Syndicated

Hours before the official start of the Democratic National Convention, Sen. Bernie Sanders faced a ballroom full of his delegates and tried to rally them to support Hillary Clinton. A few of Sanders’ Alaska delegates later spoke of the moment with a mix of sadness and pragmatism.

Here’s how it sounded when Sanders told the crowd what they did NOT want to hear: “We’ve got to defeat Donald Trump,” he began, to general cheering, “and we’ve got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.”

That’s when the booing started.

“I think it was really telling that a huge majority of the delegates in there were extremely upset,” said Olivia Garrett.

She certainly understands it. The 22-year-old, who is from Soldotna and now lives in Fairbanks, just might have been the first Alaskan to “feel the Bern.”

“I worked for the Bernie campaign. And I’m just crushed that he didn’t get the nomination. I mean, I’ve put my heart and soul into this,” she said. “I’ve been a Bernie fan since I was 13 years old.”

Garrett said the Sanders supporters need time to grieve. Alaska Democrats gave Sanders more than 80 percent of the vote in their March caucus, so he won 13 of Alaska’s 20 delegates. Garrett says some of the Alaska delegates remain in the “Bernie or Bust” camp, and she tries to respect that. But Garrett agrees with Sanders, that it’s time to back Clinton to defeat Trump.

“What I’ve never understood is the people who intend to vote third-party, thinking that they will somehow pull off a third-party win,” she said, “because it just cannot be done, and this is not the time to risk it.”

Genevive Mina, president of the UAA College Democrats, said she was moved when she heard Sanders recite his policy successes.

“Talking about a $15 minimum wage, talking about trying to get single-payer healthcare, talking about fighting climate change, and recognizing this is after he’s gotten these same policies into the platform,” she said. “It’s really compelling to see what he actually has accomplished in his campaign, despite the fact that he hasn’t achieved enough delegates.”

Mina said she’ll vote for Clinton in November, but she’ll only campaign for state and local races. She says Alaska’s three electoral votes will likely go to Trump, and she plans to devote herself to down-ballot candidates, which she says are her priority anyway.

Nineteen-year-old Nathan Sidell of Palmer said he’s moving on, too, hoping to not only defeat Trump but also pull the Democratic Party to the left.

Sidell wore a stars and stripes kuspuk on the convention’s first day and held a green felt Robin Hood hat. The caps were handed to Sanders supporters on their way into his speech – symbol of Sanders’ position on taxing the rich, and a tangible souvenir of a campaign Sidell once hoped would end at the White House.

Lovey Brock, 71, has been picking berries in Wrangell since she was a kid.

“I used to go berry picking with an elderly lady that lived next door to us and at the time, Wrangell was mostly woods,” said Brock. “So we would go out on a point. She would take us out there, and we’d pick berries all day long and come home.”

When asked about this year’s salmonberry picking, Brock said, her patch has been doing well.

“Oh gosh, this year it’s beautiful. Usually they don’t ripen repeatedly. This year they have. I’ve been berry picking since May. I just keep going to the same spots every two weeks, and I pick as much as I want,” said Brock.

It’s easy to chalk up a good season to more sun and less rain, but it’s not that simple.

Pat Holloway, a retired horticulturist, said the berry you’re picking has to make it past hungry animals and insect infestations. Most importantly, the timing of the weather needs to be just right.

“There’s a long laundry list when you think about a perennial plant like the salmonberries. Anything with in the entire year of the lifecycle of that plant can cause problems,” said Holloway. “When you see these really wide swings and you get huge amount of fruit, sometimes that means the weather was pretty darn good when the insect pollinators were out.”

Each little nub on the berry, and there can be hundreds, needs to pollinated individually. It takes a lot of pollinators such as bees, butterflies and hummingbirds to pollinate every berry on just one bush.

“So you could use one bumblebee, but it has to spread that pollen on every one of those little pistols that will eventually form into that little bump, the fruit. It’s called a droplet,” said Holloway.

She said the bush’s flowers also need to make it through spring. Any late season frost or harsh storms will kill them and fewer flowers equal fewer berries.

“The flowers are the least hardy part of the plant and so you can have a plant that survives really well, but the flowers can be killed just because the temperatures go down too far,” she said.

For Wrangell residents like Brock, this year’s picking is going a long way. She makes jams and freezes berries for her friends and family.

The Sitka Seafood Festival has issued a call for help after the 2016 event was placed on hold earlier this year.

Alicia Haseltine, vice president of the festival board, said the decision was made after the festival lost several of its leaders.

“Last year was our sixth year, and each year it’s continued to grow,” said Haseltine. “As it’s grown, the amount of people involved kind of stayed the same, so the workload wasn’t getting distributed as much as we’d hoped. Unfortunately about half of our board members ended up leaving town, including our director, which makes it very difficult to continue going how it has been going.”

In previous years, the festival offered cooking classes, meals, films, music and games focusing on the community’s fishing industry and seafood traditions.

The festival was run by volunteers. After year two, a nonprofit was established. Now, Haseltine said they’re looking for another organization or corps of volunteers to bring the festival into the future.

“To see it continue to grow we’d like to shift focus a little bit and see if we can get a fishing organization or someone in the tourism business or someone in the culinary industry who might want to spearhead it, and we can continue working on it from there,” said Haseltine.

Current board members and volunteers are holding a meeting to discuss the future of the Sitka Seafood Festival at 6 p.m. Aug. 18 at the Sealing Cove Business Center.

A Native American caucus from the Pacific Northwest is in Philadelphia this week to speak for the priorities of Northwest tribes at the Democratic National Convention.

Washington’s Native American Caucus Chair Julie Johnson said it’s possible this year’s 16-member group is the largest Native caucus to ever attend a national party convention.

“I think it’s very important that we network, that we find out what other people are doing and what their priorities are,” Johnson said. “We need to not push but share the Native American priorities.”

The platform they’ve carried with them to Philadelphia includes a number of issues that range from natural resources, to tribal sovereignty, economic development and health care.

“I strongly believe that Native people have to be at the table on voting for what our priorities are,” Johnson said.

The national platform developed at the convention this week will stand as the Democratic Party’s official platform for the next four years.

Johnson, a member of the Lummi tribe in Western Washington, said tribes generally identify more closely with Democratic principles. She and several other sources were not aware of an organized group representing Native Americans at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

“I don’t how many times the Republicans have said they want to get rid of the affordable care act,” Johnson said. “Well, you know our Indian Health Service dollars are in that budget and so what they’re really saying is they want to get rid of our Indian Health Service dollars.”

Patricia Whitefoot is a member of the Yakama Nation and the president of the National Indian Education Association. She also hopes to educate members of the DNC about the major issues affecting tribes.

“This is the way that we as a delegation have to educate the world. People simply do not know about Indian tribes and the unique relationship Indian tribes have with the federal government,” Whitefoot said. “So it’s a whole educational process.”

Other Northwest region tribes represented by caucus members include the Puyallup, Tulalip, Umatilla, Colville, Quinalt, Tsimshian and Yurok.

The Petersburg Borough Assembly agrees with the governor — on at least one thing.

At a July 18 meeting, members unanimously approved a resolution supporting a state income tax over a state sales tax, issues that Gov. Bill Walker and the legislature have been considering to bring in more revenue.

Walker proposed and backed an income tax. He only brought up a sales tax at the request of some lawmakers.

Assemblyman Bob Lynn said a state sales tax would hurt smaller communities more.

“When you look at the State of Alaska one of the things that you have is a lot of the smaller communities like similar to the size of Petersburg, even smaller, have a sales tax in place, whereas, a lot of your bigger municipalities do not,” Lynn said. “So, what happens is if you put an additional 3 percent or 6 percent from the state on top of what we have, that would put our local sales tax at 9 percent or higher.”

Lynn said an income tax would also include visiting workers.

“An income tax reaches out to all those, even those who make their income in Alaska but then take that out of state; quite a difference,” he said.

Assemblyman Jeigh Stanton-Gregor agreed saying the sales tax hurts poor people the most.

“Sales tax is a regressive. And for those of us who don’t know regressive taxes, they hurt those people on the lowest end of the income spectrum the most,” Stanton-Gregor said. “And just on an ethical level I have a problem with that. It doesn’t seem equitable to me.”

The next regular meeting for the assembly is Aug. 1 at noon.

The head of the U.S. Marine Corps stopped in Anchorage and the interior this weekend to evaluate new opportunities for training. But some see it as a potential first step in building a permanent presence.

Wearing scuffed combat boots in the parking lot just outside the Mountain View VFW hall in Anchorage, Republican Senator Dan Sullivan sounded delighted as he introduced the country’s top marine.

“It’s my distinct honor as a marine myself to have the commandant of the marine corps in Alaska,” Sullivan said during brief remarks to the press.

“One of the things we’ve been trying to do is get our leadership — our military leadership — up to Alaska to see this great state, all this training that we have,” he added.

Since taking office, Sullivan has made a priority of advocating for a strong military presence in Alaska. But so far that’s been largely speaking up about the state’s main branches, the Army and Air Force. In fact, one rarely hears anything at all about marines in the 49th state.

But that may change.

The trip is General Robert Neller’s first visit to Alaska. And he says the reason is primarily to see with his own eyes the facilities available.

“We’re always looking for places to train,” Neller told reporters, adding that the marines are working with new weapons systems like the F-35 fighter jets that have expanded capabilities. “The air space up here and the instrumental ranges up here provide great opportunities.”

Though Alaska doesn’t have a significant force of active duty marines, the status of USMC units stationed in the Pacific is changing, with several thousand service-members and dependents shifting off a base in Okinawa, Japan over the next few years. And after fifteen years of wars in the Middle East, Neller said, the branch is beginning to re-build it’s capabilities to operate in colder climates.

However, Neller said there are no current plans to permanently base a sizable contingent of marines in Alaska.

After taking a few questions, Neller and Sullivan headed in to the VFW hall, which was filled with the full spectrum of military boosters, from older vets in suits seated next to their wives, all the way to young guys in motorcycle vests and bandannas.

Neller wandered between tables as he spoke to the crowd, giving a general update on the Marine Corps itself before dipping into his impression of Alaska so far, which he plans to take back to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, DC.“Just look at this place tonight. It’s packed,” Sullivan said before the audience. “Standing room only.”

“The environment, the climate, the space–particularly air space in Alaska, is very, very interesting to me as far as opportunities for us to train Marine Air-Ground Task Forces,” Neller said.

Part of the reason for a high level commander to take two hours engaging a crowd in this way is to get a sense of how members of the community feel toward the military. Sullivan hammered home that Alaska and its veteran community are the kind of place that greets service-members and their families with open arms.

“We sell Alaska,” the senator said several times.

Standing near a vending machine, two tough-looking guys in biker vests agreed with that overall assessment.

Tom Roar is in the Air Force, and a member of the Combat Vets Motorcycle Association. As people throughout the room lined up for food and photos with the commandant, Roar explained he thinks this kind of event helps to show off Alaska to senior officials scoping it out.

“(It) tends to be pretty laid back,” Roar said of military and veteran community around Anchorage. “We get real formal when we have to and everyone’ll be up in uniform, but I think this is fabulous. You get all the old veterans out here that can come out and it’s just a relaxed atmosphere.”

Next to Roar was Todd Boren, who retired from the Air Force after 21 years, and describes the community in Alaska as one big tent.

“We poke at each other and give each other a hard time, but we’re all on the same team,” Boren said.

Not everyone at the event is convinced the commandant’s interest is just in occasional training exercises. Some see an opportunity for Alaska’s military bases to pull in a new tenant.

John E. Beasley was 19-years-old when his marine unit was caught up in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, one of the decisive conflicts in the Korean War. He keeps a close eye on military affairs in Alaska, and thinks even if firm plans aren’t in place right now, there’s the potential for a significant number of marines to eventually be brought here.

“The Commandant doesn’t travel places just for drill,” Beasley said. He cautions that his read on the situation is “based on scuttlebutt,” but believes there’s import to Neller’s rare visit.

“I think he’s taking a look at us from the standpoint of establishing a marine contingent up here,” Beasley explained. “Again, that man doesn’t go places without a reason.”

This is first time Beasley knows of a marine commandant visiting Alaska since he moved to the state in 1968.