A local “Indigenous Caucus” has formed with Olympia Stand to stop fracking proppants (sands) shipments by the Port of Olympia and the Union Pacific Railroad. The sands are destined for North Dakota oil fields and are essential to the dirty oil hydraulic fracturing industry that threatens the Standing Rock Sioux’s…
Posts published in “Year: 2016”
The email attachment below is from Wikileak’s Podesta files. It describes a strategy that the DNC and the Clinton Campaign used successfully to move the Republican Party to the extreme right and titled it the Pied Piper Strategy. Unfortunately, the lesson from the Grimm fairy tale is that unethical behavior can…
To Olympia officials who attempted to invade our spaces to present the meaningless gray dribble you call a resolution. You are mistaken to assume any claim of communication with Olympia Stand. We do not accept any compromised official into our action spaces for public relations purposes. Not one of you…
Dear Works: I’m scribbling these words in praise of the largely underappreciated efforts of those clear-sighted campers who’ve established a motley assemblage of tarps, tents, and Tyvek on a small parcel of Public Land, near the juncture of 7th and Jefferson in downtown Olympia. These campers have clearly set-forth their…
Wanting to hate Half of America Doesn’t seem like a viable plan I dodge interactions I sever relationships With those I suspect Have clearly embraced The evil platform And its slimy tentacles Now wrapping around my flag My cheek is not turning For my granddaughters Will bear the burden of…
As I continue to move through the aftermath of this election cycle and as I anticipate a trip to Washington, D.C. in January the day after the inauguration to march with women and allies to protect women’s lives, I remain ever mindful of the power of poetry to ground and…
On November 14, at First Christian Church, organizers, activists and community members met to attend the People’s Budget Forum, an event put on by Olympia City Councilmember Clark Gilman; he has a background as a union organizer and representative, and prior to his appointment to his City Council seat, he…
(This article is excerpted from the author’s forthcoming book Unlikely Alliances: Native Nations and White Communities Join to Defend Rural Lands (University of Washington Press / Indigenous Confluences series, May 2017), and draws from interviews with Native and non-Native representatives.) The Bakken Oil Shale Basin centered in North Dakota is…
When 2012 was named the International Year of Cooperatives, sparks flew in the cooperative community in Olympia, Washington. Those working in co-ops here began investigating how to make our cooperatives stronger. As part of this effort, two staff members from the Olympia Food Cooperative, as well as Evergreen students and…
In November 2016, Evergreen’s Equity and Inclusion Council released its 2016-2017 Strategic Equity Plan. The central commitment in the plan is to “substantially improve the experiences of underserved students on our campus so that we close equity gaps in student learning and student success.” Strategic plans don’t necessarily lead to…
In July 1941, Albert Einstein, ten months a US citizen, wrote Eleanor Roosevelt asking her, as First Lady, to raise with the president the matter of lifting bureaucratic hurdles so that Jewish refugees threatened by Hitler’s final solution could be granted entry into the United States. “I know of no-one else to…
November 17, 2016 — I just returned from 3 days at the main camp at Standing Rock Sioux (off) reservation site near Cannonball, North Dakota. I traveled there with two companions: a fellow Green Party member and her nine-year-old daughter. We were inspired to go by all the reports coming…
So you joined law enforcement or the National Guard because you wanted to uphold the law, protect innocent civilians against the bad guys, and help your community in times of need. Instead, they’re having you blockade unarmed people who are trying to hold a prayer vigil, chasing them with…
Olympia Stand & Indigenous Caucus Olympia, WA November 22, 2016 — A train transporting fracking proppants to the Bakken Basin in North Dakota, the source of oil for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and explosive Bakken oil trains, was prevented from leaving the Port of Olympia for almost seven days…
It’s not about our safety… The cover of the September Atlantic magazine blared a question “Are We Safer?” When I saw the title, I thought I might find out whether Americans are safer from the dangers to life and limb we face every day—safer from what, I thought? And then—who…
I heard Lucia Perillo read on a December evening at Orca Books in 2010. The following week Perillo was the featured poet at the Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute in Washington, D.C. To the handful of us seated in our metal folding chairs, she recounted her excitement when the Folger Shakespeare…
Last month, our neighbors, the rank-and-file members and local officers of the Boeing Machinists union proclaimed a huge victory at the International Association of machinists (IAM) Grand Lodge convention in Chicago. They succeeded in amending the constitution of the IAM to include a members’ bill of rights. This is a…
Dear Friends, Family and WIP: I leave for the US tomorrow, Sunday. I’ve been in Salonica just over a month. All my time here has been as a volunteer in the Elpida Refugee Center, working mainly in the communal kitchen or in the food distribution center. A 14th century Byzantine scholar wrote…
Evergreen Colleagues, and members of our wider community who are connected in a multitude of ways to the Evergreen Community, we have a problem. Last week a student came to me. She wanted some help on an op-ed article she was writing. Because I have always seen her as bright,…
On October 18th, I listened to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! report from outside the Morton County Courthouse in Mandan, North Dakota, where she was preparing to turn herself in on criminal trespass charges that the local prosecutor had switched to riot charges in the twenty-four hours before her surrender.…
Olympia community groups drew about 300 people to an October 22 rally to oppose the Port of Olympia’s shipments of oil “fracking sands” to North Dakota. The material enables the extraction of Bakken oil. This is the oil destined for the Dakota Access Pipeline being blocked by the Standing Rock…
Boudicca Walsh The storm that hit Olympia over the weekend of the 14th of October was, per the weather forecasters, going to include 70 mph winds, flooding, and tornado warnings. After the storm had passed, local social media was ablaze with memes joking at the lack of damage in…
The charm of disgusting According to a recent article in the Economist, Hillary Clinton “is reckoned to be the second most-unpopular presidential nominate ever, after her Republican opponent Donald Trump.” The historically unprecedented dislike of both candidates is illustrated in the case of Clinton by a recent pool among registered…
El encanto de lo repulsivo De acuerdo con un reciente artículo en The Economist, Hillary Clinton “es reconocida como la segunda candidata presidencial más impopular en la historia del país, el primer lugar es ocupado por su oponente republicano Donald Trump”. Este desagrado sin precedentes de ambos candidatos se ilustra…