This special episode of Notes of the Week is structured as back-to-back interviews with two progressive congressional candidates: Chris Armstrong, running in Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District against incumbent Tom Tiffany, and Abel Chavez, running in California’s 48th — the seat just vacated by 26-year incumbent Darrell Issa after the passage of Prop 50. Nick Paro and Walter Rhein host alongside guest co-host Eevie Bateman, a former early-childhood-education director and full-time writer who joined to help boost grassroots candidates. The through-line of the conversation is the same in both halves: the Democratic Party’s “electability” frame is broken, the new generation of candidates wins by being present and direct with voters, and the existing legacy media will not give that work oxygen — independent media has to.
Armstrong, an enterprise architect and IT consultant from St. Croix County, makes the technocracy fight personal. He argues for federal-level taxation on tech billionaires (“let me hold the door open” if they threaten to leave), for permitting regulations that ban data center NDAs after Wisconsin municipalities discovered local councils were being kept in the dark on multi-billion-dollar deals, and for treaty-law-based environmental protection citing the 1854 ceded territories and the seven federally recognized tribes inside CD7. Armstrong is running as part of a collaborative slate with Ginger Murray and Fred — explicitly refusing to attack his primary opponents because the goal is to flip the seat. Eevie introduces a Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath finding that Gen Z is the first generation in 60+ years to underperform their parents cognitively, with the inflection point at the 2010 introduction of classroom technology, and Armstrong agrees regulation is essential — particularly around children, data centers, and the AI bubble.
Chavez’s pitch is procedurally specific in a way most candidates never get to. He won an all-red school board seat against a GOP incumbent who outspent him 10-to-1 by sending color-coded mailers (red for Republican households, blue for Democratic, identical message), then was elected school board president by his four Republican colleagues by picking battles strategically. He passed the first school bond in 17 years — tens of millions of dollars — by running a community survey first so residents themselves asked for the increase. His congressional platform is concrete: cap class sizes at 24, build a trades building in every high school, fund schools by federal allocation tied to enrollment with rich-district property tax overflow funding poor-district baselines, hire school psychologists instead of school resource officers, and refuse all corporate, foreign-lobby, and AIPAC money. Both candidates close on the same point: this is winnable if the party stops protecting incumbents who can fundraise but won’t fight, and if independent media keeps building the coverage legacy outlets refuse to provide.
Visit and support both campaigns directly. Chris Armstrong’s site is armstrongforwisconsin.com; Abel Chavez’s site is abelchavezforcongress.com. Both candidates are funded primarily by small-dollar grassroots donations and refuse foreign-lobby money. If you can’t vote for them, you can fund them, share them, or volunteer remotely — Armstrong’s 7th District covers ~57% rural northern Wisconsin and Chavez is running in CA-48 with a Spanish-bilingual platform.
Track the Wisconsin data center NDA fight. Armstrong reports that Wisconsin municipalities entered non-disclosure agreements with data center developers without informing local councils or residents, that legislation is moving through the still-Republican state legislature to ban this practice, and that many proposed developments have been paused or canceled after public pushback. This is a bipartisan issue — verify how it’s playing in your state and demand the same prohibitions on local-government NDAs with private developers.
Read the Horvath testimony on classroom technology and Gen Z cognition. Eevie cites Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath’s congressional testimony documenting a sharp 2010 inflection point in cognitive measurements for children — attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive functioning — correlating with the introduction of classroom devices. Look up the testimony, compare it against your own school district’s tech-in-classroom policy, and bring it to your next school board meeting.
Push school board meetings toward citizen-initiated agenda items. Chavez points out that school board members are barred by procedure from responding to public comment, which makes the three-minute public-comment slot largely performative. Advocate for a community-petition pathway — a fixed signature threshold (30, 40, 50) that forces a board vote on a constituent-proposed item — as a structural reform in your district.
Stop accepting “but they can win” as a Democratic primary argument. Both Armstrong and Chavez are running against opponents — and against an internal party logic — that treats fundraising totals as proof of electability. Armstrong’s response is collaborative slates that don’t attack each other; Chavez’s response is refusing AIPAC, corporate PAC, and stock-trading money entirely while still raising near $480,000. Pressure your local Democratic Party to evaluate primary candidates on platform and proximity to voters, not on the size of their super PAC.
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I’m Nick Paro, and I’m sick of the shit going on. So, I’m using poetry, podcasting, and lives to discuss the intersections of chronic illness and mental wellbeing, masculinity, veteran’s issues, politics, and so much more. I am only able to have these conversations, bring visibility to my communities, and fill the void through your support — this is a publication where engagement is encouraged, creativity is a cornerstone, and transparency is key — please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and grow the community!.