Category Archives: Activism

My First Adventure in Worm-Wrangling

Leave a reply

From June 7, 2007:

The tenants in our apartment building started our first urban garden this April. One of the first decisions we made was that it would be an organic garden.

When I hear “organic garden” I think “compost.” When the maintenance crew hears “compost,” they think “rats.” Big hairy rats, that we already have a constant battle with around the garbage bins. And other tenants think “compost=rotting garbage=stink.” And I think, “Whole lot of work to keep a compost bin active and healthy and rat-free.”

Then I read that composting with worms yields a higher-quality fertilizer in shorter time and with less odor. I liked the idea of “worm wrangling,” and it didn’t take a lot of work to get the rest of the folks to let me try it. Continue reading →

Worm-Wrangling

Leave a reply

From the height of my worm-wrangling days:

* Two 10-gallon Rubbermaid totes outside, both sitting on a 40-gallon tub of composting material and covered in leaves, with a sheet draped over the whole. This, so far, keeps them warm enough to stay active. They have also spread extensively through the older compost bin, and begun to spread through the newer one. Six months from now, I may have two forty-gallon worm bins. Mixed redworms and European nightcrawlers. Continue reading →

Occupy CEHKC Wednesday November 20th, early MORNING!

Leave a reply

Organized homeless people have been talking to the Committee to End Homelessness since the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness was in the planning stage.  We have been telling them: they have to work for economic justice if they want to end homelessness, and in the meantime people need immediate shelter to stay alive tonight.  Helping homeless people survive tonight is not a distraction from ending homelessness; it is essential to it.

The Ten Year Plan began in 2005 with good intentions.  It went in the direction that paths of good intentions tend to go when they don’t get reality checks.  By 2012, there were more homeless people, and more homeless people outside without shelter, since the Ten Year Plan started, and  over 300 homeless people had died outside or by violence in King County.

We stopped talking to CEHKC.  We began going to their Governing Board meetings with 150-200 people and demanding that they get real.  And we have had an effect.  CEHKC changed its policies to recognize the need and value of emergency shelter as the entry point to the path out of homelessness, and at their November 20th meeting they will announce the intention of getting 1,000 people off the street by summer 2014.

To make this promise real, we must continue to give CEHKC reality checks, and insist they cash them.  Tomorrow morning we will rally in Westlake Park at 7 am, with breakfast and coffee, then at 8 am we will march to occupy the CEHKC Governing Board meeting. Please join us. We all need to pull together to make the promise real.

I will be picking up sandwiches at the SHARE office at 6:15 am, as I do (almost) every Wednesday; this time the sandwiches will be distributed at Westlake Park instead of Steinbrueck Park.  If I can get up that early, you can too!  If you can’t join us at 7 am, march with us at 8.  If you can’t march with us at 8, sit with us at 8:30, at the Governing Board meeting.

At noon, WHEEL/Women in Black will stand vigil for five more homeless people who died outside or by violence.  With these five deaths, we have reached a tragic milestone of  500 people we have stood vigil for since we began in 2000.  We will be asking the people of the Governing Board to stand with us.  We hope they will take this reality check.

What is Socialism?

Leave a reply

Seattle now has a Socialist on our City Council!  Kshama Sawant. is not the first socialist to win a city election – that was Anna Louise Strong, elected to the School Board in 1916 – but she is the first in 97 years, and the first ever on the City Council.  She will take office in January.

And my friend Annie asked, “What is socialism, anyway?”  The far right makes it sound like “The government owns everything and the government decides who gets what,”  and that equates to no more freedom for anyone, the government controls your life, and we’re all gonna die.

Continue reading →

Urban Forage: Elderberries

Leave a reply
clusters of black elderberries, with leaves

Elderberries. Photo by Edal Anton Lefterov

There are some elderberry trees on South Jackson, near us! Most of the fruit is out of reach. I thought I was in luck when I found some bunches on the ground. When I tasted one, I thought I’d made a mistake and poisoned myself. Turns out elderberries ARE edible – but they taste a lot better when dried, fermented, or cooked with lots of sugar!

I think I have enough to make some elderberry syrup.  If I had money (and space!) for the equipment, I’d use this recipe from Hank Shaw.

There is a lot of fascinating lore about elderberry trees!

Urban Forage: Beach Strawberries

Leave a reply

There is a stretch down in Myrtle Edwards Park that is filled with native Pacific Northwest plants, and among them I found many of these little red “golf balls.” I picked some up and brought them home, and looked them up on the interwebs before popping one in my mouth.  They are delicious!

Then I tried to find an image to include in this post,and none of the”beach strawberry” pictures I found looked like my little red golf balls.   I don’t seem to have poisoned myself – but now I don’t know what I’ve been eating!

On the Separation of Church and State

Leave a reply

If the government tells any church what to do, people lose freedom of religion. If any church tells the government what to do, people lose freedom of religion. If anyone gains the power to enforce your own religious beliefs by law, you will regret it, because the moment the people who disagree with you outnumber your supporters, they will use the precedent you established to enforce their own religious beliefs on you. Continue reading →

Is There a “Left-Wing Fundamentalism?”

Leave a reply

“Fundamentalist” is a term sometimes used to refer to anyone who is intolerant of other’s beliefs. Fundamentalism is “not so much an ideology as it is an attitude, an attitude of intolerance, incivility and narrowness,” says Walter Shurden, professor of Christianity and director of the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University. “It is an attitude that says, ‘We have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and we are going to impose it on you and control the system so that you will have to knuckle under to it.'” As anyone who has ever attended a meeting of two or more activists can attest, that attitude can be found at all points on the political and religious spectrum. Continue reading →