In Local News:
As we have moved out of wildfire season and into house fire season here in the County, fires have been breaking out all over Grays Harbor. One fire claimed the home of an elderly woman who was put up for a week by the Red Cross, unfortunately after the week was up she was looking at being evicted onto the streets with no assistance coming from any of the large well funded institutions in town. A neighbor eventually made contact with CRMAN and was able to discuss the issue with us enough to where we could advocate on her behalf to CCAP, who agreed to pay for her room for another week and set her up with services intake.
All it took was a phone call from us about why they would be kicking this lady out on so called Thanksgiving weekend. A fire broke out at our local homeless camp, the affected campers were left with nothing and of course the Salvation Army and Red Cross have provided zero help. Chehalis River Mutual Aid was out there immediately providing resources, a helping hand, and are working to secure the affected campers places to stay while their belongings are replaced. If you would like to contribute to their fire support fund you can find all the donations links at linktr.ee/crmutualaidnet
The local religious group Chaplains on the Harbor seems to have gotten approval to move forward with the county contract for an emergency cold weather shelter here in Aberdeen. with a post on their Facebook saying,
“As the year comes to an end and Christmas is upon us we want to take the opportunity to thank all of our supporters who have enabled Chaplains on the Harbor to do the work we do. After much delay, Our team are busy gearing up with so many community partners for an Aberdeen emergency cold weather shelter. This week we have identified a site, toured inside and out, had verbal approval by municipalities, have witnessed changing of hearts and attitudes, waiting official approval, met with the landlord and his construction crew to make a few necessary changes, reaching out to community resources for additional staffing and resources that will be needed. An answer to prayer, a Christmas miracle. Thanks be to God for community members that care about taking care of our most vulnerable neighbors.”
No shelter has been opened as of writing but this demonstrates that the public pressure put on local officials has finally broken through into some forward action. Despite this objectively good news, this will mean another 25 bed shelter when in reality hundreds remain in need of shelter throughout the city. So activists and radicals should be attentive to those left outside still and do everything we can to push for a permanent camp location, and shelter for all. Not by appealing to politicians whims, but by building a grassroots coalition that can exert it’s own power in local affairs.
263 Children woke up on the 25th of December to a Christmas that would not have been possible without the efforts of the Out & Proud Coalition and their Operation Santa Claus event. In the face of growing anti-queer sentiment in the country and calls from local officials to protest the event, “Operation Santa Claus!” was a huge success. The annual event raised a little over $2000 in one evening. The Out & Proud Grays Harbor Coalition donated an extra $500 and their online fundraiser raised another $575. So far over $3000 has been raised to purchase gifts for under served kids for Christmas! This was the most successful event they have ever had in their 8 years running. Children, parents, and other patrons packed the event leaving little but standing room as people enjoyed the drag performances, concessions, auctions, and even a balloon artist. The kids in attendance had an wonderful time with their balloon animals, dancing and singing along to the performances. In a statement posted to The Out & Proud Grays Harbor Collation’s Facebook page, organizers said,
“We gratefully thank this amazing Grays Harbor community for not letting hate win and for showing up for LGBTQIA+ individuals and the amazing drag performers.”
But not everything was happy holidays and worry free celebration this year, in the wake of online hysteria in Facebook group’s by local conservatives & reactionaries, many parents were left worrying for the safety of their children from the threat of attack by far right extremists as outcry and public threats jumped from the page’s of conservative Facebook, to push back by local officials and state representatives and other organizations demanding a shutdown of the event.
Organizers received a slew of screenshots and messages from people who claim to be, as one message stated from a resident in Raymond, that they were, quote “Sympathetic to the domestic terrorists that target your community” These threats and statements are made openly with little push back or repercussion not even a month after the Club Q shooting where after the shooter targeted a queer bar injuring 25 and murdering 5 others was only stopped not by police but by the patrons of the bar subduing the shooter. prompting the slogan in queer circles “Cop’s Don’t Keep Us Safe, We Keep Us Safe”
Luckily Operation Santa Claus! Went off without incident, potential protestors deterred by the fog and rain of the winter weather. The same could not be said of other drag events happening the same day in Renton that faced major push back led by city officials and the business who was hosting the event had their windows shot out by unknown shooters days before. John Brown Gun Club was invited to run security for the event where a team of at least 8 guards ran over watch and made sure the drag event resumed safely, a combination that has been trending since a event in Texas that had been the target of threat and harassment was shielded from a mob of reactionary protestors by armed antifascists from the John Brown Gun Club on the 28th of August 2022. As the number of drag shows being targeted by extremists continues to grow so to has the need for community defense and the need for queer people to arm and defend themselves.
We have seen a massive spike in overdoses, including fatalities, since the cold weather has arrived this winter, and while public officials would like to simply call these deaths overdoses and wash their hands of them, the truth is much more complex. When you live on the streets you often self medicate with drugs in order to sleep, in order to warm up. For some it’s the only way to make it through a cold wet night in a tent. So the rise that coincides with the cold weather can largely be attributed to exposure, as these additional deaths are the result of the additional strain of physical limits that people living outside in the winter go through. These are literally our friends dying every month and the city has this blood on its hands for denying shelter for so many, for so long.
In Dayton Washington, Katy Hussey & Jessica Wallingford were the target of illegal police harassment by officer Riley Conohan On Nov 29th outside of a local grocery where the off duty officer pulled a gun on the couple refusing to show any form of identification. Katy was quoted as saying
“I took my girlfriend Jessica and her little sister Allison to the local grocery store. I waited in my grandpas truck I was borrowing for the night (mind you he is a retired state patrolman) while they went inside. When I was waiting I noticed a man come to an abrupt stop and turned into the store parking lot all crazy like. but I live in Dayton WA so crazy things are normal. I didn’t think much of it. A couple minutes later I noticed the same guy coming out the double doors looking all around and in a hurry. He went to his truck and went back inside. A few minutes later Jessica is getting into the truck and in order for her sister to get in she would have to pull her seat forward, so before I could ask “Where’s Allison?” the same man had a gun pointed right at Jessica.
She literally got into the truck, closed the door and her window was rolled down already and the weapon was right there pointed at us. If her window was closed the tip of the gun would have been touching the glass. He yelled over and over again telling her to get out of the vehicle and she really quietly was telling me “We need to go.” I was in shock and had no idea what was going on. This man in cowboy boots, jeans and a hoodie pointing a gun at us claiming to be a cop really didn’t seem real. (the whole incident lasted about 5 minutes from what the dispatch calls time stamp shows.) I finally spoke up and yelled asking what was going on. He said to turn the vehicle off and I asked after that at least 20 times to see his badge. He said he will show me if I turned off the vehicle.
Even though right before he said that, he already checked his hoodie pocket for it and you could see his hand go entirely through the pocket out the other side. I made the decision to leave and get out of this dangerous situation. I told him I was going to put the car in reverse and leave. I went and dropped jess at her parents which you can see their house from where we were in the parking lot so it wasn’t very far at all, and I went home and called 911 myself. I explained how there was a man claiming to be one of them and he had a weapon pointed right at us and wouldn’t show a badge when asked. They asked if I wanted to speak with a deputy and sent one out since I was angry at what just happened. The deputy brought statement forms for me and told me to turn them in to him when he gets on shift around 6 the following day to make sure the forms actually get filed.”
During the time that Katy & Jessica had fled Officer Conahan had made a call to dispatch requesting the license plate of the pickup truck that she had been driving that day that she had borrowed from her grandfather who is an ex state patrolman.
This resulted in another call from dispatch to one Officer Rivera where after laughing and acknowledging that officer Conahan was attempting to make an illegal off duty arrest proceeded to assist the officer in what has been an ongoing campaign to harass this couple.
Rivera having the license plate number proves just how much their home had been stalked because Katy only had the truck less than 24 hours and they wrote it down when it was parked outside their home
Here are the audio clips from the dispatch calls including the call Katy has made reporting the incident with Officer Conahan.
The morning after she made this call though Officer Conahan showed up at their house after seeing her car home that was around 330- 430pm. The same Off Duty Officer who just had pointed a weapon at Katy & Jessica was now at their door demanding their arrest.
Katy shut the door and demanded to speak with his supervisor and that she didn’t want to talk to him considering he was just aiming a weapon at her less than 24 hours ago without provocation. After surrendering she was charged with obstructing a law enforcement officer, rendering criminal assistance, and resisting arrest. While at trial for this incident Katy was found not guilty for the first two charges and found guilty for resisting arrest which makes no legal sense if the courts had found her innocent of the first two charges given the absurdity of the incident. Her attorney has filed a couple motions to get her charged dropped or put up for a retrial. We won’t know what the decision is until January
The couple has also been forced in a dual case of no contact orders by the court. This is a load of garbage this couple was a victim of the state and even though the no contact order was lifted on behalf of Katy when the initial trial ended, they are still under the penalty of a no contact order on Jessica’s side.
And for what? So they didn’t have the same story? There was only one thing that happened that night and that’s the truth. If you were to look at all articles and the public statement and testimonies at trial every single one is different. Their stories haven’t changed a bit.
Katy Had this to say about the ordeal,
“All in all, we didn’t deserve what happened to us. Why did they do this to us? We aren’t the violent criminals they make us out to be. They could have just said it was a rookie mistake and moved on, but they completely destroyed us. I’ve been to jail 2 or 3 times now because of this. They had a no contact order on us for an entire year and actually mine was just dropped at the end of trial, but Jessica still has one in superior court on me.
They drive by our house maybe 10-20 times a night and almost practically stop outside my place. Its why I have cameras outside.
Cops were my biggest advocate growing up, and my grandfather is a retired state patrolman, I had nothing against officers but now I’m traumatized. And the sight of a deputy sends me into a panic.
I want my life back. We want our life back. Jessica and I have lost everything because of these officers. I lost my job, jess lost her home, and my rental assistance was terminated thanks to this county, and I don’t know what to do. I’m losing yet another place since I can’t afford it and my depression has completely taken over my brain. There’s no winning it feels like.
I wish I knew why they hate us and want to ruin us so bad.”
We will be conducting a follow up interview with Katy after her trial in January where she will not only be able to speak for herself but will expand upon the story and her most recent developments from trial. To support Katy in this hard time please send any donations to Venmo @katyHussey or Cashapp $KatyHussey
On Christmas day thousands of people in Graham, WA woke up to no power after four power substations were vandalized at different locations. as reported by Kiro 7
After over 14,000 people in Pierce County celebrated Christmas in the dark, Tacoma Public Utilities restored power to their substations on Monday afternoon. The Sheriff’s Department says four utility substations were vandalized early Sunday morning.
The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department says just before 5:30 a.m. on Sunday they received a call of a burglary to the Tacoma Public Utilities Substation off 46th Avenue in Graham. “When the deputies got there, there was nobody on scene, but they saw that the fence area had been broken into. In this one, the suspects cut one of the lock on the fenced area, made their way inside, and caused damage to the substation,” said Sgt. Darren Moss Jr., spokesperson with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department.
Shortly after the sheriff’s department was notified, the substation off 224th Street was also vandalized. Deputies called Puget Sound Energy, which also provides power in the area, and they confirmed that their substation off 144th Street was also hit.
“All three happened in the middle of the night, on Christmas day causing power outages, nothing was stolen in those facilities, so it’s a good possibility they are related,” said Moss.
As of now, they don’t have any suspect leads, and are asking folks who live near the three substations to check their security cameras for any suspicious activity between the hours of 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.
On Sunday night, a fourth power station was attacked in Pierce County. When crews arrived at the scene at about 7:30 p.m., it was on fire.
The substation is located on the Kapowsin Highway near Graham where it left more than 500 people in the area without power. The cause was reported as vandalism. Sgt. Moss says deputies will be monitoring all substations.
This, to some of our listeners, may sound like a simple act of asinine behavior, a drunk driver, a disgruntled worker, teenage angst. But to those paying attention to the actions of White Nationalist actions in the recent weeks might have more cause to be alarmed by this blatantly coordinated attack on our power grid.
In other news:
A state of emergency was put into effect in Moore Country, North Carolina after two power substations were vandalized with gunfire, leaving tens of thousands of homes in darkness. No one knows who launched the attack on the substations — which left over 40,000 people in darkness — but the attack in North Carolina is being probed as intentional and a criminal act, authorities said. Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields stated during a press conference that he called the attack “targeted” and said law enforcement would provide security for the substations and business overnight.
“We faced something last night here in Moore County that we never faced before,” Fields said. “But I promise you we will get through this.”
He said rumors were circulating online that the attack was connected to protests over a drag show at a local theater scheduled to begin at 7 p.m., however, investigators have not found any evidence the two were related. “No group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept that they’re the ones that done it,” , adding the FBI was working with state investigators to locate whoever is responsible.
Fields said someone “opened fire on the substation, the same thing with the other one,” though no motive for the crime was determined yet.
But as pointed out in a tweet Gwen Snyder, Though the FBI and major media outlets may not be willing to call the Moore County power grid attack- that may have been the cause of death of one person in Pinehearst, the act of domestic terror it so clearly is. You know who else is only too happy to call it terror and attempt to incite copycat violence? Nazis on telegram.
On Tuesday, December 13th there was a raid in the Atlanta forest where five were arrested after police brutalized them with tear gas and pepper balls.
Forest defenders swiftly called for a noise demonstration at the DeKalb County Jail in solidarity with the five people arrested during the raid. By 8pm, protesters began to amass near the facility. Sheriffs on foot lined the perimeter of the jail as a choir of twenty five voices, a dozen drums, two guitars, a cello, and various handheld noisemakers approached. Jail administrators peered down from office windows as protesters tossed smoked bombs in the road and chanted “1312, we are all here for you!,” and “no forest, no peace.”
According to on this report on the arrests:
On Dec. 13, the task force raided the training center site. The [Georgia Bureau of Investigation] issued a press release publicizing the arrest of five protesters on charges of domestic terrorism, among other alleged offenses. But the agency has been unable to provide any incident reports or other documents showing exactly what the arrestees are accused of doing.
…a sixth person [was arrest] on a charge of violating Georgia’s “hands-free driving” law, which bans the use or touching of a cell phone while driving – but for a different underlying reason. “We had an individual who was out attempting to film officers,” the Atlanta Assistant Police Chief said. “We were able to get him with the hands-free law as he drove by filming our officers, so we were able to lock him up.”
A press release from the Atlanta Press Collective stated, “On December 17, 175 people gathered in Brownwood Park in East Atlanta to declare their support for the six activists recently charged with domestic terrorism, and to demonstrate their continued opposition to “Cop City,” a proposed 300 acre, $90 million police training facility in Atlanta’s largest urban forest. These charges resulted from an inter-agency raid on tree sitters which included the Atlanta Police Department, DeKalb County Police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, and the Department of Homeland Security. The training facility, though widely opposed by the public, local neighbors, and environmentalists, has been approved by the city, although construction has been delayed for over a year by protestors occupying the forest.”
A small Kansas county became a site of a significant pipeline failure last week as the Keystone Pipeline leaked an estimated 14,000 barrels of crude oil into a creek — the largest spill in its history. Now, officials are scrambling to clean up the mess made by the system, which stretches more than 2,600 miles from Canada to the U.S. Keystone Pipeline has had nearly two dozen accidents since it went into service in 2010, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a history similar to other oil pipelines. There are dozens of “significant” oil pipeline incidents every year in the U.S., according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, costing more than $3 billion and leading to the deaths of six people since 2002. More than 719,000 barrels of crude oil have been lost in that time, with each barrel being about 42 gallons.
From Reuters, “TC Energy Corp, the owner of the pipeline, said on Friday a U.S. regulator had approved a restart plan for an idled segment of its Keystone oil pipeline to Cushing, Oklahoma, and it looked to restore service after several days of testing and inspections.
The 622,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) pipeline was shut on Dec. 7 after it spilled 14,000 barrels of oil in rural Kansas, the biggest U.S. spill in nine years.
The pipeline from the Canadian province of Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast has since reopened, except for the segment that ruptured between Steele City, Nebraska, and an oil storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma.
On Monday, AZ Gov. Doug Ducey began dropping the first of thousands of shipping containers along a 10-mile stretch of national forest in open defiance of federal authorities. Ducey has cited increased border crossings and the trafficking of fentanyl as justification for the trash wall’s construction, despite the fact that most drugs are brought in through established points of entry, not the desert.
the Intercept wrote:
Doug Ducey…has transformed a remote section of rugged desert into what looks like a junkyard. Along the way, he has set the stage for an unprecedented legal showdown with the feds. In a lawsuit he filed three days before the installation began, Ducey admitted he had not received authorization for the project but was proceeding anyway.
The governor’s actions create precisely the sort of state’s rights and border security confrontation the Biden administration would be inclined to avoid less than two weeks from the midterms. The situation has left environmental advocates racing to stop the project, which cuts through a corridor that is designated as critical for endangered jaguars. The environmentalists’ options, however, are limited.
As Unicorn Riot reported:
Since Nov. 29, a loose collection of locals, environmental activists, hippies and migrant solidarity workers have been putting their bodies in the way of the machines. They have successfully delayed the work crews for a week and a half, who had been rushing to drop as many shipping containers into the wilderness as possible before Arizona Governor Doug Ducey leaves office in early January.
What began as a tentative experiment in disruption, escalated to a full-fledged encampment earlier this week. When workers switched to night shifts so they could work unimpeded, blockaders started camping on the site to keep watch.
and now a quick rundown of some headlines from IGD
Twitter – Dec 15, 22
This month saw more insanity at Twitter as Elon musk took up the ban hammer and with advice from far right grifter Andy Ngo began banning anarchist and antifascist accounts that have previously raised the ire of the right generally and Ngo specifically. Andy Ngo having called out Crimethinc by name in his testimony to Congress in June of 2020.
At the time of the suspension, It’s Going Down had over 108,000 followers. IGD has been on Twitter since 2015 and has never been suspended. As a media collective, IGD curates a regularly updated website, a podcast in the top 1% of downloads featuring weekly dialogues with journalists, authors, and grassroots organizers, and a radio show that reaches tens of thousands across the West Coast on the Pacifica Radio network. As a media outlet, IGD has been quoted and cited in Teen Vogue, the New York Times, and every media platform in between; IGD has been instrumental in reporting on grassroots movements and the growing threat of the Alt-Right and white nationalism. In response, IGD has drawn the ire of the far-Right from Tucker Carlson on Fox News to the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville.
From Crimethinc,
“On November 24, a white nationalist1 who speaks at conferences alongside Richard Spencer posted a tweet approving of a wave of bans on Twitter. Elon Musk responded favorably to him, and far-right troll Andy Ngo answered Musk, specifically requesting that the @crimethinc account be banned from Twitter. Within a couple hours, Musk had fulfilled Ngo’s request.2
The @crimethinc account on Twitter dates from May 2008. The account has never been suspended or received a warning throughout fourteen years of Twitter administrations. Ngo was not bringing any new material to Musk’s attention, but reposting years-old screenshots. Other Twitter users were banned under similar circumstances today, as well.
Musk’s rhetoric about making Twitter a venue for “free speech” was a lie. Musk bought Twitter in order to impose his agenda on what he saw as the most influential social media platform remaining outside the control of people like himself. Like Donald Trump, Musk brazenly says the opposite of what he means, and his supporters interpret this as a show of strength.
At the same time that he welcomes Donald Trump, white nationalists, and fascists back to Twitter, Musk is purging those who stand in the way of their authoritarian aspirations. Make no mistake, the point of silencing our voices is to prepare the way for other kinds of violence.
Today, we speak to you from the other side of the great divide. Banned on Facebook, Instagram, and now Twitter, we nonetheless exist and organize. If you can still hear us—if you are reading these words—then there is life after social media. That goes for entire social movements as well as individuals and publishers.
Looking at this situation in a broader historical context, Twitter itself is like a canary in a coal mine. Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform confirms the end of social media as we have known it, at least for the purposes of positive social change. All the major platforms that played roles in the movements of the past decade have been brought under the direct control of reactionaries determined to make sure that they cannot be used to coordinate resistance.
The question is what comes next. Will reactionary billionaires determine what we can do and think and dream? Or will we establish other channels via which to communicate, other forms of connection, other means of coordination?
In response, we invite you to make the streets of your community speak out with a new poster about capitalists like Elon Musk and Donald Trump. If there’s one medium that billionaires will never control, it’s wheatpaste.
To address this situation, we’ve dusted off a classic motif of ours and designed a new poster. We invite you to plaster the walls of your community with it—in a strictly legal way, of course.
In addition, in case you prefer to paste up posters the old-fashioned DIY way rather than just buying wallpaper paste or spray adhesive, we have made a zine version of our Field Guide to Wheatpasting—please print these out and distribute them to anyone who might be interested in communicating on a platform that isn’t run by a pro-fascist billionaire!
You can read the contents of the zine, check out the poster, and read more about these articles by going to crimethinc.com
Besides these articles, posters, and zines, we would live to take this time to draw your attention to these other recent publications from Crimethinc:
Punk—Dangerous Utopia Revisiting the Relationship between Punk and Anarchism 2022-12-13
Producing Transdermal Estrogen: A Do-It-Yourself Guide 2022-12-15
Reaching back into November a bit they also published a great piece on abortions in Poland entitled
Abortion without Borders How Feminists and Anarchists Defy Polish Anti-Abortion Laws 2022-11-14
as well as a rundown on the Brazilian elections:
Left Electoralism, Fascist Direct Action, and Anti-Fascist Resistance The Brazilian Elections of 2022 2022-11-06