Posts published in “Uncategorized”

The recent US Senate election in Alabama focused some attention on the fact that “felons” (or at least some felons) in Alabama) can—and did—vote.   If you want to  see who these people might be, to find out what makes a person a felon—or what crime constitutes a felony—don’t expect any…

Governor Inslee has 60 days to approve or reject an application by the Tesoro oil company to build the nation’s largest crude oil export terminal on the Columbia River at the Port of Vancouver. Over the past four years, a potent, on-the-ground coalition led by the SW Sierra Club and…

There will be countless opinion polls and number crunching about why and how it happened that Roy Moore was defeated in Alabama last night. But just like last year, crucial lessons will be missed unless we take the long view. The Ordinary Peoples Society Pastor Kenneth Glasgow, Director of The…

“It’s often said of the Trump era that the Republic has drifted into uncharted waters, but the more damning estimation is that we are mindlessly revisiting some of the darker regions of our historical map.” Jelani Cobb Jelani Cobb’s December 2017 article in the New Yorker Magazine compares this era…

Reprinted with permission from Truth-out.org Thirty-eight years ago, on November 3, 1979, 35 heavily armed members of the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party drove nine vehicles through the city of Greensboro, North Carolina, and opened fire on a multiracial group of demonstrators who were gathering at a Black…

On November 18, 2017 activists in Olympia, Washington erected a blockade to halt trains delivering chemicals to the oil fracking fields along the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), the epicenter for last year’s struggles at Standing Rock. The encampment lasted for twelve days until a heavily armed police force dislodged it.…

Anti-gentrification movements exist in a multitude of forms in most cities across the US.  While these movements have been unable to stop the decline in the quantity of rent-controlled dwellings, they have slowed it. In cities with a history of strong tenant movements like New York and San Francisco, anti-gentrification…

  Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo— obedient to our keepers but dangerous to each other.                          (Angela Davis) There is no justice in this world or the other It may sound like a political heresy, but contrary…

Back in the 90’s, Charles Keating got four years in federal prison for stealing $200 million. (In contrast, I got six years for selling some marijuana.) How many of you would give up four years of your life for $200 million? And referring to the prison experience as ‘giving up…

A book by Daniel Ellsberg. (Bloomsbury, 2017) We are very lucky in this state The Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility (WPSR) began a campaign last year to abolish all nuclear weapons globally and prevent nuclear war. They initiated this campaign as President Obama authorized a trillion dollar program to rebuild…

Interview with Franz Carroll What is Olympia Assembly? Olympia assembly is an organization that has several different projects.  There are the  neighborhood action councils (NAC), which create a space where people come together and talk about issues facing their communities and how to address those issues through direct action and…

Hang out with us!  You’re welcome to come to any of our monthly potlucks in 2018. Our multigenerational community potlucks for LGBTQ+ folks and allies have definitely been a highlight of 2017: it has been great to feast, share food, and learn from discussion with community members of all ages…

To the Readers of WIP: In 1906, Congress passed the Antiquities Act and President Theodore Roosevelt signed it into law. This Act established the authority of a president to create national monuments to protect certain public lands and waters for historical, cultural, natural or scientific reasons. As an aside, these…

[Ed. Note: In October 2017, seven delegates from the US representing farmworker and African-American farmer organizations participated in the second South Africa-US Agroecology Exchange. For 10 days, the delegates visited the provinces of Gauteng, Limpopo, and the Western Cape to meet with small farmers, farmworkers, Agroecologists, and organizers in the…

“I am not a crook.” —Richard M. Nixon Between the realm of criminality and that of the political there is a wide chasm. Politicians make the law, criminals break it. In this context, the idea of the political prisoner emerges as a contradiction in terms. In fact, the contradiction is…

Little Hollywood Blog There is still no clear mandate for the Port of Olympia’s marine terminal operation located in downtown Olympia, just days after an election in which a progressive candidate for port commissioner apparently lost by a few hundred votes.   Despite significant public outcry, port commissioners and staff…

Olympia WA—A climate justice coalition identified as Olympia Stand has staged a blockade of an oil fracking train departing from the Port of Olympia. The protesters have constructed a camp along the tracks at 7th and Jefferson St. in downtown Olympia. The action comes upon the one–year anniversary of a…

Tree lighting ceremony. Friday, December 1, 5 pm Capitol Building Rotunda. Olympia motorcycle toy run Sat, December 2.  Gather at South Sound Center at 10 am, take off at 1 pm.    Contribute toys for run at Obee Credit Union, 400 Cooper Point Rd SW, or  Generations Credit Union ,…

The holiday season will prove to be a challenging time for retail workers. Often working in part–time or precarious positions for minimum wage, these workers are made responsible for the increase in productivity that accompanies the holiday shopping rush. Workers will be pushed to work harder, faster, and longer so…

As per usual, voters received a plethora of printed material from candidates this year. We had a particularly heated race for Port Commissioner, with two positions up for election. In both an incumbent ran, yet they didn’t support one another, and they were supported by wholly different groups. The Port…

So, what is the anthropocene? Although in the last few years the term has been incorporated in popular media, and its usage has been part of the vocabulary of a variety of academic and non-academic subjects, still relatively few people understand its true meaning and implications.  In general, the Anthropocene…

Those of us who read James Hansen’s Storms of My Grandchildren years ago have been haunted ever since by the vision of “tipping points” that would take climate change beyond human control. The term “tipping points” as used in climate science means the critical point in an evolving system beyond…

The City of Olympia is characterizing restoration efforts in Budd Inlet as East Bay versus West Bay, one or the other but not both. The preferred effort, West Bay, is based on incomplete information and flawed design. The importance of Moxlie Creek Beginning in 2015 a group of local citizens…

As I viewed the truncated video of the November 13, 2017 Commission Meeting, I observed a startling juxtaposition involved in the discussion on the log loaders. On one side was Commissioner Zita asking for a fuller financial analysis as well as delving into the meaning and impact of important terms…

Peter Bohmer interviewed by Mark Lester What is the Universal Basic Income​? The U​niversal B​asic I​ncome (UBI) ​is getting increasing attention in the United States, in particular from Silicon Valley, and many other countries in the world. The idea of the universal basic income is that every resident in a society would…

October, a month by month chronicle of the Russian revolt from February 1917 to October 1917, starts off with this quote: “One need not be a prophet to foretell that the present order of things will have to disappear.” I believe the present order of things is in fact disappearing.…