MONMOUTH, ILLINOIS (February 10, 2021) — COVID-19. Economic collapse. Civil unrest. Iowa caucuses. Representative Steve King's defeat. President Trump. Kenosha. Georgia special elections for the US Senate. The storming of the Capitol on January 6. Election 2020.
Monmouth College graduates were eyewitnesses to all of those historic events.
Five of those graduates will be part of a special February 15 session organized by the College's political science department and led by lecturer Robin Johnson.
Alex Altamirano ('19), Libby Meyer ('15), Steve Oaks ('16), Josh Perschall ('19), and Antonio Salgado ('20) will participate in the forum. It will be held via Zoom at 4PM, February 15, which is, appropriately, Presidents Day.
“After connecting with some students who were involved, it became apparent our young alums were involved in every major aspect of the campaign — from the Iowa caucuses a year ago to the Georgia special elections to last month's insurrection at the Capitol,” said Johnson.
Altamirano worked on the Biden-Harris campaign in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and on Jessica Gutierrez's campaign for Chicago's 30th Ward, while fellow Chicagoan Salgado was in the opposite camp, serving as a field organizer for the Trump Victory Team in Omaha and staffing the Senate election run-offs in Georgia.
Perschall was field director for Randy Feenstra's bid to unseat King in Iowa's 4th Congressional District, while Oaks was in the Quad Cities, serving as Bloomberg Regional Field Director for the primary and Progressive Turnout Project District Field Director for the general election.
Meyer, who lives in Fort Madison, Iowa, has been a political reporter for the Burlington Hawk Eye and a federal reporter for the Iowa Starting Line news outlet.