This month's theme is the public sector and the common good. The concept of a common good offers the possibility that politics can be about more than building an institutional framework a for the narrow pursuit of individual self-interest - i.e., making America work for business...
Posts published in “Issue: November 2018”
The national discussion about reforming our health care system is all about ending Obamacare (or not), adopting a “single payer”approach, or leaving things to the “marketplace.” No part of that discussion addresses the reality that we hardly have a healthcare “system” at all. Instead, we have big insurance companies, private…
Many of us are still reeling from the UN Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report published early in October. It confirms the dire predictions we read in Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene (Trajectories). The IPCC report reflects the consensus view of top climate scientists in a report that…
No more executions by the state of Washington:
In the February 2018 WIP, Glen Anderson argued that the death penalty makes problems worse, and called for its abolition. On October 11 our Supreme Court ruled the state death penalty statute unconstitutional on the grounds of racial bias...
I. The common good, and what happened to it? In the beginning there was the world, and nobody owned the world, and the world was with humanity, and humans lived in the world under egalitarian social relations based on common interests—common good. Now, a few thousand years later, were we…
The Thurston County Public Defense Office and the Thurston County Jail are collaborating on a project to replace the depleted accumulation of worn and torn books now stored in the jail library. A jail without a library is like a bookshelf without books! From now through December 10, 2018 you…
Eric Klinenberg is an optimist. His book, Palaces for the People is dense with stories about communities that have managed to be resilient in times of stress and disaster. Klinenberg weaves occasionally complex background information together with narrative, explaining context and theories such as the histories of a demographic shift,…
Olympia has a number of active neighborhood groups that bring residents together. Perhaps because it is my home, I am struck by the uniquely strong bonds within the Southwest Olympia neighborhood as a model of Klinenberg’s positive social infrastructure. The persistent activism of neighbors has kept this community from being…
An infill plan sure to make developers happy If you live in one of the older, near-town Olympia neighborhoods, big changes are looming for your neighborhood. The same goes for your neighborhood if it’s zoned R6-12 (sixto 12 housing units per acre) or R4-8 within two blocks of a Neighborhood…
Leaders from several tribes appeared at a rally in Lacey in support of Initiative 1631 last month—another instance of the people taking on the task of addressing climate change themselves. President Fawn Sharp (photo, right) of the Quinault Nation and other tribal leaders joined together to create the First American…
Storytellers, movie makers, panels and workshops, oh my! The Olympia Film Society presents its 35th Annual Film Festival November 9-17, 2018. The theme this year revolves around “Inclusion, Independence, Discovery.” OFS has curated over 50 features and shorts created by a diverse range of filmmakers and artists, with fresh new…
Imagine our surprise when WIP received copies of three emails from Administration figures anxious to clear their names—just their first name, you’ll have to guess the surname. We reprint them here for the record—and encourage other Wipster tipsters to stay on their toes for more...
President Trump [how it pains me to use those two words in conjunction], Republican leaders in Congress—Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell particularly–and sycophants in the media, have latched onto a concept that they believe, perhaps correctly, will energize Trump’s base: Democrats, and by implication the left in general, are an “angry mob.”…
Sing, Unburied, Sing (Charles Scribner & Sons, 2018), by Jessamyn Ward. Jesmyn Ward pens an account of the living and the dead in her latest novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, set in the heart of what was once home to slavery, Jim Crow and sharecropping. The story takes place in the…
Ancient Greeks revered Zeus as their supreme deity. Greek politicians publicly sanctified and naturalized the patriarchal practice of misogyny as an aspect of their democracy. The dictionary definition of misogyny is “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women” from the Greek root “hatred [of] women.” Centuries later this…
It was 1988 and I was working out of the Carpenters’ Hall in Olympia after clearing my book into Olympia Local 1148 from Tacoma Local 470. I was proud to be working out of the Olympia Carpenters’ Hall not only because it was my hometown, but also because I understood…
This month’s TV program and blog post for “Glen’s Parallax Perspectives” contrasts the worldview (greed, corruption, cruelty, oppression, etc.) that currently dominates the U.S.’s public policies with the opposite worldview that would be humane, compassionate, fair to everyone, peaceful, honest, supportive of democracy, and environmentally sustainable. Most Americans want this…
“Abolish ICE” has become a rallying cry for people who have watched in horror as thousands of migrant families have been separated and detained at our southern border in recent weeks. It has been characterized as “bold” and “radical” by some, but I argue that it doesn’t go far enough.…
“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” they say. That has proven to be a challenging rule of thumb to implement, in my opinion. Since the time I was young, I’ve wanted to be a singer/songwriter. As I aged, I pursued the craft in…
Bertholt Brecht was a playright and poet. He originally created this list of difficulties that a writer would face in telling the truth, for an essay contest. This is the summary that accompanied the final version, published in 1935 in the context of rising Fascism...
October 9, 2018 The climate movement secured a major victory today after a judge dismissed all charges against the Valve Turner activists who shut down a tar sands pipeline in northern Minnesota nearly two years ago. The activists — who were represented by Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense…
Starting after the election of Socialist Hugo Chavez in 1998 and continuing under Nicholas Maduro, his recently re-elected successor, the aim of US policy toward Venezuela has been regime change. Reference to military intervention appears periodically, but mainly the US strategy has been to cripple the country economically in hopes of fomenting rebellion. As the following article outlines, the consequences of racheting US sanctions fall directly on the people of the country...
A reflection on collective action needed to solve a problem that affects us in common I see the effects of climate change first hand. My people, who’ve lived next to the mouth of the Quinault River for many generations, are now having to relocate the entire lower village to higher…
There are currently bipartisan bills in both Houses of Congress to cut off US participation in the war Each day since Oct. 2, new evidence has emerged that the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a resident of Virginia, was a premeditated murder. At the same time, it is…
Want to get your name in the paper? There’s an easy way: contribute to Works in Progress! There are lots of ways, big or small, we need them all. (Even poetry is welcome, you see.) Since Works in Progress (WIP) is a free, all-volunteer community newspaper with a mission to…