Category: Cascadia exists (Page 2 of 5)

I am pretty reluctant to get anywhere near the Cascadian Independence movement. I know they’re serious people, thinking hard about a really true independent country. I’m not one of them, but I appreciate Cascadia (obviously) and I appreciate they’re work, but only as a venue to sharpen our concept of Cascadia. Whatever political system we’re using, there is plenty of work in the near term to get done.

And, I think, in the jet wash of the recent Scottish Independence vote, there are some lessons for Cascadians (seeking independence or not).

1. Rural vs. Urban divide doesn’t need to divide us. 

Whether you’re like me and drawn the line at the Cascades, or draw in a much larger swath of the interior west, there’s a sharp divide between rural and urban up here.

There was a similar urban/rural split in the Scottish vote. Essentially, poorer urban areas went for the breakup, while richer rural areas voted for union. This is ironic because the political party that sparked independence originally had support in rural areas.

In Cascadia the rural urban divide is based on a non-Cascadian Republican/Democratic political divide. But, as we’ve seen in some local election results, rural and urban voters can get together to elect particularly Cascadian politicians. 

2. Changing politics will change politics.

In the short term, the people who want an independent Cascadia should focus on just making Cascadia better. More people voting, more people engaged, a better politics. If, once we get more people involved at all areas of politics and government, we still want out? Then cross that bridge them.

The Scots began to see themselves differently, as representing a different sort of politics:

In the meantime, pro-independence activists have managed to capture the
hearts and imaginations on many voters in Scotland in a way that the
unionist camp has not. Drawing inspiration from what are considered to
be the fairer and more prosperous Nordic countries with high levels of
democratic participation, many in Scotland became involved in the
campaign at the grassroots level.

Scotland Independence vote was built on the back of a new sort of politics:

The idea of the public as passive,
inert spectators and with it the notion of politics as a minority
report pastime, no longer holds. Instead, across the country a new
energetic, dynamic political culture emerged which reshaped public
debate and conversations.

It could be seen in the massive
turnouts which saw poorer and disadvantaged communities turn out in
record numbers. What I called ‘the missing Scotland’ – the
voters who haven’t voted in a generation or more – re-emerged as
a potent political force which has the potential to reshape long term
politics. It was also seen in the re-imagination of public spaces,
the emergence of flash mobs and protest, and a culture of celebration
and carnival on the Yes side.

The other dimension found expression in
‘the third Scotland’ – the self-organised, independent minded
supporters of independence – who have had a very different and
distinct politics from the SNP. These groups: Radical Independence
Campaign, National Collective, Common Weal, Women for Independence
and several others, saw independence not as an end in itself, but as
a means to an end.

They brought DIY culture, network
politics, flat organisations and part of a new generation of young
people into public life. They did things which were messy, fuzzy,
creative and fun. They staged happenings, art installations, and
national tours across Scotland, and in the case of Radical
Independence they door stepped and challenged Nigel Farage when he
came to Edinburgh last year. All of this contributed to a different
kind and feel of politics which circumvented the ‘official’
version which was a high bound to command and control as any part of
Westminster.

This quote told me a lot about how the Seahawks phenomena (and sports fandom in Cascadia in general) is informed by how we approach faith. Or, how I know that being a Seahawks fan is nothing like being a person of church:

“Pray that the watching non-Christian world would not be given the
opportunity to discredit not only our church but the very gospel of
Jesus.”

Cascadia is the largest of the few places in the United States that this is true. That the majority and mainstream is unchurched. Or, more importantly, don’t consider faith, specifically often Jesus, to be an important cultural touchstone.

So, up here, if you are religious, if you attend church every week and consider it to be an important part of your social and cultural life, you are separating yourself from the pack.

Most importantly isn’t just that Cascadia is unchurched, but that those that are churched, are separated from each other because our corresponding high level of religious diversity. Even if you lumped together all of the particular evangelical protestant sects, you would only come up with 25 percent of the 42 percent that consider themselves anything at all.

So, the Mars Hill leaders really are right, the big wide world out there in Cascadia is non-Christian and also non-church.

But, even thought it is pretty unique to here that we don’t use religion as a cultural touchstone, we are not without important and almost universal cultural references. Generally speaking, these have often come up when a sports team is good.

In the mid-90s, we were all Mariners fans. Before that, it was the Huskies. These phenomena reach across Cascadia, seemingly uniting a disparate population. But, uniting behind what? That a team is good, the team is from here, we should root for them.

Matthew Kaemingk writing at Christ and Cascadia I think answers it best:

The Pacific Northwest has not “grown out” of religion, Cascadians have
simply transferred their religiosity to what the sociologist Meerten Ter
Borg calls “disembedded religion” or  “secular spirituality.” Broken
free from religious institutions, structures, rules, and creeds this
“disembedded religion” is an anti-institutional form of spirituality
that seeks powerful aesthetic experiences.

Matt’s right, Cascadia didn’t grow out of religion, it was in fact never religious ever in its non-native history. And, he hits the nail on the head when he lists “structures, rules and creeds.” This is exactly why the Seahawks (when they’re good and attractive) are an overwhelming universal force, because literally anyone can like them.

There is nothing special you need to do. You don’t need to change your political beliefs, the books you read or take an oath. You don’t need to get new friends, dress differently (in large part) or change your life at all. You just need to care whether a team wins. Deeper social, political or cultural values never come up.

A pro-choice, atheist, progressive, Seattle resident can sit next to a pro-life, Christian, conservative Duval resident at a Seahawks game and nothing much in the descriptions of each other would matter.

But, that is not how church is in Cascadia. It has a much more deeper meaning. And, because religion is so fractured here, very specific things like creed, political belief and possibly what you wear really does come to mattering. And, if you are religious, it absolutely should matter.

When we jump on the bandwagon around here, we sure do jump on hard:

Senator Bone attacked Boeing in February and March of 1934. He referred repeatedly on February 20 to an unnamed “air- plane factory” that had “made 90 percent profit out of the Govt.” and proclaimed that he did not want his country to be “helpless in the face of the inordinate and extortionate demands of privately owned airplane companies.” On March, 6 the senator went further, he named names. As part of a broader attack on firms that did business with the federal government, he charged that Boeing had made profits of 68 percent on navy business and 90 percent in its dealings with the army, and he complained about the company’s employment, at $25,000 per year, of a vice president to solicit business from the federal government. For the Tacoma Democrat, money and politics mixed in alarming ways.

Less than 10 years later, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce would join with labor leaders to rally for Boeing.

The quick turnaround in the political and cultural center of Washington state towards Boeing obviously had more to do with World War II and the company’s ability to capitalize on the war. Boeing had gone from a small-to-medium size operator in the airplane industry to the center of the Puget Sound economy. Almost 20 percent of the entire workforce of King County was somehow connected to Boeing by the end of the war.

This turnaround, from whipping boy to savoir isn’t untold, it may just not be well understood. Other people have written about it, but usually just in the terms of I outlined above, which can be pretty simple.

But, there are a few more wrinkles I think worth exploring.

First, Senator Bone. If you like my Business/Libertarian or New England/Appalachia duopoly of Cascadian politics, Bone falls into the Libertarian Appalachian wing. Firmly anti-corporate, Bone took a shot at Boeing in the same way that Washingtonians took shots at the rail-road companies. His political tradition fell from the same tree the spawned anti-corporate talk at both the Washington and Oregon constitutional conventions.

Also, it is hard to understate the double impact of the Great Depression and World War II had on reshaping our region. Nominally, we were friendly business Republicans region prior to the 1930s, but the political map was whipped clean in 1932.

But, with World War II, the inertia from the 1930s began to recenter towards business in the 40s. Youngins like Scoop Jackson and Warren Magnuson were much more friendly with the traditional New England political thought. And, by the end of the war, Washington’s economy and culture had changed, and a cadre of young business friendly Democrats were ready to fight for Boeing.

Knute Berger is usually right.

Usually.


But, not on this one:

Our current self-image is wrapped around the idea that we’re better than other people, that we’re more idealistic, more humane, more fair. Some of that is pure snobbery.

Some of it is idealism, a genuine desire to do good and do better.
Mayor Ed Murray has said that he wants Seattle to be a role model for
progressivism in the world, and the mayors before him, Mike McGinn and
Greg Nickels, were largely on board with a similar agenda. But to
accomplish that, we’d have to get a whole lot better at looking at the
real costs and true values of all those economic engines we embrace.
It’s time to reconsider our corporate heroes in a fresh light.

Berger is trying to point out that Seattle (or I think more accurately, urban Puget Sound… Pugetopolis, maybe…) says one thing but does another. While we fight for a $15 minimum wage, fight gravel mines in our back yard (and mines in Alaska), we roll over for Amazon and Boeing. We talk a nice game, but when it comes down to it, we’re a bunch of corporate whores.

Sure, people are hypocrites. No one really lives in truth all the time. That’s like saying the sun rises. But, pointing out hypocrisy hardly makes a good column.

In this case, Berger is being overly simplistic. Seattle (Pugetopolis and even Cascadia) is more diverse than he gives us credit for.

And, one of the deepest caverns of political difference in Pugetopolis (if you don’t mind) is how we approach corporations. Back to the founding of our greater region of Cascadia, the issue of corporate power has divided us. It shaped the very founding document of Oregon, played a large part in early drafts of the Washington constitution and drove the history of entire cities. The early battles between Seattle and Tacoma often took the shape of battles between railroad companies.

At the founding of our region, there were two competing mindsets on corporate power and society. One from New England was very pro-industry and pro-corporation. The other, from the upper Ohio Valley and Appalachia was very nervous about the power of companies over communities.

These competing visions were the reasons they debated corporations during the Oregon constitutional convention. Its also why Berger can see hypocrisy in Puget Sound, when really what he’s seeing is a century plus old political debate.

And, with any political debate, where the support is nearly evenly split, each side takes turns winning the day. When we raise the minimum wage its our anti-corporate (and anti-slave and anti-slavery) Appalachian history winning. When we give Boeing massive tax breaks, its our New England capitalistic history taking over.

And, these New England/Appalachian divides don’t often follow modern political divisions, you can have Democrats acting like corporatists and you can have Republicans taking shots at Boeing.

When it looks like we’re talking two different games, it is just our single regional identity working through one its largest issues, how we treaty corporations.

I’ve been blogging on the Cascadia exists label for the past year or so. The point of the blogging was to examine Cascadia as it exists right now. Also, to point out like other well-defined American regions, how this regions really does stand out now.

I’ve taken a look at our politics, if we have a regional mood (we do, Cascadia Calm) and the unique way we approach religion.

These aren’t a ton of posts, but they’re beginning to form around four general ideas: religion, politics, personality and culture. So, what I’m going to try to do over the next few months is stitch together these pieces into a short ebook.

I’ve posted an editable version of the book online, so if you feel like it, give me a hand. Or, just give me your thoughts. I’ll try to include as many thoughts as possible in the finished product.

1. One Oregon governor famously said: “I urge them to come and come many, many times to enjoy the beauty of
Oregon. But I also ask them, for heaven’s sake, don’t move here
to live.”

Irregular Times though ranks Oregon still pretty highly in the “Welcome to (this state)… Now Go Home!” race, but just outside the top 10. Washington State is downright mediocre at #25.

What’s going on here, what happened to our “get out of our fine state” chops in Cascadia? My guess is that McCall was a bit of an outlier, a pre-Big Sort voice chaffing against the Sort as it was just beginning to happen. The industrial big states were just falling apart during McCall’s time as governor and Oregon and Washington were just then being seen as nice places to live.

McCall himself was almost symbolic of the post-World War stability that had laid itself upon the Cascadian states before the Big Sort began to move things around.

 Now, we’re probably more welcoming to people who move here. At least we’re still top half curmudgeons.

2. This is the most bad-ass Facebook fandom map yet. Some folks have used these sort of maps to make a point about greater bioregonial Cascadia. Their point is that since people in Boise or Spokane watch the Hawks or the Mariners, we’re all one big Cascadia.

This map shows that Mariner fandom wanes quickly one you leave the coast. Granted, this might not be the best time to use the Mariners (I’d like to see an NFL map), but take a look at Boise. The gray is Yankee fandom, the light blue is barely Mariner fandom and the pink is Red Sox.

Still plenty of diversity, but hardly core Cascadia sport fans out there. 

3.Again, more about the debate on how far east Cascadia goes. I’m still very much a Cascadia as coastal nation sort of person. I’d argue that places like Boise (in addition to not liking Seattle sports) and Spokane are tied more closely to the great interior West. That arid West is very much not like Cascadia.

Matt Shea isn’t the most insane Republican from eastern Washington. He’s from suburban Spokane, but he doesn’t talk at all like a Cascadian.

Back mid-winter, when Seahawk fandom was hitting a fever pitch, there was a general lament among more hardened sports followers that many of the new-found fans lacked gravity. They were bandwagon fans, only interested in following a team after success has been found.

This is a common enough thing that happens when teams start to win, borderline fans start buying t-shirts, start tuning in and start learning players’ names.

But, the accusation up here was that in particular Cascadian bandwagon fans are inauthentic because of the automatic seriousness and put-on gravity they bring to their fandom. They aren’t just normal borderline fans showing a renewed and healthy interest, they are suddenly the most intense fans of a team 18 months ago they couldn’t have cared less about.

I won’t deny this. It does seem to me that most people who are interested in sports, or could be interested in sports in Cascadia, float around the surface of interest, only taking the plunge when there is enough social acceptance to do so. Like, especially, when there is a winning team to support.

But, I would argue that this isn’t an unhealthy thing. But, I’ll get to that in a little bit.

First, just a few observations about the special state of Cascadian sports.

1. We have a very short history of being major league. While most East Coast and Midwest cities have over a century of major league professional heritage, our history starts with the NBA (then not a very significant league) in the late 1960s. Seattle didn’t enter football or baseball until the 70s. So, college sports not-withstanding, we’ve been a minor league region for most of our sporting history. So while we can complain that we haven’t won much, in the grand scheme, we haven’t played for much either.

2. So, college sports still dominate our sporting culture and history. And, Husky football dominates the college sports world. The UW football program is the only tradition that even tries to reach as far back as other fan cultures around here. But, it is one program in one portion of Cascadia. Deep, but thin.

3. East coast/California bias. Our teams exist in a continental world. So, not only are we punished by being out of the mainstream of North America, we’re a second thought on our own coast. So, in terms of cutting through the noise across the continent, sporting companies from two mid-sized cities in a mostly empty corner of the country hardly stand a chance.

So, that’s what we have going against us.

Here’s what I’d argue what we have going for us. The thing that makes Cascadian sports fandom good is the exact thing that I described hardened sports fans complaining about above.

In terms of religions and politics, Cascadians are hardly joiners. Much less joiners than the rest of the country. We stand out on our own, isolated from organizations and groups. So, the loose ties of sports fandom makes a lot of sense in this way. We don’t grow strong ties to community of faith or politics, so why would the majority of us do so with sports?

But, how does that explain the intense band-wagoning when a team is good?

Well, it shows that we put our sports fandom into a decent perspective. Only the most hardened and short sighted fan would argue that sports is more important than other civic needs, like education, health care or the general economic well-being of a community.

Sports is fun, it is entertainment and it should be enjoyed. So, why agonize when your team sucks? Its better to just take your focus of it the Mariners now (or the Seahawks in the 1990s) and go climb a mountain or play ultimate.

This was a stupid blog post.

In it, I was trying to prove a point. That even though there is from time to time a surge of new people coming in to Cascadia, that the population already settled here is so big, that our regional personality (the Cascadia Calm) wouldn’t be usurped by Southern Charm.

I still don’t think Southern Charm is going to take over, but I ignored one specific piece of important information in that post. Most of the net migration in Cascadia is going to two places, Portand and Seattle.

So, if you’re moving to Cascadia, you’re much more likely to move to an urban place or somewhere near an urban place.

So, the question remains, are all those new residents changing the urban areas or Cascadia? Well, sure. But, you have to ask yourself, why are they moving their in the first place? Because they want to change it, or because it is the type of community they like to see themselves in? I’d bet it was the latter.

I’d also argue that Cascadia was particularly well positioned to take advantage of the Big Sort, the drastic demographic shift post 1965. Millions of people uprooted themselves and moved to places like Seattle and Portland, and still do. When the economy is good here, people come flooding in to our cities.

We were well positioned because our regional personality was literally open to it. We’re a business friendly crowd, so new ventures are typically seen as a good thing. This goes back to our New Englander capitalists origins. We’re also a live and let live sort. This goes back to our Appalachian, Ohio Valley farmer origins.

The data backs this up. When you rate regions by “openness,” Cascadia floats to the top. The same study points out that open people (creative, patent pending sorts) migrate to an open area, the effects tend to build on themselves. When the good times roll in Cascadia, more open people show up and “that change may lead to an increase in liberal public opinion and patent production and, thus, to a more open culture.”

So, we get even more urban, even more liberal, open and creative cities. Our cities are recruiting people because we’re Calm and the Calm builds because we’re recruiting more urban people.

The thousands of tons of mud aren’t dry, the recovery isn’t complete. But, people are alrady scratching their heads why more wasn’t done to warn or prevent people from living beneath “slide hill.”

When I look at the hear of the area covered by the slide, a neighborhood along Steelhead Road in an oxbow of the Stillaguamish River, I can see a neighborhood already familiar with the perils of living at the business end of nature.

Riverside living and the floods that go along with it is already ignoring the risk that you’ll face floods every once in awhile. Living in an oxbow is just asking for floods.

So, asking why the county didn’t do more to warn or move these people from the riveside or from below the slide area is asking a big question. It centers on the difference between the perspective of rural landowners and suburban and urban people that make up of Snohomish county civic life.

Plainly said, the people who run the county and the people who lived on Steelhead Road are the faces of two radically different parts of Cascadia. This is more than a traditional right/left or red/blue political and social divide. While in many ways it follows that dichotomy, it has its own Cascadian flavor to it.

And, the answer goes back to the founding of the non-native society out here. There are two major groups that put down early roots and still define much of our society: New England capitalists and Appalachian farmers (mostly from the Ohio Valley).

For much of our history out here, the New Englanders migrated to the urban Puget Sound. They founded timber companies, ran the Republican political machines and owned the newspapers. Before the Democratic surge in the 1930s that wiped away the Republican political advantage, these New Englanders were political life in Cascadia.

But, the Appalachians were always there. While they identified as Democrats nominally early on, they stuck to the well-spaced rural areas of the state. Their influence on our political culture has been the strain of what we’d now call libertarianism that stretches pretty far across our political spectrum. In the recent election returns on gay rights and marijuana (that included both rural and urban votes) and one recent local election for me, it is possible for this libertarian strain across both liberal and conservative politics in Cascadia to unite.

So, back to Snohomish County and the folks on Steelhead. What was it about our political origins that caused this tragedy?

 
…there were
discussions over the years about whether to buy out the property owners
in the area, but those talks never developed into serious proposals.

“I think we did the best that we could under the constraints that nobody wanted to sell their property and move…”

Take a simple look at it like this. Urban and suburban Snohomish County (and Cascadia) are the decedents of townie Republican New Englanders. They’re business friendly and with a deep seeded civic mindedness that has sprouted a sense of environmentalism. That sense of doing what is right for the good of the community brought them to point out that slides happen were they do and to map flood areas.

But, the ability to do anything about it stopped where it became obvious that no one wanted to listen to them. The deep sense of individualism that came west with the Appalachians in Cascadia still rules the point of view, especially along the Stillaguamish River.

Sadly, one of the former political leaders on the Appalachian end of the spectrum likely died in the Oso mudslide.

Sure, it is possible to offer enough money to make anyone want to move. But, it isn’t like Snohomish County had magic public funds growing fairy dust. And, when it came to spending that limited public money on someone that really didn’t want to move in the first place. Well, you see where the attention of Snohomish civic leaders can be distracted.

Its easy to point to the available evidence and blame well intentioned people for not doing more. But, it is worth looking back at our origins here and seeing that it isn’t simple.