Nearly 30,000 people in Thurston county applied for unemployment after businesses closed in response to the stay-home-stay-safe order. Thousands more were simply out of work and out of luck. At first, rents were paid, here as in much of the rest of the country. Actions at the federal and state…
Posts published in “Issue: June 2020”
This May Day, El Comité, along with WAISN (WA Immigrant Solidarity Network), Community to Community (C2C) and Familias Unidas organized a caravan to Olympia to honor the essential labor of farmworkers who work to produce the food we all eat. The arrival of this pandemic has revealed the already abysmal…
The COVID-related strike in Washington state’s Yakima Valley quadrupled in size as workers walked out at three more apple packinghouses. More than a hundred stopped work on May 7 at Allan Brothers Fruit, a large apple growing, packing and shipping company in Naches, in Central Washington.
I’ve owned two rental properties, one of them for over 30 years. I’ve been surprised in recent days by claims that portray landlords as concerned benefactors rather than someone looking to make money outside the waged economy. Online you can find postings by landlords freaked out by the fact that…
There is an important political battle unfolding in Washington’s 22nd Legislative District race. On one side are the nascent revolutionary forces of bold progressivism. On the other side is the corporate establishment, protecting a status quo that puts maximizing investor and corporate profits over basic human rights like housing, medical…
I ran for Olympia City Council in 2017 and was elected that November to a 7-member team charged with leading Washington’s fastest-growing city amidst rising sea levels, rising housing costs, rising homelessness, rising inequality—and rising local and national movements for people and planet over profit. I came on board with…