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Does the socialist-patriot George Orwell offer a model for us today? Specifically for the youngof left or rightfor whom Peter Stanskys book is likely meant to serve as an introduction of sorts?

The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War by Peter Stansky (130 pages, Stanford University Press, 2023)

Less a brief biography than a lengthy essay, this study by Orwell scholar Peter Stansky should give those on the left and right much to ponderand not just about Orwell the writer, but about Orwell the example as well. For Orwelland Peter Stanskylife as a socialist patriot was neither a contradiction in terms nor an oxymoron. Today it is. Especially for the young.

During the Cold War both left and right of all ages sought to stake a claim to Orwell. So which was he? Here Orwell and Dr. Stansky are in complete agreement. Whether as Eric Blair (his birth name) or George Orwell (his pen name), Blair-Orwell was decidedly a man of the left.

As an occasionally frustrated Peter Stansky concedes, Blair-Orwell changed his mind more than occasionally about many things. But at base he had been an English patriot for as long as he could remember, and he was a self-proclaimed democratic socialist of one sort or another for much of his published writing life.

Here Dr. Stansky considers Orwells thoughts and actions in the context of four wars: the Great War of 1914-1918, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War.

Born in 1903, Eric Blair was too young to have had any direct involvement in the Great War, but he was not too young to defend Englands role in it. Nor was he too young to think, nay to know, that England was worth defending.

Dr. Stansky captures the Blair-Orwell attachment to pre-1914 England with a line from Cyril Connolly, an Orwell compatriot and fellow Etonian: Mr. Orwell is a revolutionary who is in love with 1910. To be a bit more specific, that would be the England of 1910.

Dr. Stansky borrowed that line from a Connolly review of Animal Farm, which was published just after the end of World War II. That would be a time when the author was seriously struggling with questions that he could never resolve and which might well be irresolvable. Here they are: Could truly revolutionary reform be achieved without violenceand without any violence to a nations past, as well as to its commitment to genuine democracy? Secondly, could those who achieve such reforms remain committed to genuine equality and willingly surrender power?

Dr. Stansky contends that Orwell wrote his fable as a warningand not just to those who sought power, but to those who would be asked/required to live under it. And yet the author remains convinced that Orwell remained convinced that his desired vision could be achieved without those in power abusing their power.

Historically speaking, Orwell was aware that Stalin and Stalinism were serial abusers of power. Neither was to be emulated or admired, and both could be avoided. Still, for Orwell, democratic socialism remained not just a realistic goal, but one that offered the best vision of a decent society as well.

Decent was an important word for Orwell. He meant it not just in reference to how people should treat one another, but also in regard to how a nation-state ought to be organized and how its leaders should treat its citizenswho are just that, citizens, rather than subjects or clients. More than that, he associated decency with some version of political and economic equality.

For Orwell, that version meant some never-quite-defined version of state imposed equality, as opposed to simply the minimal safety net of a welfare state. It certainly included state ownership of the major means of production and distribution.

From the mid-1930s to his death, Orwell wrestled with the dilemmas involved in achieving such a goal, while maintaining a decent democracy. He never resolved this dilemma, and he never abandoned it. Reading between the lines, it seems to remain a dilemma for Peter Stansky as well, if only because he is not about to criticize either Orwells goal or his continuing to wrestle with it.

Orwells commitments to both socialism and democracy were heightened by two compelling experiences in the mid-1930s: his road to Wigan Pier and his participation in the Spanish Civil War.

The road led him to the coal mining district of England, as well as to an even greater appreciation for the English working class. And his road to Spain opened his eyes about Stalin and the Soviet Union.

Orwell, the socialist, rather than Orwell the patriot, went to Spain not just to observe, but to fight. And fight he did, even to the point of taking a bullet in the neck. Luckily, he survived the wound, but any thought he might have had that the Soviet Union was a force for good in the world did not survive.

During World War II, Orwell soldiered on the English home frontand in alliance with Moscow, while rallying support for the war and for a fully socialized England. In fact, it was during this war that Orwell, the patriot, and Orwell, the democratic socialist, were on fully united display. For him, this was a doubly good war, both because it would preserve England and because it would advance socialism.

There seem to have been moments when Orwell couldnt decide whether a socialized England would be a better ally or whether a victory in the war would better assure a socialized England. But no matter. Peter Stansky is convinced that Orwell had convinced himself that a socialist England would still be the same England of his youth. Specifically, Orwell believed that that the pre-World War I England (of his memory) and the post-World War II England (of his hopes and dreams) would essentially be the same England.

Orwell lived long enough to see the Labor Party come to power and take the first steps toward building his idealized England. Of course, he didnt live long enough to see his ideal realized, much less to witness the rise and fall of Thatcherism. And the England of today? Its not likely that he would recognize an England that is at once increasingly distinct from the England of his youth and not yet anywhere close to the England of his hope and dreams.

Orwell died believing that a truly democratic England and a fully socialized England remained a single realistic possibility, as well as one that could actually be achieved. On this crucial matter George Orwell did not change his mind at all during the last decade of his life. He lived those years as a socialist patriot, and he died a socialist patriot.

As such, does he offer a model for us today? He seems to be just that for a ninety-year-old Peter Stansky. But otherwise? Specifically the young for whom this book was likely meant to serve as an introduction of sorts?

Those who are young and on the right might read him and try to heed his warnings against permanently centralized permanent political power. Those on the left might read him and seek to advance his dream of democratic socialism.

But could either be interested in emulating Orwell, the socialist patriot? Those on the American left and right have witnessed Orwells treasured, working-class drift to the right, while simultaneously being dismissed and/or abandoned as deplorables by their erstwhile allies and patrons. More than that, those on the left dont much care for the past of their country. That would be the very past that Orwell treasured about his own country. For them, it is a past to be destroyed or at least transcended, rather than preserved.

At the same time, those on the right have no interest in using war as Orwell sought to use World War II. Like Orwell, they might well treasure their countrys past, but they would have no interest in transforming or transcending it. Lastly, given Orwells example, they would be less inclined to risk what Orwell was willing to risk: namely that a socialized England would remain his England of old. As a result, today George Orwell, the socialist patriot, standsand likely will remaina very lonely figure on this side of the ocean, Peter Stanskys admirable effort notwithstanding.

Author John C. Chuck Chalberg once performed a one-man show as George Orwell.

The Imaginative Conservativeapplies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politicswe approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please considerdonating now.

The featured image, uploaded by JRennocks, is a photograph of the statue of George Orwell at BBC Broadcasting House, taken 14 April 202. This file is licensed under theCreative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War - The Imaginative Conservative

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. warned in an interview on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that America is turning into a "system of socialism for the rich" after formally launching his 2024 Democratic presidential primary campaign Wednesday at an event in Boston.

President Biden's newest challenger is the son of Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy. RFK Jr. told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" hours after his campaign launch what he sees as the most pressing issues facing the United States. He cautioned that a corrupt merger of state and corporate power is turning the country into a "corporate kleptocracy."

"There's a cushy socialism for the rich and this kind of brutal, merciless capitalism for the poor. It keeps us in a state of war it bails out banks," he said.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at an event where he announced his run for president on Wednesday, April 19, 2023, at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, in Boston. (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds) (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds)

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. GAINS SIZABLE CHUNK OF BIDEN VOTERS AT PRESIDENTIAL LAUNCH: POLL

"Last month, the United States government told 30 million people it was cutting their food stamp checks by 90%," he continued. "It took 15 million people off Medicare. The same month it gave $300 million to the Silicon Valley Bank and tapped up the cost of the Ukraine war to $113 billion. We're sending $113 billion to the Ukraine. The entire budget of EPA is $12 billion. The budget of CDC is $11 billion. We have 57% of American citizens could not put their hands on $1,000 if they have an emergency. A quarter of our citizens are hungry. So we're cutting welfare and food stamps by 90%."

The 2024 presidential candidate claims that the country is bailing out bankers and paying for a war that it can't afford.

"The way that we do this is by printing money," Kennedy said. "We've printed 10 centuries of money in the last 14 years."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces presidential campaign in Boston (Fox News)

Kennedy noted that the excessive printing of money is causing inflation and fueling increased food prices - which he calls "a tax on the poor."

AARON RODGERS APPEARS TO SUPPORT DEMOCRAT PRESIDENTIAL CHALLENGER WITH ONE EMOJI

"We've raised food prices for basic foods like chicken, dairy and milk by 76% in the last two years, and now we're cutting people's food stamps and bailing out banks the same month," Kennedy said. "It doesn't make any sense."

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He added, "We need to get rid of this kind of corporate control of our government our democracy is devolving into kind of a corporate plutocracy."

Kennedy is considered a long shot in the presidential race, but a new poll says he has taken a chunk of President Biden's supporters in the outset of his campaign. A new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll says 14 percent of Bidens 2020 voters flocked to Kennedy when he first announced his candidacy earlier this month.

Kennedy and Marianne Williamson are the first Democratic candidates to challenge Biden in the 2024 presidential race.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. warns against 'system of socialism for the rich' as 2024 campaign launches - Fox News

MANY socialists are members of co-operatives from choosing to shop in their local Co-op supermarket or banking with the Nationwide Building Society, to playing a more active part in housing or other co-operatives.

For many, whatever their view of the quality of the goods and services, their membership provides the satisfaction of engaging with a body that is not solely concerned with making a profit for its shareholders.

But what role can co-operatives play beyond this, for example helping to secure a better, socialist, future?

Karl Marx attached great significance to the role that combined, social labour plays in the development of capitalisms productive forces, helping, he argued, to create the conditions and lay the foundations for the new, communist mode of production.

How could or should workers freed from capitalist relations of production continue to work in association with one another in the new sets of relations?

Unfortunately, many would-be followers of Marx have allowed his critique of utopian socialism in the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) to lead them to ignore or undervalue his subsequent remarks about producers and consumers co-operatives.

For instance, in Volume I of Capital, Marx refers to Robert Owens co-operative factories and stores as isolated elements of transformation they demonstrated how significant elements of capitalist production and exchange could be remodelled.

They were isolated in that they were separate from the working-class movement which alone could and would lead the struggle to overcome the capitalist mode of production.

This last point was something, Marx believed, that Owen but not his followers had come to understand.

Thats why, in an earlier footnote, he referred to co-operatives being used as a cloak for reactionary humbug, presumably by capitalisms apologists.

In Volume III, Marx points out that just as capitalist owners in their joint stock companies no longer directly supervise production themselves, hiring managers instead, so co-operative factories furnish proof that the capitalist has become no less redundant as a functionary in production as he himself, looking down from his high perch, finds the big landowner redundant.

Marx goes on to argue that in a co-operative factory the antagonistic nature of the labour of supervision disappears, because the manager is paid by the labourers instead of representing capital counterposed to themThe capitalist disappears, as superfluous from the production process.

Both co-operatives and joint stock companies expose the reality that the capitalists wealth does not accrue from any input to the production process, but from profit and interest derived from surplus value created by the workers.

Whereas co-operatives demonstrate that enterprises can thrive without any necessity for private ownership, they also must function within a capitalist market economy.

Subject to that economys rules and pressures, their own collectivist outlook may go no further than the enterprise and its local community, while other enterprises are unavoidably regarded and treated as competitors.

The Mondragon Co-operative Corporation (MCC) in the Spanish Basque country exhibits the contradictions of co-operatives in a capitalist society on an extensive scale.

Established in 1956, it comprises 250 enterprises employing 74,000 workers (around half of them members) in the manufacturing, retail, financial and technology sectors together with 125 production subsidiaries in China, India, the US, Mexico and Brazil. The MCC has weathered recessions more successfully than many of its capitalist competitors.

Yet Mondragon has its negative features. While the co-operative members are protected, the same does not apply to the 35,000 or so non-member contract workers and employees many of them temporary in MCC subsidiaries.

Levels of member participation in key decision-making are low; there is a significant degree of misunderstanding, even antagonism, between workers and management (despite far lower income differentials than in a typical capitalist enterprise) and between members and non-members.

The extent of solidarity with workers outside the locality is lower than in neighbouring towns, as is involvement in left-wing political activity (Mondragon was until recently a bastion of support for the right-wing Basque National Party).

Out of the internal conflicts of recent years, which have included strikes and occupations against co-operative managers, initiatives have arisen to build trade unions within the corporation.

Efforts to reconcile co-operatism and trade unionism have produced interesting developments elsewhere, including Latin America and France, where unions have rescued threatened enterprises, turning them into co-operatives governed by a unionised workforce.

The United Steelworkers in the US and Canada have been working with Mondragon to develop a unionised co-operative model for workers buyouts of failing companies.

However, the history of co-operatives, in general, indicates that shorn of any political or ideological orientation, they are unlikely to play any significant role in the struggle to overthrow capitalist state power so that a better, co-operative mode of production can be built.

Under capitalism, co-operatives must compete and survive in a market economy dominated by monopolies. The contradiction between social ownership and competition cannot be resolved within a capitalist system.

Even within a socialist planned economy (in a number of the former socialist countries and in Cuba today, co-operative enterprises exist and function within and alongside state-owned enterprises) there are contradictions to be overcome.

Contradictions between collective planning at national, regional and local levels on the one hand and co-operative autonomy on the other; between the goal of full employment and the freedom of co-operatives to retrench, lay off workers or go into voluntary liquidation; and between the collectivist outlook of a politicised working class and more localised interests, preferences and objectives.

Notwithstanding their limitations, Marx saw in workers co-operatives glimpses of the future mode of production within the old form the first sprouts of the new in which co-operative labour could continue and flourish without capitalist ownership. In Capital Volume III he wrote:

[A]lthough they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system, [they] show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage.

Later, in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880) Friedrich Engels paid fulsome tribute to many of Owens ideas and activities, stating that Owen had given practical proof that the merchant and the manufacturer are socially quite unnecessary, their internal economy suggesting a first step towards a much more radical revolution of society.

Lenin, too, grasped the potential value of co-operatives in the transition to socialism once state power had been achieved. They would no longer be the stuff of ridiculously fantastic dreams of those who saw them as an alternative to the revolutionary class struggle for political power.

Near the end of his life, in 1923, Lenin believed that state power, state control of all large-scale means of production and state supervision of private enterprise, would be all that is needed to build a complete socialist society out of co-operatives alone.

So: what role if any can co-operatives play in helping to secure a transition to socialism? Co-operatives may (or may not) embody some socialist principles but however widely they might spread they will never be even islands of socialism within a capitalist society: thats a utopian dream.

The collapse of the Co-operative Bank (not in itself a co-operative, but owned by the Co-operative Group) and its conversion to a private bank in 2013 shows how vulnerable they may be when mismanaged.

Co-operatives are not an alternative to class struggle. But they could play a greater role in demonstrating how socialism could be, though on a small scale, and how they can survive and thrive, albeit with compromises in a capitalist society.

And once we are rid of that system and its stranglehold, they could come into their own as a key element of a new, socialist, future.

The Marx Memorial Librarys (MML) rich programme of on site and online events continues on Thursday April 27 at 7pm with the launch of Radhika Desais book Capitalism, Coronavirus and War.

Next Monday May 1 is International Workers Day with a rally starting at midday on Clerkenwell Green, the site of the MML if you arrive earlier you can enjoy tea and cakes and a guided tour of Marx House. Details are on http://www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk where you can also find links to earlier Full Marx columns.

This answer, number 95, gratefully acknowledges permission to include material from Rob Griffithss Marx's Das Kapital and Capitalism Today (pp 72-78) which can be obtained from Manifesto Press at http://www.manifestopress.org.uk.

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Can co-operatives play a role in a transition to socialism? - Morning Star Online

In the space of just two years, they went from being a group of activists who could fit on a single bus, to representing the backbone of Portugals new democracy. Not even an inveterate optimist like Mrio Soares the nations former prime minister and president, and the father of modern Portuguese socialism could have imagined how much they would achieve. However, Portugals Socialist Party (PS) celebrates its 50th anniversary at a time of acute adversity, amid constant demonstrations over the Portuguese middle classes deteriorating quality of life. The governing party has a comfortable majority in the countrys parliament, but its mistakes are causing it to come under fire on an almost daily basis. That has included clips around the ear from the president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who had enjoyed a harmonious relationship with the prime minister, Antnio Costa, but now roundly criticizes many of his decisions, such as the measures he has adopted on housing.

In just a year, the Portuguese government has racked up several scandals brought about by failed appointments, and right now is in the eye of the storm over its management of TAP, Portugals flag carrier, following the airlines nationalization. A parliamentary inquiry was launched in February. After seven years in government, [the PS] is showing signs of wear and tear, says Antnio Costa Pinto, a sociologist and historian at the University of Lisbon, in an email. But it is still the party that is at the heart of Portugals democracy, particularly because now, with the growth of Chega, a far-fight populist party, the chief center-right party, the PSD, also has a considerable challenge on its hands.

So much has changed since the PS was founded in 1973, at a home in the small Rhineland town of Bad Mnstereifel. Germanys Friedrich Ebert Foundation played a key role in the partys creation, carried out in complete secrecy to avoid reprisals from Portugals dictatorship, which had banned political parties in 1933 and, 40 years later, maintained that prohibition. The Germans paid the travel costs of the small group of Portuguese activists, who met to decide whether to turn the Portuguese Socialist Action, a movement founded by Soares in Geneva in 1964, into a political party. Those who had come from Lisbon opposed the move including Soares wife, Maria Barroso, who voted against her husband. Soares, who had gone into self-imposed exile in Paris after receiving death threats for publicly opposing Portugals colonial wars, was almost alone in insisting that the dictatorship of Marcelo Caetano, who had succeeded Antnio de Oliveira Salazar in 1968, would fall imminently. Soares side of the vote won out, and he was named the PS first secretary-general.

Until a socialist party appeared, the dictatorship would say between us and the communists, theres nothing, and the communists would say between us and the fascists, theres nothing, explains Jos Manuel dos Santos, a former advisor to Soares who coordinated the events marking the partys 50th birthday. Thats a terrible state of affairs, because it strengthened the dictatorship. After the Second World War, the West as a whole closed its eyes to the two dictatorships in the Iberian Peninsula, because the major source of fear during the Cold War was communism. Soares saw that the only way to break that vicious cycle was to create a new organization, which started out as the Socialist Action and then became the Socialist Party.

What Soares couldnt predict was the exact moment of the regimes downfall. On the day of the Carnation Revolution, he was in Bonn to meet Willy Brandt, the German social-democrat who was a major source of support to Soares and Spains Felipe Gonzlez, another Iberian socialist leader who emerged to capitalize on regime change at the ballot box. After returning to Paris, Soares then boarded the train that became known as the Comboio da Liberdade (Freedom Train) and, on 28 April 1974, he arrived back in Lisbon. We called for immediate elections and proposed Mrio as our member of parliament. We only expected to get one, recalls Antnio Campos, one of the Socialist Partys founders, in the television documentary 50 years of the PS: German roots, which was aired by Portugals state broadcaster RTP. Constituent elections were held two years later, and the PS was the most-voted party, winning 116 seats one more than its total number of founding members in 1973.

The world, the country and the party have changed radically over the past 50 years. Despite their divisions, such as the conflict witnessed between Jorge Sampaio and Antnio Guterres, Portugals socialists have resisted the crisis of social democracy better than other European counterparts, and the partys governments have spent a combined total of 25 years in power half of the countrys period of democracy. The Portuguese Socialist Party has always had a Communist Party to its left with greater electoral clout than most European democracies and, since the start of the 21st century, it has also had the radical-left Bloco de Esquerda, the Portuguese equivalent to Spains Podemos, Costa Pinto observes. Despite being at the center of the biggest case of corruption in Portugals democracy, with the accusations against the former prime minister, Jos Scrates, the party has still done well electorally.

In the wake of the Scrates scandal, the Socialist Party moved into opposition, before returning to power against all expectations. In 2015, PS leader Costa agreed a deal with the partys rivals on the left to table a motion of no confidence that removed the conservative prime minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, who had been elected by only a slim margin. And in 2022, again defying the odds, Costa achieved a historic absolute majority that gave his party greater executive power than any other within the European social-democratic family right now. Of the seven governments in which the left is represented, only two have an absolute majority: Malta and Portugals. In the five other countries Germany, Denmark, Slovenia, Romania and Spain they are part of coalition administrations. Europes political map is dominated by the center-right, with populism and extremism making increasing inroads.

In Portugal, the Socialist Party presents itself as the chief barrier against the extremism of Andr Ventura, the leader of Chega. And that, in the opinion of analysts, was one of the chief factors behind the PS landslide election win last year. Its a mission that Costa pointed to when he spoke at Wednesdays 50th-anniversary event in Lisbon. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was in attendance, as was former Spanish prime minister Gonzlez, who was alongside Soares for the moment when Spain and Portugal joined the European Economic Community. Today, there may be a different war, different battle lines drawn, but well always be faced with a war, Costa said, in a speech in which he touted the legacy of socialist policies in Portugal (such as the national health service, state education and welfare assistance). Today there is no dictatorship, but there is a growth in populism that we must fight.

The celebrations, however, have also fanned the flames of internal discontent. Former socialist chiefs have in recent days criticized Costas leadership, accusing him of moving away from the founders values of solidarity and freedom. Perhaps the headline that best sums up the complex times the PS finds itself in was written by Ana S Lopes of the Portuguese newspaper Pblico: 50th-birthday blues.

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50 years of the Portuguese Socialist Party: from underground activists to stalwarts of European social democracy - EL PAS USA

The 2023 Oregon Active Transportation Summit, hosted by Portland transportation advocacy non-profit The Street Trust, is officially a go. People from all across Oregons transportation industry from advocates to transit agency officials have convened in the Lloyd Center for three days of panel discussions and networking events about all things related to getting around.

The event officially kicked off yesterday with a multimodal scavenger hunt and opening reception. This morning, the Summit got down to business with its first plenaries and panels. First, the Street Trusts Executive Director Sarah Iannarone introduced the Summits theme Move Into Action and welcomed a surprise guest, U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer, to the stage.

Blumenauer said hed prepared a written speech for the morning but decided to wing it instead and speak from the heart. He praised The Street Trust for hosting an event like this one and emphasized the importance of transportation reform in Oregon and across the country.

Youre on a holy mission here. Really, youre going to help our communities save us from ourselves, Blumenauer said. This is literally a matter of life and death.

Blumenauer covered a range of topics in his introduction speech, from getting rid of minimum car parking mandates to making active transportation options more affordable for everyone. Though he said he is not in favor of declaring war on the automobile, he was very direct about the problems our society faces as a result of car-centric planning.

We have to recognize that how the automobile is so intrinsic with how people think and how they live. And we have to find ways to unwind that in a thoughtful fashion, Blumenauer said. Theres a lot of talk these days about socialism. Lets end socialism for the car.

This mornings panel discussions were focused on public transit. First, we heard from a panel of transit agency leaders from around the state: Sam Desue, Jr., who leads TriMet, Jameson T. Auten from the Lane Transit District in the Eugene-Springfield area and Andrea Breault from Cascades East Transit in central Oregon.Then, several advocates provided a community response to this conversation, offering different perspectives on the issues the transit agency leaders discussed. (Look out for a full recap of these panel discussions soon.)

In between these panel discussions, I talked to several attendees to find out what they were looking forward to in the days ahead.

Jack Blashchishen, the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) coordinator for the Springfield School District (and one-time BikePortland contributor!) said he was eager to meet statewide colleagues from the SRTS program. School transportation has become a key issue for many advocates recently, and there is quite a large SRTS showing here at the Summit.

Im just looking forward to seeing everyone whos part of the statewide transportation community, Blashchishen said.

Rob Zako and Claire Roth, both from southern Willamette Valley transportation advocacy group Better Eugene-Springfield Transportation (BEST), said they see the Summit as an opportunity to cultivate relationships with people from across the state so they can work together to influence transportation legislation in the future.

My personal mission is to break down siloes as much as possible and encourage people talk to each other across disciplines, Roth said. The pandemic hit advocacy like a ton of bricks, and it took a toll on transportation. This is the spring of transportation, were blooming again.

Mary Lee Turner, a disability and pedestrian advocate (and current member of the Portland Pedestrian Advisory Committee) told me she wants to make sure theres a presence of people with disabilities who rely on walking to get around at events like these.

People with disabilities are everywhere, and if we arent, thats because we cant get there, Turner said.

Stay tuned for more BikePortland dispatches from the Summit in the days ahead.

Taylor has been BikePortlands staff writer since November 2021. She has also written for Street Roots and Eugene Weekly. Contact her at taylorgriggswriter@gmail.com

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Advocates mingle at the Lloyd Center for the Oregon Active Transportation Summit - BikePortland