Abstract

Seeds of Hope

The editorial reviews United States politics during 2004. When they gather on New Year's Eve, the term "good riddance" will doubtless accompany reflections on a year that saw America re-elect a President who gave us the Iraq quagmire, record trade and budget deficits and the steady erosion of our civil liberties. But even an annus horribilis can produce enough progress to inspire hope for better days. Across the country, seventeen graduates of Camp Wellstone, inspired by Paul and Sheila Wellstone's ideals, won races for the state legislature, school board and city council, while Cincinnati voters overturned a charter amendment that prohibited city officials from passing any laws aimed at protecting gays and lesbians. In New York David Soares, a young activist attorney who ran against the draconian Rockefeller drug laws on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines, was elected Albany County District Attorney. The Los Angeles City Council unanimously adopted the nation's most aggressive antisweatshop ordinance after two years of lobbying by local unions, sweatshop workers, clergy and activists, and Florida and Nevada voters overwhelmingly passed initiatives to raise the minimum wage. Major media began to show signs in the course of the year of recognizing that they had been gamed by the Bush Administration, with the New York Times, the Washington Post and CBS's 60 Minutes apologizing in their own way for their failures of skepticism before the invasion of Iraq. That is thanks in no small part to criticism by media watchdog groups and to truth-telling by documentary filmmakers like Michael Moore and Robert Greenwald. Also during 2004 progressives created Air America, part of an alternative to the right-wing echo chamber.