SPEECH President's Message

by Janine Unsoeld

The elections are over, so now we can get to work moving forward on a host of national, state, and local issues.

In early November, I met the new executive director of the Puget Sound Partnership, retired Colonel Anthony Wright, who spoke at a local League of Women Voter's event. Speaking with him afterwards, he said that when he interviewed with Governor Gregoire for the position, he told her he was going to "break some plates." She responded, dryly, "Well, how about you just chip them a little."

The exchange illustrates what elected and appointed officials and community activists on all levels need to do on a variety of issues, from saving Puget Sound to implementing county impact fees to stopping coal trains and export terminals in Washington and Oregon. We do need to break some plates but we also need to know when and how to chip away at other issues.

Thurston County Public Power Initiative campaign organizers certainly learned a lot about their foe, much of it at the last minute, as voters were barraged with slick, near-daily mailings costing Puget Sound Energy millions of dollars to retain their monopoly on local power. The public power organizers successfully garnered nearly 40% of the vote in the end. As public power organizer John Pearce said, "This is just the end of the beginning."

No doubt, organizers will continue to chip away, educating the community about their options, and be even more prepared to answer voter's lingering doubts and questions about public power. As we saw in several cases on a national level, many other well-financed campaigns lost, so it's not just money that makes a difference.

On an even more local level, SPEECH is thrilled to introduce our first volunteer intern from The Evergreen State College's journalism class, "Shaking It Up: From Journalism to New Media", Christina Balsom. A self-described military brat, Christina was born and raised in San Diego and has traveled around the world.

In a recent interview, she said she likes to get people's stories out and shed light on injustice. Racking up debt going to college in California, Christina recently returned to her parent's home in Fredrickson, in unincorporated Pierce County, to attend Evergreen. Fredrickson has no direct representation, and Christina is already getting the city-county bureaucratic shuffle as she tries to get answers to her questions about excessive industrial noise from nearby Port of Tacoma and businesses. Sounds like she has a story there. We look forward to working with Christina and other interns, matching their interests and our needs to start breaking some plates, or at least, chipping away at them.

Janine Unsoeld is president of the South Puget Environmental Education Clearinghouse (SPEECH) and can be reached at Ja9unsoeld@aol.com, (360) 791-7736, or through her blog, www.janineslittlehollywood.blogspot.com.