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Well, I was at the Memorial -- it was advertised, by the way, as a Memorial Rally not a Memorial Service. I did not boo -- but when Lott showed up I did a small thumbs down. (got my wish it turns out)!!!
Everyone is missing the essence of who Paul was, and how he became successful at Electoral Politics. It all began when he was in Grad School and adopted as one mentor Myles Horton, founder of Highlander Folkschool (Great 2 hour PBS interview by Bill Moyers with Horton is available). Horton's roots went back to Jane Addams and John Dewey and he applied those ideas to creating in the South an adult education school focused on Labor Organizing, then in the 40's Civil Rights, and come the late 60's the environment. Paul modeled his own college teaching career on Horton's example -- for 20 years there was not a progressive movement or event in Minnesota where Paul and his students were not engaged. That created one hell of a network, especially since as each little movement came to fruition, Paul invited them into the DFL. It was on that base that he ran for Senate in 1990. We had no money, and the elite in the party never thought we could win -- but guess what? Networked Progressive Movements can offset big bucks in some circumstances.
When Paul, Sheila, Marcia and the traveling staff died in that plane crash it was the demise of a life work and not just a candidacy -- and the 20 thousand people who stood in line to get into Williams Arena that day were not looking for spiritual uplift. They wanted to remember all the times, and they wanted to shout at the heavens about their pain.
Minnesotans know that it was Hubert Humphrey who forced the Democratic Party to reverse its stand on States' Rights and take up the call of Human Rights -- and he did it most publicly at the National Democratic Convention in Philadelphia in 1948. That act was the cause of Strom Thurmond's leading the States' Rights party in the 48 election -- and while Hubert had to talk for 16 years before most of the Civil Rights he stood for became law -- he did it. Paul Wellstone was his heir. Of course people in the Arena knew Lott was CCC and KKK and all the rest. When he walked in, that was the undercurrent of discussion all around me. "How dare he come here" was the comment. You need to know that we also had been offered VP Cheney for the event, and we had uninvited him because we were unwilling to put up metal detectors and wand everyone, and let the Secret Service run the Memorial. Locally the press reported some of these matters -- but the whole story of how the Republicans tried to upset the Memorial has hardly been told. For instance, in one parking area some of Coleman's little boys went round slapping Coleman bumper stickers on cars in camera range. We got the cops to paste plain paper over them. Everything was edgy -- and Lott was simply too much to take.
Rick Kahn has had to take a huge amount of responsibility for well intentioned bad judgment. He was one of Paul's students in the late 80's who took on the thankless job of being Campaign Treasurer at a time when that was a thin checkbook, and the Wellstone office was a rented broom closet in a center where we kept the phone, the answering machine, and the Apple Computer on which we formatted the early campaign literature. Two nights a week we were entitled, given our mini rent, to haul out the campaign into an office where we could do phone organizing. I organized a Congressional District for Paul -- and I did it from my dining room table, because the office was too small. Kahn simply is a young man who invested more than 14 years of his life in Wellstone -- never got called on a Campaign Finance Error, and who was beyond devastated. I wish some folk would comprehend him.
Those of us who worked over the years to keep Wellstone out there as a National Figure know we can't replace Paul. What we have to work on now is rebuilding in many states the kind of progressive network that made it possible for Paul Wellstone and Sheila to serve. Part of that is being real and human and shouting at the heavens when things crash.
I say, as I have always said, anyone who pissed on a man's grave and trashed his family and closest friends in the middle of their grieving is beneath contempt. Disgusting, hideous, insults to human decency.