Rob Richards

This is NOT meant to shame you. You shouldn't feel bad for having a warm place to be, with hot food & beverages, heat & blankets. Nor should you feel ashamed that snow is fun and you love playing in it. I don't want you to feel bad - I desperately want you to want what you have for every person. I want you to keep in your mind and in your heart those for whom snow is deadly.  Our local response, once again, is entirely inadequate.  Earlier this week, before the first flakes fell, there was - once again…

On February 1st, 2007 a group of members of the street community, along with advocates, formed a tent city in Downtown Olympia. We not only changed the course of dozens of lives, but we changed the conversation around homelessness and our community's response to it. In the fall of 2006, I had been on staff at Bread & Roses (B&R) in Olympia for about three years. Founded in the early 80s, B&R was a Catholic Worker house, inspired by Dorothy Day's work with the poor and marginalized in our society.  In Olympia, the organization had grown to encompass the original…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ2l3QoYQow The scene at Black Lives Matter Square in Washington, DC as thousands took to the streets in celebration of Joe Biden and Kamal Harris winning the White House. We all feel a little lighter today. It felt like the longest week of a very long year, during a presidential administration that has been tedious and challenging at its best and life-threatening at its worst. The wait is over as this morning the race in Pennsylvania, follow by Nevada, were called for Vice-President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris. Harris will be the first woman, and woman of color, to…

Record-Setting Voter Totals in Thurston County If you're one of the many volunteers who have been working hard on Get-Out-The-Vote efforts this election cycle, you can take a minute to pat yourself on the back. As of this morning (10/25), 199,611 people - 83% of eligible voters - have registered to vote in Thurston County, and that number is expected to top 200k on Monday. Nearly half of them have voted already. "We are at almost 50% nine days prior to the election," said Thurston County Auditor Mary Hall. "This is unprecedented. Plus we have 25,000 more voters than we…

In a release emailed out this morning, the Olympia YWCA announced this year's Womxn of Achievement Honorees to be highlighted at their virtual event on November 6, 2020. The event will feature special guest Patrice Cullors. According to their website, "Artist, activist, educator, public speaker, and Los Angeles-native Patrisse Cullors is the Co-Founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and Founder of the Los Angeles-based grassroots organization Dignity and Power Now." The honorees include: Community organizer Talauna Reed, known for her work with Justice for Yvonne, Olympia Showing Up for Racial Justice, and Black Leaders in Solidarity and Action…

Summer Is Over Yesterday on my early morning walk, there was an unmistakable crispness in the air. As I sit here at my kitchen window, I look out at the neighborhood and see trees already starting to glow orange. The forecast for the coming week shows low temperatures dipping into the 40s. The switch has officially flipped to the autumn setting. When temperatures dip, it creates dangerous conditions for our neighbors who are stuck outside—even temperatures in the 40s can be rough. If you don't believe me, I challenge you to get up at 6 AM, put on shorts and…

'We live in challenging times' is the understatement of the millennium. Four hundred years of white enslavement, subjugation, suppression, violence, and murder of Black Americans have come home to roost in the form of a long-overdue uprising of voices saying simply, "We Matter" and "Stop Killing Us." The call for an end to this brutality, and murder, of Black Americans is met by violence from a system that knows no other way to solve its problems. As I write this, our state burns, people's homes and livelihoods destroyed by a fire season we've never experienced before. Yet we still have…