SAGINAW, MI — As a presidential battleground state, Michigan is drawing visitors from both far and farther.
Consider Oct. 29 in Saginaw, for example.
At a meet-and-greet for local candidates, a woman who activists never had seen before took a turn on stage at Buena Vista Community Center with hopefuls for the City Council, the Saginaw Board of Ed and the County Board. An elder in her 60s, with a tiny frame that might not hit three digits on the scale, she announced that she had driven 30 hours just to speak to an audience that filled the cafeteria. Vote for Kamala Harris for president and for Kristen McDonald Rivet for Congress, she urged, because every vote counts and Michigan could swing both the presidency and the House of Representatives.
With that, discussion at the event, organized through the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., Eta Upsilon Chapter, returned to the Saginaw candidates
Beverly Cooper-Wiele is retired after four decades as a first-grade teacher for Boston Public Schools. She grew up in the nation’s capitol and moved north for college studies at Boston University. She always has put the “a” in “activist,” always a Democrat ever since Lyndon Johnson signed much of the 1960s civil rights agenda, now with time to be a full-time radical.
Her first venture was for the 2022 midterms for some close contests in Iowa. She explained that she picked Michigan this time around because 2020 was so tight, with President Biden winning by a scant 39,000 votes. She is volunteering for Rivet McDonald, and she didn’t ride the highways just to get from Beantown to Wanigas. Her volunteer service in the Eighth Congressional District will consume a dozen days.
“This state shouldn’t even be close,” she said, noting demographics that include the unemployed and others with hardships, disproportionate against minority groups.
Cooper-Wiele specializes in writing grant funding applications and news analysis. She can be found as “Super Mrs. C” on the Medium blog that encourages participants to “deepen their understanding” via writing and reading. Her favorite commentators, who she most sounds like, hail from MSNBC.
Boston isn’t that far
Earlier, the media contingent for J.D. Vance included journalists from TVS in Poland. Donald Trump’s vice-president nominee for vice-president was in Saginaw Township at Center Courts, across from Heritage High on a school day, but the two-man crew figured the County Governmental Center would be the proper venue for viewers from the Silesia region (hence the TVS moniker).
When they found courthouse parking difficult, as native Saginawians may attest, they headed a block north to the Mental Health Authority parking lot, where the presenter — Poland’s lingo for what we call reporters — performed his standup with his back to the traffic light at Hancock and North Michigan.
We caught them at the last minute. The presenter/reporter looked sharp in a blue suit, vest and tie, while the cameraman was in dungarees, the same as most TV operations here in the United States. They remarked on how the day was unseasonably “nice,” like some they had experienced in recent years. Then they hopped into a compact rental car, obviously on a budget, to catch a flight to Trump’s home state, Florida.
“You seem very, very divided in your politics,” the camera operator mused.
