Attention Bethel! Senator Mark Begich Brings Top Officials on Rural Tour of Alaska
Four cabinet secretaries from the Obama administration will be coming to visit rural Alaska this week. They’ll be stopping off in Bethel and in Hooper Bay.
One of the events in Bethel is free and open to the public. If you are in Bethel, or know anyone in that area, please tell them to attend. This is an unprecedented opportunity to make your voices heard. Top administration officials are coming to Bethel to listen to you. Please be there and be a strong clear voice for all of rural Alaska.
Bethel Rural Tour Forum
Wednesday, August 12 9:00-10:30am at the Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center in Bethel. Doors open at 8:00am.
Details about the Hooper Bay stop to be announced.
U.S. Sen. Mark Begich today announced the details of the Obama Administration’s “Rural Tour” visit in Alaska. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan will join Senator Begich for a series of events in Bethel and Hooper Bay, Alaska next week.
Earlier this summer, President Obama announced the Administration’s Rural Tour, during which top Administration officials, including Cabinet Secretaries, are fanning out across the nation to hold a series of discussions on how communities, states, and the federal government can work together to help strengthen rural America.
“Having four Cabinet Secretaries in rural Alaska will be an excellent opportunity to showcase the challenges and successes we have when it comes to housing, education, energy and other areas,” Sen. Begich said. “I know the Secretaries will come away with a whole new understanding of what it means to be truly rural.”
The Secretaries will hear about the diverse set of challenges and opportunities facing Alaska towns and villages that are so integral to the fabric of American life. They will also share some of the Administration’s ideas about how to nurture strong, robust, and vibrant rural communities. And, when they have heard from the people, they will report back to the President about the state of rural America in Alaska, and what the Administration can do to strengthen it.
26 mpb –
by all means! Hang out at the airport! We need voices like yours talking right out loud…
We all have great hopes for this tour. Your description of the norm – well, sadly, it is the norm.
Here’s hoping public access and a different cast of characters from the feds turn that norm on it’s head.
Your remark -“Change first of all is understanding the past– what went wrong and what went right. ” – is powerful, especially in this context.
Thank you neighbor.
( Martha Unalaska lil sis- that community we lived in swelled to population 27 when our family moved there…
35?! that’s practically a city! )
Michigander, I agree. I believe by Gov Parnell lending his voice to the discussion it will show a united front..Senator, Governor and the Native community are standing togeather in a non partisan manner to bring forth the concerns of Rural Alaska.
Martha Unalaska Yard Sign Unfortunately, I became one of the displaced to Anchorage folks so I can’t afford to return to Bethel for this. I’m not sure showing up at the cultural center meeting is most effective for complex issues. [Complex issues but not too complicated, too expensive, too thoughtful, too whatever…] Maybe I should hang out at the airport when they return?
@ mpb
Outstanding post! Wow, I linked to your blog, too. Earlier, we had found your post about the lack of life jackets on the Palin family while in front of national press at their fishing camp – not only breaking the law but setting another horrible example of safety in Alaska’s waters (which claim many lives each year).
Your viewpoint is unusual and very refreshing after reading some of your About Me on the blog. Is there any chance you will make it to the Bethel meeting?
Lets hope this is a step toward better things. There is too often an attitude among the well to do that poor, especiall rural poor, choose to live like they do.
Where there is a real expectation that effort will bring improvement and strong leadership most people will make the effort.
@ wynsplc / August 8th, 2009 at 2:04 PM
re Governor Sarah Bin Laden.
More like ‘XGov Sarah bin Lyin’
The achievement is that there will be a public access to the visitors. The usual tour is to one nearby village, easily accessible by plane or quick boat– see a honey bucket, note the mud, marvel at the happy faces– then a catered lunch [Subway, owned by one of the VPs] in the too small executive room at the local health corp so only the invited can see anyone. Then on to better fishing on the Kenai or southeast.
I have been trying to work with Sen Begich’s office to get serious questions raised, but without success–
1) why does the USDA refuse to hire anyone (or anyone with experience dealing with rural and Native communities) for the resource conservation & development coordinators for Alaska Native or Pacific native communities? This is an outstanding technical support, community-based program for remote and indigenous communities, or could be, which is deliberately neglected by USDA. Yukon Flats, American Samoa, Lower Kuskokwim are just a few of the areas USDA has withdrawn support or arbitrarily supplied with inexperienced staff.
2) why does HUD keep promoting sewage lagoons and non-traditional, unsustainable housing? why was new housing in Bethel (Bethel Heights) created without play areas and paved streets (why not ask CDC about the hazards of particulate dust to infants and elders)? What happened to all the co-located youth-elders community computing centers? Whoever allowed 465 square foot “houses” for families, extended or otherwise? Why is there only one assisted living center in all of Yukon-Kuskokwim-Nushagak?
3) Does DOE have any intention of supporting sustainable energy research, basic and applied, on the scale needed for Alaska? DOE once had hot dry rock studies and solar research, but funded by Germans and Japanese because it didn’t fit the White House bottom-line then. With little effort they could re-start interest in long-term climate change and impacts on human adaptation, as well as examine the impacts of the chemical environment on human populations [the cold war isn’t over when fallout from mining, nukes, garbage, fossil fuel burning is concerned].
4) Public involvement is a technical field and is NOT public relations. Will Interior support an autonomous repository of all documents, with supportive expertise, in Dillingham so the Bristol Bay communities can get local access and training to assess positive and negative impacts of mining, off-shore drilling, subsistence and fishery management, increased international marine and aerial transportation? We need local people to learn how to be librarians, archivists, and museum curators– information systems analysts– and to supply a necessary technical expertise not otherwise available from industry, state, corporate, or federal experts.
5) US EPA has been funding capacity building for tribes since the mid-90s. How many illegal dumps are there today, in Alaska alone? Why does EPA keep extending the deadline for closing them? In other words, don’t Alaska Native and American Indian people deserve healthy environments? Aren’t we capable of implementing sustainable communities?
Bottom line– will yet another tour of rural America be any different??
Change first of all is understanding the past– what went wrong and what went right.
We have a past due need to plan/prepare for 200 some Villages in Alaska before environmental change and cultural disruption gets even worse. [and our Pacific and Polynesian communities] FEMA and the Army Corps fresh from Katrina are currently in charge.
wynsplc – I think this is a chance for the rural Alaskans to speak up on the issues rather than to meet with Parnell. I posted a question on AnonymousBloggers asking who was going. Probably Ann or Vic will post an answer here too (o:
Oh and Gov Parnell has responded in a very good way to their letters that weren’t answered by the rural advisor John Moller. Hope I’m presenting that correctly.
Best thing would be for you guys to check over there and read for yourselves – I don’t want to confuse the facts (o:
If Gov. Parnell doesn’t take advantage of this tremendous opportunity and provide any input, it would be slap in the face to rural Alaska..and we had enough of that with the former part time Governor Sarah Bin Laden.
Good for both Parnell and Begich, who are actually doing something to address the issues out there. Way to go, guys!
Som one needs to clean up after Miss Wasilla!
Greytdog – I am sure they must have someone going to represent them – it would be crazy to miss this important opportunity.
There was a post about it a while ago. Will check over to AnonBloggers and ask (o:
What an exciting opportunity for rural Alaskans to have their voices heard by someone who might actually DO something! Let’s hope that the Parnell administration takes advantage of this great opportunity and institutes real changes that will solve some of the problems those villages face.
Ain’t it grand to have a president who cares about people who aren’t CEOs???
State needs to step it up first
Good luck Alaskans! I’m glad this meeting is taking place after SWWNBN left town/state 🙂
This is wonderful news to read.
This is very good news. Hopefully, we’ll be able to forestall a repeat of last year’s fiascos.
It’s lovely to hear some good news about trying to move forward.
Wow! HUD, Agriculture, Energy and Education Secretaries! Their eyes will be opened, that is for sure. I hope Gov Parnell has a chance to meet them while they are here – that would help open his eyes as well.
Any chance of Ann Strongheart & Nick Tucker getting to this meeting?
@ Mattie
Who cares? She is yesterday’s news up here!
Hurray for the President’s Rural America tour! I am a Rural America baby and proud of it! One place we lived had only 35 or so population, and that was after our family of five moved there. I would NEVER raise my children in a city – the country is too much in my blood – and the skills I learned by trying to be self sufficient and challenged by nature go beyond almost anything else in my life. Not that I would be a good farmer, though – my sisters have that in their blood and would put me to shame because they get up early and never stop working. Guess they learned a lot growing up in the middle of nowhere, too – also!
Rural America – you can be really weird and full of strange people but I love you anyway and you are the backbone of our country in my view!
What is SP going to say about this?
PS – that is within the state of Alaska.
wonderful indeed – one of the successes is that Alaska Native kids have shown the most progress of any group on the most recent educational assessments. They are still behind as a group but are progressing more rapidly than any other population.
It is important to note that these officals are visiting on a tour of all 50 States with the intention of discovering and serving public needs in rural areas.
Let’s hope the Alaska State government led (supposedly) by Sean Parnell welcomes this mission in cooperative spirit and does not reject their effors as “interference in State’s rights”.
This is a fact-finding mission with no strings attached with the mission to determine needs and ttheir solutions. Their determinations will impact allocation of resources at a national level – just as with the stimulus distribution, looking a gift horse in the mouth and accusing YOUR Federal civil servants of spying or interference in Alaska’s affairs will only serve to incent the administration to provide resources that might be allocated to Alaska to go elsewhere.
The more Alaskan people who make their voices heard, the better for Alaska.
Just what successes, is Begich referring too?
Hope they’re in a listening mood
This is wonderful news! Wonderful!!