Taking Down the Conestoga as I Remember It – 1979 – By Don Orr Martin
ACTIVISM – It was called the Conestoga—an odd name, I thought, that hinted at a cowboy theme or somehow played into the pioneer image of us being the first town in the territory.
ACTIVISM – It was called the Conestoga—an odd name, I thought, that hinted at a cowboy theme or somehow played into the pioneer image of us being the first town in the territory.
WORK – In the days before cell phones and the internet, print media was how we communicated, how we announced our events and rallies and theatrical productions, how we debated political change. We wanted to be pamphleteers.
WORK Hard Rain Printing Collective – Part 2: 1978-1985 By Don Orr Martin
ACTIVISM – The first phone call I took (that wasn’t a crank call) was from a lesbian in Lacey. It was 1973 and I was the founder and sole staff person answering the phone at the Gay Resource Center, a new student group at Evergreen.
ARTS – We called ourselves the Karen Silkwood Memorial Choir, named for the labor organizer and chemical technician who worked at the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant in Oklahoma.
FOOD – One comical incident I remember at Little Bread was when they put me on the bagel machine tying ropes of dough into proper knots.
ACTIVISM – I’m betting that every town in America, large or small, has a secluded public spot where men have sex with each other.
ACTIVISM – Olympia’s Karen Silkwood Memorial Choir proudly performed the Orange Juice Song at a rally against Initiative 13 to a throng gathered at Westlake in downtown Seattle in 1978.
VIGNETTES – I was right downtown on the busiest street, and this logger dude was walking toward me on the sidewalk. I knew he was a logger dude by the length of his Carhartt work pants …
FOOD – The Emma Goldman Collective (EGC) was an early “communal” household. I convinced my college roommates to take the name in late 1972.