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…

Not having stable child care is a losing situation for families, communities and the nation. A lack of social investment in child care and early education limits future achievement for kids and opportunities for mothers. The coronavirus epidemic has dramatically changed the face of child care in Washington State, but also offers clues for repairing a steadily worsening system.

After incredible growth in the movement during February, the Thurston Public Power Initiative campaign came to a screeching halt. For some reason, the Washington State government can’t figure out a strategy for gathering signatures online. People bank online, buy all kinds of things online, pay their taxes online—but to make democracy work?

They say “What goes around comes around.” Forty years ago The Daily Olympian (as it was then named) did not serve our community well. The editor-in-chief turned a blind eye to local social and political issues. The newspaper was generally silent on problems and initiatives concerning race relations, gender, growth management, waste reduction, the environment.

I put a rose against the wall of the graveyard, besides hundreds of others on the altar. Candles illuminated countless names and crosses that spanned the entirety of the wall. Every flower represented a womxn who had either been murdered or was missing, all victims of gender-based violence.

My April column explained what socialism is and what it isn’t. However, to effect actual change, we need something concrete to advocate for and organize around. Without a shared map of the territory, the idea of adopting socialist principles remains pie in the sky. The long censorship of the idea…

The pandemic and social distancing have turned cities into a void. At the few places where there is still human contact, at home and at modified workplaces for example, there is a void of norms. No one knows how to act. In front of us, in the absence of our…

We are juniors at Olympia High School. After hearing about people suffering both directly and indirectly from the coronavirus last December, we felt driven to help. Students Against Coronavirus is a project under a student organization we created called “AI Benefit Projects.” Getting official approval to expand the project We…

The Grays Harbor Shorebird Festival was all set to celebrate its 25th anniversary this year, complete with tours, special guests, and, of course, over 500,000 sandpipers, dowitchers, plovers, and dunlins. The festival was cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic, but the Sandpiper Trail is opens. We can use this time…

Maybe there should be a dam —or several dams —on the Chehalis River. It’s just that these dams should not be built by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Only some of us are in this together. The COVID-19 pandemic makes connections visible, like a three-dimensional holograph that includes space and time. So do certain traumatic images. The virus has managed to travel the world, demonstrating how our fate is connected to the fate of people in countries everywhere.