Posts published in “Uncategorized”

  Matt and Kteeo discuss the experience of federal incarceration at FDC SeaTac After five months in prison, Matt Duran and Kteeo are finally free. They were released February 27th, after a long legal battle, being held in detention without actually being charged for a crime, and living through over…

Karl Haro von Mogel of Biofortified.org, leader in Green Gene Movement  Editorial note: This article does not necessary represent the views of Works In Progress or of its members. It is presented to WIP readers as a differing perspective in hopes of encouraging discussion/debate on this important topic. Very few public…

Monday 11 March 2013, Olympia—Workers at Providence St. Peter Hospital went on strike. They have been without a contract since July, when talks broke down, mostly due to major changes in their health care benefits. Costs have gone up drastically, especially for people with chronic conditions. The new contract proposed…

  I would like to apologize to Works In Progress readers for an incorrect statement I made in the article “The Truth About GMOs”, published in the February online version of WiP. In my list of what we know about GMO’s I made the following statement: “The USDA Organic label ensures that the…

Press Release for March 1st, 2013 Re:  OMJP (Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace) organizes in response to the homeless crisis—hosts a Homeless Solidarity Rally & Community Pizza Party, builds an emergency shelter, and installs Olympia’s only 24 hour public restroom at the downtown artesian well. Attention! Our community is…

On Saturday, March 16th, Olympia will mark the 10th anniversary of Rachel’s stand in Gaza. It has been an extraordinary and challenging journey for the Rachel Corrie Foundation, for the Corrie family, and for those in our community and beyond who have worked tirelessly for justice and peace in Palestine/Israel,…

  Into the Light Walk – A walk for gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation equality  Since May 31, 2011 Alan Bounville has walked from Seattle, Washington, pushing a cart of his belongings. On the cart are two rainbow-colored signs that read, “Full Equality NOW!” He’s walked every step…

“Hats off to the 160 victorious strikers at United Natural Foods who withstood nine weeks on the picket line in freezing weather to defend their right to decent wages and union representation,” announced Patrick Burns, a spokesman for Organized Workers for Labor Solidarity (OWLS). Teamsters Local 117, representing the United…

Ed. note: The following is testimony given February 7 before the Washington Legislature on HB 1342, which would expand education opportunities in the WorkFirst program from one years to two. In support of HB 1342 As a single mother who has participated in the WorkFirst program, I can say that…

While there have been a wide range of responses to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut that took place last December, few have looked to have an impact on our community. At The Evergreen State College, the student group Police Awareness and Student Safety (PASS) asked the…

  Madrid, Spain–Thousands of people marched yet again down the main avenues of Madrid on Saturday evening, February 16, 2013. As the protestors turned from the grand Paseo de Recoletos into the more narrow confines of the Gran Via, their chant of “Si Se Puede!” boomed off the buildings in…

  On July 1, 2009 Albany International announced in the Puget Sound Business Journal that it intended to close its Tumwater manufacturing plant at 5700 Littlerock Rd. Two months later, at the end of August, they closed it. Thirty years of manufacturing history ended. The average length of work per…

  It has been exactly five weeks since I left Montana in a tiny and loud Toyota Tercel to catch a flight out of San Francisco.  That also means I’ve been in Mexico for exactly four weeks, and the country has, for the most part, ceased to feel strange.  I’ve…

  Community can’t exist without the commons. Where will we commune? The rise of capitalism began with the enclosure movement, the removal of peasants from the land they worked and shared—the destruction of the commons. In the current situation in which we find ourselves there is no more communal land.…

  According to Jesus, the only way to get to Heaven is to treat ‘the least of those amongst us’ the same way that you would treat Jesus Himself — with the understanding that Jesus Himself was also the Son of God.  [Matthew 25:40] According to this standard, the Olympia…

As an integral part of Olympia’s celebration of Earth Day, it has a very “fragile” life The Procession of the Species, Olympia’s yearly one-of-a-kind celebration of the natural world, held in conjunction with Earth Day and Arts Walk, is in preparation for its 19th year of both joyful revelry and…

Photo by Alessio Maffeis via Creative Commons In the terms of apple history the Granny Smith is a recent creation. The first known record of Granny Smith propagation dates back to 1886, where Maria Ann “Granny” Smith selectively bred a European red apple (malus domestica) with a European crab apple…

On Sunday February 17, over two hundred protesters gathered at Heritage Park in solidarity with climate-justice protests held across the nation. Protests in Washington D.C. drew an estimated 50,000 people for a rally organized by 350.org, Sierra Club, and the Hip-Hop Caucus. Many participants at the Olympia rally signed petition…

Olympia’s new ordinance targeting the homeless became effective on Friday, 2-8-13. It not only effectively criminalizes the homeless for ‘camping’ (sleeping) on public city property, but prohibits the possession/carrying of camping paraphernalia. e.g. tents, sleeping bags, tarps, canteens, cooking/eating utensils, and sticks. On February 8th, homeless advocates and a few…

  I recently saw a photo of a little girl holding a sign protesting the presence of GMO’s in her food supply.  It said “I am not a science experiment.” The next thought I had was, “well, unless we totally feed ourselves from what we grow and raise at our…

On July 1, 2009 Albany International announced in the Puget Sound Business Journal that it intended to close its Tumwater manufacturing plant at 5700 Littlerock Rd. Two months later, at the end of August, they closed it. Thirty years of manufacturing history ended. The average length of work per employee…

What the heck are all these Indians acting all Indian about, eh? Lately, Native people have taken to the streets malls in demonstrations of Public Indian-ness (or “PI”) that surpasses the sheer volume of activism of even Alcatraz and the Longest Walk. There’s a heapum big amount of PI going…

  I have a dear friend who is the son of a Bracero. He was born in the United States in the 1960s but his father never became a citizen, even after he married into a family with deep roots north of the border—a family heritage that predates the existence…

  Concrete measures are needed to back up a new law aimed at guaranteeing the rights of victims of crime and human rights abuses in the ongoing violence resulting from the struggle against organized crime in Mexico, Amnesty International said. To read the rest of this article, follow the link…

MOST REGRETTABLY, as this issue goes to Press, there is (again) NO new noteworthy (nor very sexy) ‘NEWS’ to report, regarding the spellbinding case of “the State of Washington vs. Scott Andrew Yoos”! Scott is remains a harmless WIPworker, who assists in the editing and distribution of this most noteworthy…

Scott Silber is the former organizing director of Colorado’s public workers’ union and served as lead faculty at the Youth Organizing Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development. Since 1994 his campaigns—in three dozen states and four continents to date—continue to add to a community-based…