By David Webb
Lanesboro, MN
“The death of one man is tragic, but the death of thousands is a statistic.” – Joseph Stalin
Sitting in the relative comfort and safety of my Lanesboro home, and never having been to the Middle East, I find it almost impossible to grasp the “statistics” from Gaza. Two and a quarter people living in a “confined area.” More than 1 in 100 (24,000) killed since October 7. ten thousand children killed. What does all that mean?
Trying to make the statistics more comprehensible, I found it useful to consider some closer to home numbers for comparison:
The population of Fillmore County is 20,866. If all the residents of Fillmore County – everyone of us, our families, our friends, our neighbors – were killed, that would be fewer than the number of Gazans slaughtered in the last three months.
The area of Fillmore County is 862 square miles. 862 square miles for 20,866 people. The “confined area” of Gaza is 141 square miles; less than one sixth the area of Fillmore County. 141 square miles for 2,226,544 people.
“Population density” too abstract? Consider then the populations of:
• Minnesota – 5,728,610
• Wisconsin – 5,917,415
• North Dakota – 781,915
• South Dakota – 937,144
• total – 13,365,084
If the total population of these four states – every man, woman, child, and infant – were crammed into Fillmore County, it would be almost, but not quite, as crowded here as in Gaza. The population of the municipality of Whalan would not be 63, but rather 41,098; Lanesboro not 754, but rather 491,871.
There are a few urban areas on Earth in which the population density is that great. The important differences are that in those places people are free to come and go and that the necessities of life – potable water, edible food, medicine, fuel, electricity, sanitation, etc. – are provided.
Consider Fillmore County as Gaza on a good day. Some 13 million of us here. Stuck here. The neo-Minnesotans have built a wall around the Eastern, Northern, and Western borders, and the Iowans across the Southern. We can’t leave.
Forests and farms are gone. The landscape is pretty much continuous buildings in poor repair – not unlike, for example, “the projects” on the south side of Chicago. Some rooftop gardens perhaps and an occasional chicken coop here and there. No cattle, pigs, deer, beaver. No trout in the polluted Root and Upper Iowa Rivers.
If we “behave ourselves,” the neo-Minnesotans will allow truckloads of food, fuel, some other goods to come down Highway 52 from Rochester or up from Decorah – enough to keep us from starving or freezing. They’ll keep the electricity turned on most of the time. They’ll let garbage trucks in and out. They’ll give us some medicines, for example, once their people have had all their COVID boosters, they might give us some vaccine.
We’re continuously admonished not to rebel. But we’ve also learned the consequences of nonviolent protest – march towards the wall with picket signs and the soldiers just shoot us in the knee caps to cripple us.
And on a not so good day? No food trucks, running water, electricity, fuel, or garbage collection for more than a week. As mayor of Lanesboro, you’ve been given 24 hours notice to evacuate everyone in Lanesboro to safe haven in Rushford, after which, Lanesboro will be bombed. Highway 16 will be safe passage – unless it appears that combatants are using it. How do you move half a million people 20 miles in 24 hours to another municipality that already has more than one million inhabitants? School buses? No gas left at the BP station. What about the tens of thousands folks in assisted living?
So, what can the people of Gaza do? What should they do? What can we do? What should we do?