• Blossom Patches – By Pat Holm
  Around 1970, Steve Wilcox and a group of friends decided to lobby for the legalization of marijuana. We formed an organization called BLOSSOM: Basic Liberation Of Smokers and Sympathizers Of Marijuana. I was the sympathizer since I didn’t smoke pot and nobody was doing edibles yet, except for the occasional fibrous brownies. We wrote up a list of ideas, goals, and tasks, and we assessed what each of us could contribute to the effort.
• Supporting the Teachers’ Union in El Salvador – 1985 – By Steven Kant
  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.
• Construction Brigades in Nicaragua During Reagan’s War – By Jean Eberhardt
  During the contra war—a right-wing terror campaign waged by ex-national guard mercenaries of Nicaragua’s ousted dictator and funded by the U.S.—over a hundred thousand people from the U.S. visited Nicaragua. Many of us traveled and volunteered with purpose. For example, delegations of elected officials mobilized by progressive organizations, ecumenical study tour groups, long-term volunteers with Witness for Peace, caravans carrying material aid with Pastors for Peace, medical teams, coffee and cotton harvest brigades, and journalists.
• Our Experiences at the Evergreen Labor Center – Lee, Shortt-Sanchez, Gilman
  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.
• EPIC Action During US Air Force Band Performance – 1972
  ACTIVISM EPIC Action During US Air Force Band Performance at Evergreen – 1972 By Regon Unsoeld
• The Communist Party in 1970s Olympia – Ann Vandeman – By Bethany Weidner
  “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.”
• Recollections on the Founding of the Gay Resource Center By Don Orr Martin
  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.
• Don’t Cry for Me Miami – 1978 – By Don Orr Martin
  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.
• From Here to El Salvador – By Beth Hartmann
  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.
• A Small Town’s Sex-Positive Response to AIDS – By Don Orr Martin
  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.
• Women’s Shelter Task Force – 1975 – By Susan Davenport
  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.

A Small Town’s Sex-Positive Response to AIDS – By Don Orr Martin

Blossom Patches – By Pat Holm

Construction Brigades in Nicaragua During Reagan’s War – By Jean Eberhardt

Don’t Cry for Me Miami – 1978 – By Don Orr Martin

From Here to El Salvador – By Beth Hartmann

Recollections on the Founding of the Gay Resource Center – By Don Orr Martin

Supporting the Teacher’s Union in El Salvador – 1985 – By Steven Kant

The Communist Party in 1970s Olympia – By Bethany Weidner

Women’s Shelter Task Force – 1975 – By Susan Davenport