Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

Yes, brace yourself. Governor Kim Reynolds has given every indication she wants on the national stage. Anything to get out of Iowa before public schools are shuttered, hog sh*t clogs the Raccoon, drinking water costs more than gas, and the last of the state’s topsoil flows into the sea.

Give Reynolds credit. She’s ridden unbridled ambition, a particle of intellect, a nod from her predecessor Terry Branstad, MAGA hysteria, the Iowa State Fair, and Herculean bullheadedness into Terrace Hill. And she’s stayed there by pushing the red-state agenda that plagues all of America, and has seemingly put ordinary people into a deep stupor. 

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

At the 1865 Republican state convention it was Henry O’Connor of Muscatine who nominated Gov. William M. Stone for re-election. Next came the vote of acclamation moved by General Marcellus Crocker, the ailing former commander of the Iowa Brigade.

Iowa’s two-term sixth governor was a popular war veteran and supporter of Lincoln. Until recently I’d given little notice to his part in the equal-rights cause.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal in December.

Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War. That’s where I’m headed in this series, what I’m pondering as I write this year-end column.

I was raised on the Watch Night tradition started by Moravians and adopted by Wesleyans in England and brought to America. Black Americans gave new meaning to Watch Night on December 31, 1862, praying and watching for President Lincoln to make good on his call for freeing slaves in the rebellious South. It came to be Freedom’s Eve.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

In July 1863 the War Department authorized Col. William A. Pile “to raise a regiment of men of African descent” to be known as the “First Regiment of Iowa African Infantry.” Keokuk was their rendezvous, and Alexander Clark of Muscatine was a main recruiter. While serving in Arkansas, the regiment was reorganized as the 60th U.S. Colored Troops (USCT).

After the war it was said the regiment had included “about every man of African descent in the state who was capable of performing military service.” (Davenport Gazette, April 17, 1867) 

An official 1911 report repeated the claim and said there was “an ardent desire” by “Iowa men of negro blood” to fight against slavery. 

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

People my age look back and exclaim how fast time flies. We reflect on what we learned as children and how that shaped who we became.

This column is published on my 72nd birthday. Were I born only 72 years earlier—in 1878—and growing up in Muscatine, I could have witnessed firsthand the oratory of our famous “colored” neighbor Alexander Clark. As an 11-year old, I could have attended the sendoff celebration when he departed for Liberia as the new U.S. consul, one of the highest honors accorded any Black person in 19th century America.

I like to believe I’d have felt proud of our town—Clark’s chosen home since 1842—and proud of our state where his achievements had been important and lauded.

Rachel Bruns is a volunteer advocate for quality maternal health care in Iowa.

The 2022 Iowa legislative session saw the most significant momentum in more than forty years of advocacy for the creation of a licensure of direct-entry midwives in Iowa. With the 2023 legislative session underway, I will review the pivotal moments in the 2022 legislative session and explain why the Iowa legislature and Governor Kim Reynolds should prioritize enacting a midwifery licensure bill.

While I have addressed the need to provide a licensure for Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) in previous pieces, I will go more in-depth in providing background on why all Iowans should want and support CPMs practicing in our state.

Note: I would not benefit directly in any way if this bill passed, as I am not a birthworker (doula, midwife, physician), and I do not plan on having any more children. Through my volunteer work with the International Cesarean Awareness Network, I have learned a lot about the different types of midwives and believe Iowans have been “dealt a bad hand” by not having knowledge or access to community birth options that are more readily available in other states and other high-income countries. Iowa families deserve to have all options available for safe and quality maternal health care.

“May the mark Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. left on our country never be forgotten,” Governor Kim Reynolds posted on her Facebook and Twitter accounts on this year’s national holiday to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy.

It was a remarkable act of chutzpah for an official who has repeatedly amplified racist tropes for political gain, most recently last week.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

The first draft of history is the newspaper. Or used to be.

Certainly the Muscatine Journal archive is a main source about Alexander Clark, maybe the most important one. As early as 1853, the editor saw his neighbor’s life as news worth reporting. As Clark’s fame grew from local to national and beyond, John Mahin’s paper supplied evidence of what was said at the time about Iowa’s champion of emancipation and equality.

During the 1880s, Clark and his son worked at publishing a leading Black newspaper in Chicago, The Conservator. Bits of it quoted or mentioned in the Journal are some of the best remnants of an undertaking that put Clark on the executive committee of the national Black publishers association.

Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization.

I am writing this from a hotel room in Scottsdale, Arizona where I am isolating after coming down with COVID-19.

Once again, Governor “COVID Kim” Reynolds has shown us her true colors. She is governor to the rich, enabling the rich to get richer, while she works to widen the class divide in the state. She is seeking to secure a defined underclass, by undermining the public school system; a system created to provide equal educational opportunities to all and a pathway to self-advancement for every Iowan.

If she is successful, we can see similar private school voucher programs popping up in many other red states.

RJ Miller is an advocate, activist, and executive director of Greater Opportunities Inc, a Des Moines-based nonprofit. He was an independent candidate for the Iowa House in 2022.

I’m running for the at-large Des Moines City Council seat now held by Carl Voss, because I believe the council needs more diversity and more council members who come from a grassroots background, for and from the people they represent.

I’m running because our city needs real leadership. Des Moines needs someone who will unify and truly fight for the people’s best interests. Residents deserve someone who will fight against gentrification, redlining, and eminent domain. More important, the city deserves an anti-sellout, anti-establishment councilman.

Governor Kim Reynolds, the state legislature, and Iowa Supreme Court rulings inspired the majority of Bleeding Heartland’s most-read posts from this year.

This list draws from Google Analytics data about total views for 570 posts published from January 1 through December 29. I wrote 212 of those articles and commentaries; other authors wrote 358. I left out the site’s front page and the “about” page, where many people landed following online searches.

In general, Bleeding Heartland’s traffic was higher this year than in 2021, though not quite as high as during the pandemic-fueled surge of 2020. So about three dozen posts that would have ranked among last year’s most-viewed didn’t make the cut for this post. Some honorable mentions from that group:

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

Earlier this month, the Kansas City Star’s editors wrote about White Kansas City-area high school students who were racially taunting Black players on an opposing basketball team.

In the same week, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights levied serious changes against the Ottumwa, Iowa school district (as per numerous newspaper accounts). Following release of the OCR’s report, the Ottumwa Courier’s editors took the superintendent to task, saying he has “skirted the harsh realities of what happened.” The realities of racial abuse are clearly enumerated in the OCR report, which is online (and reproduced at the bottom of this post).

The agency’s findings are grave and require the school district to take extensive steps of remediation.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

Any tidbit related to Muscatine’s equal-rights pioneer Alexander Clark gets my attention, so one phrase was all it took to start me researching “George Jones, who cultivates A. Clark’s farm on the Island.” (Muscatine Journal, August 22, 1879)

December 3, 1863: “George Jones exhibited a commendable degree of patience and excellent horsemanship, finally inducing the refractory animal to go off in a horsemanlike manner.” I’ve learned more, but not very much more, about George Jones, 1828-1888, variously classified by census-takers as Black, White, and Mulatto (mixed).

My previous column introduced two of his “white” descendants, Frank Best and Lynn Bartenhagen.

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

In my years, I have visited many American historical sites. When I was seven, my parents took me to the Alamo. It was 1950. My dad was a newly appointed chaplain at Lackland Air Force base near San Antonio.

If my folks knew the real history, they didn’t say. I doubt they did. We were from the North. So, the story we were told, the Alamo myth (as I now know), became the story we believed to be true.

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

I saw the trailer for Will Smith’s new film “Emancipation.” Smith’s character Peter is the enslaved man whose terribly scarred back was photographed in 1863 and viewed by millions during the Civil War era and beyond.

I immediately thought of Governor Ron DeSantis saying, “Florida is the state where WOKE goes to die.” He was speaking, wife and kids at his side, just after the November election where he was re-elected with nearly 60 percent of the vote.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

September 10, 1867: the beginning of the end of segregated schools in Iowa; the day 12-year-old Susie Clark tried to enroll at Muscatine’s Grammar School No. 2.

One hundred and fifty-five years ago “on the 10th day of September, 1867, said school being in session, she presented herself, and demanded to be received therein as a scholar under the common school law.” (Iowa Supreme Court, ruling in Clark v. Board of Directors, April 14, 1868.)

Instead of a welcome at her neighborhood school three blocks up West Hill from her home at W. 3rd and Chestnut, someone in charge turned Susie away on orders of the school board.

Matt Sinovic is the Executive Director of Progress Iowa, a multi-issue progressive advocacy organization.

Iowans know everyone deserves the opportunity to succeed, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or economic status. We know education is one of the greatest methods to achieve success, and we believe talented students from all backgrounds deserve a fair shot to overcome obstacles to educational opportunity.

We also know that the greatest opportunity to learn comes in diverse settings, where we can discuss with and learn from people of different races, religions, and ethnicities. Learning from people with different backgrounds benefits our nation, our communities, our workforce and our students. 

Third in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2022 state and federal elections.

People of color, Iowans who identify as part of the LGBTQ community, and those adhering to a non-Christian faith tradition will hold a record number of seats in the Iowa legislature next year.

“Here in this field of dreams that we call home, anything is possible,” Governor Kim Reynolds declares near the end of her last television commercial before the November election.

Although the ad is superficially upbeat, its script and carefully chosen images convey an exclusionary message. To Reynolds, the place “we call home” is for people like herself: straight, white Christians from rural areas.

It’s another divisive move for a candidate who already spent heavily to bring racist tropes to Iowans’ tv screens.

Shaimaa Aly explains why she is running for the board of Broadlawns Medical Center, Polk County’s public hospital.

My name is Shaimaa (shy-ma) Aly. I was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt to an upper middle-class family of three kids, two boys and a girl.

My mom is a dermatologist specializing in facial cosmetic surgery. My dad was an economics professor and a government official who believed that quality education is the key to success, so my siblings and I were sent to private Catholic schools growing up.

As a Muslim who attended a Catholic school, I learned to embrace different religions, points of view and peoples.

Rachel Bruns is a volunteer advocate for quality maternal health care in Iowa.

In August, I spoke to the Broadlawns Board of Trustees for the third time in the past four years.

You can read my comments from my first time speaking during their citizen comment period in July 2018 when I was five months pregnant and looking for VBAC supportive care for the birth of my second child. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this experience launched my maternal health advocacy.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ re-election campaign continues to air a television commercial that plays on racist tropes in order to boost the governor among the largely white Iowa electorate.

Reynolds’ campaign spokesperson Pat Garrett has not replied to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiries about the commercial. But after Iowa Democratic Party chair Ross Wilburn denounced the ad as “a cheap, racist and dangerous stunt using harmful stereotypes to score political points,” Garrett told some other reporters that the spot “contrasts the failed policies supported by liberal Democrats across the country with the common sense leadership of Gov. Reynolds.”

Visual evidence shows the ad-makers were determined to create negative associations with Black women. The tactic would undermine the governor’s Democratic challenger Deidre DeJear.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

August 24 was the first full day at SCJH—Susan Clark Junior High—and also the first day of the 2022-23 academic year at Muscatine High School, alma mater of Iowa’s first Black high school graduate.

Iowa’s 1857 constitution mandated public education for “all the youths of the State, without distinction of color,” but it took an Iowa Supreme Court ruling more than a decade later to end racial segregation. The 1868 case was named for that Muscatine student: Clark v. Board of School Directors.

Nothing happens in a campaign commercial by accident. Strategists plan every word and image, with the candidate’s approval. Directors may film many takes to get the perfect cadence for every line.

So Iowans should understand: the racist tropes in Governor Kim Reynolds’ latest tv ad are deliberate.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

Drumming and singing and chanting are background sound for writing this column. Video streaming from the 106th annual Meskwaki Powwow shows colorfully attired modern Iowans stepping rhythmically together, everyone off the bleachers between solo dances of various styles and meanings.

Near Tama, just off the Lincoln Highway, the Meskwaki Nation settlement is distinct because their settlers weren’t immigrants from Europe or elsewhere across oceans. They came from natives who were here when the rest of us arrived.

Coinciding with our big state fair, the pleasant little festival reminds us our “beautiful land between the rivers” is a crazy quilt of distinct ethno-historical communities—however some pieces fade and however melting-potted our strip malls.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

I may have misled regular readers to suppose Muscatine’s early editors and lawmakers were a pretty progressive bunch.

Those anti-slavery and equal-rights figures are indeed appealing historical characters, and I confess I tell less about their opponents, mainly because I’ve learned less.

Alexander Clark’s publicist—my description for editor John Mahin—allied this paper with the Republican party when it emerged in the 1850s. There was almost always a Democratic paper in town, so he faced a procession of partisan competitors over his half-century career.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

Theodore “T.S.” Parvin came to Iowa in 1838 with Robert Lucas, the first territorial governor, and soon settled at Bloomington—future Muscatine—to serve as district prosecutor.

His uncle, John “J.A.” Parvin, arrived less than a year later. Together they started one of the first schools in the territory. Both would achieve life-long reputations as champions of education.

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

“We never had race trouble here.” I hear this often. I call it the Nice Iowans fairytale.

Take this comment posted on the Muscatine Journal’s website recently: “Throughout all of lowa, Black children regularly attended school with their White neighbors at this time, and at all times in history. lowa has never had any such thing as ‘segregated’ schools—ever.”

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

Did you know the Iowa State Fair was held on “the island” south of town in 1856 and 1857?

From the Muscatine Journal, October 9, 1857: “A squash raised by Alexander Clark weighed 177 pounds, but as Aleck is a colored man, we presume the committee could not, according to the Dred Scott decision, award the premium to him in preference to his mule. It would be ‘unconstitutional.’”

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

Juneteenth is an easy holiday to miss if you aren’t watching for it. Still, we Iowans pride ourselves on being out in front on justice and equality, so this is for us.

You probably know it’s about the Emancipation Proclamation and the outpouring of jubilation when the long-delayed news finally reached Texas.

Did you know Governor Tom Vilsack signed a bill in 2002 declaring the third Saturday in June as Juneteenth National Freedom Day in Iowa? Then last year, amid a season of “racial reckoning,” President Joe Biden signed the bill designating Juneteenth a federal holiday.

The historic pages of the Muscatine Journal yield few mentions of the word. The first I find is a 1985 column by Aldeen Davis, titled “Texas has its own holiday.”

This column by Daniel G. Clark about Alexander Clark (1826-1891) first appeared in the Muscatine Journal.

The name of Susan Clark Junior High is meant to evoke a 12-year-old student and her father who sued a school board in 1867. Iowans celebrate the resulting state Supreme Court decision for ending separate-but-equal public education in our state.

That board’s modern successors voted in September 2019 to name Muscatine’s newly combined middle schools for the younger daughter of Iowa’s equal-rights champion.

Helen Redding is a Waterloo entrepreneur, business owner and and strong woman of faith. Over the past several years, after opening her salon, Helen has created multiple other businesses with her husband and children.

Going to a bank to get a loan should be an easy process if you have everything ready to go. Getting that loan from a bank, especially when you have business experience, good credit, and references, and proven success should be an easy process, and most banks will tout how easy it is to qualify for a loan too.

Unfortunately, even with advanced qualifications, Black Americans are twice as likely to get denied a loan. Systemic racism has busted the racial wealth gap wide open, and predatory lending practices perpetuate the gap. 

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher, and for 30 years he was a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

The Kansas City Star’s editorial board warned its readers on June 2 that “the arch conservative Liberty Alliance has created a Woke Heat Map.” The website is an interactive map of Missouri with dots representing “hot spots” where, as the Alliance claims, “the Woke Agenda … is permeating.” 

The Alliance is a faction of ultra-right zealots who use a website to undermine democracy—and raise money from an easily duped clientele. The Springfield (MO) News-Leader reports one hotspot in its area, and six in St. Louis, three in Kansas City, and one in Columbia with alleged “woke agendas” — “where toddlers are groomed with sexually explicit books.” This was in the first week.

It’s fraud. In nearly all cases, the New-Leader says, the documentation used to designate a “woke” hotspot is based on a tweet, column, or article from a conservative leader or platform.

ReShonda Young is an entrepreneur from Waterloo and a co-founder of Bank of Jabez.

Imagine a race between two people from New York to California. One person receives a bicycle and the other an airplane. The first to get to California is the winner. It’s a structurally unfair race for the bicyclist.

That’s what the wealth gap is like for Black families in America. It’s an impossible race. White people have a 400-year advantage on wealth, power, and economic mobility. And it bears stating: the system is not broken — it was rigged like this by design. The pervasive, generational inequality is systemic and structural.

People of color and Iowans who identify as part of the LGBTQ community are on track to hold more seats in the state House and Senate next year, based on results from the June 7 primary elections.

The Democratic nominees include candidates who would add to the legislature’s diversity in other ways as well.

UPDATE: I’ve added unofficial results for each race.

Iowa Democrats have more competitive state legislative primaries in 2022 than in a typical election cycle. That’s partly because quite a few House and Senate members are retiring, and partly because the redistricting plan adopted in 2021 created some legislative districts with no incumbents.

In most of the races discussed below, the winner of the primary is very likely to prevail in November. However, a few of the districts could be targeted by one or both parties in the general election.

All data on past election performance in these districts comes from the Iowa House and Senate maps Josh Hughes created in Dave’s Redistricting App. Fundraising numbers are taken from the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board’s database.

This post is not an exhaustive account of all contested Democratic primaries for state legislative offices. You can find the full primary candidate list here.

Nick Covington taught social studies at Ankeny High School from 2012 to 2022 and became the full-time Creative Director of the Human Restoration Project when his teaching contract ended on June 1. You can follow Nick on Twitter @CovingtonEDU. This article was originally published on May 15 on Medium.

On Feb 25, 2022, I resigned as a social studies teacher at Ankeny High School, a position I have held since 2012, effective at the end of the school year. I will not be returning to the classroom this fall.

I have not told all of this story in one place, but I want readers to understand the full context of my decision to leave in its relation to our nation’s destructive and divisive cultural forever war.

Iowa’s health and human services budget for the coming fiscal year includes a $500,000 appropriation for a new “maternal health” initiative modeled on an ineffective, wasteful Texas program.

But the bill, negotiated by House and Senate Republicans and approved on party-line votes in both chambers May 23, does not extend postpartum coverage for Iowans on Medicaid, a documented way to reduce maternal mortality.

Jaylen Cavil and Alejandro Murguia-Ortiz co-authored this commentary. Cavil is a Democratic candidate in Iowa House district 36. Murguia-Ortiz is an independent candidate in Iowa Senate district 17.

Dog whistles have been a feature of U.S. politics for decades. President Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens,” President Bill Clinton’s “law and order” campaign, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich calling Barack Obama a “food stamps president” are all examples of racist talking points. Politicians use coded language when trying to garner support by triggering racial anxiety. 

Today’s version of the “war on crime”—a reaction to nationwide calls to defund the police and fund communities instead—is no different from the racist wars on drugs and poverty that have led to the incarceration and deaths of millions.

With the introduction of the Invest to Protect Act, U.S. Representative Cindy Axne (D, IA-03) and U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley have joined forces to re-employ this dog whistle strategy.

Sondra Feldstein is a farmer and business owner in Polk County.

It’s conventional wisdom that Roe v Wade was a poorly written judicial decision. Not the first, nor the last.

I’m not a constitutional law scholar and I can’t say whether the weight of precedent should counteract the weakness of a poorly reasoned opinion. But each and every one of the conservative justices who can be expected to concur with the draft opinion overturning Roe assured senators during their confirmation hearing that the 1973 precedent was settled law, and that the principle of stare decisis carries such grave weight that the prospect of overturning “settled law” was unlikely.

But then, for anyone who believed what those potential justices said, I have the proverbial bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. It just isn’t relevant to ask whether future justices lied under oath, because everyone knew they were lying. It’s a game we play.