Canvassing, talking with everyone you know and a lot of people you don’t yet know about the candidates, the elections, and what is important to both of you is the most effective means of winning elections and actually getting to the issues. Even the little things like wearing a Lisa Brown T-shirt to the grocery or to a concert in the park (Want one? Call Eileen 509-939-9108) and smiling at everyone whose eye you catch has a ripple effect. Tack on some extra buttons and offer one to anyone who engages you.
Humanists, liberals, scientists, educators, mainstream Christians, Muslims, Jews, and ivory town intellectuals have been quiet long enough. We’ve sat in our armchairs with our books, read the polls, and shaken our heads in despair. It is time to buzz. It’s time for us to throw off that old dictum that one should not talk politics in “polite company.” Damn it. We ARE polite company and it is well past time to talk!
From “The Importance of Smiling” an email sent Thursday July 18, 2018 by Jerry LeClaire, Eastern Washington Indivisible Group. He sends out an email “most weekdays” with a short topical post, upcoming activist event opportunities and links to resources and information. Contact Jerry if you wish to receive his emails: jerry@jxindivisible.com
I am asking all of our Black ministers to ask their choirs to learn and sing this song. White folks in Spokane are lacking your soul when they sing this song. Please come to our next social justice event prepared to teach white folks how to sing and swing this song.
If you looked through the archives you will notice an absence of the African American Community at the marches, at the rallies, at the demonstrations, at the social justice community organizing meetings but at the Spokane Black Agenda Summit July 30, 2011 over 100 African Americans built a plan to action. What do you think happened after that? Click the above link to see what they planned.
My folks – those that are showing up for social justice.
I was asked by the Washington State Democratic Party to participate in a 30 second spot announcement. Being a visual artist I worry about the production process. When your ideas get turned into sound bites you never know what you are going to look or sound like. So here is the original full text of my testimonial about why I vote Democratic.
My Name is Bob Lloyd. I Am A Democrat.
I vote Democratic because I fought for self determination. I fought for desegregation of schools. I fought for public accommodations. I fought for the right to vote. I fought for open housing. I fought for economic development. I fought for affirmative action. I fought for equal and fair employment. I fought against the War in Vietnam.
All my life I have been fighting for the elimination of exclusion. The only place short of civil war is the democratic process. In all of my struggles for civil rights and social justice the Republican Party has been absent on all of the things that I hold dear. So I choose to vote Democratic and struggle within the party for inclusion, civil rights and social justice.
Subjective-romantic best defines Stephen Pitters’ style in this collection. He uses long poetic forms to convey the powerful, uninhibited, and at times, heartfelt actions and reactions that play out in the lines of his poems. He is a self-taught language artist in the vein of other artists who embrace and articulate the emotion and the spirit of loves and lives. He explores the physicality of relationships as Walt Whitman does in his poem, “I Sing the Body Electric.” At times, Pitters’ poems speak to the raw yoga of love, and at other points, he transcends the tangible, the touchable to weave through the less sure pathways of the heart.
The narrative he uses in these passages are not half made-up composites, but rather, they sketch real-life events in the weighted style of the romantics with a heavy dose of melancholy and with a small measure of sarcasm baked into his work. His expressions stem from his experiences as a man in the middle of his passion and not a detached observer. The central inspiration for these offerings surrounds a genuine need to share unique, postage-stamp accounts of relationships of hearts and of heartbreaks lived by one man, one African-American man in the middle of the tumultuous Sixties and Seventies when he endured the racism and the discrimination of the era.
Stephen Pitters is a poet, educator and author residing in Spokane, Washington. He has had three volumes of his work published by Gribble Press: Bridges of Visions, 2009, Walks Through the Mind, 2011, and Currencies of Life…Enlisted Behaviors, 2013.He started a new series of poetry with the 2017 title “Conversations on Altered Roadways” and 2018 title “Prerecorded”. Besides publishing, Stephen has hosted The Spokane Open Poetry Program on KYRS, Thin Air Community Radio, since 2004. He is also a long-time member of the Fairchild community.
Safety Pin Box benefits all people involved, but is specifically geared at supporting Black women & femmes who are contributing to the movement for Black lives.
Every month, Safety Pin Box will give one-time financial gifts to individual Black women who have demonstrated a commitment to serving Black people. Financial gift recipients will be featured in that month’s box at their discretion, and will be invited to contribute to that month’s task writing. Any and all Black women contributing to Black liberation in any way are encouraged to apply and recipients will be chosen at random each month from Black women applicants in our pool. The more subscribers we have, the more Black women we can support. Subscription fees, as a form of reparations, go directly to supporting Black women freedom fighters every month.
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