You don’t need to tell Robin Allen of Ayrshire and one of the founders of the Podunk Resistance, how few democrats there are in northwest Iowa. She already knows. She spent 4 years looking for them. I recently sat down with her over coffee and asked her to tell me about the Podunk Resistance and what it meant to her.
Sitting around the Thanksgiving table in 2016 after the election that changed America as we knew it, Robin, her family and her friends were despairing over what was happening and what they could do. Well aware they lived in lonely Northwest Iowa, they nonetheless determined that day to find other democrats and create a group of resistors who wanted to be heard. Thus was spawned, The Podunk Resistance, a group of both men and women resisters that persisted for 4 years during the Trump administration, even during the pandemic. That group would include retired teachers, librarians, veterans, musicians, as well as a scientist and a pharmacist.
As Robin tells it, a core group of 10 members that sometimes mushroomed to 25, met every Wednesday afternoon in some town for an hour of resisting. Sometimes in front of the post office, sometimes in front of a courthouse, and during the pandemic even in the cemetery, the group would hold up signs. They might be about inclusivity, environment, women’s reproductive rights, immigration or whatever the current news had been spotlighting that week. Then after their hour of resistance they would go have supper together in a local pub or café to support the local businesses.
I asked Robin if they ever felt threatened, “Oh yeah!”, she said, “Cherokee felt dangerous. So did Emmetsburg. One of our members was from there and she was getting so much push back from the community she became worried for herself and her daughter and finally pulled out.” But precautions were taken. As Robin said, “We stayed friendly and kept our responses positive. One of the members was a retired school superintendent who was good at fostering that.”
It was right after the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida where 17 people were murdered when they resisted in Cherokee. “I was holding a sign that said ‘Common People with Common Sense Can Find Common Ground”, reported Robin. A man drove by a little too close for comfort and made a gun out of his fingers and pointed right at Robin. “We had a lot of online threats as well. But the best experience we had was in the tiny town of Wallingford.” In Wallingford the resisters were approached reasonably and asked questions. “Online feedback was often positive,” said Robin.
For safety and courtesy Robin said she called the sheriff’s department of the county in which they would be resisting every week to let them know where they would be and what they were about. Often law enforcement would drive by or sit a block away and observe. They reported the Cherokee incident to the police at both city and county levels, however no known action was taken.
Over the course of nearly 4 years, Podunk Resisters visited over 100 towns. When the pandemic hit, the group decided to resist in cemeteries and take sack suppers. “That was nice bonding time,” Robin said. “By then our online presence had grown and we shared pictures.”
By the time Trump was nearing the end of his term, the resistance had lost some loyal members due to health issues and a death and they disbanded. So what had they done? That was after all their original mission. Robin felt that at the very least they had found self validation, empowerment and gratification from their advocacy. “Maybe we reached a few people. We may never know. We got some media coverage in Spencer and were even mentioned in a German newspaper once. Media coverage in the Des Moines Register never happened in spite of our reaching out.” she said. “For me personally,” Robin said, “my purpose in resisting was to let other progressives know they weren’t alone. I hope we accomplished that.”
As we were wrapping up, Robin and I talked about the seeming futility of advocacy in rural northwest Iowa. We shared that we had both felt hopeless at times. We talked about taking the high road, fighting dirty, finding our party and our community, Grassley and his condescending responses to questions about the emergence of facisim in our country and so much more. We can only hope in these dark days of our democracy that the story of their commitment and passion will inspire others to act.