Gearing up for next year

The Our Children Our Future campaign to end child poverty in WV has had quite a string of victories in WV over the last three years under widely varying political settings. Each year, the campaign votes on its top ten issues. Metro News reports on the new platform here.

This year over 2600 people connected with the campaign voted on the issues. Here's a list of the current platform in order of the votes received:

1. Mental Health Matters

2. Protecting Quality Child Care Centers

3. Right to Work is Wrong

4. Second Chance for Employment

5. Tax Reform to Protect Roads, Children, Seniors, and Jobs

6. Juvenile Justice: Redirect and Reinvest

7. Stop Meth Labs

8. Increasing Local Food Access & Profitability

9. Afterschool for All!

10. Expand Broadband Access

You can read more about the issues here.

A year later

This past Friday (Jan. 9) marked the one year anniversary of the Freedom Industries chemical spill that poisoned the water of 300,000 West Virginians. There's been a lot of coverage of events and ideas about the spill, but if you have a few minutes, listen to WV Public Radio's segment on the topic on Inside Appalachia.

TO HELL WITH...If any good things can be said to have come out of the chemical mess, this essay by WV Wesleyan's Eric Waggoner has to be one of them.

GEARING UP FOR 50 DAYS OF? Here's an op-ed by yours truly on the prospects for fighting child poverty in the coming legislative session.

Two good and one bad and creepy

El Cabrero has been trying to focus whenever possible on positive things in WV. One such example is the effort to make sure that kid not in school can enjoy good nutrition. Another is the effort to build a grassroots and grasstops ground game to fight child poverty in the state.

AS FOR THE CREEPY, check out this New Yorker article about how the private corrections industry has taken vampirism to a new level. Not in a good way.

A ground game

I'm in the midst of traipsing up, down and across the state of West Virginia these days going to and presenting at a series of regional policy workshops organized by the Our Children Our Future Campaign to End Child Poverty in West Virginia. Over the last two years, our campaign has won quite a few victories, which just leaves us hungry for more.

Here's some coverage of the campaign and policy workshops by WV Public Broadcasting. If you take a look, you'll notice that the campaign got some pretty powerful endorsements from state Senate President Jeff Kessler and House Speaker Tim Miley, both of whom have been champions on many of our issues.

In a nutshell, the campaign tries to work on winnable issues that are impactful and engage those families most affected by the policies in question. It's nice to be  part of an effort to build a statewide ground game that can make its presence felt as needed any time, whether at the capitol or in the community. But it does require that you put in the time. And the miles.

I think we have consensus...

Based on the testimony of around 50 eloquent speakers at a public hearing on the West Virginia chemical spill, I think it's pretty safe to say that the people affected are not amused. Further, the people are expecting the legislature to step up and pass some strong regulations to ensure it won't happen again. You can watch the testimony here.

WORTH A LOOK. Here's an op-ed by the president of the WV Council of Churches opposing proposed cuts to programs for vulnerable families in the state budget.

A CALL TO ACTION.Two friends of mine lay it out here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED