This year, Olympia can seize the rare opportunity to address income inequality, increase revenue, and fund higher education for our community. The initiative, Opportunity for Olympia, would provide at least one year of community college tuition, or the equivalent towards public, in-state university tuition for all high school graduates or…
Posts published in “Uncategorized”
After all the lessons history has taught us, people unthinkingly continue to trample the rights of their neighbors. Doing the right thing requires effort to learn what the right thing is. The struggle of any working people is a concern for all working people. On May first, while all the…
Ten years ago this month, a boycott against Ralph’s and Bayview began after numerous Olympia women had prescriptions for Plan B refused at Ralph’s Pharmacy. Despite more than 20 complaints filed with the Board of Pharmacy, dozens of protests outside the store, the promulgation of state pharmacy regulations guaranteeing patient…
Is the system working? Editorial note: The following is approved as a statement from the local Green Party. Bernie Sanders has proposed the most progressive program we have heard in many years, including more taxes for the rich, taxes on Wall Street transactions, reducing the size of banks, free college…
“In time of crisis, we summon up our strength.” So begins the introduction to poet, activist, and journalist Muriel Rukeyser’s 1949 manifesta The Life of Poetry....
Social Justice: We oppose systemic global injustice and poverty. We seek universal health care, fair payment for work, equitable drug laws and corrections to many other wrongs that exist today. Grassroots Democracy: The influence of big business and big government combined is undermining genuine democracy. To help overcome this, we…
Tacoma – Imagine that you had to flee from your own country to a completely new place to find a new job. Once you got settled into the country, you ran a red light or made an illegal left turn. For most Americans, and especially for most white Americans, this…
Bingen, WA – Insitu is a local Washington subsidiary of Boeing, whose main purpose is to produce ScanEagle drones, which provide intelligence to the U.S. Army in countries like Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan—specifically the province of Waziristan. Schools, hospitals, and neighborhoods have been attacked by the larger Boeing X-45,…
Wendy Tanowitz went to the hearing in Longview Tuesday, May 24, in which officials from Cowlitz County and Ecology heard testimony on the DEIS for the proposed expansion of the Millenium Bulk Terminal. Thousands were in attendance. She took the following photos. According to Sarah Grothjan and Marissa Luck of…
Tacoma Author: Let me tell you a bit about my book, and why I wrote it....
What do we do when storm clouds well up and are about to wreak havoc on our lives? The ultimate storm clouds are welling up for not only human lives, but all life on this planet as we spew carbon dioxide, methane, and countless other man-created chemicals into the atmosphere…
Is it because I’m an idiot? (See previous poem entitled “I’m An Idiot) Key word: entitled (sic?) Or is it that I’m a racist, sexist, bigot? No, were life so simple… I’m afraid the dimple that belies my smirk Does not suggest I am a crazy jerk But that I’m…
Bryophyte property rights and pressure-washers By Liza Rognas A caution to those planning their annual trip to the chemically noisome, noxious, aisles of the nearest box-store to buy the stuff that kills-the-moss-in-lawn-grass: Don’t do it! Anti-moss chemicals poison humans, aquifers, and soil. They harm critters we see, and those we…
By Carole Willey Mental Health Awareness Month (MHAM) is followed by July 7– 15 known around the world as MAD PRIDE Week and during October the US celebrates the Disability Awareness Month and assigns the first week Mental Illness Awareness Week. Many Washington mental health consumers are totally unaware of…
By Carole Willey The 1999 Mental Health Quality Review Team Report found 68 percent of those surveyed had their rights violated in involuntary hospitalizations, known as a civil commitment—substantive constitutional procedural due process violations—civil rights violations. I founded the Crossroads to Change Campaign to expose these violations and work towards…
(with a tip of the hat to Col. Alvin Thomas, USA ret.) They said I did a felony / ‘though I weren’t the one to blame At trial I met my lawyer / she didn’t hardly know my name The jury and the judge appeared to spacerate and snooze But…
Quercetin, lovage, and eggs By Liza Rognas “Egg!!” The pride and certainty of the high, delighted, voice delivering this pronouncement demanded I lift my eyes from the Tugboat Annie’s menu in my hand and meet the triumphant ones of the young child beaming at me over the high back of the…
Sanders vs. Clinton By Emily Lardner WHERE DO THEY STAND? Hillary Clinton Bernie Sanders Agree climate change is a problem Yes Yes Support a carbon tax Hasn’t said Yes Refuse campaign contributions from fossil fuel industry No Yes Oppose fracking To some extent Yes Oppose Arctic drilling Yes Yes Oppose…
The shadows framing the wall and slanting on the ceiling reveal more than I can see with all their revealing. The branches of the trees are stark, crisp, inviting me to reach out, hold on, ride like a trapeze artist, swing. This is my first midnight movie in this intimate…
This is a speech Dan gave before the Washington State Council of Fighters' Educational Convention in Spokane on April 20, 2016....
The Thurston-Santo Tomás Sister County Association (TSTSCA) has hosted numerous community exchanges as part of our sister city relationship with Santo Tomás, Chontales, Nicaragua. Since 1988, over 150 people from Thurston County have visited Santo Tomás, and 31 tomasin@s have visited Olympia. Sometimes always they include learning about reality on…
By Erika Takeo During April 22-24, 2016, Marlen Sánchez and Nils McCune of the Nicaraguan Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (ATC, or Rural Workers Association), will visit Olympia as part of a West Coast speaking tour. Agroecology, a form of low-input, politicized, sustainable agriculture, is seen as a key pillar to…
I was born in Kentucky on a dark and stormy night My daddy bit the cord in half and I commenced to fight And when I learned to understand, my Mama, she would say Just you be a good boy, son, and life will be o.k. Then I passed twelve…
By Liza Rognas Remember when you were a teenager in a life-sciences class where genetics was first explained to you using Mendel’s experiments with peas? We all learned about dominant and recessive genes and their manipulation, producing hybrids. Genetic manipulation explained why Mendel could produce different colors of peas and pea…
GMA’s PAC made $222,245 in political contributions at the federal level in 2014—63 percent to Republicans and 37 percent to Democrats—according to the Center for Responsive Politics. According to the Sunlight Foundation, the top recipient of GMA political contributions from 1989 through the second quarter of 2014 was Democratic Senator…
Language matters. How we name things, how we describe things, the things we choose talk and write about—all of those choices shape the shared world of meaning in which we live. It’s not that language creates our material reality, as I argued with a student last quarter....