Why the Gun Control Movement is borrowing from the Marriage-Equality Playbook: New York Magazine has a great piece which talks about the strategy of the gun control movement in this country and it features our very own political strategist, Zach Silk. Zach was the campaign manager for Washington Referendum 74, the marriage-equality initiative, and he is quoted extensively throughout the article. Here are his best bits: But watching the incremental, state by state progress on marriage that accrued over many years has given anti-gun-violence activists a different template, or a battle plan, for a way forward — although Silk says this new coalescence on guns is still embryonic, reminding him of the early days, back in 2004, when Massachusetts passed the first same-sex-marriage law… When Zach Silk thinks about how to articulate the values of the renovated gun movement, he uses the same words that the gun advocates use: “Community. Safety. Responsibility. Protecting my family.” In this redefining, he hopes to make a point. “Protection” isn’t an individual matter (a canard in any case, because having a gun in the house makes you exponentially less safe) in which individual patriarchs safeguard individual offspring. “Protection” is a communitarian thing, in which the safety of one’s own children depends on the safe habits of one’s neighbors. Like love, everyone deserves a chance at that. Minnesota shows the ridiculousness of Wisconsin’s trickle-down policies: If you haven’t heard yet, Scott Walker is a trickle-down Republican (shocker, I know). There are many things that get in the way of Walker’s economic view – namely, facts. However, his state’s neighbor is also proving to be an annoyance. David Madland over at the Center for American Progress told the Daily Beast : The fact that Minnesota’s economy rallied under progressive policies while Wisconsin’s has struggled is “one more data point proving that trickle down is wrong,” … Continue reading Daily Clips: July 10th, 2015