The Pierce Progressive

We Lost the War

We were true believers
And we fought gallantly

And we lost the War.

We went into battle
With corruption all around us

And we lost the War. Read more

Community Health Fiesta in Spanaway

Spanaway is not a city, but its population is larger than any town in Pierce County’s part of the Second Legislative District.  The largest governing entity in southeast Pierce County is the Bethel School District, and often serves as the connection between students and health care services.   Four decades ago, most of the area was rural and consisted mostly of large family farms.  As property taxes rose, these farms were broken into parcels, eventually becoming gated communities. While the population continued to grow, services did not follow.  Various doctors served the community individually, but could not meet the need for comprehensive care.  The Affordable Care Act has made a difference for this community by helping to expand care to those who need it without requiring travel to Tacoma or Puyallup. Read more

"Strangers in Their Own Land" by Arlie Russell Hochschild

Arlie Russell Hochschild, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, sets out, according to the narrative of her book Strangers in Their Own Land, to discover how to scale the empathy wall between people like herself, West Coast liberals, and the Tea Party conservatives. She picks Tea Party advocates in the state of Louisiana, because she expects them to provide fertile ground for her research on how people make decisions when experiencing emotional dissonance. On the one hand, they see petrochemical corporations destroying their beloved environment and risking their health. On the other hand, they hate government regulation, (which could force those corporations into better practices and force them to clean up the damage they have caused). Read more

Azure Standard Faces Challenges in Oregon to its Organic Farming Practices

Azure Standard, the world’s largest supplier of organic wheat and grains, has been accused of improper management of noxious weeds growing on some of its wheat fields located in Sherman County, Oregon. As a result, it is facing a threat to its organic farming practices and food products. The local county government, based in Moro, Oregon issued a show-order to Azure and its owners, David and Nathan Stelzer, to appear for a public hearing May 17, 2017, and demanded a revised weed-management plan. If found out-of-compliance, Azure’s organic farm fields may be chemically treated by court-order, possibly with potent herbicides like Roundup or Milestone, and then forced to pay for it. Read more

Education and Budget Creep

In this year's trip to the market, the Washington state legislature is faced with a significant challenge. To understand that challenge we must first fall back to the state constitution where the "founding fathers" sought to explain the reason for wanting to create a state and be allowed to share in the tax money that Washington DC had previously claimed, when what was to become Washington state was clearly an uncontested part of the United States. As a part of the explanation, they included in their constitution of the state of Washington our forebears thought that a fundamental of the duties of the new state would be education. Specifically, ARTICLE IX – EDUCATION: SECTION 1 PREAMBLE. “It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex.” Read more

"I Am Not Your Negro"

James Baldwin had planned a book about his friends: Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Remember This House. He never finished it, but Raoul Peck attempts to do that in his new film, I Am Not Your Negro. The film's narration by Samuel L. Jackson comes entirely from the manuscript. We hear also Baldwin himself in various historical film clips. Baldwin says in the narration, "History is not the past. It is the present." Peck takes Baldwin at his word and intersperses film clips from the Rodney King beating, the riots in Ferguson, and other more recent examples of brutality against blacks with clips from Baldwin's time. Read more

Cooking Frogs and Citizens’ Rights

When i* was farming in Kentucky, my neighbors would go down the "hollers" to the heads of the creeks to "gig" frogs. Upon their return home, they would proceed to cook them for dinner. Instead of bringing a pot of water to a boil and then putting their catch into it, they would put the live frogs into a pot of cold water and raise the heat. That way, the frogs would not jump out of the hot water, but would get used to the increasing temperature until it was too late and they were cooked. Pretty ingenious, but what does that have to do with our rights as citizens of this country? Read more

"Woody Sez": A Stage Review

Woody Guthrie was a Progressive and is now here again, when we sorely need him. His music, life and politics is playing at the Seattle Repertory Theatre until January 29, previously performed to rave reviews by the Woody Sez company touring since 2010. In these days when we are experiencing a descent into the abyss, Woody Sez recalls a time in the 1920’s and 30’s when Progressives fought back and victories were won. Read more