Wanting to support your community and get civically engaged? Do you also like warm cookies? I suppose the Venn Diagram for these two things would likely show a lot of overlap. I’m right there in the middle anyway.
In what is surely a startling coincidence–how could it be otherwise?–two articles appeared within 5 days of each other in Colorado Public Radio and the Colorado Sun. The former ostensibly telling people how to get involved in their communities, and the latter a glowing profile of a nonprofit focused on civic engagement. Both, of course, have at their center the group Warm Cookies of the Revolution. Friendly and homey name, no?
The progressive echo chamber
A quick look at their website would make it obvious to all (except reporters at the Sun and CPR it seems) that this group is beyond liberal. Even a cursory glance through their programs make it clear that if you wanted to show up, say, to discuss ways to get people involved in stemming the tide of gun rights restrictions pouring out of the state capitol, you’d be run out of the event, covered in rotten produce (or worse). In other words, the is civic engagement alright, with cookies, but also with a healthy dose of left-leaning politics.
The Sun at least makes a stab at honesty by hinting at this in their article, “We reached out to [Warm Cookies Founder Evan] Weissman after the election this week. Despite his left-leaning politics, which Weissman is extremely upfront about, he seemed unfazed, even unmoved by Trump winning the presidency. At least, as far as the organization goes.” You won’t get any sense of who Warm Cookies is from CPR, however, unless you can read between the lines on their list of suggestions, things like starting an “identity-based discussion or activity group.”
I don’t want to suggest that the identity politics crowd shouldn’t be involved in their communities. One of the other things on CPR’s list was volunteering as a native English speaker to help someone learning our language. I love this idea; I’ve done it myself. Imagine our world if people helped each other more, regardless of the politics. Even when it comes to politics, though, I want more, not fewer, people paying attention and joining policy discussions. If we heard each other more, I bet we’d find out we overlap more than we think, and I sure as hell want policy makers to know there are lots of eyes on them.
Trapped in the liberal bubble
So the problem with this coverage is not the spirit, but rather the way it was done. Major Colorado media outlets giving free, exclusive publicity to a far-left organization is not okay. Favoring one political ideology and calling yourself “news” is not okay. Certainly not if the Sun and CPR want to still crow about how nonpartisan they are (and if CPR still wants their “P” to mean public). Where is the balance here? I mean, besides Warm Cookies, CPR is linking to a group that has a picture of protestors swarming I-225 in 2020 to shut it down as a banner image for God’s sake. If you remember, it was the protest where a man shot at a Jeep trying to flee to safety, only to end up hitting two of his fellow protestors. That’s one way to get involved I suppose, but are groups like this the ones that the news should be promoting to the exclusion of other points of view?
I wonder how stories like this would have looked if there had been even just one conservative voice in the newsroom. Would it have been so easy to blithely push an article like this through? Would they look anywhere near like they do now? Perhaps. I emailed the reporters for both stories and asked about balance. I asked them to look into other groups that do similar work, but have the opposite political orientation. The Sun reporter didn’t respond, and the CPR reporter said she’d look into it. As of this writing, the only edit to the story was a line at the end asking readers to submit other ideas.
So, I’ll go ahead and do what CPR and the Sun should have done on their own. I’ll mention a program that might be a better match ideologically for many Coloradans than just the Warm Cookies program. The free-market Independence Institute* runs the Citizen Involvement Project which offers various ways to learn how you can get civically involved in this state. Read up on Warm Cookies. Read up on II’s program. Get involved in the way that you think will work best for you, but get involved.
Cory Gaines is a regular contributor to Complete Colorado. He lives in Sterling on Colorado’s Eastern Plains and also writes at the Colorado Accountability Project substack.
*Editor’s note: Independence Institute is also the publisher of Complete Colorado.
