Just Another Cool Lifestyle Paper?

No! And that's a good reason to support us
by Doug Collins

I went to Taiwan a month ago to attend the wedding of a friend. It was immediately after the election there which put into power the opposition Democratic Progressive Party for the first time. But it wasn't the progressive politics that impressed me most about the island.

What I especially liked about Taiwan was that people on the whole were simply kind, content, honest, open, prosperous, relaxed, and very social. They take care of each other: I didn't notice a single homeless person during the eight days I spent in the huge city of Taipei.

I really noticed the difference when I returned to my homeland. Here in the Puget Sound region, the more pierced your body is and the blacker your clothes are, the better. But whatever the fashion, many people here strive to be distant, superior, and tough. We spend comparatively little time with family and friends. Washington is "cool". Taiwan is not. Hurray for Taiwan!

In a way, I think this striving toward coolness, toughness, and rugged independence is the very idea that justifies the harsh attitude we as a society apparently have toward homeless or other people who need support. We don't even have much of a social network, much less a social safety network, so we tend to clam up in our shells of coolness and just "look out for number one."

	We do a darn good portion of our distribution by bike. (but we don't know how to pile 'em up quite this high yet!)

Well, we at the Free Press are striving toward something different. In fact, for seven years now we haven't been too worried about being cool. Instead of producing a cliqueish lifestyle publication, we ran labor news and a labor column when no one else was doing it. We revealed the chemical poisoning of workers at Boeing, the Nordstrom HUD loan scandal, and brutal sweatshops on the US Marianas Islands before the big newspapers would even touch the stories. We have consistently put ourselves on the line for what we believe is good, not to adopt a fashionable attitude. If someone was to make a movie about us, it would be called Revenge of the Progressive Nerds.

Other things we do that aren't cool? We distribute a darn good portion of our circulation by bike instead of car. We do almost all our Free Press work for free, with no stock options! Believe it or not, we have never put together any kind of blueprint for global media domination. We don't subscribe to any particular ideology, other than humaneness, practicality, and care for the future. If any institution becomes self-serving rather than serving its members well, it deserves journalistic attention with a democratic spirit.