@_ Thanks for the follow, all of you. Always glad to meet another We.

I commend you for your focus on local politics. More than anywhere, that is where the Other Team is kicking our ass. This gives them a crazy deep bench, and often gives niche Xtian issues altogether too much focus. I'm hoping against hope that the next big folderol is a concerted campaign against figs. That's right, you lot - Jesus hates FIGS, not the other thing. Read a Bible sometime, sheesh.

Whenever anyone even remotely progressive says they want to be more active politically, I urge them to run for school board, or work on the campaign of the most progressive school board candidate they can find.

The current trend of privatizing public education with charter schools, etc. has only one possible end result: defacto separate and unequal education. Every year, my local school district gets a little bit more like 80s Baltimore, where anyone with any money at all went to parochial school, and everyone else lived out Season 4 of The Wire.

@[email protected] greetings! Welcome! I like your name. It made me realize that I don't know who Mother Jones was. (I always confuse her with Brecht's Mother Courage.) I looked her up, and now I know. We could use someone like her or three. Our side hasn't had a media-savvy firebrand since... Gloria Steinem, maybe? And workers' rights has needed a champion or three for a while longer.

I keep hoping Zooey Zephyr will be able to leverage her notoriety and the current trans refugee crisis to elevate herself to the national stage. She'd be a great voice for equity and workers' rights if she could get on the cable news/democratic podcast circuit.

More than anything, I wish the most successful leftists lately, anarchists like Occupy Wall Street and the folks who created the CHAZ in Seattle would become more media savvy. Nobody listens to strident young men. They listen to families, like the planted interviewees at Tea Party rallies. And they listen to Leaders. The left needs leaders. Or at least orators like Mother Jones.