(A Work in Progress)
Olympia, WA @ Heritage Room (4-24-14) — They may not have been the 1% but there were more than a few from the 2% at this soiree to benefit the environment, stop its destruction, and open some pockets of the swells. They were alarmingly white, privileged, and air breathers–every last one–proving survival is an apolitical issue. A coalition of the breathing may be more than a good idea; it may be a vital one.
Olympia, WA @ TESC (4-23-14) — Ed Mead and Mark Cook were members of Seattle’s notorious George Jackson Brigade (GJB) in the mid-1970’s. For over two years, this group routinely robbed banks and bombed buildings across the width and breadth of not only Washington State, but Oregon, releasing communiques, while the feds were in hot pursuit, describing themselves as Marxist oriented revolutionaries.
During a radio interview after his release from prison after serving decades for the aforementioned crimes, Mr. Cook denied being a ‘real’ member of the GJB, asserting the press and authorities ‘credited’ him with membership…a credit he was happy to accept despite averring he was only an ancillary associate. Still, the string of violent lawlessness continued until a gun battle with the police broke out during one bank robbery in which a member was killed.
Declassified FBI files claim Mark Cook was the getaway driver who fired at and missed a pursuing officer during the heist, but he managed to hit one of his comrades with the bullet before making their escape. The wounded robber was captured. Nevertheless, Mr. Cook denied, during the presentation in the TESC Lecture Hall, that he was the driver. He did, however, admit to ambushing, shooting and wounding a police officer escorting the wounded bank robber to a hospital for treatment to assist the man’s escape. Authorities later recaptured him and arrested Mark Cook. He was convicted of shooting the police officer while aiding/abetting the escape of the prisoner.
With the string of violent crimes, robberies, bombings, and having been convicted of shooting a police officer during the crime of implementing the escape of the wounded prisoner, even the guest speakers conceded it was a miracle they were on the streets today, long before the sentences they’d been given were fully served.
The two spent very little time recounting the depth or length of their crime sprees, and focused on the gestalt/turbulence of the era along with their engagement in prisoner issues during their incarceration. They justified their bank robberies as ‘funding’ their ‘revolutionary’ activities while candidly warning of the consequences/suffering one was likely to incur going down the same path. They spent no time and made no mention of the suffering they caused others over the two years they defied the law, victimizing others with abandon. Judging only from their reminiscences, it appeared as though they scarcely gave it a thought. To hear Mr. Cook and Mr. Mead tell it, this was a war against an oppressive regime and one must think of the property destruction and ruined lives as collateral damage in a ‘just’ war against the man–a highly convenient self serving argument for any bank robber or bomber to make…especially after getting caught.
While on the run, the gang bombed two Rainier National Bank offices in the Bellevue area. Releasing a communique to the press, the GJB claimed it had done so for the reason the bank had connections with the family which owned the Seattle Times, a publication the gang described as a bourgeois newspaper. This hostility to the press continues apace to this day as reflected in the starry eyed admiration of their young would-be acolytes and lifestyle anarchists.
Listening to the two, it became apparent Mark Cook was the more scholarly, even while he urged those bent on a violent revolutionary future to begin living like fugitives now rather than later after they became wanted by government authorities for crimes they might commit in the future. Living a life on the run had to start well in advance, he argued. As predictable as some of his opinions were, he also had some profound insight. “The most dangerous men never go to prison,” he once observed. The track record of Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and Rumsfeld surely proves his point. Some would point to President Obama as further proof.
Despite the shortcomings of the two men, it was obvious prison and the years had changed them. They were senior citizens now, with a judgment the years of stress and suffering bring with them. They conducted themselves with quiet dignity, were not bombastic, candidly recounting the horrors and inhumanity within prison walls. Mark and Ed weren’t likely genuine revolutionaries before being caught…they admitted they’d badly miscalculated their actions…but they did become revolutionaries after being interred. Their honest reflections seemed lost on most of those who came to hear them speak, fewer than 2 dozen. Most of today’s TESC student body have probably never heard of them. The two Rip Van Winkles had woken up to a new world after being buried for decades–a world they had yet to fully grasp–strangers in a strange land that barely acknowledged them. They were humble and curiously handsome–like an old sailing ship.
After they’d told their stories, or what they wished to reveal, the audience was invited to ask questions. No one, initially, had any, so this reporter asked one: “Given the lengthy string of bank robberies, bombings, loss of life, and shooting of a police officer, not to mention their antipathy toward laws, and government, just WHAT were the authorities supposed to do with them and their ilk?–give them a stern lecture?” Each attempting to field this question…somewhat unsuccessfully…until Brad, the ACAP facilitator, cut them short, hoping others would pose less troublesome questions.
Several others asked ensuing questions and one woman asked for their take on what the impact of the “prison-industrial complex” had been? They answered as best they could, but a lifetime within prison walls hadn’t prepared them to give a comprehensive answer. They’d toiled at stopping atrocities like prison rape, improving the dismal prison conditions inmates had to endure, and negotiating with the warden over the harm done to inmates thrown into the ‘hole’. It was an asymmetrical battle, but one that ultimately transformed them, while caught in the jaws of Hell, from common criminals into champions, of a sort, for human rights. Having soaked for decades in the sewers of our archaic criminal justice system, one had trouble recognizing them from their former selves–a life affirming transition despite the cruelty they’d witnessed and endured. Both compared the fate of virtually any animal under the thumb of man as better than the appalling conditions inmates must survive. Is it any wonder violently crippled convicts arrive at our doorsteps after coming out of such a world? Each, in turn, poignantly made a case for abolishing prisons as we know them.
The session had wound down, no questions remained. This inspired one last question from the only photojournalist covering the forum: “If one understands prisons and the criminal justice systems are instruments of torture/terror used by the state to break people who defy it, how is it that ‘snitches’ are so harshly condemned and targeted when even Al Qaida operatives break under torture? In fact, are we not a nation of snitches, which any casual listener to a police scanner would be forced to recognize almost instantly?”
Mark Cook took a clumsy stab at answering. He also misunderstood the question. He responded that one should NEVER inform on another, even if the resistance proved fatal, and to endure torture at least long enough until ones comrades could be warned you were about to break. He went on to opine ‘criminals’, as opposed to ‘revolutionaries’, were merely capitalists who thumbed their nose at the law rather than using it to their advantage…essentially flip sides of the same coin. But, this reflection missed the reference to average citizens who clog the police frequencies with complaints of the most trivial and busybody sort such as “White man dancing in the middle of the street!” or “Homeless woman defecating behind a dumpster,” after all the public restrooms/toilets are locked at 5:00 pm.
The meeting was not destined to terminate so uneventfully. As Mr. Cook was trying to field this last question, a young blond curly haired youth who’d taken up a set behind the photographer interrupted, saying, “He’s a snitch!” (the photojournalist) “Is that right?” queried Mr. Cook.
Looking his nemesis directly in the eye, the reporter exploded with a short very tart and unprofessional verbal response. Robert Herdlein, an adviser on campus to the student run Cooper Point Journal newspaper tried to calm down the reporter. “He’s only a kid,” he argued in a subdued tone. “He’s old enough to know better,” snorted the photographer, “and besides, it’s a thinly veiled threat/call to action which is a continuation of a campaign of intimidation, bullying, and threats directed at the press–particularly this one!”
The ‘kid’ looked like a younger brother to Matthew M Pfeiffer, a Seattle native, self described anarchist, federal Grand Jury resister detainee, and advocate of ‘direct action’ street demonstrations suspected of being among those who destroyed property during Seattle’s May Day riots. If not his brother, then an ill conceived younger clone who after disrupting the meeting to confront the photographer, then cringed under the camera’s gaze as his picture was snapped. Perhaps it’s a family trait; Maddy reacts much the same. With this kind of cowardly mob inspired behavior, government apparatchiks needn’t fear for where they’re next paycheck is coming from. The lifestyle anarchists, despite their arrogance and violence are impotent to create meaningful change…representing something worse than what they protest as they wrap the cloak of ‘rebel’ about themselves–much as Mark Cook and Ed Mead did in their youth.
Pfeiffer jr?
Mark Cook (left) & Ed Mead (right)
Olympia, WA @ TESC (4-23-14) — The weather sucked! No, it wasn’t a case of global warming, just a typical blustery rainy NW spring day. Many tablers moved inside the Library building as few students cared to tarry on the campus’ Red Square.
A kidney stop inside the Communications Building on campus revealed the college has gone all out to accommodate the politically correct and gender identity politics of the day. Rather than ONE public restroom, or even two, there were now THREE: One for men, one for women, and one unisex bathroom for either or those who can’t make up their mind. Mario sat near the entrances, apparently guarding the toilets from the unwary and untutored.
‘L’ is for lavatory
The demographics of the campus have changed dramatically since the mid-80’s. Not only is the student body younger, but far more foreign nationals and ethnic minorities attend, an increase by at least an order of magnitude as the following photos taken in one of the dining areas of the CAB building reveal.
A young man employed by the Student Activities Office tabling literature promoting their services found the photographer so interesting/suspicious, he took several snapshots, temporarily blocking the view. The school’s apprehension of the press, even in its most public settings, appears to be ubiquitous. In an era when every citizen is toting one or more cameras, this feels strange and while encountered elsewhere across the political spectrum, nowhere is it as consistent or widespread as at TESC.
Inside were jugglers (Evergreen’s Circus Resurgence student group), literature and photos on tables demonstrating the various studies offered by the school, and even a modern looking enclosed solar powered reclining bicycle, although it was actually over 20 years old–a couple of lifetimes in today’s fast paced technical world. It didn’t even have regenerative brakes, practically standard equipment on today’s hybrid cars. But it looked cool, like a prop from ‘The Yellow Submarine’.
This student group of aspiring jugglers and acrobats meets weekly on Red Square to do their stuff.
Souki is originally from Morocco, a junior @ TESC pursuing studies in video and multimedia journalism. She’s interested in an advanced degree after matriculating from Evergreen. She expresses doubt about the question before candidly opining TESC isn’t up to snuff in its curriculum nor facilities for someone such as herself interested in social justice through the lens of multimedia, particularly video. In this short clip, acquired after many false starts due to interruptions, given the venue, she unwinds before the camera.
The day had a full schedule of events on campus, and off. Two TESC events conflicted by overlapping in the schedule; Mark Cook and Ed Mead, members of the once notorious George Jackson Brigade, were scheduled for 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm in Lecture Hall 2 as guest lecturers hosted by ACAP (Abolish Cops And Prisons, a TESC on campus student organization). But, Earth Fest has scheduled a 3-hour training will entail a history of direct action and civil disobedience in the history of social and environmental movements and how tactics and strategies have helped win campaigns in the campus ‘Longhouse’.
Torn between the two, the shorter ACAP presentation was selected, which is just as well as the ‘Longhouse’ workshop was canceled, reportedly because the organizers were terrified the Press would cover it. Evergreen organizers/advisers, smitten with r@dical intrigue and paranaoi@, not only regularly insult at least one reporter at these kinds of public events, but hide their head in the sand as though no one could/should see them who they perceive as an unknown quantity, or worse–a government spook. It’s the kind of game children play hiding under a blanket pretending it’s an invisibility cloak.
The ACAP sponsored event was captured–mostly– on video (below) except for an outburst from a young man who looked like the younger brother of ‘Maddy’ Pfeiffer (once a member of TESC’s SDS student organization and incarcerated last year as a federal grand jury resister in Seattle).
Snitch Hunting (A)narchist
Tabling Materials, Literature, Offerings, and Characters:
El Tortugo
Heading Out
Dietary Extremes
Immortalized
Sugar Pine Cone from Nevada
Arthropod
Center for Gravity
It’s All In the Wrists
Intrepid Photographer
A Layered Look
Future Proof?…or Blast from the Past?
No Regenerative Brakes for this 20 year old model
Enclosed Recumbent Solar Powered Bicycle
Souki Mehdaoui
Mark Cook (left) & Ed Mead (right)
Olympia, WA (4-18-14) — Traffic was backed up due to a young man riding a bicycle on Highway 101 near the Shelton exit ramp and Highway 8 who lost an argument, rooted in inattentiveness, with a BMW Friday afternoon. It could have been a fatal mistake, but he was seen sitting up in the back of an emergency vehicle while the driver waited for an investigating WSP trooper to complete his report and the ET’s to remove the crumpled bicycle from the roadside. The rider claimed he was ‘OK’ though he looked shaken.
The woman driver stated, when asked, the bicyclist had swerved in front of her without looking behind and she had no opportunity to avoid the collision. The moral of the story, at least for bicyclists, is clear.
by Jon Queally
(4-18-14) In an interview with journalist Bill Moyers set to air Friday, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman celebrates both the insights and warnings of French economist Thomas Piketty whose new ground-breaking book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, argues that modern capitalism has put the world “on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy—a society of inherited wealth.”
The conclusions that Piketty puts forth in the book, Krugman tells Moyers, are revelatory because they show that even people who are now employing the rhetoric of the “1% versus the 99%” do not fully appreciate the disaster that global wealth inequality is causing.
Says Krugman:
Actually, a lot of what we know about inequality actually comes from him, because he’s been an invisible presence behind a lot. So when you talk about the 1 percent, you’re actually to a larger extent reflecting his prior work. But what he’s really done now is he said, “Even those of you who talk about the 1 percent, you don’t really get what’s going on. You’re living in the past. You’re living in the ’80s. You think that Gordon Gekko is the future.”
And Gordon Gekko is a bad guy, he’s a predator. But he’s a self-made predator. And right now, what we’re really talking about is we’re talking about Gordon Gekko’s son or daughter. We’re talking about inherited wealth playing an ever-growing role. So he’s telling us that we are on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy. A society of inherited wealth, “patrimonial capitalism.” And he does it with an enormous amount of documentation and it’s a revelation. I mean, even for someone like me, it’s a revelation.
A key component of this ongoing disaster of capitalism is what happens when great wealth—and Piketty puts focus on inherited wealth—grows at rates faster than the overall economy. The mathematical formulation of that idea—which looks like this: r > g—is now gaining popular currency.
“It’s a real ‘eureka’ book,” says Krugman. “You suddenly say, ‘Oh, this is not—the world is not the way I saw it.’ The world in fact has moved on a long way in the last 25 years and not in a direction you’re going to like because we are seeing not only great disparities in income and wealth, but we’re seeing them get entrenched. We’re seeing them become inequalities that will be transferred across generations. We are becoming very much the kind of society we imagine we’re nothing like.”
The prediction embedded in Piketty’s book is that even as inequality has been on a steady rise for the last several decades, the truth is: we ain’t seen nothing yet.
As we go forward, according to Krugman, Piketty’s thesis says that even though inequality is already a huge problem, it’s going to get even worse. “Unless something gets better,” he explains, “we’re going to look back nostalgically on the early 21st century when you could still at least have the pretense that the wealthy actually earned their wealth. And, you know, by the year 2030, it’ll all be inherited.”
Writing about his new book at The Nation on Friday, the Economic Policy Institute’s Jeff Faux says that though Piketty “is certainly not the first economist to criticize inherited wealth” his “credentials and exhaustive attention to statistical detail make him harder for the pundits and policy elites that protect the plutocracy to dismiss.”
Faux concludes what Piketty has re-discovered, and re-stated for a modern audience, is what Marx himself and others long ago realized—that capitalism “is not only unfair, it is relentlessly and dynamically unfair.”
As a point of order, however, it seems noteworthy that Piketty is quite prepared to go even further. In an interview last week in Europe, Piketty didn’t stop at saying capitalism was unfair, but stated: “I have proved that under the present circumstances capitalism simply cannot work.”
And as Krugman explains to Moyers, the implications of a world dominated by the super-wealthy for regular working people is profound. “When you have a few people who are so wealthy that they can effectively buy the political system, the political system is going to tend to serve their interests,” he said.
Watch the interview:
Olympia, WA (4-17-14) — WAmend is part of a nationwide organization set on overturning the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United equating money in unlimited amounts to ‘free speech’. The ruling currently allows corporations, et ux, to contribute unlimited amounts to their favorite politician/candidate…sometimes contributing to BOTH in a transparent bid to buy access regardless of who wins at the ballot box.
Corporate Takeover
The local arm of the movement to amend the U.S. Constitution, stripping said corporations of their ability to effectively buy elections/politicians gathers on a regular basis in the Thurston County building meeting room to discuss strategies on how to gain enough signatures (300,000) to put Washington State on the map of the necessary 3/4ths of the States needed to amend the Constitution with respect to this issue of the legal ‘personhood’ of corporations when it comes to ‘free $peech’.
Keeping America Beautiful
Volunteers for gathering signatures on the petition are needed, businesses are being approached to display the document where customers can find and sign them. Community activists are tabling at public events and on the streets/business parking lots in an effort to allow citizens to take back the democratic/political process in America from the deep pockets that diminish the One Man:One Vote principle we hold dear. Given that money is the “mother’s milk of politics”, an unlimited amount of it predictably corrupts the political and democratic process.
Those who attended the night’s meeting were a mixed group of all ages and backgrounds including at least one British National who has resided in America these past 22 years. It was a lively group, full of commitment and a love for what this country has to offer. They welcome anyone genuinely interested in participating. The main organizer is Mike who can be contacted at: savocas@fairpoint.net
Mike
Student ACAP member
Olympia, WA @ TESC (4-14-14) — The ‘Town Hall’ meeting called by Professor Peter Bohmer and several supporting campus sanctioned student organizations proved to be anti-climactic. Fewer than 2 dozen attended, possibly closer to 15, among which were this reporter, Ray (student editor of TESC’s Cooper Point Journal), one faculty member, and an advocate of the now settled lawsuit against the City of Olympia alleging the municipality engaged in illegal political profiling of area dissidents.
ACAP member posing for photographer in public ‘Town Hall’ meeting @ TESC
Ray takes photos during ‘Town Hall’ meeting @ TESC.
The ‘rules’ of the meeting were written on the chalk board, the first short presentation of the ‘problem’ discussed the John Towery lawsuit where a government agent successfully sought confidences from a coalition of local anti-war activists. The Fort Lewis military command formally admitted in a lawsuit brought against them in federal court that Mr. Towery had, indeed, been acting as their agent. The first speaker attempted to correlate that as an effort to ‘spy’ on Evergreen students and criticized what he claimed to be dissembling from TESC campus police when they denied sharing information they acquired about student dissidents with other government law enforcement agencies.
professor Peter Bohmer
The next speaker was professor Peter Bohmer, who laid out a 4-point proposal seeking to require the school’s administration to discipline anyone found to be sharing information gleaned from observing students on campus and their activities/associates.
Following these two speakers, the floor was thrown open to questions. None (at least initially) were forthcoming. This reporter asked to address the small group and they consented. His remarks were limited to about 3 minutes. This was later expanded to 7 minutes out of consideration for the small number of attendees and few questions. One faculty member expressed concern over being being monitored on campus, despite being a State employee. Other ‘liberal’ faculty members were curiously absent.
Attendees were cautioned during the 3-minute comment to delineate between academic freedom and an expectation of privacy on a public tax supported college campus–especially in public venues or at public events. It was pointed out how instructors were State employees who had no more right to privacy than any other employee while at their workplace–i.e. none! Professor Peter Bohmer knows he is under close scrutiny by government investigators, thus has attempted to conflate academic freedom with privacy in an effort to use the former as a shield against investigation and monitoring his Marxist driven political activities–many involving ‘direct action’/civil disobedience. e.g. block or shutting down Port of Olympia functions and attempts to prevent or interfere with troop movements between Fort Lewis and the Port of Olympia.
The lawsuit complaining of government attempts to monitor said activities has not, to date, gained much traction in federal court. Serious doubts exist as to whether it will succeed. Larry Hildes, a member of the National Lawers Guild, has been the attorney of record for the plaintiffs. Federal Judge Ben Settle, a local attorney from the Shelton area before being appointed to the bench, has presided over the case which is proceeding in the federal courtroom in Tacoma.
As always, the event reflected TESC culture remains schizoid/paradoxical about 1st Amendment principles such as academic freedom, freedom of the press, rights (or NOT) to privacy in public forums, photography, and a firmly grounded understanding of where the boundaries lie without conflating them. It remains hostile to universal application of 1st Amendment principles involving the press, preferring to rely on vague/fuzzy notions of what’s ‘polite’ rather than the letter of the law. The school appears to have many students, staff, and faculty who lack the grasp of a high school civics class student in these matters–a college with a master’s in public administration degree curriculum where graduates will be assuming roles as judges, public officials and administrators, even leaders in the business community will leave the school dangerously ill informed, but powerful. More Town Meetings are in order, but to address the failure of this public institution to adequately educate its charges.
TESC Faculty member concerned about being monitored
Co-ed attending the TESC ‘Town Hall’ meeting
When: Thursday, April 24 at 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Where: Media Island International 816 Adams St. SE, Olympia, Washington 98501
What: 6-9 PM: Grand Strategies! This will be an awesome event that every activist and organizer will learn a lot from! The Backbone Campaign‘s Bill Moyer is coming to Olympia!
Bill Moyer is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Backbone Campaign. Bill has been an activist for over 30 years and a percussionist for more. These intersecting paths in social movements and the arts generate a unique set of skills and insights that he employs in his movement building work. Bill’s Artful Activism takes him around the country providing trainings for activists and organizers, campaign design for organizations, and strategic advice and tactical support for actions. Through these travels Bill has met many talented people whose insights he weaves into his own analysis and attempts to share their lessons with others. Yet, his home community of Vashon Island, WA is the local laboratory and foundation for his and all of Backbone Campaign’s efforts, and where he shares a wooded sanctuary with his wife Esther and daughter Aziza.
When: Saturday, April 26 at 11:00am – 3:30pm
Where: Media Island International 816 Adams St. SE, Olympia, Washington 98501
What: Backbone Campaign believes (and our 10 years experience of movement-building work underscores this belief) that Anti-Oppression skills, practices, and framework are essential for bringing about the thriving and economically and environmentally just communities we all yearn for. The weekend of April 26th & 27th we are partnering with the awesome ecofeminist and anti-oppression co-op training group the Canopy Collective (http://
Series in Liberation and Ending Oppressions
All workshops involve a mix of facilitated discussion in large and small groups (as appropriate to the gathering), brief lecture/presentation, interactive hands-on activities that would enhance learning concepts and personalize the materials to the participants.
We are the ones we’ve been looking for:
How do we focus on the goodness of our planet and each other in our daily lives, and still invest life energy into ending oppressions?
“Un mundo endonde quepan muchos mundos” – Reclaiming cultures and heritages:
This workshop acknowledges the reality that everyone’s heritage is good. It goes in depth into what it takes to create a world where many worlds fit by rebuilding the fabric of our communities by strengthening our own understandings of the goodness of our cultures and heritages.
Introduction to structural oppression and privilege:
Common definitions of oppression, privilege, and liberation. Explores how oppression and privilege work on individual and structural levels. General overview, rather than tackling particular oppressions in depth.
How Oppression Works and Strategies of Healing & Resistance (2-parts)
Focused on how settler colonialism, hetero-patriarchy, and white supremacy (what many people call racism) function in our society to uphold capitalism (class oppression) and imperialism and strategies for challenging these from the point of view of different struggles.
Building an Eco-feminist World
Fundamental ideas from ecofeminism and introduction to strategies for base building for local social justice work.
Practicing Participatory Democracy
In the format of one particular practice, present a short history of different practices of participatory democracy, and a demonstration based on the theme/topic that makes the most sense for the participants.
Sharing Allie Skills and Learnings
Beginning with the understanding that alliance is not an identity, but rather a series of thoughtful actions to end oppression, this workshop shares basic skills towards becoming an ally to individuals and communities who are targeted by oppressions.
Strategies for Building Solidarity (DIGNITY – Beyond Solidarity)
More advanced workshop following “Sharing Allie Skills and Learnings”, with strategies to address some barriers to building respectful alliances and successful joint actions.
When: Wednesday, April 23 at 2:30pm – 5:30pm
Where: TESC Longhouse
What: Join us for Earth Fest at Evergreen!
This 3-hour training will entail a history of direct action and civil disobedience in the history of social and environmental movements, and how tactics and strategies have helped win campaigns.
The training will include NVDA 101, basic blockade techniques, and folks will have the opportunity to brainstorm and learn the steps to effective action planning through role plays.
Public · Hosted by Steph Cascadia
Co-hosted by EPIC – Evergreen Political Information Center, South Sound Rising Tide, and the Evergreen Environmental Corps