Oregon House District 43 is one of the most diverse in the state. It also faces some of the biggest challenges: high unemployment, high rates of police misconduct, high displacement from gentrification.
This week Dave and Jo Ann talked with State Rep. Lew Frederick about what role the state can play in addressing some of these problems.
Bill Resnick talks with Charles Derber about his book "From Greed to Green: Solving Climate Change and Remaking the Economy." Derber says, if the relatively mainstream, working-class Boston suburb where he lives can get excited about implamenting green technology and policies, so can the rest of the country. Derber's message is fundamentally optimistic, and he explains why.
This week on Voices from the Edge, Jo Ann and Dave ask the question "Are the good guys ahead?" Local progressive may be feeling a bit down over the direction of local and state politics lately. City Hall seems more disconnected than ever from the world in which most Portlanders live. Earlier this week, city council voted 4-1 (Commissioner Fritz abstaining) to put a new bond measure before voters for a new communications system and other equipment for the Fire Bureau. With so many city services taking hits - and at least on other proposed bond measure being put on hold because of the economy - should there have been a community discussion about whether this measure could wait? Oregon's gubernatorial race - "Doc vs.
Portland City Councilvoted 3-2 this morning to let police unit commanders have a vote in certain cases before the new police review board. Does this make the new board "structurally flawed" or does it increase accountability as commissioners supporting the change claim? Voices from the Edge Hosts Dave Mazza and Jo Ann talk about this new development.
A dustup between the NAACP and the Tea Party movement throws the racist streak in modern conservatism into stark, ugly relief. It's the next chapter in a sordid tale that predates our Republic. But the good news? The Tea Party's visible virulence is proof that things are getting better.
When Marx was writing his grim analyses of Capitalism 150 years ago, workers did not have much if any autonomy. The labor movement gave workers the leverage to determine some of the terms of their livelihood, and since the 1970s progressive management theory has given more credit to self-management. The cybernetic revolution seems to have completed this great levelling, but in today's Well Read Red Joe Clement reads from Rob Horning's very recent "Autonomism Explained." Horning recalls the potential and pitfalls of Nick Dyer-Witheford's vision of worker autonomy in his 1994 essay, "Autonomist Marxism and the Information Society."
