Workers’ wages at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis have declined dramatically over the past 50 years. Today temporary workers at GM start at $16.67 and top out at $20, half as much as workers five decades ago.
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A new law that took effect last year that automatically restores voting rights to people with felony convictions the moment they exit prison in Washington – a change that expanded the franchise to more than 12,000 Washingtonians on probation and parole, along with an indeterminate number who owe court fines.
PERSPECTIVE: Aloha: A warm welcome and a fond farewell. An essence of being—with love, peace, compassion, and mutual respect. A way of living in harmony with the people and land around us with mercy, sympathy, grace, and kindness. Aloha to this September’s Hawaiian History Month.
I grew up in Yakima and came to Olympia in 1971. The WSU student newspaper had assigned me to do a story on TESC, a new college opening in the fall. Unhappy at WSU and intrigued by Evergreen, I became an original Greener.
BOOK REVIEW: Part court thriller, part chronicle of a crucial labor struggle, part reminder that when people work together they can overturn great injustices, and workers can triumph against corporate-government collusion, The Farmer’s Lawyer is an inspiring, enjoyable read.
Glen Anderson is proposing a “wise alternative” to the status quo. In the above table he sets out the basic distinctions between TRUE security (in the middle column) and the status quo assumptions about “national security” (in the column on the right).
We’re inviting volunteer WIPsters, contributors and readers to celebrate and share their stories about WIP on October 20. If you plan to come, reply by email to olywip@gmail.com with OCTOBER 20 RSVP in the subject line, and we’ll send you details.
When they got an invitation to a Wrap Party celebrating and saying farewell to Works in Progress, a lot of people expressed shock and dismay. There were two kinds of people: the ones who said they loved the paper and would miss it, and the ones who blamed current WIPsters for “shutting it down.” But the former? Let’s take up their cause. Why do they love WIP? Let us count the ways...
Hidden Histories ♦ Oly-Rafah Solidarity Mural ♦ Harvest Festival ♦ Orca Recovery Day ♦ Visioning & Art in the Forest ♦ Punk Rock Flea Market ♦ Books, Brownies & Beans ♦ Women's Lib Book Club ♦ Headless Mumby ♦ Bridge Music Project ♦ More...
Olympia officials are considering a major annexation of neighborhoods at the Southeast periphery of the city that would increase Olympia’s population by about 18%. If it moves ahead, the annexation will have a significant economic and political impact on the city of Olympia. All evidence to date shows an adverse effect
“The devil is in the details” is all too true when it comes to Comprehensive Plans that determine the shape of the communities we live in. The plans identify a series of goals, objectives, policies, actions and standards that guide day-to-day decisions of local government officials. The plans go a long way to determining how quiet our streets will be, whether there will be trees, thriving farms and wetlands, will there be affordable places for families to live, and on and on.
At one point in America’s history state and federal policies were designed to encourage families to own their own home. But not all families...
Think of joyfully singing old Beatles tunes on a road trip with friends, or stomping your feet to Queen’s “We Will Rock You” at a sporting event. How did it make you feel? Connected? Energized? Part of something larger than yourself? You don’t need to be told that music, with or without lyrics, has a powerful binding energy.
Along with many former coworkers, I only found out we were working for a for-profit school when I was denied credit for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. This program, which seemed like a dream come true for teachers and others struggling to pay off school loans, was out of reach. We felt duped.
As a kindergarten teacher, Chad Hargrove purposely emulates the late Fred Rogers, better known as children’s television host Mister Rogers. No one in Hargrove’s class needs to be told that men can be kind and soft-spoken...
South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity is proud to announce the launch of its Critical Home Repair program, an initiative designed to provide affordable repairs to homeowners in Tumwater WA. The program aims to help families live in safe and decent homes by addressing critical repairs that would otherwise be unaffordable.
BOOK REVIEW: Males increasingly struggle in school, work and families. The reasons are varied and somewhat mysterious, says author Richard Reeves, who proposes, among other things, “a simple but radical reform:” redshirt the boys.
In the long and merited discussion of teacher pay, one group of educators in the classroom has been forgotten: paraeducators. These are the people working in and out of classrooms to fill the gaps to help ensure that vulnerable students receive a quality education and a chance at a good life.
Building on its experience and advocacy for cleaning up Black Lake, Citizens for a Clean Black Lake has applied for non-profit status as the Clean Black Lake Alliance (CBLA). CBLA is dedicated to educational and environmental research and remediation of Black Lake and its watershed.
The dictator looks over his shoulder, afraid. The actor rallies his countrymen, tired...
REFLECTION: I ask myself the same questions many others in my generation ask: Should I have kids, given the world we live in today? What will my future child’s life look like if climate projections come to fruition? How will my child’s existence affect the earth’s ecosystems, plants and animals? Will it be better to be alive, despite these challenges, than never to have been born at all?
BOOK REVIEW: Matthew Desmond has written a powerful, compelling complement to his 2017 Pulitzer Prize winning Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.
America’s social studies textbooks urgently need an update — on child labor. Our textbooks, ever since the middle of the 20th century, have been applauding the reform movement that gradually put an end to the child-labor horrors that ran widespread throughout the early Industrial Age. Now those horrors, here in…
A new Washington law, SB 5096, provides a path for workers in Washington businesses to create cooperatives. In the Spring issue of WIP, we interviewed Nora Edge, founder and former General Manager, and Paulette LaDouceur, current General Manager of Capital Homecare Cooperative. We decided to revisit some of their insights into the benefits a cooperative structure offers for workers.
Not a single kid has died in a mass reading, yet they're banning books instead of guns.