Ask an average group of twenty-somethings about the Ames music scene, and you’ll get a profusion of blank stares, followed by a long silence. Given a little more prompting, they might talk about our dearth of musical venues, the scarcity of all-ages shows, or the well-documented reluctance of promoters to book local bands. But if [...]

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In the final week of August 2004 in New York City, thousands gathered in Union Square to protest the Republican National Convention – the site of George W. Bush’s re-nomination – and their discontent over the president’s war in Iraq. The decidedly less-than-warm welcome resulted in the arrests of 1,806 people, a number unparalleled in [...]

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The terms for the 2008 presidential election have been set: Barack Obama sets the agenda, determines the themes and introduces the vocabulary and John McCain responds by awkwardly and disingenuously parroting Obama’s agenda, themes and vocabulary. The most obvious and desperate example of this is the McCain campaign’s adoption of the “change” theme in the [...]

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Ryan Gerdes’ essay was originally published in issue 2.6. Read it here.
The Israeli-Palestinian war is a strange conflict: it inspires people to assume positions of impassioned and often radical advocacy, to make strident accusations and judgments, in spite of colossal ignorance. While defying most of the familiar paradigms of conflict and oppression, it is nonetheless [...]

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The following is the complete transcript of the Ames Progressive’s interview with Connecticut Senator and former presidential candidate Chris Dodd from when he visited Iowa State University on a campaign stop November 27 of last year. The majority of this transcript was featured in the December 2007 article “Why Won’t You Let Me Say What [...]

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Iowa, as Iowans know well, is something of a joke in the national imagination. The muted tone of condescension familiar in national media coverage of Iowa’s role in the presidential campaign is made explicit in a story in Rolling Stone, which begins, “Iowa is not like other states. There’s fuck-all to do here, and unless [...]

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It’s more than a month into the Writers Guild of America strike now. More than a month, consequently, without the barbs of late night stand-ups and Jon Stewart’s insights into the “Clusterf@#k to the White House,” save for a stockroom of old tapes. Television is sorely lacking fresh comic relief from the absurdities [...]

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In the October/November issue of the Ames Progressive we published “A Conversation with Christopher Hitchens,” by Gavin Aronsen and Ryan Gerdes. During the conversation, Hitchens, discussing the possibility of pre-emptive military action against a potentially nuclear Iran, asserted that “the evidence against the Iranian government [demonstrating the existence of a nuclear weapons program] has been [...]

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When people approached me about writing for the Ames Progressive, I said that I didn’t want to associate myself with any label. I was faced with the question that if I wrote for the Ames Progressive would that necessitate I label myself a progressive? Recently I realized that I could, instead of boycotting the [...]

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Why did Wolford fail to get any binding leases by Dec. 1, 2007 for his proposed development on East 13th Street?
The Ames Tribune reported December 7 that Bucky Wolford said his failure to obtain leases was due to:
1) “delays in getting the major site plan approved,”
2) the “unknown certainty of receiving approval for this project [...]

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