Crosscut Festival

As national leaders fiddle, governors on the West Coast are leading the charge on a host of critical national issues. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown discuss the importance of state action on climate change, immigration and minimum wage — and talk about the limits of what we can do without help from the “other Washington.” This session is a co-production of Crosscut and Seattle University’s Institute of Public Service.

In the fall of 2012, Julián Castro, the young mayor of San Antonio, Texas, stood in front of a packed stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, and gave a rousing speech before the Democratic National Convention. “The American dream is not a sprint, or even a marathon, but a relay,” Castro told the crowd. He rallied the country to re-elect President Obama, and in the process drew many comparisons to the president, who had given the convention speech eight years before.
Castro went on to serve as Obama’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, where he worked to bring homeownership within reach of more Americans, and launched an initiative that provided internet access to public and low-income housing. Castro is now widely viewed as a contender for the 2020 Democratic nomination for President.
Crosscut Managing Editor Florangela Davila talks to Castro about his experience as the grandson of a Mexican immigrant, his time in the Obama administration, and the current state of affairs in Washington, D.C.

In August of 2014, a young man named Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking widespread unrest and a national reckoning with the troubled relationship between police and communities of color. Numerous other deaths, many of them caught on cellphone video, have revealed an epidemic of police violence against African Americans, and a system that has turned some urban areas into oppressive police states. (Seattle's police department has been under federal supervision since 2012, when an investigation found excessive use of force and evidence of racial bias in police practices.)

Crosscut City Reporter David Kroman talks to the police leaders who are trying to change that. We’ll hear from Delrish Moss, who took over as Ferguson’s police chief in 2016; Anne Kirkpatrick, a former police chief in Ellensburg, Federal Way and Spokane who has been charged with reforming the Oakland, Calif., police department; and former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper, now a national voice in the effort to reform police policy and practices across the country. 

What is it like to be in the inner circle of the President of the United States? What’s it like to put words in his mouth, or to speak for him, fielding questions from an aggressive Washington press corps during stressful times? And having done those things, what is it like now, to look at the chaos and crossed wires within the Trump administration? We’ll hear from the guy who helped create President Obama’s unforgettable “anger translator” skit at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and a speechwriter and a press secretary who both worked for President George W. Bush.
Crosscut and KCTS 9 Executive Editor Greg Hanscom talks with speechwriter and humorist David Litt, Atlantic editor and nationally respected conservative commentator David Frum, and Seattle University Vice President of Communications Scott McClellan.

The Pacific Northwest used to be bound by it’s shared natural resources, but now our region’s fabric is better defined by its growing cities where populations are booming, the cost of living rising, and technological and cultural innovation is thriving. Cities like Seattle, Vancouver, BC, and Portland are no longer obscure provincial capitals but are known internationally for urban dynamism driven by prosperity and social conscience. It is not enough that Cascadian cities be good, they must seek to be equitable and experimental. In a time of political division and sociological upheaval, they are challenged to live up to common ideals as green and humane sanctuaries.

Is that possible? What can make it so? What is the state of Cascadia and our cities in the face of climate change, affordability, immigration and border challenges, homelessness and the pressures of rapid and persistent growth and change? What is the future of our urban dreams? Crosscut columnist Knute Berger will talk with Cascadia’s leaders, people on the front lines or regional transformation, about these and other topics.