As new “market rate” apartment buildings sprout up all over downtown Olympia, developers have set their sights on prime shoreline across the bay. What is more appealing to a well-heeled transplant than a view of sailboats and an iconic mountain with picturesque Budd Inlet for your front yard?
Posts published in “Issue: February 2021”
In mid December, thirty neighbors on the Westside of Olympia began planning for an MLK Day event and chose Peaceful Transition, Respect the Vote as their theme. They had planned two previous events on the 4th Avenue Bridge, one in support of the National Nurses Union and one calling for Justice for George Floyd and all Black Lives.
The author is a veteran of five decades of electoral work. His goal for 2020 was to take the Senate for Democrats. He agreed to work in Montana, a Trump state, but where the popular Democratic Governor was challenging a first-term Republican. He spent the last three weeks before the election leaning into cold winds from the mountains, talking with the dispersed voters of Montana. It turned out the headwinds from the Biden ticket were so powerful that they crushed the life out of the workers’ hopes for the down-ballot race. 2020 ended in Montana with a Red sweep. Here is Jeff’s diagnosis of how to cure the illness before the next cycle
Beginning January 18, 2021 four billboards around Puget Sound will display a public service announcement: “NUCLEAR WEAPONS BANNED BY NEW U.N. TREATY; Get them out of Puget Sound!” The four billboards will be located in Seattle, Tacoma and Port Orchard, and are paid for by Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action and World Beyond War.
The nine countries that have held the world captive to the threat of nuclear war are losing moral ground to 122 smaller countries that approved the world’s first nuclear weapons ban in July 2017. Once 50 of those 122 approving countries completed the ratification process of the UN Treaty for…
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Our priority is to focus on stories that are ignored or misrepresented in the mainstream media, especially those that relate directly to our mission. Informed opinion pieces are welcome, especially when accompanied by facts, examples and sources. We like articles or stories or reflections that relate to the issue outlined for the theme, but that’s not necessary. Once we receive a submission we will contact you if we are interested in publishing it.
As we enter the “darkest hours” of the winter, each of us copes with isolation, social distancing, anxiety, grief and loss from the effects of the pandemic. Many in this area experience SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, the absence of sunshine. The pandemic has layered new symptoms on mental health issues…
Nuestra experiencia de duelo, pérdida y aislamiento Al entrar en las “horas más oscuras” del invierno, cada uno de nosotros está lidiando con el aislamiento, el distanciamiento social, la ansiedad, el dolor y la pérdida por los efectos de la pandemia. Muchos en esta zona del país se enfrentan al…
We’re all familiar with suggestions for countering occasional feelings of anxiety, fear and depression such as taking a walk, listening to music or reading something uplifting. All are helpful but they may not go far enough in harnessing the power available to us to create a physical shift in our feeling life.
This telephone from times past appeared mysteriously on a tree in Priest Point Park in January. It is there now with a sign inviting anyone to make a call – a call that allows you to connect with someone not otherwise available, or to speak your mind, even to connect with your own emotions.
WIP has received a grant designated for including book reviews in 2021. How will it work?
Once you’ve walked the streets of your neighborhood more times than you can count, there are two trails on Olympia’s westside where you discover the magical shelter of the West Bay Woods. The West Bay Woods is a special kind of park, on land purchased to protect and restore habitat…
Towards the end of his life, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began arguing that racism, poverty, and militarism must be addressed as interrelated issues, as a package, in order to create a more equitable society. Many scholars today claim that connecting those issues is what led to his untimely death.
Olympia Port Commissioner EJ Zita provided this review of Port activities over 2020 with a look ahead to the coming year.
A thousand crystal droplets of water...
The escalating COVID-19 pandemic impacts all of us, but for Black and brown people in particular, the combined health and economic devastation is truly terrifying. Communities of color have higher rates of asthma, less access to health care centers, are more likely to live in food deserts, and are among…
We know more about the moon and the surface of Mars than we know about the deep ocean. Yet increasing demand for rare metals and valuable minerals could bring industrial-scale prospectors to the sea floor before we understand the nature of the ocean itself, let alone the consequences of ocean…
The Northwest Agriculture Business Center (NABC), together with a network of over 30 entities, is devoting the next three years to address food system infrastructure, food access, and education as the recipient of a $994,400 grant from the US Department of Agriculture Regional Food System Partnerships Program.
The National Archives at Seattle holds 56,000 cubic feet (1 million boxes) of permanent records, including documents and artifacts from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska. Access to these documents and artifacts is particularly important to genealogists, historians, writers, and others who seek a more intimate understanding of and connection with our region’s past.
President Trump and his advisors used their power to stop people from majority Muslim and other disfavored countries from entering the US, and to get rid of people from those and other countries who already lived here. Trump’s “travel ban” first prohibited people from six countries from coming here and…
Media Manipulation in Post-Truth America (And What We Can Do About It), by Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff This book is an essential read for those who are confused by Trump’s rise to political power and by the complacency of many in the nation even when confronted with his bad…
World history books are not stories of peace. They are stories of war, jealousy and murder on a grand scale, stretching back thousands of years. They are stories of empires that rise violently, taste momentary glory, and are then destroyed — either by the rot of their own corruption, or by the…
There’s a sentence that has stuck in my mind for years. I think it was in a book written by Richard Wright (the author of Invisible Man), but I’m not positive. This is the sentence: It’s not that we don’t know what to do. It’s that we’re not going to do it.
Get out of jail free! ♦ Didn’t slow to a trickle. ♦ More like a flood.
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