When we arrived at about 8:20 pm, the ship had docked, joined by every manner of law enforcement, and alot of protesters. (It was hard to estimate how many, as they were spread out all over.) My party included myself, my partner, my roommate, and my two kids. There was music, food, signs, dogs, children, and numerous citizen journalists at work. There was an undercover cop in a red Caterpillar sweatshirt. (If you want us to know you're a cop, wear that. )
We played jumprope in the middle of the sidewalk and tried to think of anti-war jumprope rhymes. The protester with the blue bandana on his head was the best jumper.
The coast guard was there with their machine guns. There were reports of "snipers" sighted on the cranes. (I don't know what was meant by "sniper".)
An angry soldier broke a protester's camera. Somehow in relation to that, another man took the prop "body" belonging to the protest, and went running for the parking lot. Two people from the protest followed him and after a bit of a struggle, got the "body" back. Apparently someone from the protest called the Olympia Police, and they showed up to ask about this incident.They left after a little while.
Larry Mosqueda used a bullhorn to remind the soldiers on the boat of their duty to resist illegal orders.
At 9:15 we left to put the kids to bed.

Uh...who exactly did the "discharging?" From Protesters at port to meet military ship - The Olympian - Olympia, Washington:

OLYMPIA - A military ship that pulled into port tonight to take equipment to Iraq was greeted by about 70 protestors who had been waiting its arrival.

The group lined the port plaza and the floating dock, waving signs that read “No Iraq War” and “U.S. Troops are worth more than $3.25 a gallon.” At least one person used a blowhorn to shout to the ship “Get out of our waters.”

There are reports that mace or pepper spray was discharged. Thurston County dispatchers called for medic units to respond to about a dozen people who had a reaction to the spray.

Update -- from Gar Lipow on omjp:

... protesters shaking the port fence were pepper sprayed this evening. The port police or Olympia police gave no warning; told them to stop shaking the fence after pepper spraying. They sprayed heavily too. I was tired out from other activities and was walking away at the time it happened and felt it from at least 50 yards away. I can only imagine what it was like close.

Coast Guard Has Arrived in Port - 12:40PM Monday May 29th

One report so far that the Coast Guard is here; They are reportedly hooking up firehose and may be using that against the demonstrators. We're just not sure. Get down there now if you want to protest the arrival of the ship. The next High Tide is 9:44PM tonight.

Drew 870-3127

Last year the state legislature failed to act upon the booming pay day loan industry.  The higher ups at Ft. Lewis particularly wanted action taken against this industry.  Everywhere you look another pay day loan office is popping up.

For those not particularly familiar with the pay day loan industry it is easy to describe.  A pay day loan is where you go into an office and write a check for say $500.  The pay day loan office will give you say $450 and promise not to cash the check until you get paid, a week later or so.  Pay day comes and the loan company made $50 interest on a one week loan.  This works out to an astronomical annual rate.

Pay day loan offices are often in the least affluent neighborhoods, some may show up in more upscale areas, but they are primarily fixtures of the low rent district.  There has been a recent boom in these business here in our town.  Near Ft. Lewis you can't swing a cat without hitting a pay day loan business.

Now the pay day loan business is set up do do one thing and one thing only.  That is to exploit the poor.  To deprive them of their meager resources to enrich the business at obscene levels.  This has to be curtailed.  No business should be allowed to operate uncurtailed when their only mission is to exploit the poor.

The pay day loan people will claim that they are providing a valuable service.  Making money available to those that don't have access to traditional borrowing sources.  There may be a grain of truth here, but mostly the pay day loan people create opportunites where none are required.  They provide easy access to the money so people take advantage of it.  It has to less with altrusim than it has to do with psychology and exploitation.  The costs to the poor are huge.  A good many of the clients of these services end up owing tens of thousands of dollars on what started out as a $500 loan. 

From Memorial Day History:

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war). It is now celebrated in almost every State on the last Monday in May (passed by Congress with the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 - 363) to ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays), though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19 in Texas, April 26 in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10 in South Carolina; and June 3 (Jefferson Davis' birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee.

This seems especially poignant as we are presently involved in a civil war in another country -- a war with many innocents dead. Unfortunately, I fear there will be no "greater good" resulting from the Iraq war, certainly nothing on so grand a scale as the end of slavery. In fact, it seems much more likely that a fundamentally religious and undemocratic state will arise from this war. What shameful cost of lives for so little reward. Honor the troops -- bring them home.

From Ron Jacobs, "Two, Three, Many Olympias":

Ron: What's going on up there in Olympia with the convoy blockades? Are the trucks being blockaded military vehicles? What are they carrying and where are the materials bound?

Drew: The vehicles being blocked are a type of combat vehicle known as the Stryker Vehicle. They are armored vehicles with mounted weapons and they each carry troops into patrols or battles. Sixteen people (as of Thursday) have been arrested for blocking the movement of these vehicles, in various ways, toward the Port and from there to the war in Iraq.

Ron: Can you give me a brief history of what came before the current protests? Did Olympia invite the supply ships to their port or were they forced on them by the US government?

Drew: Military shipments began in 2004, and have continued sporadically since then. So far, this is the first combat brigade to go OUT through the Port of Olympia. We have seen tanks and other weapons arriving in Olympia, but blocking them from re-entering the US seemed to us to be inappropriate, despite the fact we don’t support the Port profiting from the war.

Read more.

From kgw.com | News for Oregon and SW Washington | AP Wire:

Judith Moore, an editor and essayist whose 2005 memoir "Fat Girl: A True Story," was a frank assessment of the pain of growing up overweight, has died.

Moore, a graduate of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., died after three years of colon cancer on May 15 at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkelely, according to her daughter, Rebecca Moore. She was 66.

My Event:

 Protesting the protesting at the Port of Olympia. All day, every day, all over Olympia.