WAMM Remembers Paul and Sheila Wellstone
by Lisa Ann Pierce, WAMM editor

WAMM Remembers Senator Paul Wellstone and Sheila Wellstone, as well as their daughter Marcia Markuson, Mary McEvoy, Will McLaughlin, Tom Lapic, Michael Guess, and Richard Conry, all lost aboard the Wellstone’s chartered flight to Eveleth, Minnesota, October 25, 2002.

As we take this issue of worldwideWAMM to press, it is hard to imagine that these words will greet you in a world without the activist Sheila Wellstone and the Senator Paul Wellstone.

I suspect that members of WAMM hold a diversity of opinion about Paul Wellstone’s voting record. Many of us cheered him on as he took bold risks against war in 1991 and again in 2002. Many of us struggled with him as he took less admirable positions on matters ranging from the arming of Israel to the so-called “Defense of Marriage” and “Patriot” Acts.

Watching Paul’s political career, we often found ourselves caught between two feelings. On the one hand, we felt hope as Paul brought us as close as we had ever been to a sense of true representation in Washington, D.C. On the other hand, we felt exasperation as it became more and more clear that his progressive domestic policies would stay out of reach and unfunded until he and the rest of Congress began to dismantle the behemoth military budget.

Despite my own conflicting feelings, I will remember and celebrate what Paul and Sheila Wellstone brought to Minnesota politics. I will celebrate Paul’s many victories for family farmers, immigrants, battered spouses, the working class, and so many others that otherwise go unrepresented in Washington. More than anything, I will celebrate and remember Paul’s last act of courage and independence: his October vote against the resolution to authorize the use of force against Iraq.

May we likewise act with courage to stop this war.