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Guest Editorial: Dane: Loggers want to build families where they were raised

Lead Summary

(Wednesday night during the Republican National Convention, Minnesota’s Scott Dane, the Executive Director of the Associated Contract Loggers and Truckers of Minnesota gave a nationally televised speech printed below).
I’m Scott Dane, I represent loggers and truckers in Minnesota. But I also represent a way of life.
Logging’s been a part of the great American story from the beginning. In fact if you go to the Capital Rotunda and look up, you can see loggers on one of the panels, New England settlers carving out a new world from the wilderness.
But logging is the most dangerous job in the country but we embrace that risk because we know America was built by strong people building things together.
America needs us to keep building and we can’t wait to be a part of it. But the last time Joe Biden was in the White House Minnesota lost nearly half of its mills, thousands of jobs and experienced nearly a decade of decline. It was a similar story in other parts of the country. The administration just didn’t seem to care.
In 47 years in Washington, Joe Biden hasn’t done anything for the timber industry.
When plants closed in Duluth, Sartell, Cook and Bemidji they were just numbers on a paper to the Obama-Biden administration. To me they were people and jobs and families.
Under Obama-Biden radical environmentalists were allowed to kill the forest. Wildfire after wildfire shows the consequences. Managed forests, the kind my people work in, are healthy forests.
Under President Trump we’ve seen a new recognition of the value of forest management in reducing wildfires. And we’ve seen new support for our way of life where a strong back and a strong work ethic can build a strong middle class.
We want to build families where we were raised and stand by communities that stood by us. We want that way of life available for the next generation and we want our forests there too. President Trump, thank you for helping us do just that.

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