Author Archives: Patrick Stickney

Posted inCivil Liberties, Live Coverage

“We have to make them give it to us”: the power of organizing to push for immigrant rights

by Patrick Stickney

In the last pan­el for the day before the clos­ing keynote, the pan­elist dis­cuss the efforts that have been made to make sure the voic­es of immi­grants are being heard and pol­i­cy gains are made. The pan­el was mod­er­at­ed by for­mer AZ state sen­a­tor Alfre­do Gutier­rez, who spoke as part of the open­ing keynote Thursday […]

Posted inCivil Liberties, Live Coverage

Voting rights are for everyone: returning citizen disenfranchisement and expanding democracy

by Patrick Stickney

We start­ed the last day of Net­roots Nation at “Vot­er Rights Restora­tion and the Move Toward a Grow­ing Democ­ra­cy: How We Get There”. It was a packed pan­el table, appar­ent­ly because it was a merg­er of two pan­els to talk about restor­ing vot­ing rights for pre­vi­ous­ly incar­cer­at­ed indi­vid­u­als and grow­ing democ­ra­cy for every­one. We started, […]

Posted inLive Coverage

Netroots Nation panel tackles the question: How do we build progressive political power?

by Patrick Stickney

Wel­come to the sec­ond day of Net­roots Nation 2015! We’re kick­ing things off today with a anoth­er round of break­out ses­sions. I’m at a pan­el on build­ing pro­gres­sive polit­i­cal pow­er, mod­er­at­ed by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kei­th Elli­son (D‑MN). Net­roots Nation has a livestream for this pan­el, which we have embed­ded below:   This pan­el show­cased mut­li­ple per­spec­tives on […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Elections, Policy Topics

An in-depth look at the April 22nd special election: Results from across the state

by Patrick Stickney

Although the demise of King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1 was the most note­wor­thy out­come of last night’s spe­cial elec­tion, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber there were oth­er mea­sures on the bal­lot as well.  Accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Sec­re­tary of State’s office, there were thir­­ty-five bal­lot mea­sure on the bal­lot across the state. Turnout was depressed this April, which […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Legislative Advocacy

Ending the anti-tax mantra: Boeing and the Association of Washington Business support raising taxes to help themselves

by Patrick Stickney

As the Wash­ing­ton State leg­is­la­ture enters its sev­enth spe­cial ses­sion in three years, dis­rupt­ing fall plans, meet­ings, and speak­ing appear­ances for the mem­bers of both state hous­es, the ses­sion called by Gov­er­nor Inslee deserves notice for where key play­ers in statewide bud­get and rev­enue fights are lin­ing up–mainly that Boe­ing and the Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness have come out in support […]

Posted inUnscheduled Programming

Live from Whatcom: Senate Republican Transportation Listening Tour

by Patrick Stickney

It’s been a fog­gy day here in Belling­ham, but the low vis­i­bil­i­ty has not kept peo­ple from com­ing to the Belling­ham leg of the Sen­ate Repub­li­can’s lis­ten­ing tour, because this place is packed. As we cov­ered ear­li­er this month, Belling­ham was not orig­i­nal­ly a place sched­uled to be part of the tour, but the size […]

Posted inElections, Live Coverage, Our Environment, Policy Topics

LIVE from Bellingham: Council candidates share their vision for Whatcom County

by Patrick Stickney

Here comes the home stretch of yet anoth­er elec­tion sea­son. As cam­paigns move into get-out-the-vote mode, vol­un­teers are phonebank­ing and knock­ing on doors, can­di­dates hope to make an impact on more civi­cal­ly active vot­ers by speak­ing at forums. While many of these just serve to engage the base and get a few more peo­ple to […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, World Commmunity

Max Fisher’s “40 Maps” and the impact of framing on American politics and public policy

by Patrick Stickney

Over the past week, an info­graph­ic has been mak­ing its way around the inter­net called “40 maps that explain the world”, based off anoth­er web page which used the “40 maps” theme. Col­lect­ed by Max Fish­er of the Wash­ing­ton Post, it shows car­to­graph­i­cal depic­tions of any­thing from the four dif­fer­ent coun­tries a Russ­ian pro­fes­sor believes the United […]

Posted inUnscheduled Programming, Views & Reviews, World Commmunity

American-ness and the Promise of Global Democracy

by Patrick Stickney

As gov­ern­ments tran­si­tion and Egypt is fig­ur­ing out what to do in the after­math of a mil­i­tary coup, it is impor­tant to rec­og­nize this is not an event devoid of con­text, but is a prod­uct of a long his­to­ry, one in which we have had no small part. “Wait a sec­ond”, it might be said,“what’s with […]

Posted inEducation, Legislative Advocacy

Inslee and Higher Ed: Disappointing

by Patrick Stickney

The past week has not been a good one for high­er edu­ca­tion. As Gov­er­nor Inslee (look­ing back to before Novem­ber, it feels nice to call him ‘Gov­er­nor’), released his bud­get pri­or­i­ties last Thurs­day, it includ­ed a rec­om­men­da­tion for tuition to increase 3–5% (3 per­cent for region­al uni­ver­si­ties like West­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, 5 per­cent for Washington […]