It’s a happy new year and we’ve officially reached the start of Washington’s latest legislative session. On the heels of what we hope was a healthy and hardy holiday season for you and yours, we think it as good a time as any to preview some of the enacted legislation taking effect in 2024—the good, the bad, and the ugly, in addition to questionable impending legislation. We conclude with what we all can do to assist, defeat, or reverse their passage. The foremost answer to this last question is, of course, to vote. Vote, vote, vote.
Vote even if you do not think you care about the issue on-ballot—by the time you see the options we promise you will have a strong opinion one way or another (yes, even on library funding). Vote if it’s raining outside—a fair bet on the west side of the Cascades (and before you correct me that most Washingtonians vote by mail, I am referring to your walk to the mailbox instead of the polling station). Vote even if you cannot stand the candidate with whose policies you agree (as long as they are, overall, of sound moral character). Vote if you are only moderately injured, and medical attention can wait a couple hours. 2024 is simply too important not to. And remember, we are electing public servants, not team captains. And, even then, you would want the most qualified and not just the most popular or the one you would most like to have a beer with. Before voting statewide, for which we will have to wait until November (which will be here sooner than we realize, we assure you), there indeed are workable ways for ordinary citizens to pressure lawmakers and bureaucrats against bad policymaking.
But there are also some definite don’ts. First, please do not picket! It does not work and when it disrupts traffic it tends to create far more enemies for your cause than it does allies. Second, do not call your legislator outside an organized drive! They will not feel the heat unless it’s at a boiling point, which requires far more Fahrenheit than a mere simmer can provide. Indeed, their staffers in most cases won’t even pass on the message. Third, for the love of all that is good and evergreen, do not change your Facebook or other social-media profile picture to reflect a political viewpoint. Few give it a second thought, and those who do, do not care.
If this sounds harsh, it is because years in politics have given me a lifetime’s worth of secondhand embarrassment at the pro-freedom movement’s past (and thankfully rare) efforts to emulate the poorly-worn, frenetic rah-rah style of politicking among some sectors across the political spectrum. Recent protests against Israel’s measured response to Hamas’s early October reign of terror has generated a new slew of such examples, in all of their self-defeating glory: Blocking traffic during rush hour; stopping operations at the Port of Tacoma; graffito tagging cherished landmarks like the Lincoln Memorial (in the other Washinton, obviously). These are to name just a few. We encourage our readers to google “Gaza protests” for more shenanigans. Most of these incidents amount to skullduggery—though granted there are at least some civil protestors who simply want their voices heard; and of course their freedom of speech must be protected at all cost.
At bottom, freedom lovers (whom we hope and expect are (or with time will become) proliferous among our readership) are above such gimmicks, and they (you) recognize far more persuasive ways to organize and push freedom-maximizing policies than disruptive street antics and the like. Before we discuss those tactics that can move the needle in the freedom-maximizing direction, it is worth previewing what’s at stake this year. Jay Inslee is intent on going out in a blaze of poor-policy glory. By his own admission, “when you’re in the fourth quarter and you want to get to the goal line, you don’t think about the postgame news conference.” So much for the lame-duck executive focused simply on consolidating their legacy. Bills passed last session include raising the state (and some local) minimum wages—an apparent win-win until you speak to any economist worth their salt. Next is H.B. 1143, which now requires a ten-day waiting period for any firearms purchase. This despite very mixed research findings on their efficacy in reducing homicide rates. New laws elsewhere include Bellingham and Tacoma’s tenant “protections” that severely intrude upon the landlord-tenant relationship and are almost certainly unconstitutional. This makes rumblings in Olympia of a statewide rent-control regime that much more concerning. And then there is the new tax break for print news only, an expensive effort barely to extend the twilight of a medium that has already spent years on life support. Finally are the dizzying doozy of new proposals slated for this session—including welcome calls for harsher penalties for retail and porch theft, which have reached epidemic levels in parts of the state. We will be discussing these and other incoming legislative items in greater detail in the coming weeks, as the session really heats up.
Now on to what we, the voters, can do before statewide voting commences in November. The buzzterm to remember is collective action, the lack of which has historically been the foremost impediment to popular resistance against the whims of an elite class bent on controlling the existing power structure. It is why revolutions are so rarely successful, and when they are why they themselves soon revert to preserve-at-all-costs tactics themselves. The stakes are obviously lower in a democratic republic like ours. As prominent sociologist Elias Canetti put it in Crowds and Power (1960), in democracies “[t]he member of an outvoted party accepts the majority decision, not because he admits defeat. It is easy for him to do this because nothing happens to him: he is not punished in any way for his previous opposition.” Canetti continues that the outvoted “would react quite differently if his life was endangered.” Instead, he can look forward to “future battles, and many of them; in none of them will he be killed.” In this spirit, the best those opposed a large chunk of the legislation slated for this session can do is to organize, organize organize—identify areas of political vulnerability on policies with which you disagree, and coalesce around them. Groups like ours make this easy, as we can do much to keep our subscriber base informed of the good, the bad, the ugly, and what we all can do about any of it. If we lose, as Canetti noted we can take solace that our heads will remain on our shoulders for the future battles that await.
In a political society in which disagreements do not—for the most part—devolve into violence of the type Canetti spoke, those out of power can do a lot to organize. They can initiate petition drives, host town hall meetings and candidate forums, gently draw open-minded friends and family to their cause, among many other “soft power” mechanisms. It is true that half if not more of politics is grassroots, and that means it starts with you and me. Perhaps this comes as a disappointment. It is much more assuring for someone else to do the political organizing for us. But ultimately it is our responsibility as members of the electorate—the polity. And until statewide voting commences in November, we must limit ourselves to these soft, grassroots tactics—though without letting this underdog perception prevent ourselves from fostering real change.
So, here’s to a new year of enhanced grassroots political engagement that, by November 2024, should position those who love freedom to overperform in a state that has experienced decades of government expansion at the expense of the private sphere.
Kloshe Chee Cole and Alki,
Sam Spiegelman