Got my first book review

Thanks to Gary King, editor of the The Inter-County Leader based out of Frederic, Wisconsin, for providing me my book review on Beating the Powers that Be. The Leader is the first cooperative newspaper in the country formed during the midst of the Wisconsin milk strikes of 1933. I worte extensivly about the paper in my book and visited its archives two years ago. Again thanks for the review and a good one its is.

---Sean Scallon

Third party power

Gary King 24.MAY.06 Inter-County Leader Editorial

Are third or nonmajor party politics a dead end in this age of two highly polarized major political parties?

Sean Scallon, a writer from Beloit, has written a book that illustrates some ways current non-major political parties can fulfill a “traditional” role in national politics.

Scallon wrote “Beating the Powers that Be,” recommended reading for those who are not finding what they need from the Democrats or Republicans - and for those who simply find political history fascinating.

Scallon stopped by the Leader office in Frederic a few years ago to pursue the newspaper files, finding a treasure of information - apparently - for his book. The Inter-County Leader itself found it beginnings in the workings of a non-traditional political party movement - that of angry dairy farmers.

In 1933 dairy farmers in the area - and across the state - were banding together to protest what they felt were low prices they were being paid for their milk. In February of that year they began to refuse to sell their milk to local dairies or have it shipped to other parts of the country. In fact, they dumped it - vast gallons of it - all over the ground.

“Given that Wisconsin was the leading producer of surplus milk and dairy products in the country, the situation was serious,” Scallon writes.

Statewide there were clashes between strikers trying to prevent dairies from taking in milk not dumped in the strike and police, bombings, blockades and National Guard deployments, Scallon writes, “showed a state in upheaval.”

Polk County - he notes - experienced less turmoil - but turmoil just the same.

Local smalltown newspapers in Polk County attacked the strikers in editorials and news stories, tying them in with the violence occurring in other parts of the state. A group of local farmers - feeling unfairly mischaracterized, thought it was time someone spoke up for them and their interests. By November of 1933 - with help from $5 from each interested farmer - the Leader was born.

“...the first ever cooperative newspaper in the nation,” Scallon writes.

The book does a good job at making us think about how entrenched we’ve become with the two-party system.

“One can make a valid argument that the two-party system has served the country well by channeling all its diversity of people, economics and views into two competing factions rather than have them dissolving into multiple political units that could lead to instability and upheaval,” writes Scallon. “This legitimacy makes it hard to almost impossible to dislodge the system short of a nuclear holocaust or asteroid strike on earth.”

The book makes for interesting reading and is available through www.publishamerica.com