When Ordinary Americans Do Extraordinary Things, We Need to Join Them
Last month retired West Des Moines public school teachers put it all on the line for our state and nation.
We weaned our calves this weekend. We do it every year. I helped wean calves on the farm I grew up on nearly every year I can remember until I went off to college. It’s something that must be done.
It’s also a little tough, or at least it should be. If you love raising cattle and care about your cows, weaning time should at least evoke some emotional pause. You select your cows for mothering. You want calves to have a strong nursing drive. Weaning day is when those traits you want and select for make the weaning process all that much harder.
When you raise cattle, there are tough days. Some of it is pretty routine. It’s part of the job. Weaning, done right, is routine with just a little drama. Calves bawl for their moms until they’re hoarse. Cows pace and call for their calves, looking for a way back to them.
Then there are the moments that happen that require a bigger emotional commitment. Putting an animal down. Deciding to sell the open cow. Butchering the cow that was a bottle calf you and your brother took in parades. She was in her teens, no longer having calves, but fat enough to turn into ground beef. We decided it was time to eat her.
For farmers and ranchers, there are big, emotional, life changing decisions like deciding when it’s time to liquidate the herd, sell the farm, file for bankruptcy.
Two weeks ago I was part of an event at the Iowa Capitol with the new group Iowans for Decency. The event was organized around a group of retired teachers from the West Des Moines School District.
They showed up with a letter penned to US Representative Ashely Hinson who is running for the open US Senate seat this fall in Iowa. She’s also a graduate of West Des Moines Valley High School. Many of the teachers who signed the letter and those who showed up to deliver it had Hinson in their classrooms.
This is not normal. It’s rare that teachers would publicly call out former students and do so by referencing their own teacher-student relationship. But these are not normal times.
Teachers know what it means to do tough things. Sometimes it’s routine, like saying goodbye to students at graduation.
Sometimes the tough gets taken up a notch like disciplining students.
Very rarely does the moment arrive that the tough choice seems to go against the very nature of being a teacher.
On May 16, over 60 former West Des Moines School District teachers made that tough decision. They penned that letter to a graduate of their school with harsh words, challenging her leadership as a member of the US House of Representatives and questioning her desire to become Iowa’s junior US Senator.
These teachers, with over 2000 years of teaching experience among them, placed the letter to Hinson as an ad in the Des Moines Register the following day.
Fifteen took it another level higher and showed up to read the letter in front of several hundred people including the media.
This wasn’t routine tough like they had collectively done for their entire careers. This was one of those unique moments of tough that you hope never comes, but when it does, how you respond tells the world what you’re made of.
So many powerful Americans have stood down as President Trump, MAGA, and nearly all elected Republicans have violated the spirit of our democracy and in many cases the laws that our democracy depends on. These ordinary Iowans, these public school teachers, have stood up and put themselves on the line. They have not backed away from the hard thing in front of them.
None of them wanted to do this. Few, if any have been political or party activists. Many have been registered as non-party or even Republicans.
I’ve had a front row seat to their bravery. My husband Patrick Standley was in the Valley High School class of 1981. We’ve been a part of the growing group of Valley High School grads and other Iowans from the very beginning of this group calling itself Iowans for Decency. I’m not speaking for the group in this post. I’m speaking for myself. However, I always strive to be transparent in my writing and I couldn’t do that without providing the background that I have an affiliation with Iowans for Decency.
You can learn more at the group’s website here, follow on Facebook and Instagram, and watch the entire event at the Iowa Capitol on Douglas Burns’ Substack The Iowa Mercury here. The Iowa Capital Dispatch also includes coverage here.
Iowans for Decency has organized as a political action committee (PAC) in order to raise and spend money to engage in electoral politics. There are laws governing how Americans can do this, and the group is following those laws.
For over 25 years, I’ve been around big money consultants, ads, political campaigns, the production teams, and some pretty big egos. There is an extraordinary difference between these teachers standing up and typical political efforts organized and executed by members of the professional political class.
From my vantage point, I’d argue the resources gathered and expended by Iowans for Decency in general and the efforts by these teachers specifically have been more about human resources than big checks.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every two years in this country trying to sell the image of ordinary Americans making claims for candidates, parties, and carefully crafted political positions. While that can be frustrating at best and often infuriating when the other team does it well, those efforts are part and parcel of the American political landscape.
Americans across the political spectrum share their cynicism about this landscape, but rarely does something emerge that breaks the mold. In the case of these teachers imploring a former student from their school and now a sitting member of congress who is running for US Senate to take responsibility for her policy positions and hold her accountable for her political statements, this is an example of something breaking that mold.
These public school teachers came together to do something really hard. They knew that it could personally hurt someone they had cared for. This was not a character assassination. This was not political theater. This was not choosing Democrats over Republicans and justifying any tactic to elevate their team.
These are teachers digging deep into who they are as professionals, as citizens of our democracy, as parents, grandparents, and the children of Americans who came before them. These are dedicated public servants.
In terms of their careers as educators, this wasn’t an annual ritual of rising to the moment of saying goodbye, or counseling a grieving student, or deciding to hold a student back to repeat a year. It wasn’t even the high stakes of helping students navigate a crime scene whether that be gun violence or in my own case during my two years as a high school teacher bumbling through figuring out how to support students who had been adjacent to or a direct victim of a sexual assault perpetrated by a fellow teacher.
In nearly all of those cases, doing the hard stuff mostly elicits general support. That’s what teachers do.
But in this case, teachers stepped up to do something they knew was right. They knew they were called to do it. And they knew it would put a target on their back. It would alienate friends and family. Former colleagues would reject their actions and words. Some would even accuse them of violating the core of their profession. People would accuse them of actually violating their calling as an educator.
But still they did the hard thing. They put themselves on the line.
They know that in this moment in our nation’s history, in the arc of global affairs, and at the dining room tables of their former students something is happening that they have spent their lives trying to teach about. They’ve spent their careers preparing their students as citizens of a great nation to stand up against an attack on our American values if that were to happen in their lifetimes.
And now it is happening. The hypothetical is literal. These teachers know that they must do something in the face of attacks on civic life, democracy, and basic decency. They know what the right thing to do is. They taught those values their entire careers. So they are standing up. They are speaking out.
Presidents of universities have not done the same. Business leaders have made excuses. Members of Congress have not had the courage. Supreme court justices have given permission. These teachers, these ordinary Americans are doing the right thing and they understand that comes at a personal cost.
I was at the rehearsal the night before the event at the capitol. I watched them fumble with the script. Put their sign up at the wrong time. I came early to the capitol and heard them trying to get the microphone and their voices to align so that people would be able to understand what they were saying. You could see in their eyes the butterflies in their stomachs knowing that once they spoke in front of the crowd and the cameras, they would never be able to un-ring that bell.
Peter Hedges, one of their former students and now a successful writer and director, helped them tell their story. He gave them direction. He helped shape the 50 minutes to tell the story and frame the powerful words and the courageous actions of these teachers.
The letter is theirs. The words are theirs. They held the signs. They put their faces in front of the cameras. They did the hard, deeply authentic, and historically grounded work of standing up for the shared values of our nation. The values they spent a career teaching their students.
Democracy is sort of like raising cattle. Every day is not all sunshine and rainbows. Some days are hard. And some moments are exceedingly difficult, calling us to put it all on the line.
The history of our nation has always depended on ordinary Americans being willing to put it all on the line.
It’s all the movements. Women’s rights. The end of slavery. The labor movement. Environmental justice. Dignity for people with disabilities. Marriage equality. Public education for everyone. The list is long and it continues to grow. Although right now, we’re going backwards on almost every front.
Wealthy and powerful Americans have always been on the wrong side of this history. Eventually many find their way to the team of patriots that corrects a wrong or moves us along in the right direction. A handful of the ruling class from the beginning do indeed stand alongside those ordinary Americans willing to put their bodies and their lives on the line. But it’s not the elite that have moved our nation toward justice and greater equality. The greatness of America comes from ordinary people putting their entire being on the line.
We are living in one of those times that is calling for very bold and extraordinary action. Are Americans going to rise up and stand with our core values or stay silent and simply hope that the ugliness passes?
The difference will be if ordinary Americans do extraordinary things. Because most of the wealthy and powerful aren’t going to do it.
Peter Hedges implored the crowd at the Capitol on May 16.
You can support our brave teachers. Our brave teachers. No teacher wants to call out a former student. They don’t want to. It’s a hard thing to do. It goes against every value they have. And that these teachers stood and told the truth today and asked this candidate to look deep in herself. And before it’s too late, turn herself around. Well, what can you do today? You can add your name to the letter.
Here’s what we all need to do. Pay attention to our friends, family, and neighbors who are showing up and putting themselves on the line. Steel ourselves with the courage to join them.
Most of us are willing to do the tough stuff of our daily lives. But when a crisis comes and everything is on the line, pay attention to those who do the really hard things. Look for those Americans who are willing to take great risks because they know the consequence of silence.
In 2026, we all need to listen to courageous people calling out the truth, especially when those with much greater power and influence are making excuses for their silence and even for their acquiescence.
In the face of what President Trump is doing to our nation and world, we need to listen to ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things like these teachers.
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This is a profound and important message that starts in a cattle pen. It reminds me of a Grant Wood quote that one of our Des Moines Register reporters used to have posted on his desk: “The best ideas I ever had came to me when I was milking a cow.”
These actions are the profiles in courage that are required for saving our country, democracy and decency. Huzzah!