authors

The First Lesbian Community Meetings – By Anna Schlecht

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We stood there befuddled on Columbia Street until other women began to arrive for the meeting. Many had come pumped up to argue about who should be invited, but once they heard what had happened, most of the divisions fell away. Suddenly, everyone there had the shared experience of being discriminated against as queers, whether they publicly identified that way or not. Nearly 50 women found themselves standing sullenly on the dark street with nowhere to go.

Hard Rain Printing Collective Part 1 – By Don Martin

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Indeed, it was the concept of workers seizing the means of production that inspired Grace and me to investigate the idea of running a worker-owned print shop. 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. Thomas Paine and the Wobblies were our inspiration.

Hard Rain Printing Collective – Part 2 – By Don Martin

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We had been in the Division Street shop for a couple of years. Struggling, cold, and damp. Honing our skills. Learning from mistakes. We learned about printing standards and the allowable percentage of flawed prints or undercounts. We paid dues to the Graphic Arts International Union, in support of workers in the trade. It meant we could print a “union bug” on our work.

Part 1: Finding My Place in the Universe – By Llyn De Danaan aka Lynn Patterson

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Here’s what my life was like in the late 1960s while a student: Trips to the Pacific Ocean, driftwood, logging trucks, colorful flower-bedecked hitchhikers on freeway turn offs (on their way to San Francisco), light shows and strobes at Eagle’s Auditorium in Seattle, The Whole Earth Catalog, Helix (a brilliant “underground” newspaper), marching against the Vietnam War on the freeway and through downtown, buildings blowing up on campus, rallies at the federal courthouse, Radical Women meetings, Claire Fraser holding forth. I had the time of my life.

The Occupation of Cascadia in Tacoma – A Solidarity Action – 1976 – By Susan Davenport

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The purpose was to bring as many witnesses and occupiers of the Cascadia Building in Tacoma as could be mobilized on short notice. The action was in solidarity with the Puyallup Tribe of Indians who were reclaiming the old juvenile detention center and former tuberculosis hospital built on Puyallup tribal land.

Moldy Mansion: Tales of Dumpstering and Billboarding – By Regon Unsoeld

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There were in fact two such households. The first, appropriately called the Moldy Mansion, was located on the water side of West Bay Drive within a few hundred feet of Harrison Avenue. It was a two-story structure with a beautiful view of Mount Tahoma (Rainier) at Steh-Chass (Budd Inlet) near the southernmost point of the Salish Sea. A jungle of dense blackberry vines wove around the house and all the way down to the water.

Making Hay While the Sun Shines – By Joe Tougas

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Cold Comfort Farm took the “Farm” in its name seriously. We thought of ourselves on the model of agricultural co-ops. We wanted to be independent, creative, revolutionary. We were pretty smug about our agrarian accomplishments. Although our knowledge of small-scale farms was spotty and romanticized (not to mention borderline illegal) we were proud of our worn-out overalls and home-grown strawberries and broccoli.

The Communist Party in 1970s Olympia – Ann Vandeman – By Bethany Weidner

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“The Party people were the only ones who consistently linked race and class and I was attracted to that. Those people and their ideas helped me answer big questions I had at that age: why aren’t people nicer and what about fairness? I found them sympathetic because their values were consistent with the ones I had come to.”