This is the Tom Hartman program.

Good morning, everybody.

There is not important caravan news about Better Orrourke funding the caravan.

There is not important Hillary Clinton email and Anthony Wiener news.

There is not important virus news. All of those pieces of news

were only news in the run-ups to their respective elections. But there is news about recounts, the Florida recount. There is news

about what is happening in political reform. There is also news about the fight for who will be the next

speaker of the house, but I also want to say this. She came to Oregon in a hippie van. She stayed to raise a child. My brother Jonathan helped raise a bunch of others, including me.

She was an advocate for countless more as a social worker,

activist, and leader. She chaired the Democratic Party of Oregon through

perhaps its greatest period of growth. And for many of us, Meredith Wood Smith

offered an alternative and better model of leadership.

From foster kids to friends finding their way to far-flung political party activists, she made all of us feel valued. In a fractured

and fractious world, she made it clear that we belong. And two weeks ago, after a three-year battle with cancer, she passed. She was

surrounded by family and in the end it came quickly. Wanting to dedicate my participation in this show today to her memory

and to every hippie activist who has kept working

to make the world a little more just, a little more welcoming.

If you track the rise and passing of the hippie movement

with the beginning and end of the Vietnam War,

people can have a different definition of the era.

And as a sweet spot age of hippies was 15 to 25 years old,

that would tell us that the youngest hippies are in their late 50s,

...