Celebrate workers!... NW Green Home Tour... Working People’s Summit... Rally for Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women... “Thurston for Bernie” Action Team Kick-off... Jacobin Reading Group... Women of Color in Leadership... Justice in Crisis... More....
Posts published in “Issue: May 2019”
The people who peer into computers on the third floor of the Mottman Building in downtown Olympia are about to embark on a new stage in their working lives. Working Systems started out as an idea to offer tech services during the slack season at Cascadia Research, morphed into an…
The easiest way to think about how a cooperative differs from a typical business is that in a cooperative, people own it in common and make decisions in common. There’s not an outside investor who has ultimate control over the life and work of the business. The other big reason…
When the $15 minimum wage was signed into law in Saint Paul City Hall in November, I burst into tears. I spent three years working on the campaigns for $15 in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, including 18 months as the co-director of 15 Now Minnesota, where I coordinated the coalition…
Olympia’s own cherished Food Co-op has returned to its practice of being open every day of the year —except for one single, significant day: it is closed on May 1, International Workers’ Day. The Co-op has posted on its website this explanation of why.
Holly Lindsey, has been a licensed home child-care provider for 22 years and a union member for 12. She joined SEIU 925 when the local formed in 2006....
The coordinated effort by wealthy financiers to eliminate unions has elements in addition to the “opt out” campaign. As the State Policy Network (SPN) and its right-wing allies secure Republican domination of more state governments, they will turn also to laws requiring union recertification elections. Regulating unions, not corporations In…
Extinction Rebellion is an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience to achieve radical change in order to minimise the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse....
The iconic Olympia bookstore, Orca Books, will be expanding its ownership to the community as it transitions into a cooperative business model. The staff, along with current owner Linda Berensten, have been working with the Northwest Cooperative Development Center (NWCDC) to create a plan for the conversion which will occur…
Streams are rated healthy when they support many kinds of life. For a salmon stream, that means benthic invertebrates —little “bugs” that live in sediments and have evolved over thousands of years in the cold, clear-running streams of the Pacific Northwest. The best conditions for stream bugs also tend to…
Things happen for a reason It is easy to vilify the left. Effective vilification requires only money, political power, and access to the media. Those presently involved in the current campaign of defaming the left have had access to those three necessary ingredients for such a long time that engaging…
Congressman Albert Johnson, one of the Pacific Northwest’s most influential politicians, struck many of the same themes in relation to immigrants as does the current commander in chief. Johnson’s greatest legacy was the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act...
The Social Security Board of Trustees released its 2019 report to Congress in April. Right now, the average annual Social Security benefit is about $16,000. The new Trustees Report confirms that expanding vs. cutting Social Security’s modest benefits is a question of values and choice, not affordability. What the report…
Amitav Ghosh, an Indian novelist and winner of numerous honors and awards, including honorary doctorates from the University of Puget Sound and Maastricht College in the Netherlands, is a brilliant novelist and thinker....
Four days of debate in June may yield a progressive Democratic platform focused on addressing systemic inequality. If so, that change will be in no small part because of the ongoing grassroots activism across the country....
The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice (RFC) is a grassroots, 501(c)3 non-profit organization that conducts and supports programs that foster connections between people, that build understanding, respect, and appreciation for differences, and that promote cooperation within and between local and global communities. The foundation encourages and supports grassroots…
The May 2019 interview on “Glen’s Parallax Perspectives” series promotes an increasingly popular electoral reform. Everybody knows that our nation’s electoral system is broken. The problems prevent us from having an honest, vibrant democracy. The May 2019 interview on “Glen’s Parallax Perspectives” focuses on an exciting, practical remedy for one…
In the December 2017 issue of Works in Progress we reported on the trial of people involved in a four-state action to shut off a pipeline carrying oil from Canada....
This issue is dedicated to Labor in all its forms, from waged to unwaged, labor that takes place in traditional settings such as factories, hospitals, construction sites, offices, schools, etc. to less recognized forms of participation in the economic relations of society like reproductive female labor, rearing children, and caring for elders....