Author Archives: Andrew Villeneuve

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.

Posted inHolidays

Happy Easter 2011!

by Andrew Villeneuve

Rejoice! Rejoice! This is the day that the Lord has made, be glad about it. Every­body rejoice, rejoice! This is the day that is made — be glad.  — Lyrics from Rejoice by Ken­neth W. Lewis For your read­ing plea­sure on this joy­ous East­er Sun­day, here is an account of the Res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus Christ from the […]

Posted inAnnouncements, Events

NPI’s 2011 Spring Fundraising Gala is only one week away… and you’re invited!

by Andrew Villeneuve

As of this evening, our 2011 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala — which will take place at the Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter at Mer­cer View — is just one week away.  It’s shap­ing up to be one of the best events we’ve ever put togeth­er, and we hope to see many NPI sup­port­ers there. The speak­ing line­up con­sists of Bob Ferguson […]

Posted inCivil Liberties, Policy Topics, Technology

Researchers’ discovery demonstrates that Apple users don’t really own their devices

by Andrew Villeneuve

Two secu­ri­ty researchers inves­ti­gat­ing visu­al uses for geolo­ca­tion data revealed today that gad­get giant Apple has been secret­ly ship­ping spy­ware inside of its mobile oper­at­ing sys­tem (iOS) that con­stant­ly records its cus­tomers’ where­abouts. The dis­cov­ery, which has ignit­ed a firestorm of crit­i­cism, was first made pub­lic at O’Reil­ly Radar by the researchers (Alas­dair Allan and […]

Posted inOpen Government, Policy Topics

How do we change Congress and put an end to rampant corruption?

by Andrew Villeneuve

When our found­ing fathers put togeth­er our plan of gov­ern­ment at the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion in Philadel­phia, they spent a great deal more time ham­mer­ing out the details that con­cern the leg­isla­tive branch (Con­gress) than the details that describe how the oth­er two branch­es are sup­posed to work. This was not acci­den­tal — our found­ing fathers believed […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Education, Policy Topics

The search for a long-term answer for coherence in Ryan Blethen’s columns

by Andrew Villeneuve

Appar­ent­ly obliv­i­ous to the real­i­ty that he has as much cred­i­bil­i­ty as Tim Eyman does when it comes to talk­ing about pro­tect­ing pub­lic ser­vices, Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al page edi­tor Ryan Blethen has penned yet anoth­er col­umn lament­ing the dire straits that Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties are in. The piece, which ran in today’s Sun­day edi­tion, does a […]

Posted inAnnouncements, Events

Jay Inslee to speak at NPI’s 2011 Spring Fundraising Gala on Mercer Island

by Andrew Villeneuve

I am delight­ed to announce this morn­ing that Jay Inslee — my rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Con­gress and a true cham­pi­on for eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion — will be speak­ing at NPI’s 2011 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala (with all pro­ceeds to ben­e­fit NPI), hap­pen­ing two weeks from tomor­row on Mer­cer Island. If you fol­low nation­al pol­i­tics, you […]

Posted inAnnouncements, Events

Camp Wellstone returning to Seattle: Don’t miss an outstanding training opportunity

by Andrew Villeneuve

Camp Well­stone, the sig­na­ture train­ing offered by the orga­niz­ing genius­es at Well­stone Action, is return­ing to Seat­tle for the sixth or sev­enth con­sec­u­tive year — I’m los­ing track 🙂 — about a month from now. The 2011 camp will take place at Seat­tle Pacif­ic Uni­ver­si­ty on May 13th, 14th, and 15th. (SPU is actu­al­ly where it […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Statehouse goes into lockdown; Gregoire trying to shut out protestors?

by Andrew Villeneuve

Fel­low activists who are at the Capi­tol in Olympia are telling NPI that Gen­er­al Admin­is­tra­tion has just put the state­house — the peo­ple’s house — under lock­down, pre­vent­ing any­one with­out a gov­­ern­­ment-issued iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card from enter­ing. The lock­down has evi­dent­ly been insti­gat­ed so that Gov­er­nor Gre­goire and law­mak­ers can go about dis­man­tling the peo­ple’s government […]

Posted inAnnouncements

Please join NPI this Saturday at Lynn Allen’s memorial service on Mercer Island

by Andrew Villeneuve

This Sat­ur­day, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute team will be gath­er­ing on Mer­cer Island to join Lynn Allen’s fam­i­ly and friends in a cel­e­bra­tion of her life. Lynn was a found­ing board mem­ber of NPI who pro­vid­ed invalu­able coun­sel and advice to myself and the staff. We miss her great­ly, but we will nev­er for­get the wisdom […]

Posted inUnscheduled Programming

Democratic Party’s new chair should be chosen democratically, not by executive order

by Andrew Villeneuve

Edi­tor’s Note: This post reflects my own per­spec­tive as a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty offi­cial. As an insti­tu­tion orga­nized to fur­ther the com­mon good, NPI does not take posi­tions in Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty lead­er­ship elec­tions or hold a posi­tion on how the par­ty should be run. Ear­li­er today, for­mer Vir­ginia Gov­er­nor Tim Kaine announced that he resign­ing as Chairman […]

Posted inElections

Wisconsin State Supreme Court race turning out to be a nailbiter: Who will win?

by Andrew Villeneuve

Hours have passed since the polls closed in Wis­con­sin, but even with hun­dreds of thou­sands of votes tal­lied and report­ed, it remains unclear what will hap­pen in the Bad­ger State’s much-watched Supreme Court race. As of 8:10 PM, the race was extreme­ly close, with incum­bent David Pross­er (who is of the same ide­o­log­i­cal per­sua­sion as Scott […]

Posted inAnnouncements, Events

Scott Macklin to speak at NPI’s 2011 Spring Fundraising Gala on April 28th

by Andrew Villeneuve

Hap­py Fri­day! Just so there’s absolute­ly no con­fu­sion, this post is not an April Fools’ Day joke. And that’s def­i­nite­ly a good thing! 🙂 On behalf of the team at NPI, I am pleased to announce this after­noon that the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton’s Scott Mack­lin will be speak­ing at our third Spring Fundrais­ing Gala, which is coming […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics, Public Planning

Tim Eyman gloms onto another anti-red light camera measure — this time in Redmond

by Andrew Villeneuve

I’ve lost track of the num­ber of times I’ve been asked (usu­al­ly in con­ver­sa­tion) what moti­vat­ed me to cre­ate Per­ma­nent Defense more than nine years ago. Reg­u­lar read­ers are undoubt­ed­ly famil­iar with the sto­ry of PD’s found­ing, because I’ve told it or referred to it many times over the years. The cat­a­lyst, of course, was Tim […]