/tags/politics-and-policy/ Recent content in politics and policy on Rootstalk Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us /past-issues/volume-vii-issue-2/baechtel/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-vii-issue-2/baechtel/ I have had my second injection of the Moderna vaccine and, as of two days ago, I’m 90 percent immune to the coronavirus. As I write this, outside my window spring is on its way, and I should be feeling hopeful rather than melancholy. But after a year that has provided as much storm and stress as 2020, maybe the way I’m feeling is understandable. I’m not quite old enough to have experienced the McCarthy era first-hand, but I’ve experienced its reverberating shock-waves all my life. /past-issues/volume-vii-issue-2/ross/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-vii-issue-2/ross/ In 1945, at Iowa’s State Training School for Boys in Eldora, Iowa, seventeen-year-old Robert Miller shoveled coal all day long as punishment for an alleged escape plot. When he tried to quit working because the oppressive August temperature had drained his strength, guards at the school tried to force him to continue and, when he refused, the guards beat him to death 1 with an iron rod taken from a “harness tug. /past-issues/volume-vii-issue-2/kouchi/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 /past-issues/volume-vii-issue-2/kouchi/ In March 2019, devastating floods hit the Missouri River floodplain and lasted for almost an entire year. Corey McIntosh and his wife, Tina Popson, who farm along the Missouri in western Iowa, were displaced by the flooding and had to leave their family farm to seek shelter. Mr. McIntosh’s great-grandparents purchased that land in the early 1940s, and the family has been farming it ever since. Since long before the ‘40s, flooding has been a part of the history of the Missouri, but in recent years flooding has become more frequent and stronger.