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SUMMER,
2000 - VOLUME 20
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Entire Volume |
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You
Get What You Pay For: The Case for Public Financing
of Elections
Progressive grassroots movements in our states will
not achieve and sustain broad public policy agendas
addressing the distribution of wealth and power without
fundamental campaign finance reform. In this issue’s
special Election Section, learn how organizers in
the West are leading the charge to restore democracy
to the political process.
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From
the Director
New Economy, Same Old Politics
Like their counterparts during the conquest of the
American West, the giants of the new economy are adept
at leveraging public investment to develop infrastructure,
provide access to markets and raw materials, and protect
profits.
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Show
Me the Money: Wyoming Organizers Link State Budget
Crisis to Corporate Subsidies
By the numbers, it’s boom time in Wyoming. Mining
and mineral extraction industries in the state are
digging up and exporting coal, natural gas and other
resources at an unprecedented rate. The state leads
the nation in the production of coal and the world
in the production of trona — an ash in global demand
as a processing agent. Natural gas production has
jumped 140 percent in the past decade. But, as more
and more wealth rolls out of the state through pipelines
and in rail cars, Wyoming enters the 21st century
with a budget shortfall approaching $100 million.
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America’s
Internal Colony
The U.S. has developed a hidden colony within its
boundaries into which 2,000,000 people have disappeared.
It’s a colony dispersed geographically into thousands
of separate communities, all bounded by rolls of razor-wire.
Inside this colony is a population that is overwhelmingly
poor, young, and of color.
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Local
Organizing Handles on the WTO
Western States Center invited four leaders and organizers
who were on the scene in Seattle to discuss how progressive
groups in the Western States region are finding local
organizing handles for the global issues represented
by the World Trade Organization.
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The
Sand in the Oyster: Retiring Board Member Sharon Gary
Smith
Sharon Gary-Smith is not one of those sit-on-the-letterhead-do-nothing-Board
members some organizations are plagued with. If you’ve
been anywhere near Western States Center in the past
dozen years, you’ve probably fallen into her gravitational
pull. Though Sharon is retiring from the Board, she
will become our first Board Member Emerita.
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Questioning
Corporate Subsidies: A Rebellion Begins to Take Hold
When the other side’s public relations firm begins
to sing your praises, you know you’re making a difference.
After Wyoming’s Equality State Policy Center exposed
the link between corporate subsidies and the state’s
budget shortfalls, Venture Management International
sounded the alarm over "a new phenomenon: well
organized and well funded professional opposition
with staying power and conviction." Wyoming organizers
aren’t the only ones sending tremors through corporate
boardrooms. With the support of several research and
strategy centers, the groundswell is growing against
state and local corporate subsidies. |
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Undermining
Democracy: Research Demonstrates Unfair Influence
of Money in Politics
Review of the 1999 Oregon Action report, Undermining
Democracy: Money in Oregon Politics, which documents
with facts what most of us already know intuitively
— that our current campaign finance system keeps power
in the hands of a very few people and works for their
interests.
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Oregon’s
Political Accountability Act
While progressives have long recognized that the influence
of money in politics is a barrier to full participation
in the democratic system, most reform efforts have
run afoul of free speech protections. Recently a new,
constitutionally sound strategy has begun to take
hold. The answer to the corrupting influence of private
funds is the introduction of public funds.
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Personal
Voter Contact Plans: Build Power and Win Campaigns
Personal Voter Contact Plans follow the same basic
steps as standard electoral campaigns — with a key
difference. Instead of relying on mass media, they
start with, and strengthen, personal relationships.
Person-to-person campaigning builds a connected, motivated
base of voters and leaves an organizational infrastructure
in place beyond Election Day. It is the key for community-based
groups wanting to build progressive movement through
the electoral process.
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Tax
Measures: Remaking America
Of more than 450 initiatives circulating for the November,
2000 ballot, over sixty deal with tax reform. Most
tax reform petitions circulating this year will contribute
to our national patchwork of regressive state tax
codes that disproportionately burden lower income
and working families through an over-reliance on property
and sales taxes. State revenue reductions are felt
first in our public schools, fire and police protection,
senior services, environmental protection, health
care, and other essential community programs on which
working predicting an increase in term limits for
taxes and super-majority requirements to raise taxes,
along with other regressive tax measures for the 2000
election. |
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Communities
Convene to Take Up Historic Struggle
On a beautiful spring day on April 1st in Portland,
about 120 people gathered to examine how the influence
of money in politics is the modern-day equivalent
of the voting rights barriers faced by earlier generations.
The conference, Money in Politics: A Modern Civil
Rights Struggle, was organized by Western States Center
and cosponsored by CAUSA, the Rural Organizing Project,
Oregon Action, and the Money in Politics Research
Action Project.
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The
Western Prison Project
The Western Prison Project (WPP) was formed in 1999
as a project of the Western States Center to help
coordinate a regional response to the unprecedented
build-up of the prison system and to work toward progressive
reforms in the criminal justice system.
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Nightstand
Western States Center friends, board members and staff
review books they are reading.
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Back
to Views Magazine Archive Page |
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