Societal crackup at the farmers market

There's a situation smoldering in a small city a few hills over from my small city that has all the familiar elements of post-America's tinderbox state in mid-2019.

For those reading this in some other locale, this blog emanates from south-central Indiana, a little over forty miles south of Indianapolis.

The small city referenced above is Bloomington, home to Indiana University's main campus, as well as a few major employers, such as Cook, the medical-device maker. Typical for a university town, the political composition of its government is overwhelmingly Democrat and the ethos permeating its culture is unmistakable left-of-center. That has generally played itself out peacefully through the years, as progressives' impulse for self-congratulation compels them to express their collectivism in "nice" ways whenever possible. And you can't ask for more cultural vibrancy. Bloomington has a great restaurant scene. Its music scene has been rich and well-developed for decades. There's always an art film being shown somewhere. It's an extremely animal-friendly city. Everybody pitches in to recycle and otherwise check off all the correct care-for-the-planet boxes.

So a weekend-morning farmers market in such a community is going to be about as innocuous an environment as you're going to find, correct?

Not lately:

The Bloomington Community Farmers’ Market has been suspended for two weeks due to concerns about public safety, the City of Bloomington announced Monday.

The concerns stem from alleged ties between a vendor at the market and white nationalism.

The article from an Indianapolis television station's website excerpted above doesn't provide much in the way of details and background, but the current newsletter from Grassroots Conservatives fills some of that in:

The NoSpace4Hate group has been handing out flyers calling for a boycott of Schooner Creek Farm.  One of their protesters was arrested for violating Farmers’ Market rules and when was led away by police, supporters screamed hate and cursed the police.

NoSpace4Hate had planned a large protest rally at the Farmers’ Market for August 3.  It was cancelled after the mayor’s announcement.

A dozen Antifa thugs dressed in black with hoods, masks, and sunglasses stared menacingly while surrounding the Schooner Creek Farm booth and blocked customers from buying vegetables.  Antifa is a known domestic terrorist group that includes local members who have been convicted of a violent racist attack.

In addition, fascist hate graffiti “SCHOONER CREEK FARM ARE NAZIS” was spray painted on buildings near the Farmers’ Market.  The graffiti was at 8 places on the historic Johnson Creamery building and also on another building south along the B-line trail.

This vandalism was a Hate Crime.  The FBI defines hate crime as a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.

NoSpace4Hate is falsely accusing Sarah Dye, the owner of Schooner Creek Farm, of being a white supremacist.  Sarah Dye denies all accusations of being tied to white supremacy.  She is disgusted at the level of lies, misinformation, falsehoods, and intimidation by the protesters.  It’s one thing if someone admits it but Ms. Dye denies it.

The innuendo has unfairly persecuted her reputation.  Here is the truth about Sarah Dye. 

• She just wants to sell her produce at the Farmers’ Market as she has for 9 years
• She is peaceful and does not spread hate
• She does not recruit for white supremacy at the Farmers’ Market
• She is proud of her European heritage but does not proselytize her beliefs
• She has made some mild pro-white comments on an obscure internet blog
• She has no criminal record or been accused of a crime
• She may have thoughts (wrongthink) that are politically incorrect but that is not a crime
• She used to be very liberal but became conservative a few years ago

It would be useful to have those "mild pro-white comments" handy so the public could judge for itself as to whether "mild" is the most apt adjective. Not saying it wouldn't be, but at this hair-trigger moment in post-America, assuming the responsibility to make all relevant facts available would be a good way to go. That said, she has never done anything at the farmers market but sell vegetables.

The protester referenced in the TV station's report? An IU history professor. Of course, neither you nor I are surprised, but that makes it all the more dismaying. My advanced degree is in history. I feel it is a supremely important field of academic inquiry, and I lament the dwindling number of enrollees in it nationwide to be a disturbing trend, particularly since the remnants still so enrolling are left to the machinations of the likes of the arrested protestor. Details from a Bloomington Herald-Times editorial by Laura Lane. It's behind a HT paywall, but is reprinted in full in the Grassroots Conservatives newsletter:

This past Saturday morning, I was at the Bloomington Community Farmers’ Market. I bought peaches from an Amish vendor and a cream-filled cornetto at the Piccoli Dolci bakery stand. About 10:45, I was at the Stranger Organic Farm booth directly across from Schooner Creek Farm’s booth. Several men stood in close proximity to the front of their stall. A petite woman wearing a sundress and carrying a protest sign walked back and forth, weaving between them and market shoppers, quietly and without incident.

The mood quickly changed from uncomfortable to tense to scary, an escalation that happened over a few minutes. Market staff asked Cara Caddoo to move to the market’s designated protest area, but she refused. There was confusion about what to do. Police officers soon arrived, and some of the men near the Schooner Creek Farm booth began shouting about Nazis, using expletives not usually heard at the market. Several Bloomington cops asked Caddoo to move, and when she refused, Sgt. Pam Gladish took the sign, told the Indiana University history professor she was under arrest for trespassing and handcuffed her.

As officers escorted the 40-year-old woman to a patrol car, several men ran alongside screaming at the police for arresting Caddoo and not others. One of the men had a long sheath with a knife hanging from his belt and an officer ordered him to stay back because of the weapon.

I documented what I saw, took a few pictures and interviewed people, including Sarah Dye, the Schooner Creek Farm proprietor accused of having ties to white supremacist views. She said she has been selling vegetables at the market for years and that she wasn’t going anywhere.

Just about everyone who has emailed me this week is upset that the HT has not identified Dye and her business as having white supremacist ties.

“Its owners are members of a documented white supremacist hate group. This is a well-known and clearly documented fact, not an ‘allegation’ and one that basic reporting would have revealed,” one complaint said.

And from another: “Your characterization of Sarah Dye as a peaceful mom simply trying to sell vegetables misses months of careful research that No Space for Hate and other Bloomington organizations have undertaken to show her ties to Idenity Evropa, a known hate group. As journalists, why did you not avail yourselves of their research?”

The Herald-Times has published multiple articles on the farmers’ market developments. We have done our own research. We have reviewed court documents, emails, videos and recordings that so many claim is proof that the owners of Schooner Creek Farm are white supremacists. Direct evidence, it isn’t there.

An alt-right group called the Three Percenters offered its support and help to Dye, but she declined it, telling the group she was confident that the police had the situation in hand.

This is a bit tricky to discuss responsibly, but not all that tricky.  The Herald-Times, like most Bloomington institutions, is not inclined to view anything even faintly smacking of white superiority in a kindly fashion, but as Lane says, it couldn't come up with a smoking gun in the case of Dye.

The trickiness comes in when one lends an ear to those occupying the various strata of entrenchment in our society. There are those who, in the wake of the El Paso and Dayton shootings, point to the number of shootings and fatalities in Chicago over the weekend and ask where the outcry is about it. There are those who call such a take a cowardly whataboutist avoidance of the rise of white-supremacy ideology. There is the plain fact that Western civilization originated in Europe and has been a unique blessing to humankind. There is the fact that asserting as much can get one in a lot of trouble. There is what pointing out that no one blinks an eye at someone being reported as having posted something "mildly pro-black" somewhere in the Internet will get one: the assertion that one's "white privilege" is so embedded that one cannot recognize the historical particularities that keep the two from being equivalent. There is the rejoinder to that: that fraudulent race-hustlers like Al Sharpton and hate-mongers like Louis Farrakhan not only have legitimacy conferred upon them, but are sought after by ring-kissers.  There are those, like this Three Percenter outfit, who relish any opportunity to gain a foothold of legitimization within conservatism. There are those, like Antifa and NoSpace4Hate, who relish any opportunity to exploit even the most tenuous connection between a cultural observation made on an obscure website and a person's bona fides as a stormtrooper.



Alas, that last group came up short in this situation.

No, the bottom line in this situation appears to be one of the Left seeking to keep a lady from selling vegetables at one of the friendliest weekly gatherings in the nation based on a smeared version of her views.

This is why 2019 post-America can't have nice things.