Welcome to YOUR Internet Newsstand!

SEATTLE (May 1, 2011) — If you want interactive news and opinion from Washington state that hasn’t gone through the corporate filter of the for-profit media or some advertiser, The Stand is for you.

A project of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions, The Stand was launched on May Day 2011 and aims to fill the void created by newspapers and other commercial media that focus on business news and toe the conservative corporate editorial line.

The Stand features news for and about working people. Its news stories and opinion columns focus on creating and maintaining quality jobs, improving our families’ quality of life, promoting public policies that will restore shared prosperity, and other things that the rest of us care about.  It is an effort to restore the kind of progressive populist source of information that once thrived in Washington state, but has entirely ceased to exist thanks to media consolidation and the zenith of corporate influence on the press and on all levels of government.

When was the last time you remember a newspaper editorial in Washington state siding with a union’s perspective on a labor-management dispute involving a contract or some public policy matter? Even in Seattle, considered by the rest of the state and nation to be among the most politically liberal cities in the U.S., the last daily newspaper standing is consistently hostile to the interests of working families who choose to exercise their freedom of association and form a union.

Nevermind that Washington state has the 4th highest labor density in the nation, with about 1 in 5 citizens being a union member. Nevermind that the people of Washington have a long history of suspicion and distrust of industrial power, dating back to the 1889 adoption of its State Constitution that specifically curtails corporate influence over our government.

No, one website isn’t going to fill that void. But it’s a start.

We encourage you to visit The Stand frequently, utilize its “clip service” of local and national news coverage (posted by 9 a.m. every weekday under “Daily Links”), register and comment on the articles you read here, “like” The Stand’s Facebook page so you are notified of the site’s latest postings, spread the word about The Stand to your friends, and most importantly, recommend and submit content for the site.

David Groves, Editor of The Stand, has been writing and publishing news and opinion about Washington State since joining the staff of the Washington State Labor Council in 1992. If you have questions about The Stand or would like to submit a news article or opinion column, email him at david.groves@thestand.org.

In the meantime, welcome! Have a look around. And stay a while.