Happy New Year: Welcome 2012!

On behalf of NPI’s staff, board, and con­trib­u­tors, I’d like to wish every read­er of The Advo­cate — and every sup­port­er of NPI — a hap­py and blessed New Year 2012. I hope you’re enjoy­ing the occa­sion, no mat­ter where in the world you are.

As evi­denced by the pho­to below, I was on Queen Anne when the clock struck twelve, and watched the 2012 edi­tion of the New Year’s at the Nee­dle fire­works show from what I think you’ll agree was a pret­ty good van­tage point.

The show ran for about eight min­utes and there were no hic­cups or com­put­er prob­lems, unlike a few years ago. It was­n’t the most spec­tac­u­lar fire­works show I’ve seen, but it was still fun to watch. The tran­si­tions in between the dif­fer­ent sets were pret­ty smooth, and the col­ors fre­quent­ly alter­nat­ed. At times there were a lot of blues; at oth­er times, reds lit up the Space Needle’s Obser­va­tion Deck.

2011 was not the best of years. Leg­isla­tive­ly, it was dom­i­nat­ed by grid­lock, bick­er­ing, and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures at the state and fed­er­al lev­el that are hin­der­ing recov­ery. Abroad, untold num­bers of peo­ple died as a con­se­quence of the iron grip of ruth­less, destruc­tive regimes like Syria’s.

As a team, we have many wish­es for 2012. Fore­most among them is that we will learn to do a bet­ter job as a move­ment telling our sto­ry and com­mu­ni­cat­ing our val­ues. We can’t expect or rely on Demo­c­ra­t­ic office­hold­ers to do it. Many of them are neolib­er­als (rather than true lib­er­als) any­way. We need to be able to speak for our­selves. And our coun­try­men and coun­try­women need to hear from us.

We are com­mit­ted to doing all we can to help­ing pro­gres­sives learn how to com­mu­ni­cate bet­ter in this high-stakes pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year. Our val­ues (free­dom, oppor­tu­ni­ty, broad pros­per­i­ty, fair­ness, pro­tec­tion) are Amer­i­ca’s finest tra­di­tion­al val­ues. All of our pol­i­cy direc­tions are built on those val­ues. When we talk about our pol­i­cy direc­tions, we have to con­nect them to our val­ues. For instance, Dis­abil­i­ty Life­line is not some abstract “gov­ern­ment pro­gram” — it’s a vital ser­vice that gives dis­ad­van­taged Wash­ing­to­ni­ans a hand up rather than a handout. Dis­abil­i­ty Life­line embod­ies oppor­tu­ni­ty.

Mid­way through 2012, the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton may be asked to approve a rev­enue pack­age to keep vital pub­lic ser­vices like Dis­abil­i­ty Life­line from being evis­cer­at­ed. That rev­enue pack­age won’t have a chance if con­ser­v­a­tives are able to frame the debate around it. We must reframe the debate so Wash­ing­to­ni­ans get what com­mon wealth means — and how, through pool­ing our resources, we can accom­plish more than we could alone.

We must help our fel­low cit­i­zens under­stand that tax­es are pub­lic investments.

And right now, invest­ment is what our econ­o­my needs more than any­thing else. We won’t become more pros­per­ous by tear­ing apart our social safe­ty net, defer­ring infra­struc­ture improve­ments, or mak­ing col­lege unaf­ford­able for all but a wealthy few. Let’s work to make 2012 a turn­ing point: the point when we turn back the dan­ger­ous, tox­ic red tide of aus­ter­i­ty that has been threat­en­ing our well-being.