Women were recruited via persuasive media campaigns to join the war effort as “Rosie the Riveters” to work in the factories that were emptied by the men who were drafted to fight overseas. My grandmother became a machinist in her late 30s and developed a steady hand for guiding hair-thin bits chucked into the drill press through metals. She fabricated specialized tiny parts for war planes and then later for commercial jets.
Our action at Yard Bird’s was inspired by a project of the American Friends Service Committee. The aim was to educate people about the nature of the Vietnam War. We publicly solicited donations to help rebuild a sweater factory destroyed by US bombings in northern Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam).
We had a shared commitment to making a living by growing food in ways that would be more sustainable on the land and reconnect the community to the local food supply. Our backs were strong and our sleep needs minimal, so we swam into this “bargain with nature” with sure strokes and no fear.
I was a programmer on KAOS FM, the campus radio station, for most of my undergraduate years at Evergreen 1974 – 1980. I read news stories as the news director, and did public affairs spots . . . On one show I read a brief story about a WPPSS (Whoops!) nuclear power plant being decommissioned, due in part from finding a fault line under the construction site. A week or so later I was called to the office of the college president.
Blue Heron Bakery was founded in 1977 by Greg Reinemer, Carmela Courtney, Doug Martin, Martha Wolfe, and Terry Taylor. Harry and I moved to Olympia with our one-year-old daughter, Delphine, to cover for Terry for a month. It turned into 10 years. We rented a grounded houseboat across the street from the bakery and shared one position, deciding daily who was working at the Bakery and who was staying home with Delphine.
We are all longtime Olympia folks and three of many who learned and organized at the Labor Center with Dan Leahy. We did not differentiate between our work at The Evergreen State College Labor Education Center and our working-class roots. We each tell about our involvement with the Labor Center and how it affected our lives. Dan Leahy passed away in 2022.
I was traveling with a delegation of U.S. teachers and union activists. The trip included people from Seattle, Los Angeles, and other U.S. cities. Beth Harris of Olympia was one of the organizers. We were responding to a request from ANDES, the Salvadoran teachers union, to attend their union convention. ANDES had not been able to hold a convention for years because of the violent repression, so they invited teachers and activists from all over the world to attend as witnesses and participants.
There’s a lot involved in moving 1,500+ miscellaneous Indians in 400 or 500 cars cross country. Our Northwest organization, Survival American Indians Association, raised support from the Episcopal church, other denominations, many individuals of all races and politics for travel, food, campsites, and medical services with help from American Indian Movement (AIM) chapters.
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.
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.