Ag and Rural Caucus for November 2024

Better Practices

6:30 pm Thursday 7 November
Doug White
Organizing Central Washington

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88689149657?pwd=R3dXbFRpYVUyeGVhb3ErTFI0QXlpZz09

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Stakhanovite – does that ring a bell with you? (If not, I will let you look it up.) Why do I bring it up? It is because I suspect that many of you are Stakhanovites. That means that you just might want to study up in advance on the details behind the possible listing of the Upper Columbia as a Superfund site.

Mindy Smith has graciously offered to give us a preview of her slides. As Stakhanovites, you will not use this as an opportunity to slack off Thursday. Instead, you will use this chance to enhance your Zoom experience.

This means, too, that Mindy will have reason to expect informed questions. Just in case you feel a little insecure, though, here are a couple of acronyms that recur in Superfund talk:

RI/FS: Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study        
HHRA: Human Health Risk Assessment
BERA: Baseline Ecological Risk Assessment
CERCLA: Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act

Toss these around to pass as an insider.

Don
18 November

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Democrats helping Republicans

“Saving The Republican Party: A Democrats Duty.” So Doug White wrote yesterday..

“For…Republicans…, voting for Democratic candidates has become an absolute imperative. It’s clear that traditional Republicans—those who genuinely have our country’s best interests at heart, despite differing policy positions—have lost control of their party to a zealous faction intent on dismantling democracy and disrupting our way of life.”

John Knapp (Walla Walla) recently made a counter-intuitive argument in the Union Bulletin about how Democrats can help Republicans. He wrote that voting for a Democrat in LD 16 would give Republicans a voice in the Democratic Caucus. As long as our Puget Sound friends produce house and senate majorities for Democrats, he reasoned, electing a Republican in LD 16 did not buy you a seat at the legislative table. He urged that Republicans vote for Democrats Kari Isaacson, Linda Gunshefski, and Craig Woodard if they wanted someone who would listen to them and have influence in the majority caucus.

What is your story about how local Democrats can help Republicans?  Share with us Thursday.

Don
4 November 2024

Encourage your friends to complete their ballots.

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White Knights for rural Democrats? Look to LD 14.

We in eastern Washington routinely remind our Puget Sound colleagues that we rural Democrats do not have representation in the legislature. Only LD 3 in Spokane city elects Democrats to Olympia.

Will redistricting – in 2023 – change this? The new LD 14 with a majority of Hispanic voters is an opportunity to elect rural Democrats. It is an opportunity to elect “white knights” for eastern Washington Democrats.

These potential white knights are María Beltrán, Chelsea Dimas, and Anna Ruíz Kennedy. Join us Thursday to find out if these impressive candidates break through the turnout barrier and pack their bags for Olympia.

Doug White worries that a “minority of White voters could again decide the winner.”

We will pretty much know by Thursday.

Don
3 November 2024

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This is Saturday, and the election is Tuesday.  So, Thursday we will talk with Doug White about happened in central Washington.

Doug in 2022 ran for congress in CD 4 and has not stopped. With his Rural Americans United he persists in advocating for rural Democrats. And he persists in being provocative (“Choosing between R’s”).  And he persists in being productive (20,000 radio spots).

Add your view Thursday. Join us.

Don
2 November 2024

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Policy Briefing

6:30 pm Thursday 21 November
Jay Berube, Citizens for a Clean Columbia
125 Years – Long Enough?

According to the EPA, the contamination is the result of long-term arsenic, lead, mercury, and cadmium pollution in the upper Columbia River by Canadian lead and zinc smelter, Teck Resources, Limited, located 13 miles north of Northport.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85907982157?pwd=MU4vV3E3VGZ5VU02dnhvZjg2b3hKZz09

Paste link into browser.

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Odds are you have never heard of Teck Metals. And yet it is because of Teck Metals that we are talking about EPA Superfunds, ten years of re-negotiating the Columbia River Treaty, shooting salmon over Grand Coulee Dam, tribal sovereignty, recapturing energy sent to Canada, the 1947 Vanport flood…
The Upper Columbia is a case study of how local problems tie in with global issues. Or maybe it is the other way around…how global dynamics affect our local communities.
Looking for an antidote for your post-election malaise? Tune into the energy and expertise of our Upper Columbia neighbors as they tell us about their sophisticated battle to bring environment justice to the Upper Columbia and its peoples.
Meet Mindy Smith and Jay Berube of Citizens for a Clean Columbia next Thursday to see how these ideas come together. Join us.
Don
17 November 2024

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Superfund site? This pristine river? It’s complicated.

Citizens for a Clean Columbia advocate for an EPA Superfund listing for the Upper Columbia. Why in the world would CCC want their neighborhood listed as a Superfund site? To clean it up, of course.

Learn why the Upper Columbia needs cleaning up. Get a hint of the industrial history of this area. Grit your teeth about the bureaucratic process of dealing with 125 years of pollution. And how does this fit in with renegotiation of the Columbia River Treaty? It ties with salmon recovery behind Grand Coulee dam. How?

Mindy Smith and Jay Berube of Citizens for a Clean Columbia will navigate us through this complication next Thursday. Join us.

Don
15 November 2024