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Leadership on gun control: Gun violence in America, Part 1

originally published in The Herald

In times of crisis or shock, overreaction is hard-wired. A political spasm, an upwelling of sentiment, is followed by amnesia. A few public memories, such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, are forever. The horror and scale impress on lives and pass along to future generations. That is the case of the Newtown massacre. Too many murdered children.

The salient lesson from 9/11 was, in all things, judgment. The Patriot Act passed by Congress was freighted with a number of ill-considered measures, including “sneak and peek” searches and warrantless surveillance. The Iraq war was lit on a false premise. The touchstones for federal action after Newtown will be what works and who benefits.
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December 20, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

The horror in Newtown: Elementary school murders

originally published in The Herald

Children magnify the rawness of insensible death.

Friday’s massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school, the unfathomable number of murdered kindergarteners, the visitation of evil in the time of Advent. As we wrote earlier this year, how do Americans make sense of the senseless? Elie Weisel said years ago, “Words, they die on our lips.”

“The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old,” President Obama said on Friday. “They had their entire lives ahead of them: birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own.” The president, that taciturn profile of reserve, was weeping. Edmonds Police Chief Al Compaan told The Herald, “You just can’t imagine. All these kids, why?”
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December 16, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , , , ,

Immigration reform now: A sensible approach

originally published in The Herald

In the verve and anarchy of the campaign season, immigration reform devolves into code words. The pronoun “they” and shorthand “illegals” serve a political end–to evoke fear, to scapegoat, to conjure a sense of disorder. Ironically, just floating the how-do-we-tackle-it question kindles anti-immigrant sentiment. In 2009, Georgetown University Professor Daniel Hopkins documented various communities experiencing demographic change which then convulse in an anti-immigrant slow burn as “salient national rhetoric politicizes that demographic change.” (Read: immigration is easy to demagogue.) Political speech, honed to the lesser, Xenophobic angels, diminishes us. Punting, the default position for the Obama Administration and Congress the past four years, is unacceptable.

Kick-em-out applause lines won’t ameliorate a crisis that threads together employment, public safety, health, agriculture, entitlement spending and social justice. It’s governing season. Comprehensive immigration reform is the only tenable solution.

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November 13, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Preparing for Cherry Point: The coal train reaction

originally published in The Herald

Railroads have powered the American West for more than a century, teasing out a mixed legacy. At an 1892 banquet at the Bayview Hotel, James J. Hill, coaxed by a rabble of city boosters, claimed that Everett would be the terminus for the Great Northern Railway. Seattle seized the prize the following year. Fickle and hidebound suitors, railroads are historically over-promising, vague and indispensable. It’s a narrative that should inform policymakers as Washington inches forward with a proposed coal-export facility at Gateway Pacific Terminal at Cherry Point near Bellingham.

Wednesday afternoon, a handful of legislators, running on post-Election Day fumes, convened a press conference at Seattle’s Pier 70 to spotlight Cherry Point. The cudgel is a Jan. 21 deadline to wrap up comments and public hearings for the scoping phase of the terminal’s environmental impact statement, with lawmakers concerned about the lack of state-agency coordination (and a couple Department of Ecology staffers laboring in a windowless office does not a comprehensive report make.)
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November 8, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Promises still to keep: post-election follow through

originally published in The Herald

Until this day after the election, Washingtonians didn’t need to travel to Oslo to view Edward Munch’s “The Scream.” We had met “The Scream,” and he was us.

Enough. To bastardize Allen Ginsberg, we have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by political ads, incessant, hysterical, truth-defiling, dragging themselves through the Everett streets at dawn looking for an angry fix. (Stopping cold turkey from a campaign binge means bracing for soft voices and television marketers not running for Congress.)

Elections are a counterweight to the kindergarten lesson that we’re all winners. No, we just took a vote, and Secretary of State Sam Reed will certify it. One winner, one loser. We played witness and judge, cajoled by a high-volume screech, much of it negative and soul-deadening. And now we wait for the final, final results in the nail-biters. And then we wait some more.

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November 7, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Tackling a mixed history: Human rights at home

originally published in The Herald

Five years ago a tangle of events, seemingly disconnected, topped off at the Everett Elks club. The Illegal Immigration Summit of 2007 was a lesser angels’ showcase of xenophobes, racists, and conspiracy theorists — outliers who, one convulsed soul after another, gave expression to Snohomish County’s dark corners.

Shawna Forde, an Everett City Council candidate at the time, warned the gathering about a rising tide of illegal aliens. As The Stranger’s Michael Hood reported, Forde told the crowd, “I’m through with people who don’t belong in my country and who tax my system.” Forde, who ran the local Minutemen American Defense, was through enough that she teamed with a Minuteman cohort, Jason “Gunny” Bush, and murdered an Arizona man and his 9-year old daughter, Brisenia Flores. Today both Bush and Forde sit on Arizona’s death row.

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October 2, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Fathoming the fathomless: Colorado shooting

originally published in The Herald

On Friday the tattoo of gunfire in an Aurora, Colo., theater echoed across the American West. Raw, unfettered violence visited upon the innocent. Twelve dead. Fifty-eight injured. How do Americans make sense of the senseless? As Elie Wiesel wrote years ago, “Words, they die on our lips.”

The narrative of James Holmes, the 24-year-old graduate student who opened fire on an audience settling in to watch the latest Batman film, doesn’t bear repeating. An anchorless man with a weapon is a modern archetype. Mass killers are often delusional, living with mental illness. Some are political zealots. As defined by St. Thomas Aquinas, some are simply evil. Pusillanimous, unstable folks brandishing firearms are also as predictable as they are enigmatic. As Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Roe noted in an email, “I really wish we could make this Colorado guy anonymous, quit showing his smiling picture, and realize that we are giving him exactly what he wants.”

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July 22, 2012 phjackson Leave a response , , ,