SHORT VERSION
Ed Fallon served fourteen years in the Iowa Legislature, then ran for Governor in 2006 and US Congress in 2008. Now a recovered politician, his work is focused on the a wide range of pressing issues, especially the existential threats of climate change and nuclear war.
Ed Fallon in front of a display of 10,000 shoes at the site of a cancelled climate march before the UN Climate Summit in Paris, December 2015.
Since September, 2009, Ed has hosted the most prominent progressive political talk show on the radio in Iowa. The Fallon Forum broadcasts on two stations in Iowa — KHOI 89.1 FM (Ames) and KICI 105.3 FM (Iowa City) — and on stations in five other states. Ed also directs Bold Iowa, which helped lead opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. In 2019, he led Bold Iowa’s effort to bird-dog presidential candidates on the urgency of climate change.
In 2014, Ed spearheaded the Great March for Climate Action, leading about 50 climate activists on a 3,100-mile trek from Los Angeles, CA, to Washington, DC. His memoir, Marcher, Walker, Pilgrim, chronicles that journey. Ed and his wife, Kathy Byrnes, operate an urban farm near downtown Des Moines, called Birds & Bees Urban Farm, where they grow half of their food and offer classes on how to turn one’s yard into dinner.
LONG VERSION
Ed Fallon was born in Santa Monica, California while his father was stationed there as a sergeant in the US Army. He grew up in Saugus, Massachusetts, and was heavily influenced by his Irish grandparents and relatives during repeated trips to the family farm in Roscommon County, Ireland. While only marginally interested in academics in high school, he excelled as an athlete, setting the school record in the high jump and as a member of the 4×400 indoor track relay team.
He studied music and philosophy at Marlboro College in Vermont, and then traveled the world for six years. He worked on farms in Nova Scotia, walked across southern England during blue bell season, stayed for three weeks with Carmelite nuns at a monastery in Cairo, Egypt, spent time on a kibbutz in Israel, and served as a Franciscan Volunteer on an Objibwe reservation in northern Wisconsin. From 1985 – 1987, he attended Drake University where he received a degree in religious studies.
In the late 1980s, Ed worked in the peace movement. He organized the Iowa stretch of the Great Peace March and founded Des Moines Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Well-versed in the writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Ed became friends with Gandhi’s granddaughter, Sumitra Kulkarni, and traveled to India in 1995, staying with her and her family and traveling the country to study ways in which modern Indians continue to use Gandhi’s ideas of non-violence to address contemporary social and political problems.
From 1993 – 2006, Ed served fourteen years in the Iowa Legislature, representing residents of downtown Des Moines, the surrounding neighborhoods, and the City’s northeast side. As a state lawmaker, Ed worked to give a voice to the voiceless, including family farmers, workers, the poor, minorities, prisoners, and the LGBTQ community. He led the way on several key initiatives, including efforts to address urban sprawl, reforming laws to protect land from eminent domain, ending corporate giveaway programs, opposition to the death penalty, reforming the delivery of human services, opposition to the official English bill, and marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. His 1996 speech in defense of LGBT equality gained him an invitation from Congressman Barney Frank to testify before the US Congress.
In 1998, Ed helped found 1000 Friends of Iowa, a land-use and anti-urban sprawl group. He served as its executive director for five years. In June of 2006, he ran for Governor in the four-way Democratic primary, receiving 26% of the vote. Ed also ran for Congress in 2008, losing to incumbent Leonard Boswell in the primary.
In 2009, Ed began a career as a talk show host with the Fallon Forum. It remains one of the few independent talk shows in Iowa, and currently broadcasts on eight radio stations — two in Iowa and in five other states.
In 2014, Ed spearheaded the Great March for Climate Action and led roughly 50 climate activists on a 3,100-mile trek from Los Angeles, CA, to Washington, DC. Ed was one of five marchers to walk every step of the way. Marcher, Walker, Pilgrim is Ed’s memoir from that experience.
In March of 2015, Ed walked 400 miles along the length of the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline. He continued his work to advocate for the farmers and landowners he met during that walk, and fought hard to stop the pipeline, including being arrested three times in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience.
In November, 2015, Ed and Steve Martin walked 200 miles from Normandy Beach to Paris in advance of the UN Climate Summit. He also led the Climate Justice Unity March in April, 2017 and the First Nation – Farmer Climate Unity March in September, 2018.
Ed is an accomplished musician on several instruments, with a focus on the piano music of Frederic Chopin and traditional Irish music. He speaks some French and Spanish. He was raised Catholic, was a member of Trinity United Methodist Church in Des Moines for 20 years, and considers himself staunchly ecumenical. He lived in the inner-city of Des Moines for nineteen years and now lives in Sherman Hill. An avid urban farmer, he and his wife, Kathy Byrnes, grow half of their food on their urban farm — Birds & Bees Urban Farm. Ed maintains strong connections to his family’s farm in Ireland, where he organized the planting of 25,000 oak trees in 2000.
Ed’s spirituality continues to inspire and direct him in his work, and he is not hesitant to say that his life is committed to working for social justice, both within and outside the political process. While Ed feels he was able to accomplish much during his years as a state lawmaker and in other venues of public service, he says that the most satisfying part of his job is when someone says to him, “Years ago, you helped me and my family with a problem, and our lives are now better for it.”
Ed Fallon may be reached at ed@fallonforum.com or (515) 238-6404.
So happy to have found the Fallon Forum.
in response to the erik hagerman piece from last september…
it is entirely possible that he’s doing this in the so-called ‘name of art’–as suggested by the fact that he’s got an artist portfolio website. but that’s not my point here…
still, it’s plausible that very many of the things we value, as displayed in your criticisms of his ‘turning off and dropping out’, are entirely the result of our news and media consumption.
what is it we care about in the world, and why do we care about those particular things? in the wake of the rise of social media, very many widespread public concerns are the direct result of social media’s direct influence on how we see events. so, too, is the 24 hour news cycle’s direct influence on how we see events.
this of course does not mean that we don’t need to eradicate racism, or take care of climate change-related issues. rather, the point i’m trying to make here is to draw your attention to the processes by which you and i come to respond to issues such as these. and especially to the fact that how you and i respond to them might be very, very different from how another group’s response to them, based solely on how our media consumption influences us to respond.
and to me, that’s the salient point that people seem to miss in the erik hagerman article.
our media deeply, deeply influences us (and our social networks) in what and how we think. and if you re-read your own piece about the hagerman article–complaining about his privilege, complaining about his apparent lack of response to social issues, etc.–your own response to the hagerman article does little more than repeat its same criticisms.
Sorry for the slow response, David, and you make some good points here. I recently heard Hagerman discussed on Hidden Brain, and they touched on some of the same points you make. In retrospect, while I still think “dropping out” is available only to those of privilege, I agree the media (and of course, the political parties) are culpable in creating such a caustic environment.