Chris Winters
Verified
(He/Him)
As seen in:
Associated Press,
The Seattle Times,
Washington Times,
The Charlotte Observer,
The Spokesman-Review,
KIRO-TV (Seattle, WA),
Lexington Herald-Leader,
Truthout,
Upworthy,
Common Dreams
and
Covers:
Mostly I write editorials on local and state news for California newspaper, which often ventures into schools, politics, and the environment.
Doesn't Cover:
Sports and arts.
Writer verified elsewhere. I'm ChrisWinters at mstdn.social, bsky.social, & linktr.ee/. I no longer post here.
Articles by Chris Winters
Can a Third Party Be the Charm for Polarized Politics?
More than 230 years since the establishment of these somewhat-United States, our system of political representation still fails to adequately reflect the breadth of ideological nuance that exists among its citizens. We have two dominant political parties, two quite minor ones, and a bunch of also-rans. So as political polarization escalates, it’s only logical that efforts to create a viable third party would also re-emerge.
Elder Power
The picture of a stereotypical activist is usually someone young, perhaps a student. But older folks also want to change the world for the better, and many have more time in which to do it. They bring decades of knowledge and lived experience—a boon to many causes. These three activists came to organizing work later in life and are putting their experience to good use in the name of social change.
How Voters Can Protect Democracy-Today and Tomorrow
Here we go again. On Sept. 12, soon-to-be-deposed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced an “impeachment investigation” into President Biden. McCarthy was clearly trying to appease the extreme right-wingers in his party, who are upset that the speaker hasn’t been sufficiently radical over budget negotiations. And of course, McCarthy presented absolutely zero evidence Biden has done anything warranting impeachment.
Opinion | Indictment Days Are Here Again
It’s election season, and the leading candidates for president are barnstorming from state to state on the stump-speech circuit. Or, in the case of former president Donald Trump, to keep court dates. As they say: priorities. Trump was indicted last week, along with 18 other defendants, in Fulton County, Georgia.
The Great Guzzlers: Who’s Using All Our Water?
In Depth Solutions We Love Culture Shift Also Why you can trust us According to UNICEF, 4 billion people already experience water scarcity at least one month per year. More than 2 billion live in countries where water supply is inadequate, and half the world’s population could be living in areas facing water scarcity as early as 2025, with global ramifications for public health and migration, not to mention peace.
Opinion | Turns Out, Trump Isn’t Above the Law
“Ladies and Gentlemen! Tonight, for the main event in the center ring…”! The indictment of former President Donald Trump, on 34 felony charges stemming from hush money payments to an adult film actor, more than anything else, has a numbing effect. We simply cannot expel this egomaniac from the center of our national debate, so we sigh, shake our heads, and try to move along through the noise.
Could We End Wealth?
In 2019, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made headlines at the MLK Now conference.
Opinion | Battle-Ready Biden Is Playing the Long Game
There’s a certain amount of political theater within any State of the Union address: They’re formulaic affairs with scripted applause lines, made-for-the-camera special guests, and a requisite checklist of policy goals or interest groups that need a shoutout. But they’re also a rebranding exercise for a sitting president.
Opinion | A Coup for All Seasons
As I started to write this, it was the two-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s insurrection to remain in the White House. I spent the day watching the U.S. House of Representatives try to elect a speaker. A core of right-wing extremists had been blocking Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid, and McCarthy only prevailed in the 15th round of voting because he promised to embolden the most extreme members of the Republican caucus.
Democracy Lives to Fight Another Day
I woke up the morning of Nov. 9 feeling the exact opposite from how I had on election night in 2016. I went into the midterms this year expecting a catastrophe for the Democrats, and instead woke up pleasantly surprised. The Democrats bucked the trend of midterm elections being a rout for the ruling party, kept hold of the Senate, and only lost a net handful of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Most Important Midterm Election
The 2024 presidential election may well be decided this Tuesday. That’s not a typo. The midterm elections this year are about a lot of things—abortion rights, inflation, preserving (or cutting) Social Security and Medicare—but behind all of them is whether or not U.S. democracy is going to continue to operate as it has. That’s not because there are so many anti-democracy initiatives on the ballots, though there are a small number of states considering voter-restriction measures.
Can a Third Party Be the Charm for Polarized Politics?
More than 230 years since the establishment of these somewhat-United States, our system of political representation still fails to adequately reflect the breadth of ideological nuance that exists among its citizens. We have two dominant political parties, two quite minor ones, and a bunch of also-rans. So as political polarization escalates, it’s only logical that efforts to create a viable third party would also re-emerge.
The Past, Present, and Future of Work
Our relationship with work can be summed up in two words: It’s complicated. Here in the United States (and elsewhere, too), work dominates our lives. Upon meeting someone new, our standard first question is “What do you do for a living?” Our identities, even our names, often reflect an occupation. And yet, for too many people, their work is a thankless task for which they are undercompensated. It provides just enough sustenance to get through the day, so they can wake up the next and start over.
The Past, Present, and Future of Work
Our relationship with work can be summed up in two words: It’s complicated. Here in the United States (and elsewhere, too), work dominates our lives. Upon meeting someone new, our standard first question is “What do you do for a living?” Our identities, even our names, often reflect an occupation. And yet, for too many people, their work is a thankless task for which they are undercompensated. It provides just enough sustenance to get through the day, so they can wake up the next and start over.
The Supreme Court’s crisis of legitimacy
The United States of America today is a fundamentally different country than the United States of America three weeks ago. In this new U.S., the federal government can’t regulate carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act because the law, which first passed in 1963, doesn’t specifically give the government that power. In addition, local government cannot stop a school official from leading students in prayer. But it can control what happens inside a uterus.
The Supreme Court’s Crisis of Legitimacy
The United States of America today is a fundamentally different country than the United States of America three weeks ago. In this new U.S., the federal government can’t regulate carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act because the law, which first passed in 1963, doesn’t specifically give the government that power. In addition, local government cannot stop a school official from leading students in prayer. But it can control what happens inside a uterus.
Seeking Just Trials
Trials are far from impartial if the defendant is poor or reliant on public defenders. These people are working to re-balance the scales of justice. Emily Galvin-Almanza Co-Executive Director, Partners for Justice Emily Galvin-Almanza practices holistic defense, a set of techniques pioneered by the Bronx Defenders, a public defense organization where she worked before co-founding Partners for Justice in 2018.
Tell Better Stories to Win Public Opinion (and Elections)
There’s a common complaint in politics: Democrats are really bad at messaging. President Biden’s polling is near an all-time low, despite a number of successes on the policy front and today’s record-low unemployment numbers and record-high job gains. Sure, he’s not getting everything he’s promised passed.
Call for Submissions: The “Work” Issue
Help Us Report Asks the public for input, insights, clarifications, anecdotes, documentation, etc., for reporting purposes. Callouts are a type of crowdsourcing in journalism. Send us your leads and pitches by April 29. Why you can trust us The role of work in modern societies has always been fraught, but never more than during a time of massive job displacement during the pandemic.
Can We Make an Alien Nation Familiar Again?
We have a serious political polarization problem in the U.S. right now. It’s not so much the damage done during the Trump administration (although he certainly exacerbated those problems) as it is that our divisions have hardened into political partisanship, which now influences just about every aspect of life in America. Divisions in society are natural and inevitable, especially one as large and diverse as the United States.
Joe Biden and the Politics of Black Womanhood
On Feb. 25, the last Friday in Black History Month, President Biden made good on his public promise when he did what none of his 45 predecessors had done by nominating Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Black woman, to fill the soon-to-be-vacant seat on the Supreme Court.
Preventing Prison and Recidivism
These three activists are working to support people at risk of either going to prison for the first time or returning to prison after release. Sean Goode Executive Director Choose 180 Since it was founded in 2011, the Seattle nonprofit Choose 180 has served more than 2,500 youth accused of a crime with a half-day court diversion program that resulted in having their charges dismissed.
Opinion | Can We Still Save U.S. Democracy?
This is the way democracy ends: with a whimper. The day after President Biden’s fiery Jan. 12 speech in favor of eliminating or reforming the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation, Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema let it be known that they were a big “no” vote on that. Without their votes, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act are dead in the water, because no Republican is going to support expanding the franchise. On Jan. 19, Sen.
YES! Editors Answer Your Burning Questions
Here at YES!, we often get questions from readers about the work that goes on behind the scenes. So to help pull back the veil, several of our editors went live during YES! Fest to answer your questions during an “Ask YES! Anything” panel. Moderated by YES! board member and Press On co-founder Manolia Charlotin, the panel featured YES!’s Editorial Director Sunnivie Brydum, Senior Editor Chris Winters, Environmental Editor Breanna Draxler, and Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar.
Blowing Up a Few Myths About Inflation
— from YES! Magazine Inflation has been a bugaboo of right-wingers and even the political center since the 1970s. So it’s not surprising that with consumer prices rising, the national discourse has suddenly shifted from yesterday’s news to looming hyperinflation and fiscal ruin. But in order to understand what’s really going on, you need to understand what inflation is, what it isn’t, and where we actually are.
Blowing up a few myths about inflation
ILLUSTRATION BY KLAUS VEDFELT/GETTY IMAGES Inflation has been a bugaboo of right-wingers and even the political center since the 1970s. So it’s not surprising that with consumer prices rising, the national discourse has suddenly shifted from yesterday’s news to looming hyperinflation and fiscal ruin. But in order to understand what’s really going on, you need to understand what inflation is, what it isn’t, and where we actually are.
Blowing Up a Few Myths About Inflation
Inflation has been a bugaboo of right-wingers and even the political center since the 1970s. So it’s not surprising that with consumer prices rising, the national discourse has suddenly shifted from yesterday’s news to looming hyperinflation and fiscal ruin. But in order to understand what’s really going on, you need to understand what inflation is, what it isn’t, and where we actually are.
Lending on Character, Not Credit
In the early months of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to put enormous pressure on the economy, Rodney Foxworth saw a parallel crisis emerging among businesses led by people of color. They needed capital and couldn’t get it. “Obviously this was a pre-standing issue prior to the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Foxworth, the CEO of Common Future, a small-business support network based in Oakland, California.
Opinion | What the Pandora Papers Tell Us About Ourselves
The wealthiest people in the world hide their wealth. This is common knowledge, as is the need to reverse the trend of growing wealth inequality. Yet even knowing this, the Pandora Papers exposé by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is still jaw-dropping.
Opinion | California’s Recall Election Is a Wake-Up Call for Democrats
Texas and California are both in the news for different terrible reasons, but how we got to this point in the nation’s two most populous states is remarkably similar. Both states are effectively one-party states: one red, one blue. But in both states, the Democrats are getting clobbered, and it’s mostly their own fault.
Opinion | If We Can Pass Big Infrastructure Bills, Why Can’t We Keep People in Their Homes?
The U.S. Senate voted Aug. 10 to advance a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, the first in many years. This is a good thing, in general, even if the process getting here was fraught with tempestuous politicking and ego-management in the halls of power. But amid the self-congratulations coming from the nation’s capital over Congress doing its job, it’s easy to overlook the fact that we recently and narrowly averted two major crises.
Lack of Housing Is Not the Problem
The San Francisco Bay Area has long been one of the most expensive places to live in the United States. The region, home to the booming Silicon Valley tech sector and a rising number of billionaires, also has one of the highest numbers of people without homes.
Opinion | Does Every Vote Still Count?
In every election cycle, urging people to vote is usually accompanied by the standard argument that “every vote counts.” Technically, that’s true. Elections have been decided by single votes before. But one recurring mantra during the run-up to the 2020 election was, “vote in numbers too big to manipulate.” The message was that President Trump and the Republican Party were going to cheat, and the only way to win was to have a victory so overwhelming that the cheating wouldn’t work.
Opinion | The Time to Secure Voting Rights Is Now or Never
If you’d thought that defeating Donald Trump’s re-election campaign would save American democracy, well… it turns out that this particular vampire hasn’t been sufficiently staked yet. Four months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Trump is still waging war on the 2020 election results—because he’s been banned from Twitter and Facebook, he’s been sending unhinged press releases that still read like his fever-tweets of yore.
Opinion | Biden Bets Big on the Care Economy
A funny thing happened on the way to the 2020s. It’s that Joe Biden, famous Congressional centrist and lifelong denizen of the Washington, D.C., establishment, is showing himself to be a liberal. And maybe even a… feminist? That’s probably too generous for a man remembered for sniffing women’s hair and giving a pass to allegations of sexual harassment by a Supreme Court nominee.
What Purpose Does a Border Serve?
Border walls aren’t necessary, and neither are the borders themselves in a world built on justice and equality, says author Todd Miller. Why you can trust us At a time when migration across the U.S.’s southern border continues to grow and a new administration looks for different solutions, Todd Miller’s fourth book, Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders, seeks to reframe the issue.
Opinion | There’s More to the American Jobs Plan Than Jobs
We’re now about 80 days into President Biden’s administration, and so far the new government has already enacted a $1.9 trillion emergency funding package, the American Rescue Plan, designed to help the country recover from the yearlong COVID recession. Now the administration is gearing up to push a major infrastructure bill through Congress.
This Labor Rights Bill Could End Up Hurting Gig Workers
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data. New federal legislation makes the same mistake a California law did, which cost thousands of jobs. Why you can trust us Mar 19, 2021 EDITOR’S NOTE: After publication, it came to YES! Media’s attention that this op-ed, concerning the PRO Act as it was introduced in Congress, contained an error concerning the scope and impact of the bill that undermined the main premise of the article.
The War on Democracy and Voting Rights Is Under Way
We're now just over a month into a new administration, and Washington political life has somewhat reverted to normal. But "normal" in 2021 isn't the "normal" of 2016—Joe Biden is now leading a changed country, and navigating a political landscape vastly different from the one he helped lead as vice president.
The War on Voting Reaches Home
We’re now just over a month into a new administration, and Washington political life has somewhat reverted to normal. But “normal” in 2021 isn’t the “normal” of 2016—Joe Biden is now leading a changed country, and navigating a political landscape vastly different from the one he helped lead as vice president.
Three Cities Switching To Life-Affirming Economies
By Chris Winters, originally published by YES! magazine March 1, 2021 The city of Portland, Oregon, prides itself on being ahead of the curve. In 1993, it became the first U.S. city to adopt a climate action plan, which now calls for cutting carbon emissions by 50% by 2030, and to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Opinion | Ah, Sweet Normalcy: Obstruction and Dysfunction
Former President Trump’s impeachment trial for instigating an insurrection opens this week, but in many ways, the Senate proceedings are a sideshow. For one, the result is almost a foregone conclusion, the only question being whether any Republicans break with their party to punish a president who tried to install himself as an unelected autocrat and overthrow our democracy.
Opinion | Unity Is Impossible Without Accountability
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. took the oath of office shortly before noon Eastern time on Wednesday, and in his low-key manner ended an era in which the evil in the U.S. government could not be overestimated, and started a new one that promises to be better. It’s now up to Biden and his incoming team to make sure they use their powers for good. Simply not being a mendacious and corrupt would-be autocrat is an awfully low bar to reach.
Opinion | This Insurrection Demands Justice
The violent mob that besieged the Capitol in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, forcing Congress to be evacuated, had not even been expelled from the building before a chorus of voices, from both outside and , was uniting around a single message: Trump must go now.
Biden Won. Now Comes the Hard Part
The election is over. Joe Biden won, and by bigger popular vote and Electoral College margins than Donald Trump did four years ago. By all reasonable accounts, that should give President-elect Biden a mandate to set an aggressive agenda. Given the twin crises of the pandemic and economic collapse, Biden, once in office, will have to move insistently if the United States is to recover at all.
Biden won. Now comes the hard part
The election is over. Joe Biden won, and by bigger popular vote and Electoral College margins than Donald Trump did four years ago. By all reasonable accounts, that should give President-elect Biden a mandate to set an aggressive agenda. Given the twin crises of the pandemic and economic collapse, Biden, once in office, will have to move insistently if the United States is to recover at all.
Opinion | Biden Won. Now Comes the Hard Part
The election is over. Joe Biden won, and by bigger popular vote and Electoral College margins than Donald Trump did four years ago. By all reasonable accounts, that should give President-elect Biden a mandate to set an aggressive agenda. Given the twin crises of the pandemic and economic collapse, Biden, once in office, will have to move insistently if the United States is to recover at all.
Opinion | Why Georgia Is Now on Everyone’s Mind
On Friday, Nov. 13, most major news networks projected that former Vice President Joe Biden had won the presidential race in Georgia. That didn’t change the fact that any neutral observer had known for a week that Biden had won the election as a whole. That would seem to have put the race behind us, even as several lawsuits by the Trump campaign continued to be filed, heard, and tossed.
Opinion | The Next Challenge: Keeping the Nation Together
So here we are the day after Election Day—can we just call it Election Week from now on? Or Decision Month if this stretches into December?—and the presidential race again remains undecided. For the left, this feels all too familiar, the ghost pains of 2016 throbbing in the hole where our souls used to be.
The Feminist Horror Comedy Novel That Centers LGBTQ and Disabled Teens
Author Sady Doyle says LGTBQ teens need more representation in horror. So they wrote the book they’d wished they’d read when they were young. Why you can trust us The promotional material for the new novel Apocalypse 1999 lets you know upfront what you’re about to get into: “There are three things you need to know that no-one has ever told you: 1) The apocalypse started in Columbus, Ohio, in 1999. 2) The Devil rose to reclaim the Earth. 3) Nick Casini and Jenny Long started it.
Show More
loading
Actions
Get in touch with Chris
Contact Chris, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack