Minnesotans outside of the Russell Senate Office Building after lunch are left to right, Andy Edgar, Raven Kinnell,  Allen Christian, Mary Jane LaVigne, Greg Skog, Sky Miles, Eric Skog, Faith Kidder, Sue Skog, Chelsea Skog, Jane Miles.

Raven Kinnell pins a button on Senator Mark Dayton's lapel.

Letter from Mary Jane LaVigne
Her story about the MN group meeting with Senator Dayton at the Department of Peace conference.

Senate Soul Force

Gandhi entered the Empire theatre in South Africa on September 11, 1906 not knowing he was about to call forth satyagraha or "soul force" from those present.  Ninety-nine years and three days later, eleven of us from Minnesota, supporters of the Department of Peace, sat in the U.S. Senate dining room excitedly looking forward to lunch with our Senator, Mark Dayton (D-MN).

Two nurses, a couple of union members, we had one first grader and a grandma, an environmentalist, a sculpture, a teacher and a grocery store manager.   The Senate dining room, like many things, looms larger in imagination than it is in fact.  So, seated as we were in the center, we created a gravity of our own.
We talked about small things, like how you shake hands, Senator Dayton extends his palm down, giving the other person control of the strength of grip.  Senator Dayton went round the table and listened to each of us express our opinion on who ought to be his successor.  We talked about Robert Kennedy and Paul Wellstone.  "Why is it always planes with our people that go down?" burst out of one of the adults.   

"No one's plane should go down," said 12 year-old Raven Kinnell.   Sitting next to her, Dayton nodded quietly, then asked the young woman to pin a button on his lapel.  "We need a Department of Peace," it read.

We didn't talk about the campaign until after dessert.  Faith Kidder asked Senator Dayton if he'd be willing to consider proposing the creation of a Department of Peace in the Senate.  "Should he?" the Senator asked the youngest member of our group.  Eric looked up at his nodding mom and said "yes."  Then he asked Eric's middle school sister Chelsea and finally Raven, "yes" they said.   

Senator Dayton pushed himself away from the table, stood up and said, "then I will."

With a new bounce in his step the Senator ushered us up to the Senate Gallery, then down, in the Senators Only elevator, to the underground tram.  I got to sit in the car with the Senator.   The breeze blew my hair. He was grinning.  I'll never forget that moment.  "It's like Willy Wonka," the kids in the car ahead giggled.   

We entered his office and were introduced to his staff.  "We're going to be Senate sponsors of a Department of Peace Bill," Dayton told them.    They may call us naive.  And perhaps we are.  But no more naive than any group who dares to claim a better world.  No more naive than those who joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton in little Seneca Falls New York, calling for gender equality in 1848.  No more naive than the folks who braved the hot coffee poured on their heads determined to desegregate Southern lunch counters in 1963.   

No more naive than all those who packed the Empire Theatre 99 years ago and with only the strength of their intention, inaugurated a new kind of force.

We are all around that lunch table now, our hearts on our sleeves.

Mary Jane LaVigne