not new to us. And if we’ve learned one thing, it’s how we stand up, fight back, and get organized. This, Missouri Democrats have a long tradition of standing up against the republican bullies. And we’re not gonna stop now.
When republicans tried to strip power from labor unions by forcing down our throats ‘right to work for less,’ What did we do? We stood up, we band together, and we defeated Prop. A. [applause] When republicans refused to give Missourians access to life saving health care through Medicaid expansion Missouri Democrats banded together, passed Medicaid expansion, and you know what? Gave these rural hospitals the lifeline they needed to stay afloat and save lives. [applause] When Missouri republicans took away the right to our very bodily autonomy we gathered together, gathered thousands of signatures all across this state, and we passed Amendment 3 to reclaim our rights. [applause] But the headlines aren’t new to you and they’re not new to me.
We know that here in the Missouri General Assembly that they continue to try and erase you. To erase your voice and your vote….
Yesterday evening Lafayette County Democrats held their annual fundraising dinner and pie auction in Higginsville. Democratic Party office holders and party officials spoke at the event.
Rep. David Tyson-Smith.
.
Rep. David Tyson-Smith (D): ….the people that are around [Trump] right now have no backbone. They have no backbone and they’re cowards. And, and not only they are not standing up to him, they’re, they’re going along with his bidding, right. So, uh, for example Congressman [Mark] Alford (r), okay, so he had a town hall recently, you know I met with him, and I talked with him. You need to have a town hall. You need to go out and meet the people. A public town hall. Right, not just a private thing, a public thing. And so he shows up and he says, ‘Um, you know everyone’s, you know, basically, people don’t like these, uh, ICE agents with masks.’ And he says, ‘You know, you guys liked masks with COVID. But now you don’t like masks with ICE agents?’ [voices: “No.”] Can you believe he said that? Can you believe that? I mean, the, you’re groaning, they were groaning at that town hall. It’s gross.
You’ve got Josh Hawley (r) who voted for the big ugly bill, right, right [voices: “Boo!”] The big ugly bill which is going to kill rural hospitals, isn’t it? And then he tries to fool you and says, ‘Oh, you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna file my own bill to help rural hospitals.’ What are you talking about, Josh? Your bill is not gonna pass. No. Are his republican friends gonna vote for his bill? No. He just says that so you think he’s on your side. He’s not on your side. He’s voting against you….
Rep. David Tyson-Smith (D): ….What I’m gonna tell you is the truth. This is, I promise you, this is not an exaggeration. A thousand years from now people are going to look back at this moment and they’re going to look to see what happened. Did he roll over the country, keep the House illegally, stay an extra term, another term, smash everything that’s sacred to all of us? Or did we stand up and fight?….
….Well I say, maximum resistance everywhere all the time. We have to fight them everywhere. [cheers, applause] Everywhere. The library. The beaches. The stores. The rallies.
Yesterday evening Lafayette County Democrats held their annual fundraisng dinner and pie auction in Higginsville.
One of the auctioned desserts.
The evening started with a social hour.
Yvonne Reeves Chong, Vice-Chair and Russ Carnahan, Chair – Missouri Democratic Party
Sadly, Mark Alford (r) was not present to interact with his 4th Congressional District constituents. Certainly he’ll have that opportunity across the district later in the month.
There was music.
They were all excellent.
Some of the Democratic Party office holders and officials in attendance:
Grace before dinner – Dennis Hisek.
And, the pie auction took place in segments, between speakers.
Henry Grubb, auctioneer.
There were approximately 50 pies in the auction. The pies went for between $600 and $125. That’s quite a fundraiser.
Democrats from across the state attended and also brought pies for the auction:
Elad Gross.
Some who actively cheered the bidding on their pies.
