On behalf of the NPI team, I’m excit­ed to announce that this week marks the begin­ning of a new chap­ter in the his­to­ry of The Advo­cate, our sec­ond old­est project and pri­ma­ry pub­li­ca­tion. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been devel­op­ing a plan to fresh­en up and strength­en The Advo­cate, and begin­ning today, we’re putting that plan into motion. The first thing we’ve done is to redec­o­rate a bit.

As you may have noticed, The Advo­cate looks dif­fer­ent. We’ve giv­en it a wider side­bar, an updat­ed blogroll, and a bold, beau­ti­ful new nameplate.

The pho­to in the name­plate depicts the Cas­cade Range in the morn­ing from Sun­rise, Mount Rainier. I had the good for­tune to enjoy this gor­geous view ear­li­er this month when I paid a vis­it to our state’s old­est nation­al park, and I’m delight­ed to be able to share it with all of you — our readers.

But this new look and feel is hard­ly the extent of the changes we have planned.

Begin­ning in a few days, you’ll be able to look for­ward to week­ly columns by NPI board mem­bers, who will take turns weigh­ing in on hot top­ics and trends we’re track­ing. You’ll also be intro­duced to a num­ber of new con­trib­u­tors, who will assist NPI staff in keep­ing an eye on the news, ana­lyz­ing leg­is­la­tion, research­ing the con­se­quences of bal­lot mea­sures, and pro­vid­ing live cov­er­age of impor­tant events.

And in just over a month, you’ll be treat­ed to almost non­stop cov­er­age of the 2012 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion live from Char­lotte, North Carolina.

The upcom­ing con­ven­tion in Char­lotte will be the third Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion to be cov­ered here on The Advo­cate, and the sec­ond to be cov­ered live. But it will be the first con­ven­tion that we will pri­mar­i­ly cov­er from the per­spec­tive of peo­ple who are there as delegates.

As many read­ers may recall, back in May, I myself was elect­ed as a del­e­gate for Barack Oba­ma from the 1st Con­gres­sion­al District.

When I ran for del­e­gate, I made a promise to a room full of com­mit­ted and devot­ed activists — a promise that I ful­ly intend to keep. As I said then:

I want to bring the con­ven­tion home to all of the peo­ple who can’t go. I want to be your eyes and ears in Char­lotte. Not after the fact – not after I get back – but while I’m there. If you send me to Char­lotte, I promise to live­blog the con­ven­tion in words, audio, and pic­tures each day, with in-depth cov­er­age of the speech­es and the goings-on.

Like many of you, I don’t much care for the shal­low “who’s win­ning, who’s los­ing today” style cov­er­age we get from the cor­po­rate media these days. What’s left of the media, anyway.

I want to pro­vide you with an unfil­tered, thought­ful per­spec­tive of what’s going on. This con­ven­tion is an incred­i­bly impor­tant event. It deserves to be well-covered.

After word of my promise got out, sev­er­al oth­er nation­al del­e­gates vol­un­teered to help us pro­vide high-cal­iber live cov­er­age. They are among the con­trib­u­tors you’ll be intro­duced to in the days to come. All of us at NPI are grate­ful to them for their will­ing­ness to help us bring the DNC home to the Pacif­ic Northwest.

We will also be cov­er­ing the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion in August, though most­ly from here and not from Tam­pa. (If there are any Repub­li­can del­e­gates out there read­ing this who would be inter­est­ed in guest post­ing a cou­ple of times about their con­ven­tion expe­ri­ence, let us know).

We have many oth­er changes in the pipeline as well, but I’ll touch on those at a lat­er date, since they’re fur­ther off.

I want to end this post by extend­ing a heart­felt thank you to all of the peo­ple who have loy­al­ly sup­port­ed us over the years.

We hope you enjoy read­ing the new­ly rein­vig­o­rat­ed NPI Advocate.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

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Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than two decades.

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