Join us every Thursday morning to hear fellow Democrats share good news and recommendations. What good things have you seen or read or heard or experienced lately? What’s On Your Mind lets you connect with friends and influence progressive leaders in the community, week after week..

What's On Our Minds for April 20, 2023

Here’s what we talked about this morning:

  • Emerging strength among local young people: Juntos, for example; a new high school intern at Tillamook County Pioneer; LGBTQ community promoting a Queer Prom in May.

  • Braver Angels - a citizens' organization uniting red and blue Americans in a working alliance to depolarize America. One of our members is now a Braver Angels Ambassador!

  • Political signage around the county.

  • Gratitude that people around the county are waking up and offering support to the candidates we support. “Many, many people apparently care about the upcoming Special District elections!”

  • Recent well-attended house parties for our candidates.

  • Thank you to journalists doing such a great job lately, under great stresses including direct threats. Stories mentioned: multiple investigations of local issues conducted by Willamette Week, including one that led to the Portland Police Bureau taking some much needed action downtown; multiple investigations of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; a story about an Oklahoma sheriff who talked about killing journalists; and ongoing great work by Tillamook County Pioneer.

  • “Parents rights” being used as code words for intolerance in school board races all around the state.

  • Tides of Change celebrating Forty Years of Service to Our Community, with an event featuring True Survivor’s Stories this weekend.

  • A South County candidate forum that April Bailey is organizing. Can we count on this forum to be conducted as a well moderated, neutral venue?

  • Jim Heffernan’s campaign for Tillamook County Transportation Board, which he is conducting primarily by engaging fellow bus riders in conversations.


  • A quotation from Howard Zinn’s 2002 autobiography You Can’t Be Neutral On a Moving Train:  


    TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.


Direct link to item: https://tillcodems.org/whats-on-your-mind/2023/4/20/whats-on-our-minds-for-april-20-2023.