A Tribute to Tim Rinne
Tim Rinne, my old friend and partner in crime, has toiled all his adult life, like the Old Country peasant stock he came from, for environmental, economic and social justice, for peace and peace-making and to counter colonialism, militarization, war and nuclear arms, for cooperation, diversity and inclusion, for sane and equitable climate policy, for community gardening and food security for all.
It is no exaggeration to say that Tim’s influence on my own life has been powerful, even seminal. Tim encouraged me to go to work in 1995 for the Nebraska Farmers Union at a time of historic change in farm policy—particularly de-coupling* of farm payments from production as price floors were swapped out for welfare style payments. I have worked, paid and unpaid ever since, writing and organizing, on behalf of the family farm system of ag production.
In 1996, the Lincoln Journal Star hired me to write a column every other Sunday, “From the Left”, alternately with “From the Right” by conservative businessman Robert Valentine (famously father of guitarist James Valentine in Maroon 5). After eighteen months, the Lincoln Journal Star published my column that read, “Ernie Chambers, all too often more or less singlehanded, prevents a lot of ignorant white people from harming themselves and others…” (I’m still proud.) The following week the paper fired me for “business reasons.”
As soon as Tim heard, he called and offered me a column in NFP’s state paper, to be called “From the Bottom”. (Cf. Jim Hightower’s dictum, “Politics isn’t about left versus right; it’s about top vs. bottom.”) Since then, Tim has provided a platform for my own life’s work for more than two decades in the Nebraska Report, at times reprinted in state and regional weeklies and small towns along the East Coast through the nineteen nineties, and the national Progressive Populist.
More than enough about me—my point is, as I found my place in civic life, my topoi (my topics) and a voice with which to speak truth to power, at every turn, Tim was there—catalyst, connection, inspiration, editor and publisher. It’s been my great privilege to ride the river with Tim. Among the folks who read this tribute (you know who you are), many would say the same.
Tim was born in Beatrice, Nebraska and as a small child moved to Lost Cabin, Wyoming—just down the road from Hell’s Half Acre. When Tim’s father became a supervisor on the Platte River pipeline, the family settled in Gering, Nebraska, attending the local Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. In later years, when Tim’s conservative father asked Tim where he came by his liberal ideas, Tim answered, “In Sunday school.”
When it was time for college, Tim enrolled at Concordia University, Seward, Nebraska, and hoped to move to Portland, Oregon to write poetry. His father despaired that Tim would never earn a living with his hands and sent him to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1976. There Dad’s fears were realized as Tim left the Republican party and embraced Marxism. Tim’s first job was shelving books at Love Library, where he met the love of his life, Kay Walter (recently retired as a senior librarian from that fine institution).
Kay and Tim married in 1982 and had a daughter Anna. Through those salad days they drove a car that started no matter how wretched cold the morning, so of course they named it Stalingrad. In 1986 Tim and Kay purchased a three-story Victorian home at the corner of T Street and North 26th Street in the neighborhood still known then as T Town.
In the early nineteen nineties, Tim worked with Betty Olson, then state coordinator of NFP, on the nuclear FREEZE campaign and took part in an NFP mission to Chiapas, Mexico.
In October of 1993, Tim became NFP state coordinator and threw himself into the struggle for peace and justice. Tim wrote hundreds of articles for the Nebraska Report, raised money, managed scores of volunteers and joined forces with local and national compadres in a true global network. Tim’s campaigns were many and memorable—too many to detail, but Whiteclay comes to mind as a long fight which prevailed in the end, the end of land based missiles and nuclear arms and power both, opposition to the last twenty years of endless war waged in the Middle East, with a very strong focus on all aspects of global warming, federal Farm to School legislation to give small ag producers access to the U.S. school lunch program (arguably the largest restaurant franchise on earth), and the unforgettable Berkshire Hathaway campaign to identify the power of climate investment—for which NFP earned national press.
Personally, I know Tim to be a deeply spiritual man, inventive, unfailingly kind and like so many of the great sages, wickedly funny. Fine as these parts are, so much greater is the whole Tim entire, owning a powerful charisma and taste for guerilla theatre. Ever the radical, Tim keeps always in his heart the primacy of the poor—the voiceless, in Hebrew anawim—and he has kept steadily to the NFP mission to address social justice and human rights, along with climate crisis frequently the theme of the annual state meetings featuring compelling speakers on everything from the death penalty to the great shame of School of the Americas to Black Lives Matter, year after year.
Tim has been honored for his work. Distinctions include the Don Quixote Award (and roast) for his decade-plus fight to bring minor league baseball to Lincoln (League of Women Voters); in 2014 a TEDX talk, Growing Food, Growing Community and a story about the Hawley Hamlet in the May Mother Earth; celebration of Tim’s 25th years as state coordinator; and in 2020, Neighborworks America gave Kay and Tim the Dorothy Richardson award.
The philosopher Montaigne said a person ought not rest on their laurels, real or imagined, and should spend their latter years among their cabbages. Shakespeare echoed, “Endurance is all.” The NA award money is going towards another greenhouse for Hawley Hamlet’s common gardening space. Unless I miss my guess we’ll find Tim most days visiting with his neighbors, writing about cooperation and carbon mitigation, or puttering in some garden, earning his living with his hands.
It is no exaggeration to say that Tim’s influence on my own life has been powerful, even seminal. Tim encouraged me to go to work in 1995 for the Nebraska Farmers Union at a time of historic change in farm policy—particularly de-coupling* of farm payments from production as price floors were swapped out for welfare style payments. I have worked, paid and unpaid ever since, writing and organizing, on behalf of the family farm system of ag production.
In 1996, the Lincoln Journal Star hired me to write a column every other Sunday, “From the Left”, alternately with “From the Right” by conservative businessman Robert Valentine (famously father of guitarist James Valentine in Maroon 5). After eighteen months, the Lincoln Journal Star published my column that read, “Ernie Chambers, all too often more or less singlehanded, prevents a lot of ignorant white people from harming themselves and others…” (I’m still proud.) The following week the paper fired me for “business reasons.”
As soon as Tim heard, he called and offered me a column in NFP’s state paper, to be called “From the Bottom”. (Cf. Jim Hightower’s dictum, “Politics isn’t about left versus right; it’s about top vs. bottom.”) Since then, Tim has provided a platform for my own life’s work for more than two decades in the Nebraska Report, at times reprinted in state and regional weeklies and small towns along the East Coast through the nineteen nineties, and the national Progressive Populist.
More than enough about me—my point is, as I found my place in civic life, my topoi (my topics) and a voice with which to speak truth to power, at every turn, Tim was there—catalyst, connection, inspiration, editor and publisher. It’s been my great privilege to ride the river with Tim. Among the folks who read this tribute (you know who you are), many would say the same.
Tim was born in Beatrice, Nebraska and as a small child moved to Lost Cabin, Wyoming—just down the road from Hell’s Half Acre. When Tim’s father became a supervisor on the Platte River pipeline, the family settled in Gering, Nebraska, attending the local Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. In later years, when Tim’s conservative father asked Tim where he came by his liberal ideas, Tim answered, “In Sunday school.”
When it was time for college, Tim enrolled at Concordia University, Seward, Nebraska, and hoped to move to Portland, Oregon to write poetry. His father despaired that Tim would never earn a living with his hands and sent him to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1976. There Dad’s fears were realized as Tim left the Republican party and embraced Marxism. Tim’s first job was shelving books at Love Library, where he met the love of his life, Kay Walter (recently retired as a senior librarian from that fine institution).
Kay and Tim married in 1982 and had a daughter Anna. Through those salad days they drove a car that started no matter how wretched cold the morning, so of course they named it Stalingrad. In 1986 Tim and Kay purchased a three-story Victorian home at the corner of T Street and North 26th Street in the neighborhood still known then as T Town.
In the early nineteen nineties, Tim worked with Betty Olson, then state coordinator of NFP, on the nuclear FREEZE campaign and took part in an NFP mission to Chiapas, Mexico.
In October of 1993, Tim became NFP state coordinator and threw himself into the struggle for peace and justice. Tim wrote hundreds of articles for the Nebraska Report, raised money, managed scores of volunteers and joined forces with local and national compadres in a true global network. Tim’s campaigns were many and memorable—too many to detail, but Whiteclay comes to mind as a long fight which prevailed in the end, the end of land based missiles and nuclear arms and power both, opposition to the last twenty years of endless war waged in the Middle East, with a very strong focus on all aspects of global warming, federal Farm to School legislation to give small ag producers access to the U.S. school lunch program (arguably the largest restaurant franchise on earth), and the unforgettable Berkshire Hathaway campaign to identify the power of climate investment—for which NFP earned national press.
Personally, I know Tim to be a deeply spiritual man, inventive, unfailingly kind and like so many of the great sages, wickedly funny. Fine as these parts are, so much greater is the whole Tim entire, owning a powerful charisma and taste for guerilla theatre. Ever the radical, Tim keeps always in his heart the primacy of the poor—the voiceless, in Hebrew anawim—and he has kept steadily to the NFP mission to address social justice and human rights, along with climate crisis frequently the theme of the annual state meetings featuring compelling speakers on everything from the death penalty to the great shame of School of the Americas to Black Lives Matter, year after year.
Tim has been honored for his work. Distinctions include the Don Quixote Award (and roast) for his decade-plus fight to bring minor league baseball to Lincoln (League of Women Voters); in 2014 a TEDX talk, Growing Food, Growing Community and a story about the Hawley Hamlet in the May Mother Earth; celebration of Tim’s 25th years as state coordinator; and in 2020, Neighborworks America gave Kay and Tim the Dorothy Richardson award.
The philosopher Montaigne said a person ought not rest on their laurels, real or imagined, and should spend their latter years among their cabbages. Shakespeare echoed, “Endurance is all.” The NA award money is going towards another greenhouse for Hawley Hamlet’s common gardening space. Unless I miss my guess we’ll find Tim most days visiting with his neighbors, writing about cooperation and carbon mitigation, or puttering in some garden, earning his living with his hands.
