Don Orr Martin

Don Orr Martin grew up on a small farm in Yakima and came to Olympia in 1971 as an original Greener. He had been assigned to write a story for the WSU student newspaper on the new college opening in Olympia, and decided that fall to transfer. Don is a lifelong activist, a founder of the Cooper Point Journal, the Gay Resource Center, Emma Goldman Collective, Theatre of the Unemployed, and Hard Rain Printing Collective. He was an early board member of Stonewall Youth and later, the regional board of the Pride Foundation. Don was an actor, dancer, set designer, or director for over 40 community theater productions with eight local theater companies. He was a graphic designer for 20 years and a public health educator for 25 years. He moved to Canada in 2014 when his husband got a job with the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation. They received Canadian citizenship in 2021. Don is currently on the coordinating committee for Quirk-e, a Vancouver writers collective for queer elders.

• 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.
• Hard Rain Printing Collective Part 1 – By Don Martin
  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.
• Hard Rain Printing Collective – Part 2 – By Don Martin
  WORK Hard Rain Printing Collective – Part 2: 1978-1985 By Don Orr Martin
• Recollections on the Founding of the Gay Resource Center 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.
• Don’t Cry for Me Miami – 1978 – By Don Orr Martin
  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.
• Logger Dude – Don Orr Martin
  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 …
• Karen Silkwood Memorial Choir – By Don Orr Martin
  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.
• Practicing the Revolution: Making Bagels – 1974 – Don Orr Martin
  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.
• A Small Town’s Sex-Positive Response to AIDS – By Don Orr Martin
  ACTIVISM – I’m betting that every town in America, large or small, has a secluded public spot where men have sex with each other.
• Emma Goldman Joins the Co-op Movement – By Don Orr Martin
  FOOD – The Emma Goldman Collective (EGC) was an early “communal” household. I convinced my college roommates to take the name in late 1972.