250 Years, One Big Picnic: How We Celebrated Together

On July 11th, sunshine and a serious sense of history met at our Working Families Picnic, celebrating 250 years of the USA. Potluck dishes lined the tables, the food was terrific, and the crowd settled in for something more than a meal.

The real draw was the speaker lineup:

• Matt Kreft & Jeff Clark (Move to Amend) — the push for a constitutional amendment establishing that corporations aren't people and money isn't speech.

• Peter Limbert (History Center of Olmsted County) — Minnesota's messy 1858 path to statehood as a "free state, slave state" pairing.

• Virginia Wright-Peterson — the story of Amelia Witherstine, the first woman elected to Rochester's school board, in 1911.

• Mark Liebow — how Social Security and Medicare came to be, and what's at stake for them today.

• Jason Lohmann — the gap between crop insurance support and health insurance support for farm families.

• Brian Swancutt (Stonewall DFL) — the fight for marriage equality and what's still ahead.

Each speaker dug into the context behind these moments — why they happened, and why they still shape our country, state, and city today.

Good food, good company, and a deeper understanding of where we've been. That's a picnic worth having.