Alida Messinger
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Alida Messinger donated $25,000 to the Secretary of State Project in 2008. She is listed as a philanthropist.
Dayton marriage
In 1978, Mark Dayton was appointed the Minnesota Economic Development Commissioner and married Alida Rockefeller Messinger, a member of the Rockefeller family.
Wellstone Action
In 2009 Alida Messinger was listed as a member of the Advisory Board[1] of Wellstone Action, a Minnesota based organization based on the political legacy[2] of that state’s late ‘progressive” Senator Paul Wellstone.
- Wellstone Action and Wellstone Action Fund combine to form a national center for training and leadership development for the progressive movement. Founded in January 2003, Wellstone Action's mission is to honor the legacy of Paul and Sheila Wellstone by continuing their work through training, educating, mobilizing and organizing a vast network of progressive individuals and organizations.
Black Hills Alliance
From David Tilsen:
- When the Oglala shooting happened in 1976, I lived in the area for eight months and served as the court-appointed investigator. Those defendants were eventually acquitted, though the case was similar to Leonard Peltier’s. Peltier was facing extradition in Canada and so he was not part of that trial. Had he been part of that trial, who knows what would have happened.
- After that, a lot of us got involved with water issues in Western South Dakota. There were a high number of miscarriages in both livestock and people living around the Black Hills area. We identified it as connected to the uranium mining in the Black Hills that did not properly dispose of the tailings—radioactive waste from the mining process. The Black Hills Alliance that developed brought together white ranchers, environmentalists and Indian people. It was an unusual coalition, especially for South Dakota. There were similar coalitions developing around fishing rights in Washington State, so it wasn’t unique, but it was special.
- Out of the Black Hills Alliance came the 1980s Black Hills Survival Gathering, a 10-day communing of thousands of people on a ranch near Rapid City. The Rapid City Journal said the Gathering was the third-largest city in South Dakota for ten days. There were experts from all over the world doing workshops on alternative energy and sustainable development.
- Alida Dayton came for two days and paid a cab to wait in the parking lot, which got lots of comments, but we appreciated her. She was one of our major funders.[3]