Southeast Missouri community activists work to make messages heard

Tracy McClard hasn't been sleeping well. Not in a while. Not really.

Not since Jonathan.

Nearly three years ago, her 17-year-old son committed suicide in a Missouri jail. Since then she spends her nights tossing and turning, thinking about other parents who aren't sleeping because their children are in prison. Alive, but with the same fate as Jonathan a possibility, thanks to what McClard considers a society that has thrown them away and a penal system that subjects them to tortures children should never have to endure, no matter what they have done.

So instead of sleeping, McClard ambles out of bed, usually about 4 a.m.

She has e-mails to check. Events to plan. Calls to make.

McClard doesn't want another parent to share her nightmare. In her mind, something has to change. And if she doesn't do something about it, then who will?

"I'm on a mission," McClard said. "I can't not do something. I just can't. My son is gone, and I look at it as he is safe and loved. But so many other parents are dealing with this. How can I sleep when they can't?"

It's not a life McClard would ever have wished for herself or anyone else.

But it's how an activist is born.

Southeast Missouri has its share of community activists -- civic-minded people who want to bring about, in some small way or some upheaval, a social, political, economic or environmental change.

Some, like McClard, are born from tragedy that leads to anger and then to a sense of injustice.

Some fight to protect something they hold dear, whether it's an unloved animal or to-die-for liberty.

Others want to save the environment, to take care of the country's aging population, to have their ideas be heard.

The one thing they all have in common: the hope that their activism becomes a movement that leads to real change, not the kind normally reserved for political rhetoric.

McClard is spokeswoman for the Campaign for Youth Justice, which lobbies against children being certified as adults and sent to prison with adult offenders. Instead, she believes they should be sent to special juvenile facilities until they're 21 and then to prison.

She lobbies legislators, works to educate the public and shares her story, even though it's painful to relive.

McClard is one activist, but there are countless others who are working to advocate their issues and beliefs.

We can tick off the mostly well-known names: Robin Cole, Alan Journet, John Casebolt, Melanie Coy and Estelee Wood, just to name a few.

Cole, a Jackson businessman, is president of a new organization formed to promote free market principles and fiscal responsibility in government.

Journet, a biology professor at Southeast Missouri State University, for years has warned people about the dangers of climate change.

Casebolt, of Scott City, is the head of the Cape Girardeau County Tea Party, which is the part of the now-famous fiscally conservative sociopolitical group that emerged last year through a series of locally and nationally coordinated protests.

Coy is a Cape Girardeau pit-bull rescuer and longtime animal welfare advocate.

Wood is a member of the Silver Haired Legislators, which works to promote senior issues.

Passion and purpose

Most of them work full-time jobs and spend their free time working on these issues. In most cases, it is their passion, their purpose.

Cole got involved with his group when he began to realize that his Republican Party was becoming less forceful with new and productive ideas about how to govern the state and run it in a fiscally responsible manner.

"It's just that we need to energize, we need to invigorate, we need to stimulate much more innovative thinking," he said. "New ideas can have great power. Even better if they're good ideas."

But for Cole, it's also about leading a purposeful and productive life. Cole said he tried retirement at age 50. It didn't work.

"It was a vastly overrated concept, and I decided I wouldn't do that again," he said.

So now he spends his time, when he's not running The Rite Group, traveling around the state getting his message out there to pretty much anyone who will listen.

"I took stock and realized I wanted to do more than just do well in business -- I wanted to do some good," he said.

Citizens, not subjects

Casebolt became interested in the tea party movement when he was doing an internship in Washington, D.C. in 2009. He went to a tea party rally and was hooked.

"I've always been interested in politics," he said. "But the country is becoming more and more divided. I saw it as an area where I could make a contribution. Both parties want to make the country better, but they have different ideas about going about it."

So Casebolt wants to help educate the public. The idea isn't the most glamorous, but he feels it's important.

"Only about 50 percent of the country votes," he said. "That means 50 percent don't. That means the U.S. has many people who are subjects, rather than citizens. That's what happens when you don't participate. We'd like to get more people involved in the process."

Wood, whose group lobbies the Missouri Legislature about issues important to senior citizens, said there is much to be vigilant about for aging Americans. People don't like to think about it, but there are myriad issues from elder abuse and neglect to nutrition.

Her group comes up with 16 bills a year and then whittles them down to five to submit to legislators.

"I got involved because I'm getting older myself," she said. "It's for their sake and my sake. Things won't get better unless we all step forward and say something."

'Be the change you want'

Alan Journet is among the most well-known in the area for his activism, for years talking about the dangers of climate change. In an area known for its conservatism, he admits it sometimes seemed daunting.

"It has been frustrating," he said. "It's been frustrating to be in a community that does not seem to value environmental issues."

In the past, Journet has been conservation chairman of the local Sierra Club, a position he held for 18 years. He also has served as co-facilitator of the Southeast Missouri Climate Protection Initiative.

Journet retired from the university June 1. Soon, he will leave town for Oregon, where will take his activism to a new community and a new job at the National Center for Conservation, Science and Policy.

"Gandhi said, 'Be the change you want to see in the world,'" he said. "That's what I'm going to continue to try to do for as long as I'm around. How can you not feel strongly about something as important as this?"

For Coy, it was a love of animals and a hatred of seeing them mistreated. So now she volunteers at the Cape Girardeau County Humane Society and also works to rescue pit bulls and other dogs who are mistreated.

"I have to be involved," she said. "I've always enjoyed pit bulls. Then a witch hunt began and '20/20' did a piece with Barbara Walters saying they're slobbering hounds of hell and they're killing our children. It steamrolled over the years, and I've been fighting the stereotype ever since."

Coy said she'll keep up the good fight until she can't. She can't imagine a life without her mission, which no doubt adds a sense of purpose. But she has a goal and she thinks it's attainable.

For Coy, and most activists, this isn't good work for good's sake. It's not simply something to do. For the most part, they're believers.

"I really hope that common sense and intelligence will take over," Coy said. "I hope I will see this reform in my lifetime."

smoyers@semissourian.com

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