A Historic Library Levy Lid Lift Will Appear on Ballots this November, Putting Timberland Regional Library’s Fate in Voters’ Hands

by Kylie McQuarrie

2026 has been a tumultuous year for the five-county Timberland Regional Library (TRL) system. With a new levy lift measure on the ballot, the library’s financial woes will continue until at least November, when voters could choose to solve those problems with a mild property tax bump.

But whether they’ll opt to trust Timberland after years of mismanagement (by Board members and library administrators alike) remains to be seen. If they want a lid lift to pass, the Board and admin have just under 100 days to rebuild public trust, connect with community members, support staff, and take responsibility for past actions.

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Read more TRL coverage here, here, and here.

by Ronda Larson Kramer

In December 2025, federally threatened Mazama pocket gophers played a key role in halting a plan to significantly expand the Olympia Regional Airport. Seven months later, the species and its Bush Prairie habitat at the airport have become part of a nationwide effort to stop a sweeping rollback of the Endangered Species Act.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife and National Marine Fisheries Services — federal agencies that say their mission is to conserve species and and “their habitats” and “the ecosystems they depend on”— have finalized a rule that redefines “harm” under the Endangered Species Act to exclude habitat destruction.

At issue is whether governments, companies, and landowners may destroy habitat occupied by protected species. Tribes and conservation groups insist that protecting endangered species necessarily includes protecting the habitat they require to survive and recover.

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by Morgan Atwater

While we were tabling at a No Kings protest, a Palestinian man from out of town stopped by and said to us, “I can’t believe a group like this exists in Wenatchee. You expect to see this kind of thing in Seattle, not out here.”

We were handing out zines and flyers promoting our Apartheid Free Wenatcheecampaign and collecting email addresses for the Wenatchee for Palestine mailing list. Beside us, a Boycott Chevron trifold poster teetered in the breeze.

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Everyone knows that American-style democracy is a two party system. Whether red/blue, Democrat/Republican, or conservative/liberal, it all points to an either/or outcome. However, substituting this systemic fact for political analysis ignores what’s really going on.

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Excerpt from Clare Follmann’s Scapegoat: What the Invasive Species Story Gets Wrong

by Clare Follmann

A caste of plants and animals, labeled “invasive species,” are charged with being a key cause of habitat degradation that must be eradicated at any cost — an ethically questionable and often futile approach. While some invasive species cause great environmental damage, recent developments in the study of ecology have found that intervention efforts themselves have frequently proved more harmful than helpful to their local ecosystems. Yet the outdated narrative of “species management” persists in both public belief and conservation policy, distracting from and even justifying a far greater threat to biodiversity: the global capitalist system that is destroying our planet.

***

(Abridged excerpt, slightly edited)

Although this book isn’t a story, it’s certainly about a story. It is full of many different stories, and it also begins with a story. So, for the sake of tradition (which this book at times will at length disavow), let it begin this way.

Once upon a time, there was a group of fishermen. . .

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Right to Work, Reconsidered

In order for organized labor to overcome the anti-union political right, it must shift focus from simply using collective power for meager pay raises, towards taking back power.

by Nicholas Hefling

As a union rep, I hear a lot of confusion about Right to Work (RTW) — a term that the left should reappropriate. RTW is the norm in most states (though not in the State of Washington) and the entire public sector since 2018. Where RTW exists, most workers in a union-represented workplace only pay dues voluntarily. RTW is an attack on a hard-won contractual provision called the union security clause, which requires that everyone a union represents pay their share of the cost of that representation.

At first glance, RTW can sound fairer to workers; why should anyone be forced to pay union dues? Here’s the catch. Even when a worker pays nothing, the union is still legally required to represent them: to bargain on their behalf, file their grievances, and defend their rights on the job. That costs significant resources. When the share of workers paying dues shrinks while the represented workforce doesn’t, the union is squeezed. This strain pushes unions to raise dues (which drives more people to drop out), cut staff, or scale back external organizing efforts. That, of course, was the dream anti-union activists pursued in Janus v. AFSCME.

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Captive Consumers!

Within prisons, exclusive contracts with private vendors leave incarcerated people with no choice.

by Tomas S. Afeworki

The prison industrial complex has always been rooted in profit, and it’s a well-oiled, self-feeding operation. And it will continue to grow during this new AI era as the citizenry loses jobs and the middle class becomes more nonexistent with each passing year.

Olympia Joins International Kite Festival to Resist Israeli Occupation in the West Bank

by Nicholas Kohnen and Michelle Ryder

On a sunny summer Sunday afternoon, some 25 Olympia families gathered near the Heritage Park Fountain to build, decorate, and fly kites alongside organizers across the world to show solidarity with Palestinians facing settler violence in the West Bank.

Laughter mingled with the sounds of classic Arabic music as bubbles floated past smiling faces, and children ran freely, compelling their kites to take to the skies. It was an afternoon of deliberate celebration and unbridled joy, part of an act of global solidarity coinciding with the 13th annual Burin Kite Festival.

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by Ronda Larson Kramer

A first-of-its-kind lawsuit by growth management watchdog Futurewise against Thurston County is set to become one of the initial tests of Washington’s pioneering climate planning law.

The 2023 law builds on decades of planning research showing that development patterns influence how far people drive and how much money local governments spend extending water, sewer, and other infrastructure. The climate planning law requires many local governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled through land-use planning.

Under Washington’s pre-existing Growth Management Act, most future urban growth must occur within designated Urban Growth Areas, or UGAs. UGAs include existing cities as well as adjacent unincorporated land intended to accommodate future urban growth. One of the main aims of a UGA, according to the Thurston GeoData Center, “is to provide a limit for the extension of urban utilities, especially sewer service.”

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US vs. Iran, Live Coverage on Every Channel

by Carl Eugene Stroud

If you follow the news at all, you’ve definitely encountered their extra easy-to-understand theory of war, a theory that presents armed conflict like a soccer match. The pervasiveness of this theory has created a situation where the dominant narrative about American-Iranian relations might be true, but it’s not the whole truth. Billing it as two sides facing off against each other increases the number of spectators watching from home, but it doesn’t help us see where, how, or why various forces are behaving the way they are.

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The Jungle's Planned Closure Falls Short on the Issue of Cats

by Whitney Bowerman

In May, the City of Olympia announced the beginning of a multi-year process to close The Jungle. It is the right thing to do. The site is unsafe and lacks the infrastructure to support human life with dignity.

However, conversations about encampment closures almost never cover the fact that the residents have animals, and lots of them! Almost all housing has strict rules about animals.

Most housing options permit a maximum of two animals. Encampment residents frequently have more. Additionally, animals must be spayed, neutered, and vaccinated to be accepted by most housing options — services that are genuinely difficult to access without transportation, funds, or the ability to keep appointments. So residents face an impossible calculus: which animals do I give up to get into housing? For many, the honest answer is none. They will not leave their cats behind. What looks from the outside like resistance to housing, is often something much simpler and more human. It is loyalty. It is love.

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Mesh: Not Just for Your Home Network

by Rob Ott

For months, I’d been hearing about mesh networks as various friends started getting into learning about them and attending educational events (often held at DECAY, which, along with so many other good things can be found on the DECAY community events calendar).

I had a long career in tech at the State, during which I studiously avoided becoming a supervisor and also, despite knowing many good humans who worked in this field, also avoided hardware or network setup. My brain is great at a lot of things. Understanding how physical things are built, configured, or operate is not one of them. Mesh falls into this category and therefore not intuitive to me. So, I kept asking people in mesh-land for a simple, easy intro document but none were offered. And as you know when you repeatedly ask for things like that, sometimes it is suggested that you create what it is that you are looking for. This is my bare bones attempt. With the research I have done so far, it is clear that I could spend many hours diving into this rabbit hole because there is so much more to learn. Here’s what I’ve got.

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🗞️ Watch this space! We are going to be announcing some really exciting news soon! The Works in Progress team has been working hard to make our dream of bringing back a print issue a reality!

A big thank you to everyone who has already donated to our fundraising campaign! If you would like to contribute to the creation of an ongoing print issue, you can make one time, monthly and yearly donations here.

by Isaac Wagnitz

Staff at North Thurston Public Schools (NTPS) are looking at layoffs after the school board decided on a reduction in force (RIF), as part of their plan to address a significant budget shortfall in the district.

According to The Olympian, the district is currently facing a $10 million shortfall. The layoffs were first proposed at a school board meeting on April 28th, but were tabled due to substantial opposition from organized labor and present community members. At a subsequent meeting on May 7th, the board decided to follow through with the RIF. Initially the board had been at an impasse, but board member Michelle Gipson ultimately cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of the layoffs. Members Sarah Tracy and Gretchen Maliska also supported the RIF, while Esperanza Badillo-Diiorio and Jeff Line cast their votes in opposition.

Works In Progress spoke with two NTPS staff about the current situation: Jeff Berland, a special education teacher in the district, and another employee who declined to be named due to concerns about retaliation who will be referred to hereafter as E for Educator. Berland and E discussed the background and impacts of the RIF, as well as steps moving forward.

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Fragments of a Working-Class Queer History

by Coco N. Spirator

Historically, the fights for queer liberation and for working-class power are seen as completely separate struggles, with completely independent demands. Yet, most queers in the United States are, and always have been, working class. Additionally, queer people also make up the most economically marginalized members of the working class. In reality, the history of queer struggle is often about tangible day-to-day concerns: work, living, housing, policing and access to healthcare. In other words, working-class issues. This oversight is particularly dangerous right now, as attacks on trans existence have become a central pillar of the right-wing movement.

What follows is a small collection of scenes from the history of queer struggle that demonstrate how the material realities of class and race informed those struggles. Although these movements rarely utilized many working class slogans, it was these day-to-day realities that brought people together into larger fights for queer liberation, and affected the kinds of movements they built. Unfortunately, these concerns were just as often also the basis of class divisions that would tear those movements apart again and again. There are important lessons to be learned here.

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Noticings: A Column About Public Space and Design — The City’s Back Door

by V Lane Hoy

During a seminar on the subject of public art in the late 1990s, art historian Rosalyn Deutsche outlined how a renovation of Jackson Square Park in New York City’s West Village introduced a new gate around the park’s perimeter. The New York City Parks Department entrusted a community group with keys to close the gate at night and prevent houseless people from taking refuge there. This was but one of the ways the underfunded parks department offloaded maintenance tasks they weren’t able to accomplish in-house due to ongoing budget cuts initiated in the late 1960s. Deutsche uncovers one of the assumptions embedded within that decision: ”People without homes are not residents of the neighborhood and are therefore not part of the public. Rather, homeless people are intruders in public space.”

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Prison Reformism: The Molding of Docile Prisoners

by Tomas Afeworki

In the not so distant past, many recognized the inhumane, militaristic oppression that was embedded into the fabric of the prison slavery system.

This recognition produced political awareness about the social, economic and cultural impacts of poverty. That awareness influenced many of us to radically defy this unjust status quo.

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Commissioner Tye Menser is seeking to remove elected commissioners from the appeals process, despite unanimous opposition from the Planning Commission.

By Ronda Larson Kramer

The Thurston County Board of County Commissioners (the Board) recently postponed its vote for a second time on a proposal that would remove the Board from the county’s land-use appeals process. The proposal by Board Chair Tye Menser has faced staunch opposition from environmental groups and the county’s own advisory committee.

In July 2025, the Thurston County Planning Commission — a 10-person advisory committee appointed by the Board — voted 10-0 against the proposal after hearing testimony from conservation groups and members of the public overwhelmingly opposed to it. Opponents argue it would remove residents’ only practical avenue to appeal erroneous land use decisions by the county.

The only person to submit comments in support was Heather Burgess, a land-use attorney whose clients include mine owners and developers of large housing projects.

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Privacy Services and Activism

Silver Bullet, or Snake Oil?

by Robb Ott, Technology and Surveillance in Dystopia Desk

We exist in an era where the state is leveraging surveillance and technology to engage in an intensifying campaign against activists, protestors, and any others who oppose them. Last September, the office of the President signed an executive order declaring “Antifa” a terrorist organization. The fact that Antifa it not an actually existing organization has not stopped White House officials from using the refrain over the past few months. Several activists across different states are currently facing federal charges with the common theme of “conspiracy” or “terrorism” charges being put forth against the defendants. The stakes for standing up for change are higher than ever and the stakes for remaining silent are immense. With cloud and communication services being deeply integrated into the daily lives of most people who do not think twice about using them. Those fighting for change for the better must utilize a higher standard of security than they would otherwise, but is this enough?

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Analyzing Timberland Regional Library’s 2018 Capital Facilities Proposal

Timberland Regional Library’s cost-cutting measures that reduce staffing and library access connect back to a proposal rejected in 2018.

by Caelen McQuilken

To better understand the developing story at Timberland Regional Library (TRL), Works in Progress looks back to 2018, when the TRL administration released its Capital Facilities Proposal (CFP), a long-term strategic plan that addressed funding, service models, and staffing.

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Fight Like an Animal: Revolutionary Biology in Defense of Life by Arnold Schroder

Arnold Schroder’s new book describes a scientific paradigm for social change which will appeal to veteran activists and armchair intellectuals alike.

by Reed Ingalls

Imagine you, dear reader, are an activist out on the street protesting against the activities of some nefarious corporation, police department, government office or what have you. Or maybe you don’t need to imagine.

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🗞️ Thank you for the continued support! We are currently in the process of fundraising for a printed issue of Works in Progress — to be part of this effort please consider making a one time, monthly or yearly donation here.

by Whitney Bowerman

Following the recent news of plans of closure for The Jungle, a look back at its history and what steps can be taken for a proper transition for those most affected.

In early May, the City of Olympia announced it would begin a regional effort to close The Jungle encampment, in coordination with the City of Lacey and Thurston County. A regional encampment transition planning team has been assembled, including representatives from the City of Olympia, the City of Lacey, Thurston County, Interfaith Works, Family Support Center, Olympic Health & Recovery Services, and Intercity Transit. The closure is expected to take 18 months to 2 years or more.

For a moment, this seemed like it might be different — not a sweep, not a clearing, but a genuine attempt to do the right thing.

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Shelton Wins Its Fight For Pride

by Matt Hilton

Shelton Pride Proclamation approved due to community turnout and reconsideration by Shelton City Council.

A Pride Month proclamation in Shelton initially failed on a tied 3-3 vote before being approved. A large community turnout pushed City Council to reconsider. More than 180 community members showed up to the revote, with 56 people giving public comment primarily in support. The final vote passed 5-2.

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End US Aggression Against Cuba!

by Peter Bohmer

The Trump administration is committed to overthrowing the Cuban government and its political economic structure. What can be done to stop it?

On May 1, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order authorizing additional sanctions on Cuba. Trump said, “We will be taking it [Cuba] over almost immediately.” These continued threats follow the Trump administration’s April 14 directive to the Pentagon to “ramp up preparations for possible military action against Cuba.” In response to Trump’s threats to take over the country, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said, “No aggressor, no matter how powerful, will find surrender in Cuba, … he will find a people determined to defend sovereignty and independence in every inch of our country.”

Trump told reporters that “we may stop by Cuba after we’ve finished with this” (referring to war against Iran). This followed a January 29 Executive Order calling Cuba “an unusual and extraordinary threat to US national security.” Trump announced a blockade of oil to Cuba and stiff tariffs for any country delivering oil. The two main suppliers had been Mexico and Venezuela. They and other nations have stopped shipping oil to Cuba except one big shipment by Russia in late March.

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Sharpening Conjunctures

Taking a technical term and turning it into a multi tool for everyday carry.

by Carl Eugene Stroud

It doesn’t matter what the goal is, there’s not much point in only anticipating ideal scenarios. This is why the concept of “conjuncture” is helpful, for strategizing and getting a lay of the land. Analyzing the conjuncture is about starting from the here and now because it’s important to look at things in context, paying attention to the situation at hand, accounting for the when and the where. But it’s also true that, as a term, conjuncture needs to be demystified to make it a tool that more people feel comfortable picking up and using.

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Today we begin our yearly commemoration and celebration of the queer and trans struggle for liberation that has existed for decades and continues to persist in the face of mounting systemic pressure.

We remember the working-class queer revolutionaries that threw the first bricks at Stonewall and dared to fight back against a state that criminalized their existence. Pride was a riot, a collective act of solidarity by the most marginalized: trans women of color, sex workers, the homeless, and the poor.

As we gather this June, let us honor their legacy by recognizing that true queer liberation cannot be achieved through market inclusion or legal reform alone, but only through the dismantling of the class structures that produce homophobia, transphobia, and material deprivation simultaneously.

Pride means solidarity across every axis of struggle: with striking workers, with tenants fighting eviction, with the undocumented, and the incarcerated. Because the liberation of queer people is inextricably linked to the liberation of all working people.

In love and solidarity,
Works in Progress

The First Pride Was A (Prison) Riot

by Felix Chrome

In recent years activists and scholars have done much important work to uplift the street queens who “threw the first brick at Stonewall,” and to reinsert the radical history of the Stonewall Riot into pride, far beyond rainbow jockstraps and vodka shots or the pride line from Gap. However, in this new popular retelling, many of us are still missing a huge facet of this story. In addition to being a multi-night series of riots, during which police were attacked in response to their violent provocations, in which gay revelers, drag queens, homeless youth, trans women, dykes, and many queers of all sorts, mostly unknown to us to this day, formed a beautiful mass to fight the cops who had long been agents of their degradation and destitution. Stonewall was also a riot inside the walls of a prison.

A block down Christopher Street from the historic Stonewall Inn, a mafia run gay bar that served as a gathering point for many gays in the Greenwich Village, stood the Women’s House of Detention. Until its demolition in 1973, the Women’s House of Detention was a women’s jail that operated much like Rikers does for men today, both as pretrial detention and where women would serve prison sentences. “The House of D” as it was familiarly called, also served as a point of queer gathering. At the heart of the gayborhood, women could often be seen calling up to their lovers through the barred windows, gathering outside waiting for their sisters to be released, or protesting in solidarity. The historical record shows that many of the women incarcerated inside the women’s house of detention were queer. Even as official documentation tries to elide this fact, the evidence is everywhere both in government surveys and first hand accounts.

In 1969 it was still common practice for the New York Police Department (NYPD) to arrest queer people for the crime of “impersonation” if they were not wearing three articles of clothing associated with their gender assigned at birth. While “crossdressing” was not technically illegal, this vague statute served as a loophole to criminalize trans expression, drag, butch presentation, and other facets of queerness. This meant that many people in the House of D were butches, bulldykes, or people we may today understand as transmasculine. Another common crime women were incarcerated for was prostitution, and many gay women turned to hustling, often working on the street where arrest risk was high as a means to support themselves after being disowned by family or barred from employment due to their lesbianism or gender non-conformity.

These factors meant that lesbians were already over represented in jail, there was also a queer culture in the House of D where life centered around familial structures women created with each other. Angela Davis, who was incarcerated there in 1970, writes, “homosexuality emerged as one of the centers around which life in the House of Detention revolved.” She goes on to state, “In an elemental way, this culture is one of resistance, but a resistance of desperation.” The families did not always include a sexual relationship but many women and girls who may not have identified as lesbian on the outside prior to being incarcerated forged romantic and sexual relationships behind bars — whether out of necessity or a paradoxical freedom found away from the compulsory heterosexuality of the outside. Davis describes being “bewildered and awed by the way in which the vast majority of the jail population had neatly organized itself into generations of families: mothers/wives, fathers/husbands, sons and daughters.” In addition to solving immediate problems and providing certain perks, Davis asserts, “the family system served as a defense against the fact of being no more than a number.” In this way the House of D stood as a central site of lesbian resistance in the village.

On the night that gays took to the streets — lighting a literal match in the movement for queer liberation as they tried to burn down Stonewall while cops cowered inside — the incarcerated queer women of the Women’s House of Detention responded in kind, in a remarkable act of solidarity behind bars, one that has gone largely untold.

Rita Mea Brown, author of the seminal lesbian novel Ruby Fruit Jungle, describes being out to dinner with a friend the night she encountered the riot, “I was in my early 20s, it was a very hot night, and Martha Shelley and I were walking through Sheridan Square in New York City. The cops, in a matter of seconds, pulled in front of this little bar — we all knew it was a men’s bar — and we heard this noise. The next thing we saw was cops flying out of the bar, then patrons came flying out of the bar. They were running out in their high heels. And we realized ‘Oh my god! It’s faggots in revolt! It’s heaven!’” She then goes on to say that night “at the Women’s House of Detention, the women heard the noises and started rioting inside the prison. All the windows were [open] because it was summer. The women burned mattresses and shoved them through the bars. This never got written up because all the accounts of that period were given by men.”

Another lesbian who was on the street that night shares a similar story, as described by historian Ryan Hugh, “Arcus Flynn was driving home late that night from her job as a nurse, wending through the streets around Washington Square when she noticed something strange: small points of light, flying through the sky. When she pulled over, she realized they were fires—little burning things being thrown from the windows of the House of D. As she got out of her car, she could hear them inside: dozens, maybe hundreds, of voices screaming, ‘Gay rights, gay rights, gay rights!’ That, she would later tell interviewers, was how she first realized Stonewall was happening.”

Rita Mea Brown is right that this fact was completely absent from news articles at the time and left out or unnoticed by many first hand accounts, mostly given by men, that have been committed to the record. The only indication of the women’s actions during the three days of rioting at Stonewall in an official report, is a story from the following weekend in the New York Amsterdam News, headlined “Women Held In Assault on Guard.” It describes a prison guard being attacked by eight girls who “threw her to the floor and tried to choke her” then “tried to take the officer’s keys which they had hoped to open the doors and gain their freedom.”

We can’t know for sure what instigated these actions or all the events inside of the House of D during the Stonewall riots but we know that above the riotous mass in the streets, there towered a building full of dykes and queers also fighting for their liberation. Scholar Polly Thistlethwaite writes of these women, “Lesbians may not have been roaming the Village streets in the numbers their gay and trans comrades were. But there were hundreds of dykes in the House of Detention for Women during the Stonewall Riots. The lesbians of Stonewall were arrested. They were in jail. They were not silenced or hidden or still. They were the nerve center of the Riots, the critical mass, the motor spiriting the resistance. They were shouting from the windows. They were raining fire onto the streets. They were floating sparks up into the sky.”

***

Much of this information and research shared in this article is owed to historian Ryan Hugh who wrote “Women’s House of Detention: Queer History of A Forgotten Prison.” Interviews and oral history work conducted by the Lesbian Herstory Archive has also provided crucial historical insight. If you are interested in learning more about the era, “The Stonewall Reader” edited by the New York Public Library contains many great essays and excerpts about Stonewall as well as the context leading to this moment and its lasting impact.

Organization Spotlight

This Pride, please consider giving a donation to the following organizations:

• Stonewall Youth

• Lavender Rights Project

• Pizza Klatch

• Lambert House

Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1765 is the latest public-sector union in our area to be embroiled in contentious negotiations with a recalcitrant employer. ATU 1765 represents transit drivers in Thurston, Grays Harbor, and Pacific Counties in western Washington. Their current contract negotiations with Grays Harbor Transit (GHT) have been ongoing since August of 2025, and drivers are feeling the pressure as management refuses to make a fair deal. Works in Progress sat down with ATU 1765 President Mark Neuville and Executive Board member Kenny Farver to discuss the situation.

According to Neuville, the union’s key concerns in Grays Harbor are around wages and scheduling. Under the current contract, new drivers with GHT start at $24 an hour and are often only given a part-time schedule. However, they are expected to be on-call 24/7, making it difficult for them to find supplemental employment or plan their lives. These conditions also hinder the recruitment of new drivers, aggravating GHT’s labor shortage and placing additional pressure on existing drivers. A convoluted system for assigning work shifts has also made it easier for management to engage in favoritism rather than following seniority.

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Growth Board Showdown: Bird Alliance vs. Thurston County Over Quarry Rezone

A more than 20-year effort to protect sensitive salmon habitat and one of the largest populations of Oregon spotted frogs in Washington entered a new phase in December, when Thurston County commissioners, by a vote of 4 to 1, approved an industrial rezone of approximately 270 acres in the Black River corridor, overriding a recommendation from the county’s Planning Commission to deny a rezone.

The change allows uses such as meat processing, pesticide distribution, fertilizer manufacturing, and landfills on land largely surrounded by a national wildlife refuge. South Sound Bird Alliance is now appealing the decision before the Growth Management Hearings Board.

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Tacoma Tenants Launch Fourth Union

Kenny is a self-proclaimed “hot head.” Living with mold, leaking windows and holes in the walls of his Newcastle Apartment haven’t done much to calm him down — then his landlord banned his cat, and he’s not the only one. “Everybody’s pissed, but I’ve got a certain righteous fury that’s downright biblical, man,” he said when speaking with the Seattle Worker. Kenny and the residents of the Newcastle Apartment Tenant Union (NTU) are banding together and demanding satisfaction. They are but one of four tenant unions that have launched in the last several months in Tacoma.

Unionized Tacoma tenants are following in the footsteps of New York Apartments Tenant Union (NYTU), Tacoma’s first tenant union, which launched December of last year. Newcastle Tenant Union, New York Apartments Tenant Union, and recently launched North Slope Tenant Union (NSTU) are a part of the same portfolio owned by absentee landlords Ann Linborn, Rob Hoover, and Candy Hoover. All together, these unions make up roughly 75% of tenants in Hoover-Linborn owned properties, and control $50,000 in monthly income to their landlords. For reference, the Hoovers own over $22 million dollars worth of property in Pierce County, a yacht, an art gallery, and a permanent residence in Huntington Beach, California. The cost of repairs is not beyond them.

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What Are We Invested In?

In the fall of 2024, a group of people in Olympia, WA reached out to city Council Member Clark Gilman. At this time it had already become apparent that there was a genocide happening against Palestinians in Gaza, carried out by the Israeli military and supported by U.S. tax dollars.

Soon after Israel’s full scale invasion of Gaza following October 7, 2023, activists gathered in Olympia to form an organization that soon took the name Palestine Action of South Sound (PASS), which calls for a permanent ceasefire, an end to the siege of Gaza — now nearing twenty years — and an end to Israeli occupation. PASS operates through committees, and it is the legislative committee that began to work with Gilman.

By the time the PASS legislative group had reached out to Gilman, some individuals within the committee had already filed a Public Records Request to learn what the City held in Israeli bonds or other holdings concerning Israel. The findings turned out negative. Nothing in the Public Records Request told us that the City had any holdings regarding Israel. We wanted to keep it that way.

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Olympia Community Defends Planned Parenthood

During the last decade, there have been intermittent protests and clinic defense for patients entering and exiting the Planned Parenthood on the corner of Legion and Adams in downtown Olympia. The protests have historically countered the presence of forced birthers who attempt to invoke fear, shame, and harass patients entering the clinic. Forced birthers are against abortion in all circumstances. They are a splinter of the national pro-life movement that has been mobilizing for decades to abolish and criminalize access to abortion legally in the United States.

In response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the summer of 2022, concerned community members sought to create a recurring third space on the sidewalk outside the clinic and build community. This space has been habitually gathering once a week since June 2022 to serve a free hot breakfast for all. The space is called the Anti-Fascist Community Alternative Breakfast, also known as ACAB Breakfast. It is in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups, and individuals.

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Savage Transformations: Book Review of The Jakarta Method

[ON RADIO]:… continued disturbances in Jakarta, but are advising U.S. citizens…

JOEL: Jakarta. Where is that, Middle East?

TOMMY: Doesn’t ring a bell. It’s definitely a country. Or maybe part of Asia?

SARAH: Being a part of Asia isn’t mutually exclusive with being a country, and in fact, [Jakarta] is the capital of Indonesia.

The prevailing tendency in the English speaking world is to reduce the Cold War into a boxing match between capitalism and communism (the plot of Rocky 4) or a story of two superpowers playing spy games in the shadows (the plot of Stranger Things season 3). The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins rectifies this misreading and shines light on the overlooked history of anticommunist bloodshed. In his 2020 debut, Bevins argues that the United States’ most significant Cold War victory took place in Indonesia roughly 60 years ago.

Regardless of postal address or education level, few North Americans could tell you anything substantial about Indonesia. Most do not know that Indonesia’s population exceeds 270 million. Or that it is home to more Muslims than any other country in the world. Due to its reputation as a desirable vacation spot, Bali has more name-recognition than the rest of Indonesia’s 17,000 islands combined. Why does the Southeast Asian archipelago cast such a small imprint? If Indonesia’s present does little to pique our interest, then Indonesia’s past does less. Our lack of awareness is by design.

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Stay tuned! Thursday May 14 12-1pm 89.3FM

Managing Editor, Arlo Dolven and a few Works in Progress staff writers will be hitting the air waves with Kim Dobson’s Parallel University on KAOS 89.3FM.

by Matt Hilton

Following weeks of budget uncertainty, the Shelton School District has determined that a board-approved reduction in force (RIF) will not move forward. The district shared that enough staff members retired or resigned to avoid layoffs for the upcoming school year.

This is a relief to teachers and students. Yet lower enrollment, state cuts, and district administration priorities means this problem is not fully solved. And a question remains: Why was a RIF proposed even after voters approved a local levy?

What Happened

On Feb. 10, Shelton voters passed a local levy to preserve school programs and protect staff jobs. The community groups Citizens for Shelton Schools and the Shelton Education Association (SEA) informed the public about the importance of the levy through door-knocking outreach and a social media campaign. The levy passed with 62% “yes” votes, a victory for supporting Shelton schools.

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Shut Down ICE & CBP Collaborators

by Lalo Cuitzeo

Collaboration from private corporations is essential to the daily operations of the US detention and deportation machine. Tracking down and confronting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents engaging in abductions can be difficult to arrive to in time, and leads to higher risk of arrest and injury. But corporate targets have stationary addresses and often lower defensive capabilities. People willing to take action must raise the social costs of any entity that assists ICE and CBP.

Corporations like Geo Group and Global X Air directly facilitate detentions and deportations, while tech companies provide the software used to track and target immigrants for abduction. Another such example is Hilton Hotels and Resorts, who provide ideological and logistical support to ICE and CBP. They do so by welcoming its agents to stay there, as well as punishing subsidiaries for taking actions in support of immigrant communities. For these reasons, the Doubletree by Hilton Olympia was targeted on March 28, 2026.

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“A Library That is Not Based on Relationship is One That Will Wither and Die”: Rural TRL Libraries’ Longstanding Demands Lead Calls For Change Across the System After Layoffs Canceled

by Caelen McQuilkin

“Many of you signed the petitions placed in local stores recently and these have been delivered to the Timberland Board. But the power of individual letters is mighty indeed and a few letters to follow up the petitions might mean the difference in getting a library. So how much do you want it? Tell the board,” reads an article in the 1973 issue of The Quinault Rain Barrel, a local newspaper in the Amanda Park community.

Four years following the letters and petitions, the first Amanda Park Timberland Regional Library branch opened as a bookmobile by the Lake Quinault School. In 1991, the branch was expanded into a permanent building with full services and community support for the local library has continued strongly since then, but in the past decade the Amanda Park library has faced at least three threats of closure or major cuts. Community members have been continually forced to remind the board and administration why the library is important to them, just as they did in 1973.

Today, patrons across the entire Timberland Regional Library (TRL) system are hearing calls to protect local libraries from staffing cuts and closure. After the TRL admins announced a budget shortfall of about $3.8 million in January 2026, they attempted to lay off 61 frontline staff and transition three rural libraries to unstaffed libraries only accessible to “Expanded Access” (EA) card holders.

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Stay tuned! Thursday May 14 12-1pm 89.3FM

Managing Editor, Arlo Dolven and a few Works in Progress staff writers will be hitting the air waves with Kim Dobson’s Parallel University on KAOS 89.3FM.