Using a PA system, we announced that we would be showing a slideshow to reveal the actual military purpose of the air force in Southeast Asia, noting that we were not attacking the individual band members, but rather bringing attention to bear on the actual role of the air force itself, especially in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
“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.”
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. She and her partner had both been divorced from men, and between them they had five kids living in a double wide trailer. She wanted to know if I could offer them any help regarding child custody issues.
Anita Bryant was an also-ran Miss America contestant in 1959 (Miss Oklahoma) and a christian pop singer who became a spokesperson for the lucrative Florida citrus industry. She popularized their slogans. “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”
Anita was also a rabid homophobe and a lightning rod in the thunderhead of anti-LGBT politics of the late 1970s. Anita Bryant was a piece of work.
At home that night, the war was present in my mind and my dreams, the images and stories haunting me. I wasn’t the only one. We were soon meeting and talking about how to organize in support of the poor of El Salvador and confront the policies of our own government that perpetuated rampant abuses. No one envisioned an antiwar movement like we had with the Vietnamese War. This was a tiny country and U.S. involvement was hidden and more subtle than boots on the ground, though there were boots on the ground in some cases.
I worked in public health at the height of the AIDS pandemic. Powerful Republican congressmen and President Reagan’s agency heads put in place serious limits on what federally-funded educational programs could say about safe sex. Federal laws required that all the materials we produced about condom use and HIV testing had to include the message that the only ways to prevent AIDS or other sexually transmitted infections were by: 1) Abstinence; or 2) Fidelity in a heterosexual marriage. These were not messages that resonated with the men in the woods by the railroad tracks.
In 1975, one of the social spots for young adults and students was, oddly, the local Crisis Clinic. Many Evergreen and Saint Martin’s students who were looking for ways to connect in the Olympia community volunteered there. Word of mouth got around that they offered exceptional training in communication skills, crisis intervention, suicide prevention, and de-escalation of acute mental health episodes, along with expansive knowledge about local agencies, resources, contact numbers, and their eligibility criteria. This was a treasure trove for students in sociology and psychology studies and those interested in internships or social-issue policy work.
Glen Anderson was a lifelong activist, never wavering in his dedication to promoting peace on all fronts. He remained a steady proponent of nonviolence in local activism. We are fortunate to have called him our friend and fellow activist. May his memory be an inspiration to continue to stand up for social justice.
After a few minutes, though, the tone changed, and the music stopped. The owner, who was at the club that night, cut us off from the bar and ordered us to leave, telling us that we’d be arrested if we returned. We were shocked—as were several people at the bar, who looked at us with a mixture of curiosity and discomfort. We refused to budge from the dance floor and demanded an explanation. The owner said he had the right to refuse service to anyone he pleased. “If you let certain types or elements, take over a place,” he later told the Daily Olympian, “you’re going to be hurting.”