Mike, this is everyone. Everyone, this is Mike. I know it's not ideal to identify someone by their partner, but in this case I just can't get around it. Mike's wife was in my Providence Hospital New Moms Group (bless them for having that), so I've known this family since a few weeks after my son was born in 2003.
But beyond fretting about overly-soft soft spots and too-short naps together, their lives have remained intertwined with mine because they, too, are a public policy-saturated family. Nicole works tirelessly to support and improve our pubic schools - especially promoting more equity across the district, and Mike has worked for the Oregon Center for Public Policy for years, directing his work to improving social policy here in Oregon by researching and analyzing budget, tax and economic issues. Mike is too mellow to bowl you over with his opinions (how nice!), so we're lucky that he agreed to share them with us here:
Describe
your family. It all begins with our
five-year-old, the king (in his mind) of his domain. My partner Nicole and I
serve his silly lordship mac & cheese (with peas), keep him supplied with
paper for drawing, and share his thrill at various wonders of nature: he sees a
ladybug! The seed he planted is really growing fast! We live in a little
townhouse in North Portland. Most of our time
outside of child-rearing goes to our work as researchers and activists: Nicole
for public schools, me for state policies that help low-income families.
Name one thing America
is doing right for parents. It’s sad how hard it is to answer that question. I wish parents had half the
supports that parents in much of Europe get.
Name one thing America is not doing right for parents. I wish every public school had a compelling and broad curriculum and lots of enthusiastic and highly effective teachers. When only some schools have those things, a lot of parents end up scrambling over each other, bidding up home prices in “good school” neighborhoods, stressing over all the logistics of complicated lives, and trying to ignore the obvious wrongness of leaving some kids with an inferior education. And those are the parents who “win,” in some screwy sense. We don’t need more “choices”; we need public structures that serve our interests and save us time, money, and stress.
What's
one parenting issue that really riles you up, makes you ready to work for
change? Well, one thing is that a single
mom working in a minimum wage job in Oregon pays about a month’s worth of food
in state income taxes (about $320), while two-thirds of corporations operating in
Oregon pay
just $10. In fact, the whole state and local tax structure has been shifted away from
corporations and the rich and on to ordinary working families.
Who's gonna get your vote for President '08 & why? Obama. We are at a moment in history that cries out for him, someone who can
inspire us toward a new vision of our common future and renew our sense of
purpose. We've been led so far into the woods by the lies of corporate
conservatism that we need someone to both show us the general way out and
inspire us to believe we can actually get there. I think progressives will have
to push Obama to take us further than he may want to at times, but hopefully
we’ll be able to do that. Anyway, after eight years of George
Bush I am longing for someone who will just make me forget all that
peevishness and emotional monotone.
Name one thing Activistas could do to be a better place. You could add Oregon
Center for Public Policy,
where I work, as a link! Our research on public policies and the state economy
may be interesting and useful to folks who visit your site.
What's your fave thing about parenting in the Portland area? The great outdoors! The mountains, the beaches, our neighborhood park.
And another thing!! Thanks, doing this was kind of fun.
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