News from Our Friends- A Shot of Perrier - 16 and 17 year old pre-registration February 22, 2012In this installment of A Shot of Oly, Alex gets into the mix on HB 2205, which would make it easier for young people to register to vote. Hence, an age-appropriate Shot of Perrier. Not 16? Not to worry! Included is a glossary of "what the kids are saying" - follow along! […]
- Just registered nine voters outside the T-Pain concert. Shortaay!! February 21, 2012Just registered nine voters outside the T-Pain concert. Shortaay!! […]
- Damien Jurado Tonight! February 20, 2012If you have a lot of nothing, or a little bit of something to do tonight—put aside your plans. We are going to Sonic Boom in Ballard, at 6 PM. Don’t worry, Ballard is kind of cool now. (Kind of). […]
- Seattle Makes the Colbert Report February 19, 2012[…]
- Slash the Wolf registers to vote with the Pink Bunnies! Gotta love a civically... February 17, 2012Slash the Wolf registers to vote with the Pink Bunnies! Gotta love a civically engaged super-mascot. […]
- A Shot of Perrier - 16 and 17 year old pre-registration February 22, 2012
Fwd: How we won
We got an email this morning from our friends at New Era Colorado, talking up the story of the passage of Measures 2B and 2C in Boulder this week. These two measures lay the groundwork for the Colorado city to become the first in the country to consider creating a municipal energy utility for the purpose of promoting renewable energy.
The victory was a huge one for our friends at New Era who, in the lead up to the vote, registered 5,000 young voters and made 100,000 attempted voter contacts. Over the course of the campaign, New Era and their allies were outspent nearly 11 to 1 by Xcel Energy, the local utility company that has repeatedly refused to respond to the threat of climate change by moving to more renewable energy production.
One local blog powerfully demonstrated the impact of New Era’s get out the vote efforts.
Posted in The Latest, Victorious
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10 Years of Bus
Hard to believe, but the Bus is turning ten. The Wheelies, the Oregon Bus Project’s gala awards for stuff that matters, will mark the Project’s 10-year anniversary this fall, appropriately on 10/10/11. The biennial awards show generally credits a range of ideas, institutions, and individuals — from high-profile (and good) bipartisan legislation to high-road business ventures to “best supporting activist” for those folks who stayed behind the scenes but helped make crucial work happen.
Check out TheWheelies.org for more details!
Posted in The Latest
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Register a Voter, Fight Unemployment?
This is pretty amazing — even if it isn’t Bus work: a brand new academic paper finds a relationship between civic engagement in communities and lower levels of unemployment during this latest recession. That’s right, engaged communities are employed communities. Now, putting on our social science hats, we should clarify that the causal relationship here is not clear. But the underlying connection is quite impressive.
In fact, the new study finds that levels of civic engagement were a better predictor of changes in unemployment than were economic factors. Community matters, more than we might suspect.
Posted in Our Learning, The Latest
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