Posts published in “Uncategorized”

The best place to see Moxlie Creek is on the loop trail in Watershed Park. Moxlie Creek starts out as an artesian spring at the southern end of the park. As it flows through the park northward towards Budd Inlet, the creek is joined by more springs and groundwater from…

EJ Zita’s re-election campaign motto is:  Port for the People. She wants a Port that represents the people of Thurston County and works for them.  Since taking office as Port Commissioner in 2014—an election that was cheered as a triumph for the people of Thurston County—Zita has been working to…

Do Your Homework. Recognize that the Right is a complex movement. No one organization “controls” the Right. No single funder is “behind” the Right. Some large organizations are important, but many others appear to be more influential than they really are. Recognize that there are multiple networks of organizations and…

YWCA Olympia held their first annual Racial Justice Summit on May 6, 2017.  As the issue of racism in our community has become more broadly known and discussed, the Summit’s “Intent vs. Impact” theme proved to be a timely focus. Before the November election, YWCA Olympia began cataloging the escalating…

As I venture back from the bad lands of the prison system a fortunate survivor of police brutality, and hostage of a tyrannical judicial system, I dream of an American with less state and federal laws that govern the lives and social conduct of the American peoples. As the thin…

Lebanon has banned the blockbuster movie Wonder Woman, featuring the former Israeli soldier Gal Gadot. Gadot, who plays the lead role in the movie, served in the Israeli army during the bombing of Lebanon in 2006. The attack on Lebanon  killed 1,200 civilians, a third of them children, during a 34-day…

In the winter of 1992, national news services ran a story of about a house that was perched precariously on the edge of Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. The pale, yellow modernist house sat on the beautiful sandstone cliff, like enchanted aerie in a city beloved for its steep hills.…

“Not my fault” On May 31, Hillary Clinton did the unthinkable. She added her own party to the list of those she blamed for her loss to Donald Trump. According to Hillary the DNC’s “was bankrupt”, “on the verge of insolvency”, and its data was inadequate. And she didn’t stop…

A case of beer. Around midnight on May 21, 2015, two men carrying skateboards attempted to steal a case of beer from the Safeway at Cooper Point Road in Olympia. Confronted by a clerk, they threw the case toward her and ran out of the store. Two Olympia police officers…

Thank you to all of our allies who rallied in support of water protectors fighting DAPL in North Dakota. We are now in need of that same spirit of activism in our very own Thurston County, which is facing several issues related to water quality and use. We need YOU to…

We who will march together, on the day of June 3rd, from Heritage Park in Olympia to the Capitol steps, seek to proclaim and invoke Peace, Unity, and Solidarity with every being’s right to Freedom of Religion and Sacred Clean Water. Therefore, we have elected to gather in Harmony in Order…

Late in 2016, the Thurston County Board of Commissioners passed a new plan to manage septic systems. It would have assessed a flat $10 annual fee on septic systems throughout the county to fund education, monitoring for contaminants and data collection. This January, a new set of county commissioners was…

Mount Vernon, WA — A Washington state judge has ruled that Ken Ward, a climate activist who who helped to temporarily block the flow of tar sands oil from Canada to the United States in an October protest, cannot present the climate necessity defense at his trial scheduled to begin…

My name is Bill Fishburn, and I’m running for Port Commissioner. I was born and raised in Spokane. My mom is from Panama, and my dad was an electrician for the railroad, and member of IBEW for more than 20 years. I’ve been married for more than 26 years, and…

Olympia community organizer Renata Rollins announced her candidacy today for Olympia City Council Position 6. Her campaign asks, “Where Can We Go?” and will focus on embracing what’s possible during times of transition. “In Olympia we face rising population, rising home prices, rising rents, rising homelessness and rising sea levels,”…

Assad’s Chemical Weapon? Dear WIP: In his article in the May 2017 issue of Works in Progress, Peter Bohmer claims that “there is close to but not 100-percent  proof” that Assad carried out the recent sarin attack on Khan Shaykhun in Syria. He further suggests that “those who deny or cast doubt…

In recent weeks, students at the Evergreen State College have engaged in an escalating number of protests culminating in the occupation of the campus library on Wednesday, May 24. The protests focused on specific incidents of mistreatment of students of color on the campus, and more broadly on continuing, unaddressed…

A letter to the community As the smoke from May Day clears, we hear many people asking, why? Why did what happened happen? We also hear many people throwing around baseless accusations and assumptions: it was a bunch of angry white men, there was no message, they weren’t really anarchists,…

What is success? Is it beating down a corporate opponent or outshining another human being in the game of life? Is it to become a CEO of a mega corporation that makes huge amounts of money, yet devastates our environment? Is it being the head of a company like Boeing…

Olympia’s sonic-art enthusiasts prepare to host another round of experimental sound performances at the 23rd Annual Olympia Experimental Music Festival June 23 to 25. The Festival calls upon 24 diverse experimental music projects to grace Olympia’s downtown for a full weekend of unpredictable audio-visual adventure. “It’s about allowing for whatever…

I watched an edition of Frontline on the computer last night. Normally, this is an excellent series. This edition was about fish as a food source. They got a few things right. We raise salmon in nets and feed them ground up anchovetas from Peru. As it would probably be…

The six residents chained themselves to a piece of machinery called an auger that was located on the 30-acre private property. By 5:40 am the residents had already locked down and settled into their positions on the property, walking right through the front gates, which were not bound by any…

For the better part of a year, I’ve been sharing essays and poems about poetry’s prismatic capacities to cast light on how humans live in a dominant culture depleted of deep meaning. I’ve shared how poetry connects us in time and space to historic events like the Pulse nightclub shootings,…

A polar bear paid me to protest. Don’t be a fossil fool. There is no Planet B. Separate oil and state. Shit is meltin’. If the environment was a bank, It would be saved already. May the facts be with you. Give bees a chance. Air pollution Is a chemical…

for Kabby Mitchell III, (1956-2017)   In Seattle at the Quality Inn off Aurora and John, I greet an elder brother with a particular train cap perched on his head, a Pullman porter whose stepped out of time while we wait to ride the elevator with my grief and gratitude…

a poem in prose… Might the “J” stand for jack-ass? O.J was acquitted of murder for the same reason Trump was elected. In the former instance black people were taken advantage of, the community was used as leverage to instill fear, O.J. escaped an otherwise certain fate and went free; not because of any…