Kate Brown is “a combination of Snoopy and Katniss Everdeen”?
So says Brown’s former communications director in a quote that pretty much sums up the tenor of a new New Yorker profile of Oregon’s governor. (Katniss Everdeen, in case you didn’t know, is the butt-kicking protagonist from “The Hunger Games,” played by Jennifer Lawrence in the movies.)
The article in the national literary magazine surely will reinforce the widely held (and not entirely accurate) view of Oregon that’s out there in the rest of the country. New Yorker staffer Daniel Wenger insists the state is so liberal that Brown has “the broadest mandate of any progressive politician in the country, and, like a left-wing Scott Walker, she will try to push through a radical agenda — in her case, one that could include everything from cap-and-trade to universal health care.”
But The New Yorker isn’t writing about Brown to get into the weeds of Beaver State policymaking. She’s a symbol, a beacon of hope for distressed progressives across the country. And she’s embracing that role.
Brown makes clear that, for progressives, resisting President Trump will be a full-time job for for the next four years — on top of the full-time jobs they have that pay the bills.
“It’s going to require more than you’re bargaining for,” she said. “Activism will change your life.”
Brown began the effort this week, launching a recruitment drive for a “Social Action Team” of volunteers that will “bring communities together to resist in a divided nation.”
The governor’s conversation with Wenger ranges far and wide, from Ernest Callenbach’s classic 1975 utopian novel “Ecotopia” to how Brown was, as she winkingly puts it, “introduced to lesbianism” while a student at Lewis & Clark Law School.
* Read the profile.
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