Reading Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste provides a foundational perspective to address the questions about Trumpism. As indicated by the subtitle, The Origins of Our Discontents, her work is an etiology, a search for origins and causes. We live in a time of deep social discontent. To understand the origins of our discontents, Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste should be required reading.
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How novel to be together, scattered safely across Jean’s yard on Oly’s Westside, potting up perennials once again. It’s our annual plant sale to raise money for scholarships for students in our sister town of Santo Tomás, Chontales Nicaragua. Every weekend from mid-March through April, masked volunteers will be chatting…
Working single moms in the pandemic: One thing has become clear over the past year, the pandemic didn’t affect everyone equally.
This dam idea isn’t new Although I’ve lived and worked in the Chehalis Basin for fifteen years, I did not experience the 2007 and 2009 floods first hand. But I vividly remember the footage of catastrophic property damage: dead cattle and images of people and their families devastated by the floods.…
Can we heed the lessons of the past? On March 16 the United Kingdom that it will increase the limit on its nuclear arsenal for the first time in decades. Instead of maintaining a cap of 180 warheads (as it had previously stated), the UK will increase its stockpile cap…
Washington state has two potential tracks toward a 21st century rail future, with starkly different outcomes. One provides higher speed, climate-friendly passenger service linking as many as 13 communities on the Cascadia corridor, with increased capacity for freight trains. It has been in development since 1991 and some elements have…
Like most private corporations, railroad companies are continuously trying to do the same work with fewer employees. In the case of freight trains, the goal has been to get down to a single crew member running an entire train. Automation can take care of the rest. The goal would have…
Poor Peoples’ Campaign • Military Affairs Meeting • South Sound Food System Network • Pizza Klatch Annual Gayla • Purple Martin Monitoring Training • Healing destructive divisions • Solarize Thurston • Working with Local Government • Weekly Peace Vigils • Olympia Coalition to Abolish Nuclear Weapons • Trans & Nonbinary Gender Health Clinic • Thurston Conservation District
Providence slashes tech unit workers’ sick leave benefit Providence Health System, one of the country’s richest hospital chains, has eliminated sick leave for workers in its nine tech units at St. Peter Hospital. To protect this and other benefits, the technicians have unionized and are represented by UFCW 21. They…
This month’s theme is what’s been revealed by the pandemic. If you’ve ever been played in a shell game, you know things move very fast. You think you know where the hidden object will be when the shells stop moving, but you almost never do. Sometimes, there’s nothing under any of the shells...
West Bay Yards West Bay Yards Development Project was initially presented to Olympia’s Community Planning and Development staff (CP&D) in May. At a “presubmission conference” the architect provided 19 pages of detail, including a site plan, designs showing the location of all elements of the project, numerous renditions of the…
They should have had Olympia SWAT at the Capitol … More homeless in the making … Cancel culture comes in handy!
I’m torn between Merlot and Chardonnay—those houses in that new Lennar development behind the Auto Mall. I mean, they both have the Shaker-style wood cabinets with crown molding. All the bathrooms have the elongated comfort seat toilets. And a whole list of other luxury features. There is one difference—would it…
WIP has received a grant to print book reviews in 2021. How will it work? Each month we’ll publish a list of books (listed below). If you’d like to be considered to review one of them, contact us at olywip@gmail.com and put BOOK REVIEW in the subject line. We will…
This was Anne Feeney’s theme song. The singer and labor activist who was a familiar face and voice in the South Sound, died February 6 of COVID 19, at age 69.
A reinvigorated safety and health (S&H) movement is taking on the long historic injustice of work-related illness, injury and death. It’s also digging deep into structured inequality to reveal the race/class/gender discrimination that shapes that inequality in both small and screamingly obvious ways...
Now that the campaign to vaccinate the planet for COVID-19 is well underway, news of effective, affordable treatments—and deterrents—is finally coming to light. Studies on ivermectin, colchecine and hydroxychloroquine, published in the US, Spain, India, Iran, Egypt, Argentina and elsewhere indicate that these drugs, used prophylactically and in early and…
In Olympia’s City Manager system, Council members exercise little direct control over decisions that shape the City and its neighborhoods. The Council delegates land turnover decisions to the City staff. The Council states they can’t interfere in the planning process. They send citizens to the Hearing Examiner who reinforces staff decisions.…
On January 17, the Olympia community came together to clean up a tent encampment adjacent to Marathon Park by Capitol Lake. The camp had been devastated by a recent storm that left belongings and trash scattered all around. Leaders of several activist groups jumped in to help support the folks living in the encampment....
Early in February, some of the wet, cold people living outside in Olympia tried to take rooms in the downtown Red Lion, aided and encouraged by activists from Oly Housing Now. Staff members of the hotel fled to the basement and called the police....
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in November of last year issued new mitigation requirements for nearshore developments — like West Bay Yards, for example. The opinion includes significant increases in mitigation necessary to protect juvenile chinook salmon and the Southern Resident Killer Whale from extinction.
Last summer George Floyd, many others, and the BLM movement reminded us that we haven’t made much progress against racism worldwide or locally over the last several hundred years, or maybe forever. Corporations rushed to cloak themselves in noble statements about their support of Black Lives Matter and the value of…
MOVIE REVIEW: Kiss the Ground, a documentary, now screening on Netflix, is a breath of fresh air among the constant bad news about climate change. Not only is it highly informative and educational, it also reveals a plausible solution to the global warming crisis.
The Community Sustaining Fund (CSF) provides grants to support progressive, community-oriented projects across Thurston County. Their goal is to empower individuals and organizations that advance social justice, environmental health, and community activism. For over 30 years, the CSF grants have supported local innovation and creative collaboration potential....
Trump is out and Biden is in. Where do we go from here, in combating the cancer of Trumpism and working to transform our society in a socialist direction?
Growing up with tales of the American Dream pouring out of books, TV, and radio so steadily that the psyches of many young Americans are imbued with the belief that if you worked hard, you would grow-up to be a successful adult—owning a home and having a spouse, 2.5 children, and a dog—or a close variation.
The OlyDSA DefundOPD committee has been researching and organizing around cutting the police budget, reinvesting in community and increasing accountability. They reviewed 19 bills related to policing in the legislative session, and identified this annotated list of bills to support.