Gavin Aronsen

Reporter

Gavin is a Mother Jones reporter in the DC bureau.

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Gavin is an Iowa native, and covered the 2008 first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses for the Ames Tribune. He has also contributed to the Agence France-Presse, Daily Beast, Iowa Independent, Manhattan Media, and Village Voice.

14-Year-Old Occupier Arrested at Iowa Democratic Party Headquarters

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Thu Dec. 29, 2011 8:22 PM PST

Fourteen-year-old Frankie Hughes, right, was one of 12 Occupy Iowa protesters arrested Thursday in Des Moines.

Occupy Iowa continued a string of protests on Thursday, this time outside Democratic Party headquarters in Des Moines, resulting in the arrests of 12 people. Among them was 14-year-old Frankie Hughes, who was released into her father's custody at the scene and may face a juvenile court proceeding. The overall tenor of the arrests was peaceful and symbolic.

When the protesters first arrived, Iowa Democratic Party chairwoman Sue Dvorsky and executive director Norm Sterzenbach came out to greet them. The two party officials spent about 20 minutes expressing their frustrations with what they considered to be a distraction, but also their willingness to listen to the protesters' grievances. Then they went back inside to prepare for the January 3 caucuses, and soon called the police.

The protesters originally planned to demonstrate outside Barack Obama's campaign headquarters, after having focused their attention Wednesday on Mitt Romney. They changed their plans after an impromptu early morning protest at Ron Paul's headquarters, and after hearing that Obama's headquarters had closed for the day. At the new location, about 40 protesters focused their attention on Obama's ties to Wall Street and his support of the National Defense Authorization Act, which codified the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects arrested on US soil.

"We are here to listen to you. We are not trying to ignore you," Dvorsky had told protesters before the arrests. "But we don't know what you want," she added, expressing frustration that, after eight protesters were arrested at the same location 10 days prior, some occupiers had turned down a subsequent offer to meet with her and instead showed up to protest on Thursday unannounced. When protesters asked Dvorsky to make a phone call to the White House to request that the president meet with Occupy Iowa, she refused, calling the demand unrealistic. "You guys are working outside of electoral politics," she added. "We work inside of it. That's the best answer I can give you."

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

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Iowa Occupiers Bring a Mic-Check to Ron Paul

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Thu Dec. 29, 2011 4:00 AM PST

Following an afternoon of protests outside both a Wells Fargo branch and Mitt Romney's Des Moines headquarters on Wednesday, 15 or so Occupy Iowa demonstrators regrouped at their headquarters. Nathan Adeyemi, a member of Occupy Cedar Rapids hailing from eastern Iowa, called for volunteers to help disrupt a Ron Paul campaign appearance set to begin a half hour later. "I've been looking forward to it all day," Adeyemi told me on the short car ride to the State Fairgrounds.

But when the handful of protesters arrived at the building in which Paul would speak, it was clear that a last-minute mic check effort would be difficult to pull off. More than 500 people, many of them avid Paul supporters, were waiting out a series of endorsement speeches and patriotic sing-alongs that felt a bit like the opening act of a rock show.

Paul soon took the stage, and as Adeyemi started shouting for the mic-check he was quickly surrounded by Paul supporters. Many began cheering to drown out Adeyemi's recitation of the script he'd brought, which criticized Paul for opposing abortion rights and supporting the elimination of social programs. One Paul supporter escorted him out of the building while members of the media crowded around Heather Ryan and her 16-year-old daughter Heaven Chamberlain, two of about 12 protesters left in the building (another four had yet to arrive). The mother and daughter linked arms with the other protesters and were forced to the back of the auditorium as Paul supporters yelled at them. The small group had barely been able to disrupt Paul's speech, with just a brief chuckle coming from the candidate when he heard Adeyemi's initial "mic-check!" call.

Despite the tension between the protesters and Paul supporters, they shared some common ground. Occupier Clarke Davidson carried an "End the Fed" sign, echoing a key demand of many Paul supporters. But Davidson said he refuses to support Paul because he isn't running as an independent and remains a participant in a broken political system.

For some of the protesters, the thwarted mic-check was still a worthy effort to call attention to what they see as the candidate's pseudo-populism. "I particularly dislike Ron Paul because of his use of popular language to try to make himself appear to be a person who represents the interests of the poor and the middle class," Adeyemi explained. "He's trying to basically co-opt the vote of people who are frustrated with the establishment."

Ryan, a veteran of the Gulf War, said that although she is a peace activist she considers Paul's non-interventionist foreign policy to be "naive."

Other protesters were plainly frustrated with the lackluster results of their effort to disrupt the event. "It was bad, it was a bust," said Katie Coyle, of Coralville, Iowa. "They out-shouted us." Still, she said, "we did get a lot of cameras on us."

UPDATE, Thursday, December 29: On Thursday morning, five Occupy Iowa protesters were arrested for blocking the entrance to Ron Paul's campaign headquarters in the Des Moines suburb of Ankeny. They protested Paul's opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency, and among those arrested was Clarke Davidson, who reportedly said that he was a Paul precinct captain as police cuffed him. "But I’m here in solidarity," he said. "I don’t support every single position Ron Paul holds."

Occupy Protesters Arrested Outside Romney's Iowa Headquarters

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Wed Dec. 28, 2011 4:00 PM PST

Occupy activists kicked off their first day of direct actions in the week leading up to Iowa's January 3 caucuses with a protest outside Mitt Romney's Des Moines headquarters, where seven protesters were arrested on criminal trespassing charges on Wednesday. About 70 others chanted familiar occupy slogans and protested Romney's ties to Wells Fargo. (Employees and executives of the San Francisco-based banking giant have given $61,500 to Romney thus far in the 2012 election cycle.)

Before the protest, several dozen occupy activists met at their own headquarters near the State Capitol, where they decided to protest outside Romney's campaign office because of its vicinity to a Wells Fargo just a few doors down the same street. The occupiers were joined by about a half-dozen police officers from the Des Moines area, who were invited in the interest of open communication.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Occupy Iowa Kicks Off Caucus Week Plans

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Wed Dec. 28, 2011 9:23 AM PST

At the People's Caucus Tuesday night in Des Moines, Iowa.

Inside a rented storefront down the street from the State Capitol in Des Moines, Occupy Iowa supporters preempted the state's first-in-the-nation caucuses with their own "People's Caucus" Tuesday night. After a day of strategizing, the activists broke into preference groups to indicate which local presidential campaign headquarters they would most like to see occupied over the next three days. The winner of the dubious honor: Barack Obama, followed by Mitt Romney and, in a close third, Iowa GOP front-runner Ron Paul.

About 200 people, including a small handful from occupations across the country, turned out for the event. Participants ran the gamut from pre-teens to seasoned protest vets, and one energetic young man sported Hatchet Man jewelry from the band Insane Clown Posse.

A flyer distributed Tuesday explained that after three days of occupying presidential campaign headquarters, central Iowa occupy demonstrators plan to "occupy campaign events around the state" from Saturday until Monday, January 2—the day before the caucuses. That could mean anything from mic-checking candidates to further occupations: "The execution of it is all over the board," one supporter explained.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Santorum Searches for His Spotlight in Iowa

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Mon Dec. 26, 2011 7:46 PM PST

Rick Santorum, left, talks about his Iowa pheasant hunt Monday as Rep. Steve King listens in.

Outside Doc's Clubhouse in Adel, Iowa, on Monday, Rick Santorum sported a bright orange Cabella's suit and matching NRA hat as he chatted up reporters. The presidential candidate joked about his "four clean kills" on the day's pheasant and quail hunt, and his weight: 211 pounds. Santorum recently lost a dieting competition to Iowa Rep. Steve King, who joined him on the pair's second hunt in recent months. But the GOP underdog, who's running sixth in the state behind Michele Bachmann, was less than candid about the expectations game a week ahead of the January 3 caucuses.

Santorum, who has made a point of visiting each of Iowa's 99 counties but remains the only serious contender in the state who has yet to take a turn as the front-runner, said he sees the caucuses as three competitions in one. The first is among libertarians, "which Ron Paul is going to win." The second is the moderate primary, "which Gingrich and Romney are scrumming for." Then there's the "non-Newt-Romney" bloc of real right-wingers, in which Santorum hopes to edge out Bachmann and Rick Perry. But even if he loses that contest, he may stick around. "I think you could have a bunch of folks all packed together...and first, second, third may not mean as much as how well you do," he told me.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]