Spirit in Action

Progressive Every Day

Dan Nerhaugen's Daily Progressive is a great source of inspiration & knowledge, highlighting change-makers and events which have tilted the world in a progressive direction, and promise more in the future. Succinct, rich, and diverse, there are tidbits, with links to those interested in going deeper, for some really transformative people and events.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 17 Apr 2016
Audio Format:: other

[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, we're going to be talking to Dan Nierhagen about his daily progressive site, which will connect us with a lot of people and history that have been crucial in pointing us in the right direction over the decades and centuries. So it occurred to me that this would be a perfect topic for installment four of our... So it occurred to me that this would be a perfect topic for installment four of our history in our best future series with retired history teacher Myron Buckles. We'll talk in depth with Dan after a brief check-in with Myron. So Myron, you taught history in high school for 34 years. Do you think that teaching history is important and can you report any kind of success or changes that you brought about in your students or the world through your teaching? There are a number of things that come to mind over the years. I saw mainly sophomores for much of my career and I always found sophomores to be very interesting because generally being 16 years of age, they are into that interesting area where they are adults in the eyes of the law and driving and they're also considered children in some ways. And they are starting to learn that the world is not everything that they thought it was in the first 12 years, the recollections. So you see the lights come on quite frequently when you expose them to some of the amazing challenges and differences in our world and that's what I try to do and then ask them to think about it. So I have one memory especially from the last decade and that was pointing out that our top tax bracket for the very wealthy post-World War II and into the 1950s was 90 percent. After your first $100,000 you were taxed at a 90 percent rate. And I had a boy come back to class a day or so after we'd gone over that and he raised his hand and he said, "Mr. Buckles, I told my dad what you said about the tax rate and he didn't believe you and I stood there and shrugged my shoulders, paused for a little bit and the boy said, "But then I went to the internet and after about the third website he started to believe me. That's why we do it. Light some fires. You don't feel vessels in that old adage about teaching. You light fires." And it's one of the reasons I'm so frustrated with this emphasis on testing because testing attempts to fill vessels but in reality it puts out a lot of fires, especially in areas of social studies. There's room for it. There's always been room for it. But this over-emphasis on testing is very bothersome to me. What about for you personally, Myron? Are there folks that you encountered in your study and work as a history teacher who transformed your worldview? Well, I continually come across people and events that I was not aware of. I'm not surprised. I used to joke with my students that I knew everything. It was just an attempt for me to demonstrate some critical thinking but because students come into the classroom and sometimes they do think teachers know everything and so I would say that. And then they would look at me funny and take them a few seconds ago. Probably not. And I said, "Yeah, you're right. I'm learning all the time." There are plenty of opportunities to pick up new information. And that is one of the beauties of teaching social studies. It is not to memorize the great men and then think that you know everything about history. It is to look at the issues and the controversies in history. That's what people find interesting. People talk about liking the history channel. And they'll say, "Oh, I go home, I watch the history channel all the time." The problem of being in a classroom is that your time is so limited that it is difficult to cover the topics in depth to find that interest level because you do feel forced to cover a tremendous amount of material in a limited amount of time. So the challenge is to try to find some depth in some of the issues that you choose and hope that that lights the fires and so that they continue down a path of lifelong learning. I had a couple of instructors in my college career and one of them was John T. Zelazak and he was geography instructor. I was in a class with him during the second Arab oil embargo and he said in 1979 that it's not going to be about oil in the future, it's going to be about water. I hadn't thought of it that way before and as my life is progressed and seeing things take place across the world realizing that he called it in 1979 and I always have an appreciation for people who predict the future and get it right. We'll have more visits with Myron in his series, History in Our Best Future, but now on to today's main event, a visit with the author of the website, Dan Neerhagen's Daily Progressive. New just this past year and a source of amazing resources and inspiration. Dan Neerhagen joins us by phone from that Progressive Bastion Wisconsin and often the nation, Madison. Dan, welcome back to Spirit in Action for your second visit. Well thank you Mark, it's great to be back with you. You keep going further and deeper into the history, the inspirational people who've brought along our country to the point where it is, not just our country I guess, the world. Who's your number one hero of all time? Well I don't know if I've got any heroes per se Mark, I think we need to be our own heroes and if we're looking for icons I think we need to tread a little lightly. We tend to find when we look that even those we admire most have, if not feet of clay at the very least, some imperfections that are a little bit unsavory. I think of some of the personal habits of say Mohandas Gandhi, no need to get into that right now, but if any of your listeners wanted to google a little bit it wouldn't be too hard to find some of the things that he did, or a little odd, or we could go on and on. Mark Luther King, I think we're familiar with the fact that he had his flagels, no matter how much we admire, some of the folks that we'll probably be talking about, we're always able to find shortcomings, and I think we need to be a little bit careful, maybe a lot careful, about looking for heroes. There are those I admire, you know, I mentioned Gandhi and Mark Luther King of course, but one of the things that I've enjoyed a lot as I've put together my latest website, Daniel Howkins Daily Progressive, is not so much the superstars, but some of the folks we might not be aware of, because I use a daily format, having to come up with a different exemplary progressive for every day of the year, all 366 days. I found not only the obvious choices of the Mark Luther King's, the Mohandas Gandhi's, but also the far less obvious choices, the people who are doing great things in unheralded sorts of ways, for example, I'm looking at one right now, a fellow who was born February 10th, 1944, his name is Joel Cohen, and he's an academic, he's a demographer, and he answers what I consider to be one of the most important questions we can possibly ask, and that's what's the earth's human-carrying capacity. To me, that's an absolutely fundamental question, and it's one that seldom gets asked at all, when it does get asked, I think it tends to be answered very poorly, and yet here's a guy who's toiling away in the growers of the academe, dealing with that question specifically, and doing a great job of it. As I say, he's not regarded a moral superstar by anybody that I know of, but I consider him to be an exemplary progressive, and I'll live in high esteem. In no less high esteem, I suppose, than I hold some of the other folks we might talk about. So I guess it's an awfully long-winded way of saying, I'm not much into the idea of heroes, we need to be our own heroes, there are folks we can admire and consider exemplars in various respects, and I'm a little hesitant about putting anybody on a pedestal, but if I don't knock them off, somebody else will. I was afraid when you started going that direction, you were going to dish out some of the information about me in case anybody has any kind of pedestal. No, no, we don't need to get into that, Mark. We don't have that kind of time for goodness sake. Well, let's disclose a little bit of back story here. I've known you since very young, actually, because you lived across the block from me on the other side of the block in O'Connell, Wisconsin. So to have two such prodigious scholars, it's really your guess. No, I'm not actually justing. I think that both you and I, the pursuit of progressive and beyond somehow must have been fed maybe by the ball field between us. That could be, that could be. Well, you know, all the kidding aside, we do have somewhat similar backgrounds, and I think our ages have something to do with that. We grew up in an era that was in many ways very inspirational for young men or young women growing into the society in which we found ourselves. It was an age in which the Civil Rights Movement was front and center. If not in our little, you know, lily white town of O'Connellock, certainly on the evening news every night, it wasn't too hard even for a kid to see who the guys were and who the bad guys were and to draw inspiration from the good guys. Likewise, you know, when we were children back in the sixties, as we watched the evening news, along with our TV dinners, came body counts from Vietnam every night. And there again, it wasn't too hard to see who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. See, even then, it started harboring suspicion that L.B.J. was a profoundly mixed bag. Plus, we both have some Vatican II Roman Catholicism in our background, and we both certainly I was influenced by some of the wonderful nuns that I knew when I was a kid. I experienced none of the police shave baloney that one tends to hear about how tough the nuns were. To me, they were smart, strong women who were in favor of social justice, my goodness. What's not to like? I had the same reaction, you know. Priests and nuns were amongst the best Catholics, the ones in the pews. Well, it was a mixed bag there, I guess. It certainly was. And although I'm certainly not part of that camp anymore, I long ago made my peace with the Catholic Church, and I'm very frankly, I'm an atheist. I absolutely have no extra grind with the Catholic Church whatsoever, or with Christians in general, any more than I do with Buddhists, or Marxists, or whatever. You know, as you gathered your daily progressives, again, you've got folks for each day of the year. Did you notice any, or maybe did you perhaps emphasize, because of your own beliefs, any particular religious spiritual identity? Are atheists number one amongst the crew, or is it some other group that seems to generate people who fit your template for a progressive? Well, I definitely did keep an eye out for atheists, although I tried to steer clear of angry atheists. You know, they tend to give those of us who consider ourselves more along the lines of amiable heathens of a bad name. For example, one of the more popular folks I would consider an angry atheist today is Richard Dawkins. I had included him as one of my 366, eventually, because he's had so many unpleasant things to say to so many different people. I had to demote him to the second tier. I think it's important for those of us who are not involved in religion, and who are atheists, agnostics, whatever, to be aware of the fact that we are, to a great extent, persecuted religious minority of sorts. We have had lots of Protestant presidents, for example. We've been a Catholic president. We could be on the cusp now of having a Jewish president. An atheist president, that's unthinkable. So, yeah, I definitely kept an eye peeled for atheists. I was looking for folks who weren't militantly unpleasant about it, although I admittedly did make room, a special room for Christopher Hitchens. I've always gotten a kick out of him, and not just because of his atheism, but also because of his scholarship and his great intellect. But that's, by far and away, not one of my primary interests. Far more of a category for me was looking for people who fought oppression and fought for social justice. And as a result, my collection of exemplars ended up being disproportionately black. Lots and lots of folks from the civil rights movement of the '60s. Lots of African Americans, most of us have never heard of, who were involved in the abolitionist movement in the 1800s. There again, we tend to think in terms of a few superstars as having made all the difference. You know, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass. Well, one thing that became clear to me as I looked into some of the lesser known folks is that there were thousands and thousands of people doing extraordinary things over the centuries. And particularly black folks, we tend to think in terms of the abolitionist movement of the 19th century in terms of people like William Lloyd Garrison, or maybe Elizabeth Katie Stanton or others. Always, if not always, frequently white folks trying to take care of African American citizens who'd been given a raw deal. Well, we tend to give short shrift to the incredible things that many, many African Americans were doing on their own behalf. As I say, from that perspective, is disproportionately African American, that's for sure. I also kept an eye out for socialists of various stripes. I, frankly, have voted Democrat most of my life, but not by choice. I tend towards socialist sentiments and thoughts in most cases. So I certainly kept an eye out to folks like, well, certainly Eugene Victor Debs and people he was affiliated with. Milwaukee, which of course is so close to the little town we grew up in and a tremendous socialist history. Amalcidal, Dan Hone, Frank Cidler, on and on, socialist mayors presided over the city of Milwaukee, I believe until 1962, throughout most of the 20th century up until then. So a lot of socialists, a lot of feminists certainly kept an eye open for feminists. One of the threads that ties the daily progresses together is folks who tried to overcome their own or others oppression certainly applies to feminists. Certainly it does. Of course, there are various versions of the daily progressive out there in the world. And this is Dan Neurhagen's daily progressive that we're dealing with. And if you don't know how to spell Norwegian names, folks, come via northernspiritradio.org and I'll have a link. But it's Neurhagen.com/dndp and that's Dan Neurhagen's daily progressive. That's right. And you'll find that on my site if that's easier for you. Most everybody can spell northern and spirit and radio. And we do it org because it's organic, not commercial. We're not selling them. So what kind of person are you particularly thinking is going to be nourished, sustained, motivated and livened by visiting the progressive? Who are you targeting? Well, you know, we've been kicking around the word progressive, I guess, of necessity quite a bit since we started chatting about this. I guess that sort of goes to, you mentioned why Dan Neurhagen's daily progressive. Why not just call it the daily progressive? Progressive is a very slippery term. It's almost as bad as liberal. Those words mean all kinds of different things to all kinds of different people. And certainly progressive has a great deal of historical baggage. I would assume that people who find the various iterations of progressive parties in American history, congenial, would find many of the people in my collection to be congenial. There were the Bible of Follett Progressives fighting Bible of Follett Sr. of the late 1800s and early 1900s. That was a progressive party. Took on slightly different overtones with Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose progressive party, I believe in 1912. There was the Henry Wallace progressive party of 1848 with which I certainly resonate, I guess, of the bunch. That's probably the one nearest and dearest to my heart. But it's a personal matter. Any time you put together these kinds of lists, everybody's going to have differences of opinion. Who fits the profile? Who doesn't? What's a progressive? What's not? I guess what it comes down to is these are mine. Where are yours? One example comes to mind of somebody who might seem a little less appealing to some of your listeners. I can't remember what the day is on which Mahandis Gandhi was born. But I find it a little bit amusing, a little bit ironic, something that on the same day, Nat Turner was born. So on the same day, we've got one icon who is one of the greatest pacifists, one of the greatest peacemakers, one of the greatest proponents of nonviolence in history. As well as Nat Turner, who's a slaver of all claimed dozens of lives and some of the most horrifying violence possible. And yet, I feel entirely comfortable, including Nat Turner on my list. Not because I find him to be particularly progressive in any normal sense of that word, but I find it very easy to get behind the idea of a slave revolt. Again, when it comes to people who are being oppressed, overthrowing their oppressors, in my mind goodness, what's not to like. As a matter of fact, 304 years ago, the New York slave revolt of 1712 took place. That was one of the early slave revolts in this country. That's something that I commemorated yesterday on the Daily Progress, but I think that's worth mentioning. So obviously, you can include people in who are of very different stripes from one another, some are horizontal, some vertical, and some are black and white and some are chartreuse. I don't know. What kind of litmus test would you have to make sure someone is not included? You know, it's kind of arbitrary. For example, I mentioned that there are a lot of folks associated with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. One comes to mind who just kind of had to exclude, and it wasn't because of any set principle. It was just because of a couple of strikes against the guy. Martin Luther King's best friend, or a guy he called his best friend on many occasions, was Ralph David Abernathy. Well, in my mind, Reverend Abernathy committed a couple of nearly unforgivable myths that Matt came off the list, and I certainly plan to include him. But the fact that he basically betrayed Martin Luther King in a biography he wrote long after King had died really didn't resonate too well with me. He made special mention and really kind of harped on the fact that Dr. King was sometimes involved in meridling infidelities. I think we all know that, and I think it's pretty hard to look too favorably on that, but we all have our faults. We all have our shortcomings. Well, I find it rather appalling. It is the best friend out of his way to make that in his biography. I think a lot of other people did too, a lot of people who were affiliated with the movement. That was one, the other one that absolutely bumped him from the list is the fact that for a variety of reasons, I would think, he saw fit to back Ronald Reagan for President in 1980. To me, that's about as crazy as a person could possibly get. You know, having been involved in some of the great progressive struggles of the 1950s and 60s, the great progressive struggles that I watched from fire and growing up as a kid, then getting behind Ronald Reagan in 1980, you got to be joking me. So, every half of you is not part of the list. On the other hand, I've included a number of people who, you know, don't necessarily fit the profile all that well, but I included for various other reasons. Most of the people, almost everyone of the 366 is somebody I look up to, but not everybody. There is at least one exception. I thought I kind of had to include Samuel Gampers, because you're talking about progressivism in American history and American politics. You're almost always going to end up sooner or later, probably sooner, talking about the labor movement. You end up talking about labor leaders, and it's almost impossible to talk about the history of the American labor movement without talking about Samuel Gampers. He played enormous roles in the late 1800s and early 1900s as a leader of the American Federation of Labor, and yet he was, well, I think it's probably safe to say that he betrayed many if they had most of the basic principles of the labor movement. Even all those years ago in Okinawa, I can dick well as ninth grade history class. I had problems with him ever since, but I thought, what the heck? Let's include him, because he's kind of got to be in there. I mentioned the fact that maybe if we really stretch things, we can find some things to like, but it is a stretch, and I conclude my profile with him with a suggestion that now that we've taken care of that, maybe now let's hang him. I'll better that. I think pretty highly, I just want everybody on the list. I kind of wonder if some people could be on the list because, for say, their first 40 years, they were going in the right direction. Some people take a wrong turn, or maybe they were going the wrong direction until they're, you know, bringing a slave ship over to the United States and have a moment of revelation, and then they turn around. So do you have people on the list that you think are particularly of that stature? Yes, there are those who had a 50s, saw the light, you know, led exemplary lives after having been somewhat less an exemplary in their flip side of that too. People who did very strange things later in life. You're thinking of Darth Vader. Well, maybe not to the dark side of the forest. I mean, what can we say? Some people do that. Well, we didn't limit. So, like I say, you know, some people just, in my mind, were beyond the pale. And that's an example I can think of the latter would be Abernathy. How do you hope or anticipate or wish that people will use Dan Hagen's daily progressive? How will they use it to, what, motivate change? I mean, what's the purpose and what's the mode of using it? Multiple modes, multiple purposes. I would hope that anybody who visits the site would use it in whatever way they happen to find congenial and would probably be different from day to day. Sometimes one's getting one's day underway. A person has a significant amount of time to despair, needs to spend a little time getting the brain engaged. And there are lots of links, obviously, involved in the site. So, there are opportunities to read lots of worthwhile articles on Wikipedia. There are lots of links to books on Amazon. Or if you're in a hurry, use it as a page a day calendar. Read what's there. Take less than a minute to do so and get on with your day. And hopefully, before you take off, you've been given a little food for thought. As far as what the site might accomplish or what it might mean to different people, again, it depends on the person. It depends on the person's circumstances on any given day. For me personally, what it meant more than anything else was an opportunity to hang out with some of the best people the world has ever produced. As I was putting this together, which I did mainly during, you know, I've been working on it for many years. I've been trying to hunt down the people to fill 366 days for probably a dozen years, took me that long to get them all filled. But when I finally got that figured out after about a dozen years or so, I actually sat down and put most of it together late January and throughout the month of February. And many of those days over the course of six or eight weeks or whatever, just ecstatic from the company I was keeping. These are some wonderful people. Going through the world as we know, listening to the evening news or turning the news on the radio or just bumping into people, you know, in our work-a-day world, you run into a lot of people who are not necessarily exemplars, and it's not too hard to find oneself in kind of a sour mood about our species. But in hunting down these exemplars and spending a little time thinking about them and reading about them, I was just thrilled with the company I found myself keeping it, and the site's been up and running for a couple months now, and it's taken me all that couple months to wipe darn smile off my face. Put me in an awful good mood there. And what he's talking about is Van Nierhagen's Daily Progressive. If you don't know how to spell all those words, come via northernspiritradio.org. Because this is Spirit in Action, which is a Northern Spirit Radio production around the web at northernspiritradio.org. With more than ten and a half years of our programs for free listening and download, there's links to our guests, so when you want to get to the Daily Progressive, come via the link on Northern Spirit Radio, there's place for comments, and we love two-way communication. Instead of just listening to me, give us your feedback. You probably have heroes that Dan has been talking about, and that he hasn't yet included on his site. We'd love to see you include them via our site. Also, there's a place where you can make donations for Northern Spirit Radio, and that is crucial because that's how this full-time work is supported. Even more important, though, than supporting Northern Spirit Radio is to support the community radio in your own area. They provide you a slice of news and of music that you get nowhere else on the American airwaves. Remember to start by supporting community radio in your own area. Again, Dan Neurhagen is here. Daily Progressive is what he's talking about. I had him on years ago about the '48er, and he already mentioned that back in 1848, there's a special crop of people who were making the world a better place. Of course, that's what Spirit and Action is all about. And I think that the Daily Progressive, if you tune into it, each day flip it up on your computer, I think you'll find something that'll make your day and the world a little bit better. I'm jumping around a little bit here, Dan, because there's... Well, it looks like Jim Brown was sick with that idea. I'm looking at tomorrow's page right now. Here's what somebody would find if they went to the Daily Progressive tomorrow. To have the pages, Yip Harburg, who was born 120 years ago. For those of you who don't recognize the name Yip Harburg, I guarantee you, you recognize one of his songs. He's a songwriter, and he's the guy who wrote not just somewhere over the rainbow, but I believe all the songs in the Wizard of Oz. He wrote one of the sweetest songs in American history. Well, he also wrote what is very easily argued the sadest song in American history. He wrote, "Brother, can you spare a dime?" If you don't know that one, I'd strongly recommend checking it out on YouTube or wherever. It's something of an anthem for the Great Depression. Mr. Harburg was very much a lefty. If I'm not mistaken, he was blacklisted. He fell afoul of the McCarthyites of Huac. He suffered a great deal under that. Another thing that you'd see for tomorrow's page from the Daily Progressive is this item, the fact that the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution became law 103 years ago yesterday. Now, that was the amendment. I think most people are unaware of this one. That mandated the direct election of U.S. senators. What most people, I believe, are unaware of is that when the founders set things up in the Constitution, U.S. senators were originally to be appointed by the legislatures of the individual states because the founders believed that just in democracy, if anything, they thought of democracy as a necessary evil, something they very definitely believed in was meritocracy. Now, they would not have used that word because it didn't exist then, but that's thereafter. Their hope was that the states, the individual states, would find the best and the brightest people that can possibly be found in each of the states and send those to, you know, use again the word exemplar. You send those two exemplars to Washington, sit in the U.S. Senate. And it was a nice idea in theory. Long story short, it didn't work out very well. So the 70th Amendment, which became law 103 years ago tomorrow, mandated the direct election of U.S. senators. And here again is something that I think is pretty typical of what I've tried to do with the site. You don't need to become a 17th Amendment scholar, if you don't want to, but I think it's something that, or relatively, civically literate Americans should be aware of, should know a little something about. And I also make mention on the page for tomorrow that on the following day, Paul Robison has the birthday. Paul Robison was born 118 years ago on Saturday. And I think he's certainly a fascinating person from the annals of American history that those of us on the left should know about and would find interesting and find particularly compelling. He's also an excellent example of a person who did a lot of things right from a good left-use perspective, but also did a lot of things that weren't so right. For those of you listeners who might not recognize the name Paul Robison, he was an actor, he was an athlete, he was a political activist, he was one of the most tremendously talented and outspoken and vibrant African Americans, in this high profile actor in the American 20th century. Robison, like so many lefties in America affiliated with the Communist Party in the 1920s and 1930s, and with good reason. Many, if not most of those, however, once they became aware of some of the monstrous activities of Joseph Stalin, pulled the plug on that and went in different directions, renounced their associations with the Communist Party, and again with excellent reason. Unfortunately for Paul Robison, he did for a variety of reasons. He remained loyal to Stalin and the Soviet Union long after. It was generally known that really horrible things were taking place in the Soviet Union under Stalin. As a result, his credibility was ruined, his life was ruined, basically. Interesting story though, I mean, certainly not a happy ending, but he's a person that I would think, those of us who consider ourselves progressives or liberals or even just folks who are interested in American history, somebody we should know a little something about. And again, my hope is that somebody who visits the daily progressive won't necessarily become a Paul Robison scholar, but it's easy enough to refresh one's memory, or if nothing else, to click on a link by which you can either read a Wikipedia article about Robison or the other folks I cite or by biography. Again, it's my hope that people who visit the site would use this in whatever way they find King Geno. I think these are some people, these are some things, these are some events that are worth thinking about. You know, I think it's a little bit ironic. I don't know if you've tried to hold these two in your view at the same moment, but one person you disqualify from being part of the daily progressive because he voted for Reagan, and another person who was able to still support Stalin, although doing that from the US has a different sense, and he still gets included. Is there any discomfort in having that kind of a decision made? No, not whatsoever. It seems to be somebody somewhere along the line that said that the foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds or something like that, far be it for me to engage in any foolish consistency. No, of course, there's a little discomfort there, but you know, I have a short memory, so I'm able to shake it off. No, if anything, I feel sorry for Robison. I feel sorry for his folly. To me, when I look at Paul Robison, I think, boy, oh boy, there was a wonderful, just amazing human being who blew it kind of badly at the end and really, really suffered for it. I know that you did a really massive amount of research, Dan, while coming up with this. Well, no, wait a minute. Don't give me credit where no credit is due, Mark, because you can't really call it research. It was more of a 12-year scavenger hunt, to be honest. A very long, difficult scavenger hunt. It took me years and years to define somebody for every day of the year. And I was a pretty darn happy guy when I finally did. Well, Dan, it's one of the things I know about you is that you don't give too much credit where even a large amount of credit is due. I really think this represents a vast amount of insight, research, and the question I had out of that was, is there any particular mind-blowing moments of revelation, eye-opening that you experienced in the course of gathering this material? Is there anything that really your eyes flew open and said, wow, how did I miss that before? Well, sort of, you know, we kind of touched on it earlier. I think it might have been Barbara Erin Reich, who used the word superstar to get at the idea that there are many, many people who've been involved in all kinds of different struggles against oppression. And I think she was speaking specifically about the civil rights movement. And I saw that to a great degree as I was developing this, but it really wasn't just one or two superstars, like Martin Luther King or Medgar Evers or Rosa Parks. They played huge roles. But whether you're talking about the civil rights movement or the workers movements of the 1800s and early 1900s, it wasn't just these big names that we've all heard. There were dozens and hundreds and thousands, tens of thousands of other people playing other kinds of roles who made enormous differences. And it wasn't that there was a great epiphany as I was working through putting the site together, but it was something that kept coming back to me over and over and over again. Look at all these different people, many of whom I'd never heard of before, that had played really significant roles in making some of the most important reforms in America. And that's something I really like about the artificial discipline going by the calendar forced on me. I didn't have the opportunity to look only at superstars. When you get 366 days to fill, you're going to have to go with some of the lesser-known folks as well. And I like that. When I look at the finished product, that's one of my favorite aspects. So it wasn't an epiphany. It wasn't a mind-blowing thing. It was just a steady drumbeat of, well, I've been a lot of fine people who have done a lot of fine things for us. And I feel lucky to have spent a little time thinking about them, reading about them, maybe watching some of their stuff on YouTube or listening to them, whatever. Well, if you didn't have any epiphanies, did you at least have any particularly press of new heroes that emerged as part of this research? No heroes, Mark. Yeah, there are absolutely recent people that I ran into that impressed me that I had never heard of before. Phil, the name of Docs Thrash was one in particular. He's an artist, an African-American artist, unusual name, D-O-X, first name Docs, Thrash, K-H-R-A-S-H. He got some funding through the New Deal, the WPA perhaps, and he was one of several fairly important African-American artists who were responsible for portraying African-Americans in non-stereotypical depictions. We've all seen some of the horrible, racist, monstrous depictions of African-Americans who were popular in American culture in the 1800s and early 1900s. Well, how did we get past some of those monstrous caricatures? Well, it was folks like Docs Thrash. When I stumbled across some of the work he did, I was done for the next couple of days doing any other work because I couldn't leave some of his artwork behind. It was an eye-opener to me. It was inspirational. It was just incredibly captivating. Everybody I ran into had to listen to an earful about Docs Thrash for a couple of days. He blew my mind. And there were others. My background in art is admittedly pretty thin. So as I ran into progressive artists, it was a real pleasant surprise. How many people that I had never heard of who have done great things politically, socially, via the visual arts, which, as they say for me, is kind of an area of weakness. So in reading their stories, not only did I find their biographical facts to be inspirational and some of their accomplishments to be inspirational, it was a real joy for me to see some of their artwork. Well, I know you, Dan, also as a musician, certainly you're not claiming to be one of the front-liners in the field, but- Well, Dan, over mark. But you certainly have deep affection, enthusiasm, passion for music. I do. You've already named one musician who was part of your daily progressive. No, you've got to love Ef Harbor. Absolutely. So can you name some others? Oh, I'll tell you, the first one that comes to mind is Aaron Copeland. He was the left. I think he had some communist affiliations. The guy who wrote "Fanfare for the Cow and Man," "Apple Ancient Spring," "Lincoln Portrait." In my mind, some of the most evocative American music that's ever been written. If Aaron Copeland isn't absolutely at the top of that list, he's got to be mighty close to it. Joan Baez is aware of the fact or many of us are aware of the fact that she played very prominent roles in the civil rights movement, but the extent to which she played those kinds of roles was just extraordinary. I hold her in absolutely the highest possible regard. What a spectacularly fine human being with a spectacularly fine American. Phil Oakes, I guess would be what I would include, not so much for his personal activities, but for some of his lyrics. Joe Hill, the wobbly, IWW songwriter from the early 1900s. There's another one who may have feet of clay. He was executed by a firing squad in Utah, I believe, because he may have been a murderer. We'll probably never know. Probably the greatest labor songwriter, at least in American history, who's ever lived. Almost certainly. And yet, did he kill a guy? Well, maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. We don't know. But he's the one who wrote, there's power in a union. He's the one who wrote Rebel Girl, so many other labor classics. Are there a lot of other musicians who fit the profile? You bet there are all kinds of, no shortage. And again, folks, what we're talking about is Dan Nahagan's Daily Progressive. If you don't know how to spell that, come via northernspiritradio.org. I'll have a link to his site, nirhoggin.com/dndp, Dan Nahagan's Daily Progressive. Amongst other things, Dan, that I'm sure some people would expect would be some of the founding fathers. And some of the founding fathers probably wouldn't match up to your standards. And perhaps people like Thomas Payne. I'm glad you mentioned Thomas Payne. That's absolutely the one that I had first and foremost in my mind. Yeah, I have a little problem with some of the founders. They maybe don't fit the profile in several respects. The fact that a lot of my own slaves really doesn't sit too well with me. The fact that a lot of them were highly privileged, dead white males. A limited amount of enthusiasm for that. And there's also just the simple fact that when I'm using the word progressive here, I am very definitely using it in a more contemporary sense of the word, so that it's a bit of a stretch for me to reach back over the centuries. In a few cases, I absolutely do. But for the most part, I tend not to go back to the 1700s too much. So you wouldn't include a Voltaire or someone in there? I can't remember if I included Voltaire, but I was certainly thinking about it. Yeah, Voltaire, if he's not in there, he certainly could be. Or here's another one. As a matter of fact, his birthday is today, 244 years ago today, and you're the Francophone around here. You can help me with the pronunciation. Charles, how do you pronounce that? The utopian socialist. He was one of the most important socialists who ever lived, maybe as important as Karl Marx. So that certainly goes back aways. As I say, 244 years ago, there are a few. But by and large, I tend not to go back that far. Probably most of my subjects, whether you're talking about the biographical aspect of the site or the events aspect of the site, tend to go back somewhere between 100 and 200 years. For example, again, sticking with today's home page on the daily progressive, the top line icon was Fourier. Top line event was the Free Speech League, which was formerly incorporated 105 years ago today. That's pretty typical of the kind of timeline I'm looking at. Here's a deal with the Free Speech League, you know, read directly from the page. Among its main objectives was eradication of the Comstock Law, which was passed in 1873. The Comstock Law effectively eliminated most contraception options or even the public discussion thereof from America. And it would not be fully expunged until 1965 and 1972. And obviously, I'm going to include a link when I talk about the Comstock Law to an article on Wikipedia. That's something that I think is a fundamental reality of American history in the 19th and 20th century. And yet, most of us haven't heard of it. I had not. It's what made it illegal even to talk about birth control during the early 20th century. And it basically was the law of the land for darn near a century. You know, I actually remember when that was the case. Early 70s in Milwaukee, I heard someone speaking, I can't even remember who he was, but he had been arrested several times over the previous decade for speaking about contraception. The police would be standing there waiting for him to say the rubber pro flag. You just say something and poof, you're going to be put away. So he said to get around that and you certainly couldn't show a contraceptive. Oh, heaven forbid. So what he did was he'd bring a garbage bag, a plastic garbage bag. And he says, well, this is for Tyrannosaurus Rex or something. And they couldn't quite arrest him for showing a garbage bag and talking about that in the Tyrannosaurus Rex. That points to another exemplar who's maybe not such an exemplar, but more of a mixed bag, Margaret Sanger. I would think she probably has to be ranked as the greatest reproductive rights champion in American history because she was running up against the Comstock law all the time in the early 20th century. To found her Planned Parenthood or actually the organization was a forerunner of Planned Parenthood, which is very, very active on behalf of reproductive rights. Well, to make a long story short, there are some other aspects of her career that are not nearly as happy. I mean, some horribly racist stuff, some stuff involving youth in Asia, just monstrous. And plus apparently she was just really unpleasant personally, not somebody who didn't really want to invite to dinner. And yet we have to tip her hat to her because of the way she really laid it on the line on behalf of reproductive rights. So again, a lot of these folks are decidedly mixed bags. I was just looking at one you're talking about is there anybody in particular who really stands out as being terrific. One of the people I'd put at or near the top of my list, I think most of us would be Albert Einstein. I think most of us are aware of the fact that not only was he one of the best known physicists of the 20th century, he was also one of the best known and most outspoken pacifists. He was a socialist. He fits the profile in so many respects. I'm aware of very few aspects of his life or career that would give me pause the way so many aspects of St. Margaret Sanger's life and career might. You know, I wanted to ask you also about some specialties because I am Quaker and because I come from this spiritual point of view, I figure there's a few Quakers. I mean, you've mentioned, I'm Joan Baez and other folks who are obviously included in your list. Mark, the site is filthy with Quakers. I mean, it's just it's a thought filthy with Quakers. Filthy with Quakers. Yeah, it sounds as bad as a binder full of lemon, but inevitably there's going to be a lot of Quakers. It's not that I've set out on it. It's inevitable. You people are into that sort of thing, you know? Well, the group I was going to ask you about, though, because I know that along the way you flirted with them is the UUs, Unitarian Universalists. Just recently I had Frances Moore LePay of Diet for Small Planet Fame on my show, and she told a great story about how when she was early elementary age growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, she went to church with a friend and then came home and asked her folks, you know, "What's Hellfire in Brimstone?" And her parents were just gassed with what their daughter's mind might get poisoned with, so they went about starting up the first Unitarian church down there so that there would be a counterbalance for Frankie. Point is, I know a lot of great UUs, and I wonder if any of them are in the daily progressive. Absolutely. First day of the year was James Reed. He's a UU minister, I think, from Massachusetts. I'm not sure I'd have to look it up, but it went down. You know, when there were three Selma to Montgomery marches, the first two didn't make it, and the third one finally did. So that whole thing played itself out over the course of, I think, several weeks in Alabama. It was a '65, maybe. In the midst of that, Martin Luther King kind of put out a call. After the first one was turned back, after the nightmare at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Martin Luther King put out a call to the country, come to Alabama. Terrible things happen in here, and we need to rally down here and change what's happening. One of the people who answered that call was James Reed. He ended up on the wrong end of a two-by-four. Some racist literally beat his brains out. He died in the process. If you want to read something or hear something, really particularly riveting, look up Martin Luther King's eulogy for James Reed. It's one of the most powerful things I've ever read. I would put James Reed at the top of that list. And he was a Unitarian? Minister. January 1st was his birthday. Again, we're talking about Dan Nuhaugan's Daily Progressive, nuhaugan.com/dndp. If that's all too complicated for you to come by in OrtonSpiritRadio.org, get your daily dose of inspiration. I think that at very least, if they're not heroes, they're at least inspiring. They're going to be food for our imagination of what we could do to make this world better and appreciation for the folks who've gotten us as far as we have gotten. I like the way you put that. And you're going to find that on Dan's site. He does a lot of other good work that we won't deal with now, but hopefully we can maybe go out with a song that Dan's performing because that's another one of his talents besides his scholarship and besides his insight, all of those which I attribute to him in spades. Again, Dan, it's just wonderful what you've brought together here. Every day of the year, there's no reason to lack for inspiration because of your calendar that you've put together. Thank you for putting together the website and for leading us into a better future. Thanks for joining me for spirit and action. Well, it's been my pleasure, Mark. Thank you so much for having me. I've enjoyed talking to you as always. Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed my visit with Dan as much as I have. And if so, you might want to check out the NortonSpiritRadio.org website for some bonus excerpts that I just couldn't fit into this broadcast. Also, because Dan Nairhagen is a modest man, you may just not know that he's quite musical and among the songs he plays is one he mentioned in conjunction with Yip Harburg's birthday. Brother, can you spare a dime? So, I thought I'd play you out with a portion of Dan's recording of that. This is all Dan, guitar, harmonica, and vocals. If you've got extra change, why don't you buy a book or donate to NortonSpiritRadio or support your local community radio station? Or even just help your neighbor and we'll see you next week for spirit and action. ♪ They used to tell me I was building a dream ♪ ♪ And so I followed the mile ♪ ♪ When there was earth to plow or guns to bear ♪ ♪ I was always there right on the job ♪ ♪ They used to tell me I was building a dream ♪ ♪ With peace and glory ahead ♪ ♪ Why should I be standing in line ♪ ♪ Just waiting for bread ♪ ♪ Once I built a railroad made it run ♪ ♪ Made it race against time ♪ ♪ Once I built a railroad now it's done ♪ ♪ Brother can you spare a dime? ♪ ♪ Once I built a tower to the sun ♪ ♪ Brick and rivet and line ♪ ♪ Once I built a tower now it's done ♪ ♪ Brother can you spare a dime? ♪ ♪ Maggie Suze ♪ The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World" performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. ♪ With every voice ♪ ♪ With every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ With every voice ♪ ♪ With every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ You