WOMEN WEAVING RESISTANCE IN CHIAPAS, MEXICO
“Jolom Mayaetik

In the area of Olympia High School there are several bodies of water that qualify as ponds or even lakes, such as Hazard Lake. In the region where the Capitol Blvd. bridge crosses I-5 there was, apparently, a body of water called Moss Lake. In the days before environmental impact statements, Moss Lake was merely filled in when I-5 plowed through Oly and Tumwater in the 1950s without a lot of fuss.

On the OHS grounds there was "The Pond," and the cyclone fence around it was not an adequate barrier in preventing older students from tossing sophomores into it (in those days high school started at grade 10). I was in a Russian history class where we held a revolution, put the teacher on trial, and sentenced him to be thrown in The Pond, which was handy as we were the nearest classroom to that aquatic feature. Several of us had managed to shove him through a hole in the fence, and he was hanging on to the upper bar with all his strength. We would've had him too, except some teachers from the nearby portables raced out to rescue him.

This all comes to mind as I read through the late Mary Ann Bigelow's book, Where the Potholes Are (1990). Here is an excerpt to add to the OlyBlog Olylore:

... Nobody had a name for the oddities, but except for the size, they were alike. A Hole. A hole of from fifty feet across to several hundred feet; amazingly deep, whether in open or forest land, but with no change in surrounding soil or marking; a HOLE deep enough in many cases to hold water, with spring-fed depths of how many feet? Many seemed fairly shallow, but more held deep waters. Children were forbidden to go near and no one knew where the holes had come from or why they were there.

Read more...

From Lansing State Journal:

A neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Movement, hopes to gain notoriety and more members during the April rally. Community leaders can learn well from similar Capitol rallies in the mid-1990s, held by the Ku Klux Klan.

Mainly, Lansing leaders did the right things a decade ago. They didn't try to prevent the Klan rally. Rather, they presented a unified front with anti-hate rallies and prayer services. The Capitol steps were "cleansed" after one Klan rally, in a symbolic show of positive community power.

But during one rally, in 1994, anti-Klan protesters showed up. It was an angry confrontation. Police used pepper spray and made arrests. That clash simply played into the hands of publicity-craving Klan members.

Similarly, in Toledo last October, protesters who rallied against this same neo-Nazi group turned violent and torched a neighborhood bar. Do we want to be a sorry sequel to Toledo?

True, anti-Nazi protesters have just as much right to rally as the neo-Nazis. However, we urge a more constructive path.

Some communities, faced with impending hate rallies, have employed smart, creative strategies to make a strong, but peaceful, statement.

In 1995, leaders in Wheaton, Ill., brought in a mariachi band. People sang, danced, had fun - right under the Klansmen's noses. The message: We won't stoop to your level.

[Via Olyunity]

Good Rockin' Blues by Alice Stuart and The Formerlys - and Higher Energy Funky Grooves by The Jude Bowerman Band is this Sunday, March 19 at The Evergreen State College’s first “Concert for Scholarships

From The Seattle Times:

A coalition of conservation groups hopes to establish 10 new parks along Puget Sound as part of a new 10-year effort to revitalize shorelines.

The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Lands and People for Puget Sound yesterday kicked off what they say will be a decadelong, multibillion-dollar campaign to clean up and restore the 2,100-mile web of tidelands, mud flats, rocky shores and beaches that serve as a nursery for the Sound's aquatic life.

[snip]

The groups also plan to take on a host of restoration projects, such as a recent Nature Conservancy program in the South Sound's Woodard Bay near Olympia to restore native Olympia oysters. And they plan to purchase more tidelands that are important to species such as herring, hake and migratory birds -- for example, properties recently bought with state and federal grants around Port Susan Bay in the Skagit River delta.

"We have been working around the Skagit, the San Juans, the Duwamish and South Sound and have some ideas about projects, but the details will be forthcoming," said Kathy Fletcher, executive director of People for Puget Sound.

The goal, ultimately, is to build momentum for restoration of Puget Sound on a massive scale.

Not much, it turns out. From The Olympian:

They can require buildings to be demolished if they go vacant for a certain period of time to guard against blight, said Pete Swensson, a planner working on the study. And officials can limit the square footage on the ground floor of a proposed building.

But the social and moral responsibilities of companies is a legal tightrope. The city does not have the authority to regulate these matters, Sterbank said. Some issues such as wages already are controlled by federal law, and Olympia lacks the power to supersede.

Thus, cities cannot require that companies be good citizens in the community. But if cities can't care, who will?