THE BRIGHT LIGHT OF JOHN KINSMAN
Rally at the 2011 Pull Together Solidarity Tractorcade, Wisconsin State Capitol. The event drew over 150,000 people -the largest gathering ever in WI history. John Peck on left, John Kinsman on right with another farmer in the middle.
The physical life of John Kinsman has ended, but he lives fiercely in the hearts and minds of the myriad people he touched and his many close friends.
Wisconsin dairy farmer, a dear friend to many, a tireless warrior for food sovereignty, and a champion of family farmers in his home town and literally around the world. While continuing to run his dairy farm, John traveled around the US and the globe showing up wherever people needed to hear about the plight of family farmers, how they needed a fair price, and the need to turn upside down exploitative trade and farm policies. Even as he began to decline he would be out with the masses, marching with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and speaking in front of crowds.
This quote gives you a sense of John’s unique humor and colorful stories, “Organizing farmers is like pushing a wheelbarrow of frogs.”
John lived life with abundance, fought for justice, laughed with friends and enemies, inspired me and so many others, and will be sorely missed!
~andrew kang bartlett
“John Kinsman, a dairy farmer and loving husband and father from the hilly Driftless region of Wisconsin was an unlikely and unassuming giant in the global struggle for justice and food sovereignty. But a giant he was, touching the lives of countless people around the world in his 87 years of farming, protesting, strategizing and building relationships and solidarity.John died peacefully yesterday at 87, on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, surrounded by family on his farm.”
Read the “In Memory of John Kinsman,” by Siena Chrisman on the WhyHunger blog.
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