For many years, POWER (Parents Organizing for Welfare and Economic Rights), an Olympia Welfare Rights non-profit organization has worked tirelessly to educate our community on the struggles and strengths of low-income parents in our community, and to fight the stigma tied to parents on welfare. Monica Peabody, former Executive Director…
Posts published by “Laura Downing”
Ann Vandeman is in her kitchen on 6th Avenue in Olympia. She is making me dinner and I’m asking her questions about what it was like being involved in the Communist Party here in the 1970s. The actual CPUSA...
Those who “round up for CSF” at the Olympia Food Co-op are “walking the walk.” Generous donations totaling $3600 meant that this Spring, the community provided grants to strengthen the fabric of people, environments, and habitats throughout our Thurston County. 100% of contributions go directly into the fund’s twice-yearly grant cycles.
Peace proponents opposed to nuclear weapons joined forces recently to display a quote from the pope on four billboards in Seattle and Tacoma. The Poulsbo-based Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action joined with an international Catholic group, Pax Christi USA, to pay for a billboard ad, in an effort to reawaken public awareness of the dangers of nuclear weapons in the Puget Sound region, said the release. The billboards stayed up for four weeks...
BOOK REVIEW: In his detailed history, subtitled The Great War: A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis, Adam Hochschild guides the reader through an extensive examination of the turmoil in American society during the period of the Wilson administration before, during and after World War I.
PERSPECTIVE: The City of Olympia has no code of ethics. But a movement is afoot to urge Olympia’s City Council to establish an Ethics Code and Commission. This will help ensure that our elected officials and government agencies are transparent and act without bias--free of commercial or political interests that can influence them to make decisions that improperly benefit one group over another.
LETTER FROM FRED: I am a proud citizen of our quaint city and a witness to the changes which have come downtown over the twelve years I have resided here. For the most part, we have held our own in the battle of civic pride vs. uncivil behavior, but the spectre of “gentrification” has overtaken those in authority, bringing a new set of problems and solving few of the old ones.
OPINION: Authorities now practice top-down control, often ignoring citizen opinions for Olympia parking, public-safety, etc.
In its 33 years as a print newspaper, WIP has routinely published stories that were overlooked by local papers --- or that failed to offer readers serious truths. Even with unpaid, volunteer contributors, our “citizen reporters” dug into issues and provided our readers with accurate information and critical context. In this article, we’ve printed three stories of consequence from past issues of the paper.
What disturbs us so much about wild places? Is it that they seem to have little concern for our needs? Do they challenge our obsession with mastery and control? Maybe wilderness just terrifies us.
BOOK REVIEW: Hey you guys. Climate change is going to kill us. We are going to fight each other to the death in violent uprisings and wars over water. Of course. But have you considered the role that antifascist Norse warrior ghosts (don’t call them vikings) might play in the world of tomorrow? How about lesbian mermaids? And how are those Free Orcas of Cascadia going to handle it all? Oh, you haven’t considered that? Well Margaret Killjoy has...
Students and student movements have played a major role in struggles for reform and revolution in the United States and around the world. Here are a few examples of student organizing and protest on campus since I came to Evergreen in 1987.
Workers’ wages at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis have declined dramatically over the past 50 years. Today temporary workers at GM start at $16.67 and top out at $20, half as much as workers five decades ago.
A new law that took effect last year that automatically restores voting rights to people with felony convictions the moment they exit prison in Washington – a change that expanded the franchise to more than 12,000 Washingtonians on probation and parole, along with an indeterminate number who owe court fines.
PERSPECTIVE: Aloha: A warm welcome and a fond farewell. An essence of being—with love, peace, compassion, and mutual respect. A way of living in harmony with the people and land around us with mercy, sympathy, grace, and kindness. Aloha to this September’s Hawaiian History Month.
I grew up in Yakima and came to Olympia in 1971. The WSU student newspaper had assigned me to do a story on TESC, a new college opening in the fall. Unhappy at WSU and intrigued by Evergreen, I became an original Greener.
BOOK REVIEW: Part court thriller, part chronicle of a crucial labor struggle, part reminder that when people work together they can overturn great injustices, and workers can triumph against corporate-government collusion, The Farmer’s Lawyer is an inspiring, enjoyable read.
Glen Anderson is proposing a “wise alternative” to the status quo. In the above table he sets out the basic distinctions between TRUE security (in the middle column) and the status quo assumptions about “national security” (in the column on the right).
We’re inviting volunteer WIPsters, contributors and readers to celebrate and share their stories about WIP on October 20. If you plan to come, reply by email to olywip@gmail.com with OCTOBER 20 RSVP in the subject line, and we’ll send you details.
When they got an invitation to a Wrap Party celebrating and saying farewell to Works in Progress, a lot of people expressed shock and dismay. There were two kinds of people: the ones who said they loved the paper and would miss it, and the ones who blamed current WIPsters for “shutting it down.” But the former? Let’s take up their cause. Why do they love WIP? Let us count the ways...
Hidden Histories ♦ Oly-Rafah Solidarity Mural ♦ Harvest Festival ♦ Orca Recovery Day ♦ Visioning & Art in the Forest ♦ Punk Rock Flea Market ♦ Books, Brownies & Beans ♦ Women's Lib Book Club ♦ Headless Mumby ♦ Bridge Music Project ♦ More...
Olympia officials are considering a major annexation of neighborhoods at the Southeast periphery of the city that would increase Olympia’s population by about 18%. If it moves ahead, the annexation will have a significant economic and political impact on the city of Olympia. All evidence to date shows an adverse effect
“The devil is in the details” is all too true when it comes to Comprehensive Plans that determine the shape of the communities we live in. The plans identify a series of goals, objectives, policies, actions and standards that guide day-to-day decisions of local government officials. The plans go a long way to determining how quiet our streets will be, whether there will be trees, thriving farms and wetlands, will there be affordable places for families to live, and on and on.
At one point in America’s history state and federal policies were designed to encourage families to own their own home. But not all families...
Think of joyfully singing old Beatles tunes on a road trip with friends, or stomping your feet to Queen’s “We Will Rock You” at a sporting event. How did it make you feel? Connected? Energized? Part of something larger than yourself? You don’t need to be told that music, with or without lyrics, has a powerful binding energy.