The vote comes two weeks after the council, an affiliate of the national AFL-CIO, passed a resolution calling on SPOG to acknowledge and address racism within its ranks and law enforcement more generally, and to commit to negotiating collective bargaining agreements that do not evade accountability.
Jacob Johns, a fellow UU from Spokane, was shot on September 28th, while participating in a peaceful protest down in New Mexico. Last we heard he was in the hospital and holding his own. Jacob was very involved in indigenous, climate and environmental justice issues—internationally, nationally and locally. Some of us had the chance to…
By Dahlia Bazzaz / Feb. 18, 2020 / Seattle Times After the newspaper illustration spread on social media, the school became one of several in the Puget Sound region where racist, bigoted images or speech by students garnered media attention in the last year. What happened next, experts said, followed a familiar sequence: Public outcry. School…
Yakima County has the highest per capita rate of COVID-19 infections on the entire West Coast, a distinction the community leaders blame on a slow response from the governor and state and local officials to demands for stronger health and safety protections for agricultural workers. The Central Washington county has a 26.5% positive rate among those tested;…
In the wake of revelations that Washington State Patrol troopers search Native Americans and other people of color at far higher rates than whites, the state Legislature has agreed to appropriate $50,000 to investigate bias in police stops. . . . The money for the bias study, requested by Rep. Gina Mosbrucker, a Goldendale Republican,…
[Still pertinent . . . ] “Do Indians celebrate Thanksgiving?” I am asked this question at least once every fall. Which, by the way, is too many times. The answer is that my family (though I can’t speak for the other 5 million Indigenous people in America) doesn’t. Not the “brave-pilgrims-and-friendly-savages” version of the holiday,…
Many of the places that have been dealt the harshest blow by COVID-19 are simultaneously dealing with other serious threats to residents’ well-being. Even under the cover of the pandemic, environmental rollbacks and pipeline plans continue to threaten the health of people of color. Add to that the outrage and civil unrest that has erupted…
