History

Here is a familiar fact to many people across the United States and the world: the Redwoods of Northern California are the tallest trees in the world at nearly 400 feet. This is both true and false. It’s true because right now the redwoods are the tallest trees. But it’s false because not long ago, that wasn’t the case. The tallest known redwood is 379 feet tall. But historical accounts are full of references to Douglas Fir trees 400 feet tall and more. One tree in the lower North Fork of the Nooksack River Valley is thought to have been 465 feet tall, probably the largest known tree ever recorded anywhere on the planet. And it wasn’t alone. ...

The great musician Lauren Hill once said, “Fantasy is what people want but reality is what they need.” And the reality is that the climate movement is failing. See this graph? That’s a measure of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere from 2005 to mid-2015. The trend is up. That means we’re losing. Until that trend is heading steeply in the other direction, we’re in trouble. ...

Check out this event from European Dissent Seattle: Click the image for a larger version of the poster. Film screening and discussion as part of our work to build a base of anti-racist white organizers!Saturday, December 13th3:30 - 6:00pmYWCA, 2820 E Cherry, Seattle WA 98122 ALL ARE WELCOME! European Dissent Seattle presents a screening and discussion about this documentary on pioneering white anti-racist organizer Anne Braden. The documentary explores the life and legacy of this American civil rights leader. After she was charged with sedition for attempting to desegregate a Louisville, Kentucky neighborhood in 1954, Braden used the attack to turn herself “inside out” and embarked upon a lifetime of racial justice organizing matched by few whites in American history. Braden was hailed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail” as a white southerner whose rejection of her segregationist upbringing was “eloquent and prophetic,” and named as one of only five white southerners he could count as allies. Labeled a “traitor to her race” and ostracized as a “red” by segregationists and even many in the civil rights movement, she fought for an inclusive movement community and demonstrated that protecting civil liberties was essential to gaining civil rights. After decades of being shunned by even the most progressive organizations, in 1989 Anne Braden was awarded the first Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty from the American Civil Liberties Union as a “lifelong leader of the movements for racial justice, labor rights, and peace in the South.” Read more: http://annebradenfilm.org/about/ ...

Seattle has a long history of social struggle and revolutionary politics that spans many decades. The indigenous people resisted European colonization in several wars in the 1800’s, including the Puget Sound War. Labor struggles have been a huge part of the history of this city, as have been immigration issues, especially in Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian communities. In the 1960’s and 70’s, the second strongest chapter of the Black Panther Party – after Oakland – was built here. ...