15,000 Farmers Angrily Protest Reagan Policies

About 15,000 angry Midwestern farmers staged one of the largest farm protest rallies in American history Wednesday, filling a giant basketball field house that thundered with jeers and boos at the mention of President Reagan and Budget Director David A. Stockman.

The four-hour rally at the Hilton Coliseum at Iowa State University opened with prayers asking for salvation from a “calloused Administration” and ended with chants of “We will win! We will win!”

“Let this meeting serve notice on Washington that a crisis exists and federal assistance is needed now,” Minnesota banker Pat Dubois said to a standing ovation.

“It is unacceptable . . . when those chosen to govern blame those who produce food . . . for their inability or unwillingness to govern properly,” Cy Carpenter, National Farmers Union president, told the gathering, the second largest of its kind since the turn of the century. A National Farmers Organization rally in the late 1960s drew a crowd estimated at up to 30,000.

Farmers and their wives from 18 states, many of whom drove through the night to attend Wednesday’s rally, transformed the arena into a huge and colorful billboard of discontent.

“Reagan Policy: Let Them Eat Cake” read one banner not far from a hanging effigy of Stockman. The budget director, the son of Michigan farmers, has enraged rural mid-America with his stand against additional federal aid to help farmers plant crops this spring.

One sign, referring to the secretary of agriculture, read: “Get Rid of John ‘Auction’ Block.” Another read: “Farms, Not Arms,” and one simply asked: “Why Us, Lord?”

Absence of Politicians

The rally was distinguished by the absence of politicians on the podium. Iowa’s Gov. Terry Branstad and two-thirds of the members of the Iowa Legislature sat on the sidelines while a parade of farmers, protest leaders, union members and community leaders addressed the crowd.

At one point, one speaker asked how many farmers were in foreclosure or on the brink of it. Hundreds of hands in the audience went up.

A coalition of farm and rural organizations--ranging from moderate to militant and often unable to agree in the past--joined to call the rally to draw national attention to economic conditions that are driving farmers off the land and threatening many mid-America rural communities with extinction.

“This is not just a farm rally. We are talking about the rising up of the American heartland,” said Jon Wefald, chancellor of the Minnesota State University system and a former state agriculture commissioner.

‘Ready to Fight Back’

“This marks a historic turning point for rural America,” added Dixon Terry, a leader of the Iowa Farm Unity Coalition. “We’re ready to fight back, to organize to protect our business and our way of life.”

In addition to giving farmers a forum to vent their anger, express their fears and articulate their pain, the rally was designed to draw national attention to tight credit, high interest rates and low crop prices that farmers face as they prepare for spring planting.

“Within 48 hours, news of this rally will be in the living room of every home in America,” National Farmers Organization President DeVon Woodland said as he looked at 25 television cameras and hundreds of reporters and photographers on hand to record the event.

Bishop Maurice Dingman, the head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Des Moines and the descendant of a pioneering Iowa farm family, told the crowd: “I come before you today to tell you that, if we do nothing, the bells will have tolled for the end of an American dream.”