Whatever your party affiliation or ideological leanings, the historic nature of last year?s protests and this year?s gubernatorial recall is undeniable. Local writer Dennis Weidemann has taken on the project of documenting the movement to create what he describes as a sort of “yearbook” for participants who want to remember the time when they stood shoulder to shoulder with strangers in the snow, united for a common cause. Weidemann is no political firebrand; he goes to great pains to stress that his interest in the protest movement is not a partisan one. He did not even attend the protests at first, but was encouraged by his wife’s stories of the people she met there.
“It was just the normal folks,” Weidemann says. “Immediately, that’s what hit me. Not just the numbers of people. The diversity. People from all walks of life.” Where news reports portrayed a sea of faces, Weidemann saw individuals. His interviews capture a broad spectrum of participants, from the most obvious stakeholders ? public employees like teachers and librarians ? to people not customarily associated with public demonstrations, like farmers and pilots.