Michigan legislators met for two days this week (without taking attendance or casting any votes) then folded up shop and went home for a one-month recess. They did this as our state’s roads continue to crumble and without passing any legislation to deal with the ongoing road and bridge repair crisis. UPDATE: @EmptyWheel reminds me that they did actually take […]

I’m on a listserv along with Working Families Party communications director Joe Dinkin. He posted his initial response to the #BlackLivesMatter protest at the presidential candidates townhall meeting at Netroots Nation last Saturday that I found to be one of the most impressive analyses of the event that I’ve read. He turned it into a piece for The Nation titled […]

The following is a guest post from Sommer Foster, the Political Director for Equality Michigan and a long time political activist. Like Anne and me, Sommer was at the #BlackLivesMatter protest during the presidential candidates’ townhall meeting last Saturday at the Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix. Anne and I have shared our perspectives as white progressive allies. Sommer brings the […]

Processing… I’m processing the protest. I’m processing the articles written about the protest. I’m processing comments people are leaving about the protest. I’m processing how prevalent racism still is, even in the progressive community. And I’m processing my photographs. As I go through the hundreds of images I took during the presidential candidate town hall protest at Netroots Nation on […]

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Dr. Martin Luther King NOTE: You can view more photos from the event in Anne’s post HERE. In the two days since black activists from the #BlackLivesMatter movement took over a Netroots Nation townhall forum with presidential candidates Martin O’Malley and […]

NOTE: This post has been updated HERE and you can see more photos from the protest in Anne’s post HERE. The main event at the Netroots Nation conference in Phoenix, Arizona this year was a “Presidential Town Hall” featuring one-on-one discussions between journalist and undocumented American Jose Antonio Vargas and presidential candidates Governor Martin O’Malley and Senator Bernie Sanders. I […]

Presiding Dent County, Missouri Commissioner Darrell Skiles filed a letter with the city commission asking that flags be lowered to less than half staff for one year to protest “the U.S. high court’s stamp of approval of what God speaks of as an abomination”, referring to the recent SCOTUS decision that ruled same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutinal. “[A]ll who see […]

This past weekend, former Dean of the House John Dingell and his wife Congresswoman Debbie Dingell were gracious enough to participate in our Eclectafundraiser party. It’s hard to repay such generosity to a power couple like them but I’m going to try anyway. Congresswoman Dingell is in a competition with her colleagues in Congress to see who can get the […]

After scandal after scandal (after scandal after scandal), the Michigan Department of Corrections While the Detroit Free Press takes a victory lap for this development, the true heroes were Progress Michigan who tenaciously kept the story in the news including spending the money needed to procure thousands of pages of documents through Freedom of Information Act requests. Here’s Progress Michigan’s […]

“What happened to your family was terrible, but I didn’t do anything to you.” Yes. Yes you did. The following guest post was written by Tali Wendrow of Oakland County. I had spent much of my adult life trying (not always successfully) to keep my political views quiet, at least in public fora. Oh sure, I’d let ‘er rip at […]

Last Saturday evening, history was made when former Congressman and Dean of the House John Dingell was named “The Dean of Twitter” at the 2nd Annual Eclectablog Fundraiser Party. At the party, he was presented with a custom-made “Dean of Twitter” stole and then he read some of our favorite tweets. But, not only that. He interspersed his readings with […]