#midweek reading

Take only what resonates.  Please read more for brief notes on each card’s meaning and an overall reading below.

There are too many incredible people in this damn city. Read some things they wrote this week.

Omar Wiley’s essay “That’s When I Became Black” in Nailed—for the Robert Lashley curated/edited series Actual Space—is incredible. WHAT A DREAM TEAM.

Speaking of dream teams, Sarah Galvin interviews Clyde Petersen about his life (and duh, his new film Torrey Pines) for City Arts.

#BlockTheBunker is demanding answers and action from the city, conveniently laid out in Real Change.

You know how this works: It’s Wednesday. Here’s some stuff to read. Maybe on the bus on your way to ENOUGH: A Panel and Story Slam Tackling Sexism and Online Harassment? Ehhhhh?

Whoa, can you believe it’s been a whole year since That Bernie Rally? Local badass and Bernie-interrupter Marissa Jenae Johnson reflects on the experience and how things have changed and not changed over the past year for The Root. (PSST: Marissa will also be at the story slam!)

YAY DAVID SCHMADER HAS A STRANGER COLUMN AGAIN. It is about pot! The first one is here.

As #SeaHomeless draws to a close, here’s some of our favorite writing, both recent and recent-ish, on people without shelter—consider it your reading material for the coming days.

“You’d Have to Be Crazy” by Peter Wieben for The Awl focuses on stories told by unsheltered people in Seattle.

What will happen to Seattle’s homeless population if the Big One hits? Ashley Archibald reports in Real Change.

In South Seattle Emerald today, Kelsey Hamlin profiles single mom and Othello Village resident Ronda Althaus.

YOU KNOW THE DRILL. Click the below links and read them, please and thank you.

Great job—a lot of different kinds of folks got their HALA applications in, reports ECB! But some areas are still lacking applicants, so if you’re not in Ballard, Wallingford, Phinney Ridge, or Capitol Hill and you wanna serve on a focus group, get your apps in.

Anna Diblosi profiles KOBO Seattle, which is a very cool shop in the ID and Capitol Hill that we love a lot, in the International Examiner.

ICYMI, Tobias Coughlin-Bouge’s feature in Real Change last week on the city’s lack of options for homeless families and pet owners is a must-read.

Two things: Because weekend reading isn’t enough, here’s a mid-week update of great reads about Seattle. Also, tomorrow is Christmas Eve, so this is basically like Weekend Reading anyway. Here’s what to read while you’re taking a “bathroom break” that is really a “break from family that happens to be in the one room with a door that locks”:

Check in with Marissa Janae Johnson—of That Bernie Sanders Event—via South Seattle Emerald editor Marcus Green and Yes! Magazine's James Trimarco. They cover “respectability,” white liberals, and what’s next in a piece for the Seattle Weekly:

And for just a split second, she questioned her role in what had just taken place. Was it right for her and Mara Jacqueline Willaford to invade a local union rally that featured a keynote address from the great (white) liberal messiah? Had it been wise to relegate Sanders to a mere bystander by taking the mic from the U.S. Senator’s hands right before he was about to deliver his gospel of class politics?

Were they correct in electing to withstand an onslaught of jeering fused with forceful chants of “Let Bernie speak!” in order to lead four and a half minutes of silence in honor of black men and women killed by police?

A moment later, she arrived at her answer: You’re damn right.

Read the whole thing here.

International Examiner remembers activist Tsuguo “Ike” Ikeda, who died earlier this month at age 91:

In an interview with the International Examiner in April 2015, Ikeda said, “I made a promise to myself when I entered the camp and there were soldiers with rifles pointed at us that I would fight for social justice,” he said. “I promised that I would fight to never let this kind of nonsense happen to any other group of people.”

Read the whole thing here.

Washington Community Action Network has given Waleg a C+ grade on addressing concerns of people of color, and Seattle Globalist has all the details:

Washington Community Action Network said both Democrats and Republicans — which each head the opposite chambers — made little headway in the 2015 session on issues affecting people of color.