Denver green jobs rally at Alliance for a Sustainable Colorado, Sept. 27, 2008. (Photo/Greenforall.org)

The $785 billion spending bill that Obama signed Tuesday, shortly after he toured the sparkling solar-paneled roof of the Denver Museum, will save or create 3.5 million jobs over the next two years, according to the White House. Environmental groups, happy about the sharp departure from Bush administration policies, say up to 1.5 million or 40 percent of the jobs created by the unprecedented legislation will be “green” — meaning they will contribute to decreasing energy consumption, lowering oil demand and switching to renewable sources.

But the carbon-based reality of the new president’s spending scheme was illuminated just after Obama signed the legislation. Within minutes, Missouri’s Department of Transportation became the first governmental entity to actually tap the stimulus money. The state announced it was using the new federal money to fund an $8.5 million project to replace a bridge in rural Tuscambia. The Obama stimulus program, it turns out, will also save or create hundreds of thousands of jobs that might be called “gray” jobs — positions with less environmentally friendly results, such as new road construction that encourages the use of carbon-fueled vehicles.

In fact, a review of the energy and transportation provisions of the stimulus program reveals a spending program that is much “grayer” than most media coverage has suggested, with up to a quarter of all the jobs created under the program likely to come from highway and road construction that do nothing to reduce fossil fuel consumption or protect the environment — and may actually encourage traffic, sprawl and greenhouse gas emissions. While “green” groups are happy with the Obama program, so is the highway lobby.

The Obama program authorizes $27.5 billion in spending authorized for highways and bridges, 50 percent more than the $18.9 billion that Environment America, a Washington-based coalition of state advocacy groups, says will go to environmentally friendly transportation purposes. The road construction money is most likely to go to 20th-century freeways and suburban thoroughfares that enable carbon-fueled cars, gas-guzzling Hummers and long-distance truckers to move from factory to mall to office park to subdivision more easily.

That money will pay for “increasing or improving capacity in places where people need it,” says Tony Dorsey, spokesman for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. The vast majority of Americans, Dorsey points out accurately, rely on private transportation for work and leisure. It is only natural, he says, that “the lion’s share [of funding] go where the greatest need is.”

And if the Federal Highway Administration is right, that funding will generate lots of jobs. That agency’s oft-cited formula holds that every $1.2 billion in infrastructure spending generates approximately 35,000 jobs. At that rate, the Obama program would create 802,000 road construction jobs — more than half the 1.5 million “green” jobs predicted by Environment America and almost a quarter of the total 3.5 million jobs saved or created that the White House anticipates.

Such predictions are open to question. Robert Pollin, economics professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst, a prominent advocate of “green” jobs programs, questions the Federal Highway Administration’s formula. He said his research suggests that traditional highway and road work creates 19 jobs per $1 million spent, or 22,800 jobs per $1.2 billion, about a third less than the government estimate.

A lot depends on what happens in the next few weeks as the departments of transportation in 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico decide which projects should be prioritized. The DOTs, as they are known, will have a central role in deciding whether the Obama stimulus program turns out to be “green” or “gray.”

“Once the money starts flowing,” says Tony Dorsey, “it’s going to be spent awfully fast.”

Some environmentalists worry that bureaucratic inertia will generate more new roads, not a 21st-century infrastructure.

“Most stimulus project lists from state DOTs prioritize new highways while paying relatively little attention to repairing crumbling bridges and roads and even less emphasis on forward-looking transportation options,” such as public transit and the the country’s major inter-city rail network, wrote Phineas Baxandall of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group in a recent paper.

The Missouri DOT makes no bones that roads and bridges are its priority. According to a press release, the state expects to receive $637 million for road and bridge projects, more than four times as much as the estimated $150 million it will receive to address air, rail, transit, waterway and pedestrian projects. Baxandall surveyed 38 state DOTs about their plans to spend stimulus money and found that 18 of them plan to spend more than 80 percent of the stimulus funds on new local streets. Only two, Illinois and New Hampshire, plan to spend more than half their infrastructure spending on transit, aviation, bicycle and pedestrian purposes.

The administration’s desire to pump money into the economy inherently conflicts with its “green” agenda, said Scott Bernstein, president the Center for Neighbhorhood Technology in Chicago, which promotes sustainable urban development.

“It’s hard for there not to be a lot of ‘gray’ jobs” in the stimulus package, he said in a telephone interview. Bernstein pointed to the repairs needed on I-94, a major highway running through the state of Illinois, as an example. “Is it ‘green’ to fix them?” he asked. “It’s greener than the alternative of building new roads. But it is still going to be a highway. Fixing the road will induce more traffic.

“If you take the money and spend it on an alternatives to motorized travel, things are going to be a lot cleaner,” Bernstein said. “But doing that optimally is not as quick” as fixing roads.

Despite the ‘gray’ streak in the stimulus program, most ‘green’ groups are happy with its overall color.

David Foster, director of the San Francisco-based Blue-Green Alliance, praised the program as “a true down payment on a new, ‘green’ economy.”

Environment America chimed in with a press release estimating the program will create 731,000 jobs in the renewable energy sector, including 165,000 in the solar industry. The solar panels that Obama viewed in Denver were installed by Namaste Solar, a Colorado-based firm, whose president told reporters earlier this week that he plans to add 20 employees because of the stimulus program.

Environmental America predicts provisions to expand weatherization assistance to homeowners and improve energy-efficiency of federal office buildings will create 488,850 new jobs. Spending on mass transit and high-speed rail projects, the Washington-based group says, will sustain another 388,120 jobs, they say.

Pollin also questions these assumptions. The putative employment benefits of weatherization are based on a Department of Energy (DOE) finding that $1 million spent on programs to caulk, winterize and insulate low-income homes creates 52 direct jobs and 23 indirect jobs for every $1 million spent

“That figure is not realistic,” says Pollin. He says his research shows that if the government spends $700,000 on energy-efficiency and $300,000 renewable energy programs, the $1 million will generate approximately 17 new jobs. That’s two-thirds less than the DOE estimate.

Pollin’s lower estimates of job creation may disappoint liberals who already fear the Obama program will not be big enough to blunt the deepest recession in decades. Whatever the estimates, there is no dispute that the Obama stimulus program is the largest infusion of money ever into the country’s weatherization, renewable energy and high-speed rail programs.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel made sure that the U.S. high-speed rail endeavor received $8 billion. The expansion of the U.S. program to develop state-of-the-art rail systems in 11 regions across the country is one of the “greenest” features of the new bill, supporters say.

All told, the stimulus bill marks a decisive change in traditional “gray”/”green” spending priorities, says Dan Weiss of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington.

Under current spending plans, roads and bridges enjoy an 83 percent to 17 percent spending advantage over transit, according to Weiss. The stimulus bill, by contrast, authorizes $29 billion for highway spending and $17.1 billion for other forms of transit, a ratio of 63 to 37 percent. In other words, road spending still has an advantage but it is smaller.

The narrowing gap, he says, is proof that “the ‘green’ energy agenda is very much on track.” Meanwhile, the enduring ‘gray’ reality of carbon-centric public policy endures.

She took a walk. TWI’s sister site, The New Mexico Independent, has “the anatomy of the dodge” that killed gay civil unions in the Land of Enchantment.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama addresses a record-setting crowd of 100,000 in Denver, Colo. (Photo/Jason Kosena)

“It is how this nation has overcome the greatest differences and the longest odds,” Obama declared to the huge crowd on the mall, “because there is no obstacle that can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change.”

The televised spectacle hammered home the message with the constant brooding visage of Lincoln peering down on a multiracial cast of singers dressed in bipartisan red and blue who were clearly having a ball. The penultimate song in which Pete Seeger, the ebullient 89-year-old former communist, joined Bruce Springsteen bawling out “This Land Is Your Land,” a working man’s anthem written by another leftist, Woody Guthrie, showed just how capacious this new patriotism is.

But, of course, this blue patriotism is not new. It is found everywhere in Washington, hidden in plain view, forgotten by those who preferred not to learn its lessons. For example, when Obama begins the parade from the Capitol to the White House on Tuesday, he will pass the unobtrusive but swank Capitol Grille on the northwest corner of 6th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, where a bronze plaque outside its door notes that “The Star Spangled Banner” was first sung in public on this corner in 1814 and that a free black man named Beverly Snow once ran a restaurant there in the 1830s.

Obama’s passage through this intersection reveals the country’s racial history anew — its complexities and its glories. Beverly Snow, proprietor of the Epicurean Eating House, was a man who wouldn’t have been out of place in Obama’s Washington: He was a mixed-race entrepreneur who had a way with words, friends in high places and a fondness for good food. Back then he found success, but his very example generated fears. In the city’s first race riot in August 1835, Snow was hounded out of business by a white mob as city authorities — including Francis Scott Key, the national anthem author then serving as the city’s district attorney — stood aside.

Obama’s ascension to the presidency is the culmination of a struggle that began on the streets of Washington 175 years ago. The red-blue dynamics that have dominated American politics for the last 40 years were born here in the first real national debate over slavery. A few months after “the Snow-storm,” as the 1835 riot was known, a handful of brave congressmen from the Northeast and Midwest, blue states today, for the first time submitted petitions from their constituents demanding abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Southern legislators, uniformly from states considered “red” (at least before 2008), responded by imposing the gag rule forbidding any debate about the issue.

At stake was the very meaning of American patriotism. For the red state representatives, to raise the question of whether the white man had the right to enslave Africans was to insult not only their rights but to subvert the essence of the United States of America. Red patriotism was, in the words of historian Gary Gerstle, a kind of “racial nationalism” in which the country’s glory was tied to white man’s prerogatives. For the blue states, patriotism was “civic nationalism,” based on fidelity to the Declaration of Independence, especially its defining phrase, “All men are created equal.” The two American patriotisms have dueled ever since.

Obama’s victory is a triumph of blue patriotism that has been a long time coming. Red patriotism, while it has long since repudiated overt racial appeals, continues to embody the view that America has achieved its greatness — and must be defended from those who would undermine it. Blue patriotism has all along insisted that America’s greatness depended on living up to its ideals — and has to be defended from those who do not take those ideals seriously.

From the start, red patriotism had the upper hand. Francis Scott Key, whose lyrics defined “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” prosecuted abolitionists who dared advocate their cause in the capital city. Key’s brother-in-law and close friend, Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, would go on to write the 1858 Dred Scott decision that legalized slavery everywhere and hastened the arrival of the war between the states.

Many abolitionists responded by reviling America as a wicked and irredeemable country. But other abolitionists embraced America despite the blot of slavery. The first great blue patriots were former president turned congressman John Quincy Adams, who single-handedly battled the gag rule in the face of insults and threats, and Frederick Douglass, a former slave and orator who denounced America’s hypocritical celebration of the Fourth of July but predicted that the Declaration of Independence and “the genius of American institutions” would eventually prevail over the slave masters.

Douglass was proven right by Abraham Lincoln, the greatest blue patriot. Unlike Obama, this Illinois politico did not come to office as a blue patriot. He rejected abolitionism as extremism and espoused white supremacy. But in the crucible of the War Between the States, he understood that America had no choice but destroy the slave system in the name of universal liberty. In the Gettysburg address and the Second Inaugural address Lincoln redefined what America would look like after that was achieved. It would be “a more perfect union” in which the spirit of the Declaration would be transformed into constitutional protections for the former slaves.

With Lincoln’s assassination and the advent of Jim Crow in the South, red patriotism (and white supremacy) remained the norm for another century. But every popular and politically effective social reform movement of the 19th and 20th centuries would promote their causes as carrying out the ideals of the Declaration and the preamble to the Constitution. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s declaration of women’s rights at Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848, the labor movement of early 20th century and the civil rights movement of the 1950 and 60s all drew on this tradition. At the peak of their influence in the 1930s, even American communists (like Pete Seeger) liked to describe their ideology as “20th-century Americanism.”

Amid some stagy theatrics, the We Are One concert showcased this history. The giant TV screen along the Reflecting Pool flashed back to grainy newsreel footage from 1939 when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let Marian Anderson sing at Constitution Hall because she was black. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt arranged for her to sing at the Lincoln Memorial where the 16th president’s two greatest speeches are inscribed. (Anderson sang “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” not “The Star Spangled Banner.”)

So, in 1963, it was natural for Martin Luther King to choose to give his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Memorial. It was equally natural that a country only just beginning to renounce Jim Crow laws preferred to ignore King’s speech. Life magazine, then one of the country’s most popular magazines, ran exactly one line of text about King’s speech and made no mention of his dream.

Not always noticed, not always successful, this tradition of blue patriotism was nonetheless a source of political strength for liberal causes. “For American leftists, patriotism was indispensable,” historian Michael Kazin has written. “It made their dissent and rebellion intelligible to their fellow citizens and located them with the national narrative, fighting to shape a common future.”

The exceptions were the anti-war and Black Power movements of the 1960s, whose leaders, like the radical abolitionists before them, rejected the very idea of American patriotism, attacking the country’s leaders, institution and history with insults and guns. Red patriots began to link progressive causes to riots, bombs and burning flags. Ronald Reagan parlayed this theme into the governorship of California in 1966 by depicting liberals as soft on the rioters in Los Angeles. In time, Reagan perfected red patriotism by shearing off its overt racial appeals. His sunny optimism enjoyed a consistent popularity — at least among white Americans.

But the covert racial appeals of red patriotism never went away. Red patriotism, founded in the struggle against the abolitionists, never entirely abandoned the notion that social change was the harbinger of black violence and violation of white women. A common theme in the partisan press of the 1830s, this dire theme recurred a century and a half later in George H.W. Bush’s successful TV ads in 1988 linking his liberal Democrat opponent to a black rapist.

The last gasp of red patriots’ effort to impugn the blue patriotism was an attempt to trash Obama’s patriotism by linking him to former Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers. It didn’t work because the country has grown multiracial since 1988. (Salon’s Joan Walsh points out that if the country had the same ethnic makeup in 2008 that it had in 1988 Obama would have lost to McCain.) But it also failed because Obama had made his name by offering a more inclusive and hopeful patriotism.

In his 2004 Democratic convention speech, the young senator from Illinois declared, “Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation — not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy” — an implicit rebuke to the complacency of red patriotism.

“Our pride,” he went on, “is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”

But Obama advanced blue patriotism by imbuing the traditional invocation of the Declaration of Independence with new-found confidence. He noted that the red-blue vocabulary of contemporary politics injected a dualism into American patriotism that is not only unnecessary but also unrealistic. To those who invoked the superiority of red patriotism, he said, “I’ve got news for you.”

“We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States,” he said. “We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.”

Blue patriotism is just as good, just as pervasive, as red, Obama said, and the election results last November vindicated his vision.

Obama’s inauguration, of course, does not mean that America has overcome its social and racial divides. But it does mean that the popular definition of American patriotism is undergoing a decisive change. The concert on the mall was its first, but not last, display. Even President Bush, in a gracious passage of his farewell address, acknowledged that Obama’s victory shows “the vitality of American democracy.” It was a tacit recognition that the long ascendancy of red patriotism that began on the streets of Washington 175 years ago is over, at least for now. American patriotism is blue.

I told the remarkable story of Beverly Snow and Washington’s first race riot in the Washington Post magazine in February 2004.

Writing at the Minnesota Independent, Noon says:

In most ways, Palin has been a vast improvement over her predecessor, Frank Murkowski, a world-renowned dope who managed to aggravate every possible constituency while presiding over a vast ocean of corruption during his single term in office. She approved a bill that squeezed oil producers for more revenue, and she called out fellow Republicans, including the party’s own state chairman, for their pliable ethics.

But:

Palin’s vaunted record as a budget-trimming “maverick” and a principled opponent of federal pork is also overstated. …. It’s true that she eliminated funding for a zamboni blade-sharpener — a budget item that was to state political snark what the “Bridge to Nowhere” was for the rest of the country — but to describe Palin as “anti-pork” requires that we overlook the basic point that for most people, “pork” is merely synonymous with “projects I don’t like.”

And:

She’s not a policy wonk, and she’s incapable of holding a press conference without a coral reef of staffers to feed her answers. Though amiable and charming in debates, she is staggeringly uninformed on most issues of national significance, and voters would do well to wonder how the erstwhile Mayor of Wasilla would manage the American imperium when President McCain strokes out over a third-tier international crisis.

David Noon is a professor of history at the University of Alaska in Juneau, the author of the great, sort-of-on-hiatus Axis of Evel Knievel blog, and a contributor to Lawyers, Guns and Money.

None of us expect that arguments about patriotism will, or should, vanish entirely; after all, when we argue about patriotism, we are arguing about who we are as a country, and more importantly, who we should be. But surely we can agree that no party or political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism. And surely we can arrive at a definition of patriotism that, however rough and imperfect, captures the best of America’s common spirit.

Less than 24 hours later, at the commencement of a Denver City Council meeting, jazz singer Rene Marie sang the melody of Francis Scott Key’s "Star Spangled Banner" but used the lyrics of “Lift Ev’ry Voice in Praise,” written by poet James Weldon Johnson in 1900. The song is often described as the “black national anthem.”

By Wednesday, Colorado media outlets were stoking a racialized media controversy with propagandistic overtones. Retiring congressman Tom Tancredo said that Marie had insulted America.

The rage of the offended not only highlights the challenge that Obama’s candidacy-cum-movement poses for the country but the new biracial patriotism that seeks to defuse it.  

Denver was “shocked” by Marie’s version of the national anthem, according to the easily shocked editors at Fox News. The Rocky Mountain News called it a “self-indulgent deception. ” Gov. Bill Ritter, sensing a right-wing talking point, told a talk radio show he thought Marie’s action was “inappropriate” and “a distraction,” according to NBC affiliate 9 News.  

"There is no substitute for the national anthem, period," said City Councilman Charlie Brown. "And that’s what really bothered me. You know when we fly the flag, the American flag, it’s always the highest flag, as it should be. And that didn’t come across today, that didn’t happen today."

Marie held her ground."When I decided to sing my version, what was going on in my head was: ‘I want to express how I feel about living in the United States, as a black woman, as a black person.” 

The blogospheric chorus waxed indignant. An unscientific survey on a local TV news Web site found that 4,300 of 6,300 respondents found Marie’s actions “highly offensive.” Her song choice, said Rightpundits  “plays into a stereotype about Obama backers that they are divisive and provokes unfair whispers that Obama himself may be secretly unpatriotic” — a clever formulation that enables the anonymous authors to perpetrate the stereotype and amplify the whispers.

In fact, Rene Marie’s version of the national anthem resembles nothing so much as Jimi Hendrix’s blues rock rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at the Woodstock rock festival in 1969. That too was denounced by aspiring cultural commissars as offensive. In fact, it expressed an anguished love of country that knew no racial or religious bounds.  

To be sure, there was something impolite about Rene Marie’s mischievous music-making. She was invited to sing the national anthem at a solemn civic occasion and she did not exactly do that. But there was nothing rude about her performance.  

The words she substituted for the anthem’s lyrics hardly lacked seriousness or patriotism.

Rene Marie’s rendition was less thrilling but no less patriotic. By singing the melody of "The Star Spangled Banner" but not the familiar “Oh say, can you see,” this low-profile jazz singer with four albums to her name tapped into the deepest roots of American patriotism. She replaced the white poet’s words with a black poet’s words, yet loyally kept the song’s traditional melody. She married the black experience to the national anthem without abandoning the original. It wasn’t appropriate for the occasion but it was a forgiving and loving tribute to her country. 

Those who see controversy in Marie’s song choice not only miss the point, they miss the patriotism.

“As we begin our fourth century as a nation,” Sen. Obama had said the day before in his patriotism address, “it is easy to take the extraordinary nature of America for granted. But it is our responsibility as Americans and as parents to instill that history in our children, both at home and at school. The loss of quality civic education from so many of our classrooms has left too many young Americans without the most basic knowledge of who our forefathers are, or what they did, or the significance of the founding documents that bear their names. Too many children are ignorant of the sheer effort, the risks and sacrifices made by previous generations, to ensure that this country survived war and depression; through the great struggles for civil, and social, and worker’s rights.”

Too many children — and too many adults — are ignorant of the complex strands of race and history that are woven into our history but this presidential campaign may be starting to change all that.

None of us expect that arguments about patriotism will, or should, vanish entirely; after all, when we argue about patriotism, we are arguing about who we are as a country, and more importantly, who we should be. But surely we can agree that no party or political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism. And surely we can arrive at a definition of patriotism that, however rough and imperfect, captures the best of America’s common spirit.

Less than 24 hours later, at the commencement of a Denver City Council meeting, jazz singer Rene Marie sang the melody of Francis Scott Key’s "Star Spangled Banner" but used the lyrics of “Lift Ev’ry Voice in Praise,” written by poet James Weldon Johnson in 1900. The song is often described as the “black national anthem.”

By Wednesday, Colorado media outlets were stoking a racialized media controversy with propagandistic overtones. Retiring congressman Tom Tancredo said that Marie had insulted America.

The rage of the offended not only highlights the challenge that Obama’s candidacy-cum-movement poses for the country but the new biracial patriotism that seeks to defuse it.  

Denver was “shocked” by Marie’s version of the national anthem, according to the easily shocked editors at Fox News. The Rocky Mountain News called it a “self-indulgent deception. ” Gov. Bill Ritter, sensing a right-wing talking point, told a talk radio show he thought Marie’s action was “inappropriate” and “a distraction,” according to NBC affiliate 9 News.  

"There is no substitute for the national anthem, period," said City Councilman Charlie Brown. "And that’s what really bothered me. You know when we fly the flag, the American flag, it’s always the highest flag, as it should be. And that didn’t come across today, that didn’t happen today."

Marie held her ground."When I decided to sing my version, what was going on in my head was: ‘I want to express how I feel about living in the United States, as a black woman, as a black person.” 

The blogospheric chorus waxed indignant. An unscientific survey on a local TV news Web site found that 4,300 of 6,300 respondents found Marie’s actions “highly offensive.” Her song choice, said Rightpundits  “plays into a stereotype about Obama backers that they are divisive and provokes unfair whispers that Obama himself may be secretly unpatriotic” — a clever formulation that enables the anonymous authors to perpetrate the stereotype and amplify the whispers.

In fact, Rene Marie’s version of the national anthem resembles nothing so much as Jimi Hendrix’s blues rock rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" at the Woodstock rock festival in 1969. That too was denounced by aspiring cultural commissars as offensive. In fact, it expressed an anguished love of country that knew no racial or religious bounds.  

To be sure, there was something impolite about Rene Marie’s mischievous music-making. She was invited to sing the national anthem at a solemn civic occasion and she did not exactly do that. But there was nothing rude about her performance.  

The words she substituted for the anthem’s lyrics hardly lacked seriousness or patriotism.

Rene Marie’s rendition was less thrilling but no less patriotic. By singing the melody of "The Star Spangled Banner" but not the familiar “Oh say, can you see,” this low-profile jazz singer with four albums to her name tapped into the deepest roots of American patriotism. She replaced the white poet’s words with a black poet’s words, yet loyally kept the song’s traditional melody. She married the black experience to the national anthem without abandoning the original. It wasn’t appropriate for the occasion but it was a forgiving and loving tribute to her country. 

Those who see controversy in Marie’s song choice not only miss the point, they miss the patriotism.

“As we begin our fourth century as a nation,” Sen. Obama had said the day before in his patriotism address, “it is easy to take the extraordinary nature of America for granted. But it is our responsibility as Americans and as parents to instill that history in our children, both at home and at school. The loss of quality civic education from so many of our classrooms has left too many young Americans without the most basic knowledge of who our forefathers are, or what they did, or the significance of the founding documents that bear their names. Too many children are ignorant of the sheer effort, the risks and sacrifices made by previous generations, to ensure that this country survived war and depression; through the great struggles for civil, and social, and worker’s rights.”

Too many children — and too many adults — are ignorant of the complex strands of race and history that are woven into our history but this presidential campaign may be starting to change all that.

We expect that this close access to the candidates will enable us to provide unique insights into the evolution of their character, and go beyond the news cycle that all too often recycles and regurgitates the same information.

Our Fellow, Sridhar Pappu, flew with Obama to Michigan, and filed a combination of video and text reporting. He joins Senator McCain later this week. You can read the press release about this exciting development, here.

WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT

Washington Independent inaugurated its new series on John McCain with John Dougherty’s expose of McCain’s sinking popularity among Arizona Republicans, raising the possibility that the senator’s own home state could be in play this fall. The article was picked up by The Huffington Post, which brought thousands of new viewers to our site.

Readers also responded in large numbers to Suemedha Sood’s investigation into the skyrocketing costs of new nuclear plant construction and whether federal subsidies can, or should, continue to support the industry.

Turning overseas, Spencer Ackerman peeled back the optimistic veneer of Laura Bush’s recent visit to Afghanistan to reveal the current state of the U.S.’s seven-year-old military operation there, which a former CIA official described simply as "stuck."

COLORADO INDEPENDENT

Erin Rosa’s reporting on the efforts by the U.S. Secret Service and the city of Denver to withhold information about public demonstration zones at this summer’s Democratic National Convention was picked up by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Fellows continued their aggressive coverage of the upcoming convention with J.C. O’Connell’s exclusive look at the anticipated rise in prostitution and human trafficking during the event, and the efforts of police and social workers to protect women and children from such seldom-covered abuses.

MICHIGAN MESSENGER

Michigan Messenger garnered national recognition this week with the news that fellow Eartha Jane Melzer will receive an honorable mention for the Sandy Hume Award in political journalism from The National Press Club. The prize is to be given in recognition of Melzer’s investigative reporting on Sovereign Deed, a private disaster-response firm. Melzer revealed the firm’s founder had lied about his military record and his history of fraud while winning millions of dollars in tax abatements from the state government.

And Melzer remains on that important story, reporting this week that the firm has been cleared by federal authorities to pursue plans for its Michigan training center.

With the state emerging as a key battleground in the presidential election, Ed Brayton explained why, and Todd Spencer got David Bonior, former congressman and John Edwards’ campaign manager, to identify the three most important counties for presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

MINNESOTA INDEPENDENT

Andy Birkey shared a heretofore untold story about Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s cultivation of evangelicals to shed light on the widespread speculation that Pawlenty is being considered as a running mate for John McCain. Paul Demko profiled three Minnesota political operatives atop the Obama campaign. Demko also kept up with Al Franken’s Senate campaign and its continuing problems.

The site received professional acclaim from the Minnesota Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, winning two awards at the group’s June 12 banquet. MNIndy too first place in the best independent online news story category for Paul Schmelzer’s analysis piece, "Annarama! Anna Nicole Smith and the Experience Newspaper." The entire Independent staff, finally, took home third place in the Best Independent Web site category.

IOWA INDEPENDENT

Iowa Independent fellows braved rain and rising waters to give its readers thorough coverage of one of the week’s biggest national stories – the state’s widespread, flooding. Video from Chase Martyn and Lynda Waddington captured the catastrophe, while Dien Judge reported on the impact on farmers. The IIndy writers also went beyond the floods’ immediate effects to uncover its impacts on state politics, including the postponement of both party conventions and the response of elected officials.

The team’s efforts have been rewarded by a handsome spike in traffic.

NEW MEXICO INDEPENDENT

New Mexico Independent continues its aggressively local focus on politics and public life. Gwyneth Doland took a close look at New Mexico’s increasingly powerful Hispanic vote and talked to experts about whether Gov. Bill Richardson can help deliver the state for the Democrats. Answer: probably.

Heath Haussamen, meanwhile, offered an exclusive analysis of the departure of state Minority House Whip Dan Foley and how his absence may change the way business will be done in the Roundhouse.

DEPARTMENT OF GOOD NEWS

Food prices spur a return to gardening — Eartha Melzer, Michigan Messenger.

A simple click for hunger — Denise Tessier, New Mexico Independent

Eartha Melzer of Michigan Messenger reported on a return to gardening as people try to come to grips with rising food prices, and Denise Tessier of New Mexico Independent showed readers how they can help stem the tide of worldwide hunger with a simple click of the computer mouse.

Congratulations to Michigan Fellow Eartha Jane Melzer who won an honorable mention for excellence in political journalism in the National Press Club’s annual awards program for her 2007 investigation of the private security firm, Sovereign Deed.

Her reporting is a case study of the positive impact investigative reporting can have on public debate.

WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT (TWI)

TWI stayed on the cutting edge of coverage of America’s economic woes with two penetrating pieces about what’s gone wrong.

Mary Kane explained why the foreclosure crisis is swelling the rate of bank failures with giants like Wachovia and Washington Mutual now in danger. In "The Perils of Regional Protectionism," as the auto industry’s woes mounted this week, Mike Lillis traced how the Michigan congressional delegation’s 30-year-long defense of Detroit’s demands actually accelerated the decline of America’s biggest manufacturing sector. (Lillis’s story also ran in Michigan Messenger.)

Political writer Sridar Pappu, formerly of The Washington Post, made his TWI debut with a timely look at how presumptive Republican nominee John McCain still inspires mistrust in the party’s conservative base.

COLORADO INDEPENDENT (TCI)

The Independent’s thorough and fair yet irreverent reporting on the national Libertarian convention in Denver won praise from a tough critic. Editor Cara DeGette’s prolific coverage (five stories in two days) outshone the Denver dailies," said conservative columnist Dave Kopel of The Rocky Mountain News. One highlight was DeGette’s dispatch, "Libertarians battle over the evolution of the revolution."

Erin Rosa covered Barack Obama’s campaign visit to a Denver school with close attention to his support for bilingual literacy and federal financial aid for undocumented immigrant students.

Managing Editor Wendy Norris gave a fair and balanced presentation of diverse religious perspectives on the ballot initiative to amend the state constitution with a provision conferring "personhood" on embryonic human life.

MICHIGAN MESSENGER

Melzer continues to follow the deadly trail of dioxin contamination in central Michigan left by Dow Chemical. She filed a report on the EPA’s belated decision to test 10 homes in Saginaw, with the timely reminder that regional EPA administrator Mary Gade said she was forced to resign last month because of her efforts to hold Dow responsible for the cleanup.

From a conclave of the state-elected leadership, Todd Spencer reported that state Senate Majority leader Mike Bishop was booed for criticizing the state’s much-delayed ban on smoking in public places.

With remarkable fidelity (and a few wisecracks), Managing Editor Rayne Apo-Joynt liveblogged the critical May 31 meeting of the Democratic Party officials in Washington that resolved the question of whether and how to seat the Michigan delegation at the party’s presidential nominating convention this summer.

Now that Todd Heywood is reporting Barack Obama is due back in the state on June 1 — his second visit in less than month — the presidential battle has come to Michigan.

MINNESOTA MONITOR

The Monitor finished May with its best month ever in terms of viewership, and its sixth straight month of growth in site traffic. Driving the surge? Thorough and interesting news coverage.

Editor Steve Perry and reporter Paul Demko kept readers current on the increasingly turbulent state of affairs in comedian Al Franken’s bid to win the Democratic senatorial nomination.

Molly Priesmeyer covered the new phenomenon known as "condo-cide," i.e., downtown construction projects dying off in the wake of the housing bust.

Andy Birkey told the unlikely story of a Minnesota man arrested at a military recruiting station. The problem: He’s gay and he wants to fight for his country.

And Chris Steller made news out of history with his video interview of retired Minneapolis congressman Don Fraser. A liberal warhorse (and later mayor of Minneapolis), Fraser helped rewrite the Democratic Party rules in 1968, creating new primaries and caucuses and opening up the party to insurgent candidates like Barack Obama.

IOWA INDEPENDENT

While the national media has forgotten the May 12 raid at a kosher food factory in the northern Iowa town of Postville, the Independent continues to report on the stories behind the story.

Lynda Waddington reported on the routine sexual harassment that female employees at the Agriprocessors plant faced. Jewish groups, Waddington notes, are calling for changes at Agriprocessors, the company that employed — and exploited — hundreds of undocumented workers arrested in the raid. Doug Burns and guest writer Lorena Lopez reported that so-far unfounded fears of a similar raid have frightened the local Latino population in western Iowa.

NEW MEXICO INDEPENDENT (NMI)

Accountability reporting is fast becoming NMI’s signature.

Managing editor David Alire Garcia excavated a previously unknown story: Conservative Republican congresswoman and U.S. Senate hopeful Heather Wilson was once a youthful liberal foreign-policy thinker who defended the "right to fight" of people seeking national self-determination.

The official release of an audit of the state’s voter-education confirmed the revelations in Trip Jennings’ May 19 scoop: that $6 million of $19 million in federal funds provided under the Help America Vote Act was misspent or is unaccounted for.

Marjorie Childress illuminated the chummy relationship between developers and the State Land Office, which controls millions of acres of coveted property. And Heath Haussamen followed up with the news that the Office has been targeted for a special audit.