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 […]

Legislation aims to prevent unintended pregnancies and improve women’s access to essential healthcare services. No matter where you stand on a woman’s right to choose, everybody wants to see fewer unintended pregnancies and abortions. Because we know that abstinence education doesn’t work — after all, biology is what it is, and people are inclined to have sex when given the […]

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 […]

Today, thanks to the success of our recent fundraiser, I am thrilled to announce our newest Eclectablogger John Waite. John grew up and lives in Muskegon County and has been blogging since 2004. His work has appeared on Michigan Liberal and Blogging for Michigan where he as a contributing editor, as well as at Daily Kos. Born with spina bifida, […]

Study shows that access to physicians went up, not down — exactly the opposite of what ACA opponents predicted. Once again, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is proving its critics wrong. Opponents of the ACA, or Obamacare, have been falling all over themselves proclaiming that an influx of new patients will overburden the healthcare system, creating a dire doctor shortage. […]

What is going on here and why does it matter? “Nope, zero.” That was President Obama’s response when Speaker Boehner asked him how much he was willing to cut from Planned Parenthood in 2011. Defunding the organization that has provided health care for 1 in 5 women in America has become a conservative obsession since the rise of the “non-partisan, […]

Round Island Lighthouse in the Straits of Mackinac, photo by Anne C. Savage The aspiring but unannounced 2018 gubernatorial candidate Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette appointed a Task Force to address the increasing public concern about Line 5, Enbridge’s pipeline that runs under the Straits of Mackinac. That was last year. Since then new voices and new media outlets have […]

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 […]