Janet Allquist, 68, said she has always been faithful about voting but was never active in politics — until six months ago. That’s when she had an epiphany and decided to leave John, her husband of 48 years, for life on the road as a political activist.
Luckily for John, a retired Marine Corps pilot, she didn’t go far. Instead, she launched a one-woman protest campaign and became what she called “one voice against socialism” at the intersection of Highways K and N in her hometown of O’Fallon, Mo.
What motivated Allquist, a retired McDonnell-Douglas secretary, to become political? She said it was, and still is, the future of her three children and 11 grandchildren — including one with Autism — whose photos appear like wallpaper on the doors of her side-by-side refrigerator.
“To me, the most important things in life are God, our family and our country,” she explained. “These kids are 100 percent the reason why I’m up there. I’m really worried about their future.”
That worry stemmed, in large part, from the direction she saw — and continues to see — her country take since the election of President Barack Obama.
“I’ve never been afraid of our government before or afraid of what they’re going to be doing to our country,” she explained during an interview in her kitchen Thursday afternoon. “Things just began to pile up and pile up, and the more I saw on the news, the more I was screaming at the television. That’s when I decided to go up to the corner.”
Though “scared to death,” she went to that street corner alone, carrying a sign bearing the all-caps message, ONE VOICE AGAINST SOCIALISM, which she had printed out on her home computer and taken to a local print shop to be enlarged, laminated and “put on a stick.”
“I was afraid people might say something ugly to me, but no one did,” she explained. “There’s a lot of traffic there, and they started honking and giving me thumbs up and, generally, just showing their support for what I was doing.”
Allquist said she went out of town the next weekend, but resumed her one-woman protest a week later at the intersection where 40,000 vehicles pass daily. Her message began to resonate — and continues to resonate — with others in and around the city of 77,000 that straddles I-70 about 30 miles west of St. Louis.
Doctors and real estate agents joined in, carrying signs alongside small business owners and veterans, she explained. Card-carrying union members, mothers of newborns and people from seemingly every walk of life, skin color and political party came, too.
“We just started gaining numbers each week. Slowly at first, but then we started growing faster. We had 60 people, and then 80, and we’ve gone as high as 300 people recently.”
As the number of people on her side of Highway K grew, so did the number of counter-protesters across the highway.
“The fact that we’re getting counter-protesters out there, more and more each week, tells me that we are making an impact,” she said. “Of course, all of the signs that they carry are the pre-printed little yellow signs that say, ‘We want public option,” and they’re all identical.”
She added that she thinks the union people who, according to a recent union newspaper are being paid $11 an hour to be there, are “just doing what the union leadership has asked them to do” and that it would be wise for them to “really study the issues and see how it’s going to impact their families as well.”
What does Allquist see in the future as she looks down the activist road instead of across the real one that is Highway K?
“We feel like we would like to do more than just stand out on the street corner and hold our signs,” she said. “We have to make this grow.”
Making the effort grow, she said, will necessarily involve getting her group’s message out to like-minded people across the country and have absolutely no division.
“We have three objectives in this group,” she explained. “We want to fight the socialist agenda coming out of Washington, we want to get very good conservative candidates on the ballot for the upcoming election in 2010, and we want to get those people elected.
“I think we have to decide that the most important issue is our Constitution and our freedom,” she explained, “and, if we can all agree on that and get behind that, I think that’s the winning combination.”
And she’s not just talking about national politics.
“From the school board on up, we have to get people who share the same values that we share if we’re going to take back this country for our children and our grandchildren,” she continued. “We have let things get away from us, because we haven’t been paying attention.”
Asked how long the rallies will continue, she said she and her cohorts are prepared to be out there as long as it takes.
“I’m expecting this is going to be a long-term commitment. This all just didn’t happen overnight, so its going to take a while to get things the way they should be in this country again.”
To help them better manage their anticipated growth and matters they expect to accompany it, Allquist and her compatriots established a nonprofit group. To follow the group’s efforts, visit K-N-Patriots.org.