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Articles by Dick Price

Dick Price is Editor of the LA Progressive. With his wife Sharon, he publishes several other print and online newsletters on political and social justice issues. He has worked in publishing as a writer, editor, and publisher for a quarter century, currently serving as associate publisher for the IEEE Computer Society. In earlier releases, he was a cab driver, bartender, construction worker, soldier, and farmhand, and for many years helped operate a nonprofit halfway house for homeless alcoholics and addicts. To contact him, please use the form on the Contact Us page.

First Solve Prison Crisis, Then Fix California’s Budget
Saturday, 13 Mar, 2010 – 6:00 | 10 Comments
First Solve Prison Crisis, Then Fix California’s Budget

Dick Price: To get a handle on the damage California’s current approach to incarceration is having on its citizens, consider this: In a recent 23-year period, California erected 23 prisons—one a year, each costing roughly $100 million dollars annually to operate, with both Democratic and Republican governors occupying the statehouse—at the same time that it added just one campus to its vaunted university system, UC Merced.

Help Provide Missing Haiti Coverage
Friday, 5 Mar, 2010 – 6:00 | 7 Comments
Help Provide Missing Haiti Coverage

Dick Price: Next week, Georgianne Nienaber departs on a 12-day investigative research trip to Haiti where she will look to fill in gaps in the mainstream media’s news coverage while also providing emergency medical assistance to rural Haitians. As she works with Haitian human rights organizations to develop story ideas, she also invites LA Progressive readers to contribute their thoughts on where else she might look.

A Little Perspective, Yes?
Sunday, 24 Jan, 2010 – 6:00 | 19 Comments
A Little Perspective, Yes?

Dick Price: To get elected, we understood that Obama had to take a pragmatic approach. But underneath the pragmatism, we were attracted to the compassionate world view, the deep ability to grasp complex issues, and the eloquence to voice our best hopes and dreams for the future that we saw, and see, in the man—traits that had been so woefully absent in George W. Bush fear-mongering, hate-mongering, war-mongering reign.

Tiger’s Rag
Thursday, 24 Dec, 2009 – 6:01 | 4 Comments
Tiger’s Rag

Different strokes for different folks, right? If Tiger and dozens of other celebrities can do what they’re doing and hurt no one, why should we care?

Laughing So Hard
Thursday, 26 Nov, 2009 – 6:00 | One Comment
Laughing So Hard

So, right, it’s a wonderful movie, and as much as the LA Progressive does such things, we give it four stars, a kiss and a hug and a pat on the behind, and recommend that you see it. But I think we were touched with something more that night.

JPL Employee Privacy Fight Comes to a Head
Sunday, 11 Oct, 2009 – 6:36 | 3 Comments
JPL Employee Privacy Fight Comes to a Head

There was nothing in the order about invading anyone’s privacy. According to Nelson, “Bureaucrats deep in the bowels of the Department of Commerce cooked up the requirement for a background investigation.”

“Just Old Men Talking” at the Playhouse Theatre
Saturday, 5 Sep, 2009 – 16:44 | No Comment
“Just Old Men Talking” at the Playhouse Theatre

“Just Old Men Talking,” Written by Grady L. Mackey III, Directed by Sharon L. Graine/. September 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13. Playhouse Theatre Players, 600 Moulton Avenue, Los Angeles. Reservations at 323.227.5410

Kabul In Encino
Monday, 27 Jul, 2009 – 6:07 | One Comment
Kabul In Encino

Sitting in that auditorium thick with nostalgia for another age, you’ve got to wonder where’s the passion beyond this room? Where’s today’s outrage? Where are the young people inflamed with the outrages of their elders?

Plugging Pasadena’s School-to-Prison Pipeline
Sunday, 19 Jul, 2009 – 6:34 | One Comment
Plugging Pasadena’s School-to-Prison Pipeline

As Governor Arnold Swartzenegger and the Democratic-controlled state legislature strip education funding wholesale to meet California’s budget collapse, Pasadena’s public school district offers a microcosm of the woes besetting school districts that are already in …

Women of the Plains, Downtown
Wednesday, 6 May, 2009 – 20:38 | No Comment
Women of the Plains, Downtown

Because we publish the LA Progressive, folks send us announcements of all kinds of events, ones supporting every imaginable progressive cause taking place throughout Greater Los Angeles. It’s more than any three couples could attend …

Can You Imagine?
Thursday, 30 Apr, 2009 – 5:18 | 6 Comments
Can You Imagine?

Can you imagine the pickle we’d be in if George Bush still occupied the White House? Or if we had a McCain-Palin administration making the problems facing America today that much worse?
That thought kept crossing …

From Oxy to Encino: Making Friends and Creating Waves
Sunday, 29 Mar, 2009 – 6:43 | 5 Comments
From Oxy to Encino: Making Friends and Creating Waves

If you’ve glanced at the LA Progressive recently, you know that our weekend last week was consumed with the media workshop at Occidental College, which this magazine sponsored and which Sharon and I helped organize. …

Obama Delivers Purpose-Driven Slap to Gays and Lesbians
Thursday, 18 Dec, 2008 – 1:01 | 14 Comments
Obama Delivers Purpose-Driven Slap to Gays and Lesbians

by Dick Price
In choosing a prominent anti-gay evangelical preacher from Orange County to deliver the invocation at his inauguration, President-Elect Barack Obama has gone out of his way to insult the gay-lesbian community, which …

I Couldn’t Wait To Vote For Barack Obama
Monday, 3 Nov, 2008 – 6:00 | One Comment
I Couldn’t Wait To Vote For Barack Obama

I didn’t really mean to do it. I usually have more self-control. Something just came over me. I couldn’t restrain myself. Please forgive me.
I voted Friday.

Taking a Stand on Prop 8: Opposing It Is Just Plain Right
Sunday, 26 Oct, 2008 – 6:00 | 11 Comments
Taking a Stand on Prop 8: Opposing It Is Just Plain Right

by Dick Price
If you’ve spent two minutes on our LA Progressive, you know where we stand on Proposition 8, the wrongheaded and wronghearted initiative that would take away the recently won right to marry …

Turning Red Districts Blue: Will Linda Jones’s Stealth Campaign Surprise the Antelope Valley?
Sunday, 19 Oct, 2008 – 6:00 | No Comment
Turning Red Districts Blue: Will Linda Jones’s Stealth Campaign Surprise the Antelope Valley?

The remorseless Santa Anas that whistle across the Antelope Valley teach residents of Palmdale, Riverside, Victorville, and surrounding communities all there is to know about high desert winds.
But this November, those same folks might …

Turning a Red District Blue: Is the Third Time a Charm for Ferial Masry?
Saturday, 4 Oct, 2008 – 7:00 | No Comment
Turning a Red District Blue: Is the Third Time a Charm for Ferial Masry?

by Dick Price
When classes end at Reseda’s Grover Cleveland High School, American History teacher Ferial Masry drives across town to a restaurant, changes her clothes in the ladies room, and begins walking the streets …

Getting Our Feet Wet With Fundraising
Sunday, 21 Sep, 2008 – 0:27 | 4 Comments
Getting Our Feet Wet With Fundraising

In our ongoing immersion into all things political, we held the first fundraiser in our home last Saturday. We’re not exactly social butterflies, so the idea of having dozens of folks over for Stella, Brie, …

Talking Heads
Tuesday, 2 Sep, 2008 – 7:00 | 4 Comments
Talking Heads

I am, or at least I was for much of my life, an inveterate newspaper reader. Once I left my childhood home in Minneapolis and moved to New York City at 17, later to …

Xavier Becerra Turning the Ship
Friday, 22 Aug, 2008 – 23:39 | No Comment
Xavier Becerra Turning the Ship

“If I asked for a show of hands on impeachment, I know what I’d get,” Congressman Xavier Becerra told the jubilant crowd of 100 or more packed into the new local Democratic Party headquarters in …

Asking the Question Unvarnished
Sunday, 6 Jul, 2008 – 8:00 | 5 Comments
Asking the Question Unvarnished

At a recent strategy meeting among fellow progressive activists, Sharon and I were surprised to learn that our politically savvy friends felt that California as a whole and even our bluer-than-blue Los Angeles neighborhood was …

Elect the Barack Obama-Jim Webb Ticket
Saturday, 7 Jun, 2008 – 11:16 | 3 Comments
Elect the Barack Obama-Jim Webb Ticket

Now that Barack Obama has emerged as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, our attention turns quickly to which running mate would most help secure victory in November and who would stand that proverbial heartbeat away …

Have We Forgotten About Iraq?
Sunday, 1 Jun, 2008 – 13:01 | 5 Comments
Have We Forgotten About Iraq?

Now slogging through its sixth bloody year, America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq is much on my mind this Saturday afternoon. On the television in the next room, the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee …

Light Bulbs and Laws: Will We Let Global Warming Cook Us?
Wednesday, 21 May, 2008 – 19:13 | One Comment
Light Bulbs and Laws: Will We Let Global Warming Cook Us?

In recent generations, the test was the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, and maybe the Cold War.
With polar bears drowning in open Arctic waters and evermore fearsome storms spinning out of warming oceans in …

The Obama Campaign Maybe We Can!
Tuesday, 6 May, 2008 – 19:59 | 4 Comments
The Obama Campaign Maybe We Can!

The 150 Democratic Party activists who gathered for the 56th Annual California Democratic Council convention this past weekend in Fresno certainly had sky-high hopes about their party’s chances in the November elections—but they had their …

HSPD 12: It’s Not Rocket Science
Sunday, 30 Mar, 2008 – 5:00 | 4 Comments
HSPD 12: It’s Not Rocket Science

Thwarting the Bush Administration’s latest assault on individual liberty, a small band of Jet Propulsion Laboratory employees have fought and won—at least for now—a battle against government efforts to trample their rights to privacy and …

Why Am I in This Hand Basket?
Saturday, 29 Mar, 2008 – 8:21 | No Comment
Why Am I in This Hand Basket?

Texas best-selling author and radio commentator Jim Hightower swung through Southern California this past week to ruffle a few feathers—“kick a little ass,” is what he actually said—and spread a little sunlight as the long …

The Winter Soldier Returns
Saturday, 8 Mar, 2008 – 23:12 | One Comment
The Winter Soldier Returns

In 1971, a group of veterans—current Massachusetts Senator John Kerry prominent among them—staged a protest called “Winter Soldier” that helped end the Vietnam War but that also unfairly saddled the Democrats with a “soft on …

The More Things Change: Remembering the Little Rock Nine
Sunday, 17 Feb, 2008 – 0:00 | No Comment
The More Things Change: Remembering the Little Rock Nine

(Part 1 of a 2 Part Story)
For those of us of a certain age, the image is forever seared in our minds of Governor Orville Faubus blocking the doorway to Little Rock’s Central High School, …

Getting Young Latinos to Vote
Tuesday, 12 Feb, 2008 – 16:21 | No Comment
Getting Young Latinos to Vote

As the Democratic Party’s presidential primary season moves into the homestretch with Senators Clinton and Obama vying to match each other stride for stride, two voter groups — Latinos and the young — are playing …

Veterans Fight to Save “Hallowed Ground”
Saturday, 1 Sep, 2007 – 12:29 | No Comment
Veterans Fight to Save “Hallowed Ground”

With the Iraq Occupation grinding through its fifth year, the Bush Administration and its supporters continue to trot out the “Support the Troops” bumper stickers and yellow ribbon decals at every opportunity, shaming us into …

Battling Gang Violence
Monday, 14 May, 2007 – 12:39 | One Comment
Battling Gang Violence

Despite decades of governmental and grassroots efforts, a drumbeat of gang-related killings over the past several years, some apparently racially motivated, has driven gang violence to epidemic proportions here in Los Angeles. With gang crime …

The War Comes Home
Wednesday, 14 Mar, 2007 – 12:55 | No Comment
The War Comes Home

The Iraq-Afghan War has taken on a sad new face as stories of shoddy health care given returning veterans began surfacing lately. Newsweek brought us up short with its coverage last month of the Minnesota …

Stormy Weather
Wednesday, 14 Feb, 2007 – 12:49 | One Comment
Stormy Weather

In early February 2008 , the world’s leading scientific body on global warming issued its latest report confirming what many of us have suspected: either we do something profound about greenhouse emissions or we will …

Reporting for Duty
Tuesday, 14 Nov, 2006 – 12:59 | No Comment
Reporting for Duty

Sure, John Kerry took it in the neck for telling voters he was “reporting for duty.” His brand of high-minded earnestness will forever be an easy mark for the kind of rightwing nastiness that has …

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