“Stop TB in my lifetime” awareness in Snohomish County, March 24

Tuberculosis control continues its long history in Snohomish County
 
SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash. To build local awareness of an ongoing global tragedy, the Snohomish County Board of Health recently adopted a resolution proclaiming March 24 to be “World TB Day” in Snohomish County. The Snohomish Health District is responsible for carrying out the work of preventing and controlling tuberculosis in Snohomish County.
 
Worldwide, each day 4,000 people die from this curable disease.
 
The Health District’s TB prevention and control program manages the treatment of about 20-27 active cases of TB every year. They also manage150-200 people annually who have breathed in TB bacteria but are not actively sick, known as latent tuberculosis.  Snohomish County has among the highest number of TB cases in the state of Washington, which averages about 200 cases of active TB annually.
 
In the early part of the 19th century, TB killed close to 1,000 people in Washington every year, up to 96 percent of the people who had the active disease. Snohomish County had its own well-populated TB hospitalnear Snohomish, named Aldercrest Sanatorium. Over the decades, TB detection and treatment improved and brought the figures down dramatically—but the disease stubbornly remains present in our community.
 
“Although our work has forced the numbers down over the years, this disease is still alive in Snohomish County,” said Joseph Aharchi, Health District TB program manager. The best news is that TB is preventable and curable. It’s important for Snohomish County health care and social service staff to be aware of the disease potential in their patients and clients.”
 
In recent years, Aharchi’s staff of 11 have found and treated TB among school students, drug populations, transients, refugees, shopping mall staff, travelers to foreign countries, and government employees. The TB team continues to work on a current outbreak among mentally ill residents. To date, the Health District has screened 140 contacts of the original case, and found 11 positive for latent TB and eight with active disease.
 
Managing a TB case involves interviewing and perhaps treating the original patient’s close contacts for latent tuberculosis, and aggressively treating the patient with active TB. The standard course of treatment for TB lasts six to nine months.
 
“TB can affect and infect anyone,” said Aharchi. “We are here to help defeat it.”
 
Established in 1959, the Snohomish Health District works for a safer and healthier Snohomish County through disease prevention, health promotion, and protection from environmental threats. Find more information about the Health Board and the Health District at http://www.snohd.org. Learn more about TBat theinformation table in the Health District atrium at 3020 Rucker Ave., Everett.

First Day of Spring: The Skies Have It, as NOAA Catches the Vernal Equinox in Space

Source: Indian Country Today Media Network, March 20, 2013

At 7:45 ET, NOAA's GOES-13 satellite captured this full disk image of Earth, then photoshopped the sun into its relative position.
At 7:45 ET, NOAA’s GOES-13 satellite captured this full disk image of Earth, then photoshopped the sun into its relative position.

Spring may have arrived on Earth with a winterish whimper, but what’s happening in the sky is preordained.

At 7:02 a.m. Eastern Time, the plane emanating from Mother Earth’s Equator was also bisecting her guiding star, the two poles exactly perpendicular.

Less than an hour later, far above the Earth, at 7:45 Eastern Time, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-13 satellite captured this full disk image of Earth. The agency superimposed an image of the sun at its relative position and released a stunning photo.

On the ground it was nothing special, even generating complaints about a faux spring that did not generate a whit of warmth. But that did nothing to change what is going on astronomically between Mother Earth’s orbit and her guiding star. In fact, it’s more like New Year’s.

“Although popularly described as ‘the first day of spring’ in the Northern Hemisphere, the annual event is actually much more important than that,” reports space.com, explaining the significance of the sun’s position in the sky in relation to earth’s ecliptic. “More than any other event, it marks the beginning of the astronomical year.”

The vernal equinox, which marks the first day of the northern Spring season, occurred at 7:02 a.m. EDT on March 20, 2013. (Image: Starry Night Software/Space.com)
The vernal equinox, which marks the first day of the northern Spring season, occurred at 7:02 a.m. EDT on March 20, 2013. (Image: Starry Night Software/Space.com)

 

On this day the sun switches from the south to the north side of the celestial equator during the spring equinox, Space.com explained. Above is a look at what the sun’s position would be against the stars, if we were to dim our star so as to see it in context.

We are quite possibly spoiled from last year, when March temperatures were at a record high, the Washington Post said. This year they are unseasonably cool. However, those warm spring days are just a matter of time.

“Yet no matter what the weather outside, the spring equinox is a reminder that incoming sunlight is significantly stronger as the Earth’s northern hemisphere begins to tilt toward the sun,” the Washington Post said. “Even as winter overstays its welcome for some, we now see more daylight than darkness. That means spring can’t be far behind.”

 

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/03/20/first-day-spring-skies-have-it-noaa-catches-vernal-equinox-space-148274

Thornton Media Launches Kickstarter Campaign for 3-D Video Game To Teach New Languages Including Cherokee

By Ralph Richardson, Indian Country Today Media Network

In our highly competitive global economy, learning a new language is back in vogue, whether it’s Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic—or Cherokee. There are a plethora of programs, applications and schools to help people hone their communication abilities. Now comes a new strategy: Don Thornton, founder and president of Thornton Media, Inc. and a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, has developed Talking Games, the first 3-D video game that teaches language.

“The problem is that too many language courses are sitting on shelves gathering dust,” Thornton says. “The reason is boredom. You simply can’t get the player to continue using the game for hundreds of hours because they are bored. We intend to make language learning more fun.”

Don Thornton
Don Thornton

 

Thornton has utilized new technology to help preserve the language of his ancestors. “Our video game model is a true paradigm shift in the language software industry,” he claims. “It’s a disruptive technology advance that will change the way all languages are learned.”

Thornton says his grandmother, Lucinda Robbins, taught Cherokee in her home-town of Tahlequah, Oklahoma for 40 years. “While visiting her I purchased a Cherokee-English dictionary near her home, which I showed to her for her opinion,” he recalls. “She flipped through it and said she knew the professor who wrote it and commented that he used to ‘come over and ask me how to say words when I was sitting on my porch.’”

Eventually the professor didn’t even bother to sit on Robbins’ porch and “would just drop off lists of words and she would fill them out for him. He did this for three years. I flipped through the dictionary thinking at least he must have thanked her profusely for her help. But her name didn’t appear anywhere in the book. She told me about many similar projects that she had worked on. She translated books for people into Cherokee, and had a request to narrate the entire New Testament—a two-year project. At no time did she ever get paid for these major projects or even receive a copy of the work. It got me thinking how Indians don’t have control over their own cultural property and must rely on others.”

Determined to bring Cherokee back to the Cherokee, Thornton says he “started the company by adapting the world’s first ‘smart toy’ to teach an indigenous language.” He claims that development of Talking Games has created many “endangered language firsts,” including the first handheld translator, first two-way translator, first Nintendo DS language-learning apps, first language learning apps in the iTunes Store, and first language learning video game for an endangered language.

“All of the R&D for these projects was paid for out-of-pocket,” Thornton states proudly. “No grants. We have created custom language tools for more than 170 tribes and First Nations.”

All of this came from his desire to honor his grandmother, who, he says, “died in December 2012 at the age of 92. She was the best Cherokee speaker in our family.”

 

Earlier this month, Thornton was a speaker on the panel “Mobile Devices and Indian Country” at the National Reservation Economic Summit 2013 Conference with Jamie Richardson, senior systems engineer for Apple Inc. “The conference brings together American Indian businesses and corporations,” Thornton says. “I was the only panelist invited to speak with Apple about mobile apps.”

Despite his successes, Thornton still needs the support of Indian country to continue his work. His Kickstarter campaign launched on March 11, and his goal is to produce his game in both Cherokee and Spanish. Thornton hopes the inclusion of Spanish, which he says is the most requested second language in the country, will subsidize the inclusion of Cherokee. “If we are successful in launching this project it will benefit the revitalization of all endangered languages,” he says.

TRANS TK. e future for Talking Games looks bright, because the game Thornton has developed is engaging and fun. Users fight zombies, wrestle Bigfoot, and escape from aliens—all while learning a language. “The virtual world we create for Talking Games is not meant to simply recreate a town or community, but to create a ‘suspension of disbelief,’” Thornton says. “We want the player to sort of’ forget they are playing a game. This is the reason for the amazing addictive power of immersive video games. When you read a great book or see a great movie, you become lost in it, and part of your brain actually forgets you are playing a game. We use 3D characters that you interact with in our virtual world.”

Talking Games video still of Cecil and Cindy meeting for the first time (Thornton Media)
Talking Games video still of Cecil and Cindy meeting for the first time (Thornton Media)

 

No special glasses or equipment are required to play Talking Games. It is a role-playing game, or RPG, with 3D characters that exist in 3 dimensions, like Grand Theft Auto. In Talking Games, the player controls the main character, Charlie Vann, gets a head injury in a car crash and forgets how to speak Cherokee. His family and friends must help him to regain his language. The obstacles he must overcome include zombies, Bigfoot, and aliens. “The problem with most ‘serious games,’ Thornton says, “is that the motivation to play the game is external. You are ordered to play the game by your superiors, for instance. There are no internal motivators to play, making the game fun to play.”

Talking Games also differs from other language learning programs in that users must speak to play the game. In addition, Talking Games provides what Thornton calls an “immersion environment.” Virtual characters can only respond to the language the user speaks. These aspects of the Talking Games system create a richer learning environment.

Thornton says he has commissioned third party studies on 25,000 military personnel learning Arabic that show that video games that teach languages are “more effective than traditional methods” of language learning. “When you attempt to learn a new language, one of the biggest fears is that you will speak incorrectly and will be laughed at,” he explains. “There is a moment where you look the other person in the eye to see if they understood you. Some people are not bothered by making mistakes in public, but most people feel very uncomfortable if they make a mistake. Talking Games provides a safe environment to practice basic conversation. If you make a mistake in front of a video game character, it’s really not that big of a deal.”

Cecil negotiates with Coyote (Thornton Media)
Cecil negotiates with Coyote (Thornton Media)

 

This innovator in the area of language learning says he launched Thornton Media in 1995 “to create custom language tools to help indigenous communities to revitalize their languages while retaining control over their own cultural property.” Now, Thornton says, his company is still the “only language tool company in the world that retains no ownership over the cultural property of our Native communities.”

With the introduction of Talking Games, Thornton says he has expanded his goals to promote accelerated learning of all languages—but the heart and soul of his company remains with the languages of original peoples, like his grandmother. “Part of our efforts and profits,” he says, “will always be devoted to the revitalization of endangered languages.”

Support Thornton Media’s Kickstarter campagin at http://kck.st/WhweWy.

 

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/03/22/thornton-media-launches-kickstarter-campaign-3-d-video-game-teach-new-languages-including

Complicit in Killing the Earth: Of Pepsi Challenges and Democrats and Republicans

By Gyasi Ross, Indian Country Today Media Network

A few months ago—right up until Election Day—many of our people messaged and pontificated like crazy to point out that there are serious and profound differences between the two political parties. This past election was presented as the ultimate Pepsi Challenge©; in a blind-folded taste test, Native people chose Barack Obama and Democrats 2 to 1!!

A few years ago, I was one of those people—I worked on the President’s campaign and honestly thought that we were entering a new generation of progressive politics, where Democrats moved back to respecting our people and the Earth.  But at that time, I didn’t get the punchline of the Pepsi Challenge, the fine print that we never hear on the commercials:

“Whichever you choose will still kill you.”

That is, whichever choice you make—Pepsi or Coke—both are horrible choices.  YES, one might taste better to you—you dig the spiciness of Coke or prefer to catch the wave of Pepsi.  Still, when you finish that refreshing can of pop, you’ve just ingested exactly the same high fructose corn syrup, brominated vegetable oils.  Both brands will kill your teeth, makes you fat, causxe erectile dysfunction, etc etc…No matter which one you choose, both Coke AND Pepsi do that.  Therefore, while one might be nominally better, they both kill you.

And just like pop kills Native people disproportionately, this Keystone XL pipeline will disproportionately affect Native sacred sites, unmarked Native grave sites, our aboriginal homelands.

We’re seeing that same scenario play out in politics with the Keystone XL Pipeline.  The party that is supposed to be pro-environment, the Democrats, are working hand-in-hand with the party that unabashedly loves scorching the Earth, the Republicans, to absolutely kill any possibility of yours and my grandchildren and great-grandchildren having a quality of life that even remotely approaches ours.

Make no mistake, our grandchildren are screwed if this thing goes through.  The Keystone XL pipeline and our dependence upon fossil fuels generally will ensure that.  Think Soylent Green. Think Children of Men.  Think Planet of the Apes, except with no talking apes (I don’t think). As we speak, the supposedly different Democrats and Republicans are conspiring together to kill the Earth, trample over Native burial grounds and sacred sites. In fairness, President Obama has noted that the Keystone XL pipeline is not a major job creator, and perhaps that will be a basis for rejecting this especially since some 68% of his voters disapprove of this project.

I hope so.

Still, as noted previously, the President effectively gave himself cover when the State Department rubber-stamped the environmental impact statement and said the pipeline would have “no significant impact to the environment,”

Pepsi and Coke will both kill us—there really is no choice.  Instead, we need to drink water, a radical choice, in order to live.  Similarly, we need to start earnestly looking for a radical option to the political parties that are killing us—the Green Party, Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke, help us please!! Funny, the things that get characterized as “radical” are the ones that will keep us alive.

We fell for the political Pepsi Challenge—God help us all.  God help our kids, Native and non-Native, even more—they’re gonna need it.

Contact your Senator — the information is here.  Tell them “no.”

Gyasi Ross
Blackfeet Nation
Activist/Attorney/Author
Twitter: @BigIndianGyasi
www.cutbankcreekpress.com

 

Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/03/21/complicit-killing-earth-pepsi-challenges-and-democrats-and-republicans-148296

Storming the Sovereign Gates

Sauk-Suiattle Court Battle Reveals Alleged Racism, Corruption and the Power of Sovereign Immunity

By Nina Shapiro, The Seattle Weekly, amrch 13, 2013

There’s no sign that marks the Sauk-Suiattle reservation. Indeed, driving on State Route 530 in the foothills of the northern Cascades, you could miss the tiny enclave in a blink of an eye. Essentially, it’s one looping road, home to less than 100 people.

Yet, the reservation, which despite its small size boasts a multi-million budget, has been the site of an intense drama over the last couple of years. It kicked off with the sudden firing of 11 staffers–allegedly a purge aimed at non-Indians.

Many of those fired filed suit, charging discrimination. They might seem to have a strong case. At a raucous tribal council meeting, the member who initiated the firings said this when questioned: “None of these people are Sauk-Suiattle, other Natives, spouses of Natives, you know, okay?”

But the plaintiffs have an uphill battle before them. That’s because of a legal principle that has an enormous effect in Indian country: sovereign immunity. No matter how grievous the alleged wrong, tribes cannot be sued unless they waive their immunity, something they rarely do. In contrast, cities, states and the federal government have all granted broad waivers, making suits against then an everyday affair.

Jeffrey Needle, a lawyer representing the fired employees, and someone whose sympathies naturally lie with the tribes, calls sovereign immunity “an anachronism. It originates with the idea that there’s a king, and the king can do no wrong.” Needle says it allows tribes to say: “Even if we did this, is doesn’t really matter.”

It’s a notion that has come under increasing scrutiny as tribes, with their casino riches and economic development plans, draw more and more employees and tourists. And sovereign immunity is proving not quite as ironclad as once thought in Sauk-Suiattle tribal court, where the fired employees are pressing their case.

The court battle has exposed more than just one little-known aspect of the law. It’s also tapped into deep dysfunction at the tribe, which insiders say is rife with racism, feuding and corruption–all of which is portrayed in our cover story this week, Tribal Kings.

 

From the start, the specially called meeting of the Sauk-Suiattle Tribal Council was rife with suspicion and conflict. Gathering in a small meeting space that doubled as a courtroom, located in one of the few public buildings on the tiny reservation in the shadow of the north Cascades‘ Whitehorse Mountain, council members and observers even sparred over what they were there to talk about. Why hadn’t resolutions been circulated in advance? some wanted to know.

 

Judy Pendergrass (right) and Denise Baird claim they were fired from the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe because they are white.

Shyn Midili
Judy Pendergrass (right) and Denise Baird claim they were fired from the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe because they are white.
Tribal member John Pugh calls his tribe "the most racist culture I've ever been a part of."

Shyn Midili
Tribal member John Pugh calls his tribe “the most racist culture I’ve ever been a part of.”
The Sauk-Suiattle reservation consists of 20 homes, a longhouse, and a few administrative buildings. Yet the tribe employs about 60 people, making it one of the area's largest employers.

Shyn Midili
The Sauk-Suiattle reservation consists of 20 homes, a longhouse, and a few administrative buildings. Yet the tribe employs about 60 people, making it one of the area’s largest employers.

 

The meeting took up the management, or possible mismanagement, of the tribal smoke shop and gas station, and dipped into a discussion of why some Sauk-Suiattle members had access to tribal cars to do their personal business.

And then the real agenda of the June 10, 2011, meeting became apparent. “I make a motion for the immediate termination of Ricke Wayne Armstrong as Sauk-Suiattle Tribe tribal attorney,” said council member Michael Hoffman.

“On what grounds?” asked a former council member, John Pugh, the son of then–Tribal Chair Janice Mabee.

“At will,” was Hoffman’s succinct response, according to a transcript of the meeting.

“What’s the grounds, though?” Pugh persisted. “What’s the reason?”

“At will,” Hoffman repeated.

Hoffman quickly called for a vote, and the motion passed, with four members voting yes, two opposed, and Mabee, the chair, abstaining according to the rules.

If some of those present were disturbed at the sudden jettison of the tribe’s legal adviser, they became even more agitated when Hoffman brought forward his next resolution. “The immediate termination of Cabrini Artero,” Hoffman said, referring to the tribe’s mental-health counselor.

Mabee laughed, presumably at the audacity of it all. “Excuse me,” said her son.

“At will,” Hoffman repeated. Despite several objections that the resolution was illegal because it wasn’t on the agenda, the motion carried with the same people voting for and against.

Hoffman, known on the reservation as a rather erratic personality, didn’t stop there. One after another, he trotted out new names, all on his list of people to be axed. As his flustered opponents sputtered their dismay, Hoffman offered what he apparently thought was reassurance: “None of these people are Sauk-Suiattle, other Natives, spouses of Natives, you know, OK?”

Pugh, a veteran of 25 years in the Army, serving as an equal-opportunity adviser for part of that time, was not reassured. “So you are discriminating against non-Natives?” he asked.

Hoffman denied it. But neither he nor his supporters would offer any reasons for the firings.

“Do you not have a shred of moral decency?” Pugh exploded after a handful of names had been put forward. “Have you lost any honor that you have? These are real people’s lives. I am ashamed to call you tribal members.”

By the end of the meeting, the council had summarily dismissed 11 staffers.

Afterward, Pugh and some of the exasperated council members walked outside to the parking lot, where they ran into Judy Pendergrass, still shaking, as she remembers it now, after hearing that she had just lost her job as the tribe’s human-resources manager. “You guys need to get an attorney,” Pugh told Pendergrass.

Eventually, she and seven other fired employees did. Their lawsuit, charging discrimination and wrongful termination, is now pending in Sauk-Suiattle’s tribal court, the forum where the law dictates such a claim must first be heard. But the suit faces a daunting obstacle. According to a legal principle known as “sovereign immunity,” Native American tribes cannot be sued—at least not unless a tribe specifically grants a waiver from such immunity. And most tribes grant no such thing, except for limited waivers pertaining to specific business contracts.

In contrast, the federal government, states, counties, and cities have all granted broad waivers—so much so that lawsuits against these jurisdictions happen virtually every day, for discrimination, sexual harassment, negligence, all sorts of things. “I can give you a thousand examples,” says Jeffrey Needle, one of two Seattle lawyers representing eight of the dismissed Sauk-Suiattle employees.

Needle further charges that sovereign immunity “is an anachronism. It originates with the idea that there’s a king, and the king can do no wrong.” A left-leaning lawyer who specializes in civil-rights cases, Needle says his natural sympathies lie with Native Americans, who have experienced “invidious” discrimination. Yet he says his eyes have been opened to the way tribes can use sovereign immunity to avoid even discussing alleged wrongs they committed. Their stance, he says: “Even if we did this, it doesn’t really matter.”

Indeed, that’s the Sauk-Suiattle tribe’s position in court—making this case typical of the countless, usually futile lawsuits brought against tribes over everything from broken bones at tribal casinos to deaths at the hands of tribal police.

Nevertheless, an early ruling in the Sauk-Suiattle case suggests tribal immunity isn’t completely ironclad. That undoubtedly comes as welcome news to yet two more ex-staffers, fired in the protracted battles that followed the 2011 meeting, who are now likely to bring additional suits.

Tribes throughout the state are carefully watching the legal maneuvering, according to prominent Tulalip tribal member and state Rep. John McCoy, trying to “figure out what it means for them.”

Even so, the court battle only hints at the drama that has been playing out among the Sauk-Suiattle. Alleged corruption, veiled and unveiled racism against tribal members and nonmembers alike, and family rivalries of Shakespearean proportions attest to the deep dysfunction many say is rife within the tiny tribe.

You get to the Sauk-Suiattle reservation by driving northeast from Darrington, a hamlet on State Route 530 so small that residents can’t think of anyplace to take a visitor for lunch besides the local IGA. It’s a metropolis compared to the reservation, however, which is accessed by a looping road off the highway called Chief Brown Lane. Actually, that road—only about a quarter-mile long—essentially is the reservation, aside from some woods and pasture land in the tribe’s domain. Chief Brown Lane is dotted with modest homes, about 20 in all; a longhouse; and a couple of administration buildings.

In the mid-19th century, the tribe clustered in a nearby village alongside the confluence of the Sauk and Suiattle rivers that boasted eight cedar longhouses and 4,000 members. Like that of many tribes of the region, its life revolved around the water. Its members fished and plied the rivers in hand-built canoes. And also as with so many tribes, white settlers confiscated their land. The Sah-ku-mehu people, as they were then called, scattered, some fleeing to other tribes’ reservations. By 1924, the tribe could count only 18 members.

In the 1970s, the federal government officially recognized the Sauk-Suiattle as a tribe and demarcated a small reservation. The tribe’s numbers have since grown, but not much: The population now stands at about 200, only a fraction of whom (roughly 70, according to one estimate) live on the reservation.

Yet, considering its diminutive size, the tribe is flush with money—in part from the (up to) $6 million annually awarded in federal and state grants, according to Pugh, who currently works for the tribe on economic development. The tribe receives another $4 million to $6 million dollars a year through slot machines, Pugh says. The Sauk-Suiattle don’t run a casino, but, like other tribes, are entitled to a share in the proceeds from a certain number of gaming machines on other reservations.

Along with Hampton Lumber Mills and the local school district, the tribe stands as one of the area’s biggest employers. At the time of the mass firing, the tribe maintained a staff of about 60, according to Pendergrass. They worked in departments devoted to, among other things, natural resources, cultural resources, health care, housing, and police. Retired Seattle homicide detective Steve O’Leary, who served as the tribe’s police chief from 2007 to 2012, says his four-person department kept busy in part by giving rides to kids who missed the school bus into Darrington.

At least until recently, many of the tribe’s jobs went to whites—slightly more than half, according to Pendergrass’ records. It’s not unusual to see non-Indian faces on reservations, especially as more and more workers are brought in to man casinos and other businesses.

Pendergrass says that while the Sauk-Suiattle maintained an Indian-preference hiring policy, she often would get few applications from Native Americans for skilled jobs.

Herold Hudson is one of the whites who came to the tribe. With experience as an auditor for an accounting firm, he landed a job as the tribe’s chief financial officer in 2007. Two years later, the tribal council asked Hudson to take over as CEO.

Hudson was well aware of the tribe’s history of infighting. Two dominant families—the Josephs and the Enicks—were at each other throats “like the Hatfields and the McCoys,” Hudson says. But at that moment, it seemed to Hudson that the families had come together in a shared vision for economic development and stability. The tribe wanted to build an amphitheater, and insisted upon signing a 10-year contract with Hudson, he says.

Hudson served as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, however. In 2010 he was called to active duty and deployed to Kuwait, where he ran a base that shipped equipment to Afghanistan and Iraq.

And despite Hudson’s impressions that the tribe was ready to mend its internal rifts, he and others say his deployment lit a tinderbox that has now engulfed the Sauk-Suiattle in acrimony. From his base in the Middle East, Hudson could only watch as racial tension and family rivalry began to tear at the tribe’s core.

Jim Thomas, who hails from the Tlingit people of Alaska and has served in various leadership positions in the region, including at the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, seemed like a natural choice to oversee the tribe’s operations while Hudson was away.

Arlington attorney Lowell Halverson, a vice-president of the executive council overseeing the Tlingit and Haida tribes, says that Thomas is a “well-respected” figure in the Northwest. Halverson remembers being moved by an essay Thomas presented at an Affiliated Tribes meeting in Washington, D.C., a few years back that was “very passionate, almost statesman-like.” The essay dealt with the challenges facing Native Americans who want to preserve their culture.

“In the beginning, he and I got along exceptionally well,” Pendergrass says of Thomas. She’s talking in her Darrington home on a rainy January day, a fire lit in the family room where she and Denise Baird, once a fellow employee of the Sauk-Suiattle tribe, sit overlooking Pendergrass’ sprawling backyard. In another room is Pendergrass’ husband, a member of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. (In several cases, Hoffman was wrong in characterizing the people fired as being neither Native nor spouses of Natives.)

But little by little, Pendergrass says, her relationship with Thomas became fraught. “Why are so many whites working here?” Pendergrass says he would ask her. She says she would respond: “If you don’t have Indians apply, you can’t hire them.” (Thomas declined to speak with Seattle Weekly, except to say that the firings came as a surprise to him.)

Even before Thomas came along, some tribal members were hostile toward whites, according to Pendergrass and Baird, both 51, who have known each other since kindergarten in Darrington. In particular, they point to then–council member Norma Joseph, who has since become tribal chair. At one point, Baird says, Joseph asked her why she hadn’t properly introduced herself. “Isn’t that how you do it in your world?” Joseph asked, according to Baird.

“I thought we were in the same world,” Baird says she replied.

“Good morning, Norma,” Pendergrass says she would frequently say to Joseph, who worked in the cultural-resources department. “She’d look right through me.” (Reached by phone, Joseph declined to be interviewed and hung up.)

These slights are minor, however, compared to what Pugh says he and his family have experienced. “This is the most racist culture I’ve ever been a part of,” says Pugh, who spent 11 years as a test-lab manager at Microsoft in addition to serving in the Army. “If you’re not Indian, then you’re not worth having here,” he says some people seem to feel. What’s more, “If you’re not full-blood Indian, then you’re not really Indian.”

Pugh is a quarter-blood Indian, just meeting the tribe’s blood quantum. He says he grew up near the Canadian border in Blaine, and didn’t think too much about his Native heritage until after high school. Stationed at Fort Lewis, he started exploring his roots and got hooked. When he left active duty in 2000, he moved his whole family, including four children, onto the Sauk-Suiattle reservation. His mother moved onto the reservation about the same time.

But although he got elected to the council in 2001, serving one three-year term, and his mother later became chair, Pugh says his family members remained unpopular in certain quarters because they were not “FBI” (full-blooded Indian). “For the first seven years, my wife would drive up to the reservation and people would flip her off,” he says. His wife is white. His three teenage daughters were called “bitches and sluts”—by adults, not by other teenagers, he says. Invitations were not forthcoming to traditional events like naming and cleansing ceremonies.

As Pugh tells it, the environment was ripe for someone to come in and play the race card—someone like Thomas.

Thomas reportedly stirred up other tribal dynamics as well, namely the bitter family rivalries that just before his arrival had appeared to be dissipating. Aligning himself with the Josephs and alienating that family’s rivals, three of the seven tribal council members wanted to oust him, according to Pendergrass. She says he was therefore suspicious of anyone friendly with his opponents, including Pendergrass, whose office was frequented by Mabee. She says Thomas warned her that the relationship was threatening her status with the tribe.

That was about a week before her firing. In fact, she was packing up her office on the morning of the fateful council meeting, which she felt certain would bring bad news one way or another. Not only did she feel her job was at risk, but there was a rumor that the council members sympathetic to Thomas were planning to try to remove Mabee as chair. Hence the tension prevalent at the meeting from the outset, and the presence of Mabee’s children, Pugh and Cindy Harris, a voluble woman who, according to Pendergrass, came running out afterward screaming to the just-dismissed employees: “You’ve just been fired because you’re white!”

Was that what motivated Hoffman? Pendergrass and Baird say he hadn’t previously struck them as anti-white. “When he was running for council, we hoped he would get it,” Baird says. “He seemed very pleasant, respectful.”

One theory is that while Hoffman himself wasn’t anti-white, Joseph and Thomas lavished him with raises for his tribal job, new clothes, and access to the tribal vehicle and credit card to get him to go along with the purge. “Basically, he was used as a pawn by the Josephs,” Hudson, the former CEO, says. He concedes that he can’t prove as much, but says he did see some key pieces of evidence when he returned from deployment, namely receipts from Hoffman’s use of the tribal credit card.

Hoffman is certainly conflicted about the firings. Initially declining comment but then calling back a handful of times to talk, he paints himself as a victim. “I do feel extremely used,” he says, although he never really explains how. He denies he used the Sauk-Suiattle credit card improperly, but concedes that he commandeered a Sauk-Suiattle vehicle. “I was given authority to use a tribal car by Jim Thomas,” he says.

He is insistent, however, that he was not part of any anti-white conspiracy. “My last name is Hoffman. I’m half Jewish and German,” he says. Instead, he says, he brought forward his explosive resolutions because there were “problems” with “every single one of those employees.”

One of the terminated employees, mental-health counselor Artero, was overbilling clients, he charges. (Artero counters that the tribe, not her, handled billing.) A second employee made racist remarks about Indians. Pendergrass, he claims, “would give the inside line” about job openings to her friends. (Pendergrass denies it.)

Hoffman’s inner conflict was perhaps most pronounced last May, when he began to call some of the fired workers.

Baird says she got the first call in May. Hoffman started by expressing an interest in attending Baird’s church, she says. Then, she says, he broached the firings. “He said, ‘What we did was wrong, and we’ll do whatever we can to fix it.’ ”

He called Pendergrass next. “Talk about shock,” she says. “I just about fell over.” They had “multiple conversations” initiated by Hoffman, she says. “I asked him point-blank: Was [the mass firing] racially motivated? He said it was.”

When he told Pendergrass that he wanted to make things right, she says she told him: “There is one thing you could do. You could waive your sovereign immunity.” She says Hoffman initially worried about how that would affect him. Pendergrass assured him that he wouldn’t have to pay any settlement—the tribe’s insurance would cover it. “He said he would be willing to do it as long as it doesn’t cost him personally,” Pendergrass says.

Hoffman—who says that after the firings he experienced a backlash by opponents, including having his young children targeted by paintballs in front of his house— concedes that he told Pendergrass and Baird that he’d had a change of heart. “It was a mistake for me to present any of those terminations,” he says. “I feel really bad about it.” Yet he still insists the firings were for cause, not racial reasons. “It was just the wrong way to do it,” he says, adding that the employees could have been spoken to privately about problems.

He also presents a very different version of his sovereign-immunity conversation with Pendergrass. “She said you can waive sovereign immunity as an individual. I said, ‘Yeah, right.’ It was a sarcastic statement.”

The first legal strike came not from the fired employees, but from Pugh. He filed a suit in tribal court contesting the dismissals, and got none other than the famed and flamboyant criminal-defense attorney John Henry Browne to represent him. Pugh says his mother knew Browne, who was once married to a Native American woman and has a son enrolled in the Tlingit tribe, the same one Thomas is from. (Browne nonetheless says he knows little about Thomas.)

But Browne couldn’t help Pugh’s case. The tribal judge said Pugh didn’t have standing since he hadn’t been fired himself.

Then in January 2012, eight of the dismissed employees, including Pendergrass and Baird, filed their own suit in tribal court, alleging racial discrimination. The tribe countered with a motion for summary judgment, arguing that due to sovereign immunity, the case should be thrown out. Tom Nedderman, the attorney for Travelers’ Insurance, which is representing the tribe, did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

“People don’t realize what sovereignty means,” says Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, Calif., who has studied the issue for years. “When you go to an Indian nation, it’s like going to Mexico.” That might seem a strange notion, not least because of the utter lack of marked borders and the dependence reservations have on federal and state dollars. Yet people are fooled, Rose says, into assuming that the same laws apply on reservations and in the rest of the United States.

When he began looking into the matter 25 years ago, he says he was “astounded” to find that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t hold sway on reservations—including the Bill of Rights, guaranteeing things like free speech. The 14th Amendment, which prevents government from depriving people of life, liberty, and property without due process, also has no currency in Indian country. Nor does Title VII, the portion of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits employment discrimination. At the time he began researching tribal courts, he says, “Two tribes didn’t even allow women the right to vote.”

He doesn’t know of any tribes, though, of whom that’s true now. And it’s not as if the law provides no protections in Indian country. In 1968, Congress passed the Indian Civil Rights Act, which offers some of the same protections as the Bill of Rights. Needle points out that the act prohibits tribes from denying “equal protection” to people within their jurisdiction, a provision he believes outlaws discrimination. “Once again, the issue comes down to sovereign immunity,” Needle says, however. If tribes can’t be sued, that can’t be enforced.

Rose adds that few people cared about sovereign immunity when tribes were “poor and isolated.” He says the advent of Indian gaming has changed all that. “Now you have a lot of people coming onto [Indian] land, and tripping and sometimes dying.”

Witness the case of Jeffrey Young. In 2007, Young, then 55, a psychologist who taught at online universities, wandered onto the Puyallup reservation and into the tribal clinic. Whether the tribe’s casino was his ultimate destination isn’t clear. His brother Chris says he suspects it was. In any case, Young was acting strangely, asking to see his patients and then calling two employees the “Antichrist.”

Three tribal police officers arrived at the scene. According to court documents, the officers kicked Young’s feet out from under him, piled on top of him, Tasered him repeatedly, and cuffed him by his wrists and ankles. Young weighed approximately 300 pounds. By the time a fourth officer arrived, Young’s lips were blue and he had stopped breathing. Young was dead.

The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s office ruled the cause of death “excited delirium.” A forensic pathologist hired by Young’s estate blamed a heart dysfunction caused by the weight of the officers pressing down on Young’s lungs and chest.

“It’s the very definition of false arrest,” says Seattle lawyer Yale Lewis, who represents Young’s estate and points out that Young was never charged with any offense.

The Puyallup tribe hasn’t justified its actions beyond a recitation of Young’s behavior, because it doesn’t have to. After Lewis filed a lawsuit in Puyallup’s tribal court alleging civil-rights violations, the judge ordered a hearing to discuss whether the case should be dismissed because of sovereign immunity. Lewis withdrew the case from tribal court and filed it in Pierce County Superior Court, where sovereign immunity again reared its head, resulting in a dismissal—the same treatment the suit later received in the state Court of Appeals. Ann McCormick, one of several lawyers representing the tribal officers named in the suit, declines to comment.

This past June, Lewis filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to review the case. In October, he received word that the court had asked the Solicitor General to weigh in on the case. “It’s very exciting,” Lewis says, noting that cases passed by the Solicitor General stand a much higher chance of being heard.

“The tribes have no friend in the U.S. Supreme Court,” observes Rose, the Whittier law professor. The court expressed reservations about sovereign immunity in a landmark 1998 case, Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma v. Manufacturing Technologies, which involved that tribe’s default on a promissory note to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock. On the one hand, the court reaffirmed that tribal sovereign immunity was virtually absolute. But on the other hand, Rose points out, the court questioned the wisdom of this doctrine and invited Congress to repeal it.

Congress never did. Rose suggests that legislators lack a “political will” to take up sovereign immunity, given the plethora of tribal campaign contributions that have flowed through the Capitol in recent years. Rose doubts the Supreme Court will ever overhaul sovereign immunity on its own, but muses that the justices are “looking for ways to cut back on it.”

The “more progressive tribes” are cutting back on immunity of their own accord, according to McCoy, the state representative. “Tulalip does it all the time, for a specific project or a specific business deal.” Businesses like Home Depot and Walmart that have come onto the reservation, becoming part of a thriving economy sparked by the tribe’s casino, all have immunity waivers written into their contracts, McCoy says.

Still, the Tulalip tribe has not enacted any broad-based waivers, and McCoy notes that “tribes are very protective of their sovereign immunity.” Historically, there’s been a good reason for that, argues Ron Whitener, executive director of the University of Washington‘s Native American Law Center. Tribes simply haven’t had the money to pay out legal claims, in large part because they’re “extremely limited in their ability to tax,” Whitener says. With reservations comprising mostly “trust” land held for tribes by the federal government, tribes don’t have access to property taxes.

Tribes do have their newfound gaming riches. But Ron Allen, longtime chair and CEO of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe and treasurer of the National Congress of American Indians, asserts that “The majority of tribes don’t have casinos, and of those that do, only a handful are very successful.” He suggests that tribes have no choice but to hold onto sovereign immunity.

The Sauk-Suiattle’s grip, however, proved not to be as firm as might have been expected.

Ruling in October, Judge Randy Doucet, who comes from a pool of judicial officers supplied to tribes by the Northwest Intertribal Court System, rejected the tribe’s motion to dismiss the case.

The plaintiff’s success can be traced in part to Hoffman’s efforts to make amends. Needle and Mindenbergs argued that sovereign immunity shouldn’t hold because Hoffman expressed a desire, in conversations with Pendergrass and Baird, to waive it. The judge didn’t totally buy that argument. Hoffman was not empowered to waive immunity on behalf of the entire tribe. But he might be able to waive it on his own behalf. Doucet said the matter raised factual and legal questions that required further review.

The judge also acknowledged that the council’s dismissals might have been outside the scope of its authority. That’s what the plaintiffs argued, because the tribe’s own employee handbook forbids discrimination. Without knowing whether the tribe acted legally, the judge said he couldn’t say whether it could use sovereign immunity as a shield.

Such rulings are the picayune stuff of legal cases, yet given the ways in which suits against tribes have been stopped at the gate in the past, Susan Mindenbergs, who is working with Needle on the case, calls the victory “amazing.”

“It is very difficult to succeed” given courts’ deference to sovereign immunity, says Needle, talking with his fellow counsel in their shared Pioneer Square offices. Having done little previous work in Indian country, he says they’ve dived into similar cases only to discover that most of the time, “you’re knocking your head against the wall” to sue a tribe.

The tribe has appealed Doucet’s decision, and a hearing is scheduled for April 2 in tribal court. “Even if we lose in court, we’re not done,” Pendergrass vows. “We haven’t even started contacting the funding agencies” that dole out federal grants to the Sauk-Suiattle, she says—grants that are supposed to be conditional on the tribe’s adherence to basic federal laws, like those outlawing discrimination. She and her fellow plaintiffs will ask the agencies to enforce their rules.

That may not be the only gauntlet ahead for the Sauk-Suiattle. Both Hudson and O’Leary, the former CEO and police chief, say they too are likely to sue the tribe. Both were caught up in the controversy over the mass firing and were subsequently fired themselves.

The police job is still open—one of six open positions advertised on the tribe’s website, along with a clinic manager, a chemical-dependency counselor, and a medical assistant.

It’s not hard to imagine that under the circumstances, the tribe might have a difficult time filling these positions. Some believe that the council eventually would have fired even more employees if there hadn’t been a backlash. In the tense days after the tumultuous 2011 meetings, Pugh recalls, the chair ordered that locks be put on the administration building to prevent further havoc.

A year and a half later, Pendergrass and Baird still seem choked up by what happened. They say they loved their jobs, which offered good pay and benefits. Pendergrass says she was proud of making sure all the employment policies were followed on her watch. Baird says her varied court and police duties kept things interesting. “I even mopped when I had free time,” Baird says. “You just want to keep the place presentable,” she says.

Neither has yet found a new job. Baird has taken to selling Cookie Lee jewelry at house parties. “It hurt,” she says of her abrupt dismissal. “It hurt real bad.”

State senators pledge $300M more for higher ed

State Senate leaders pledged Tuesday to increase funding for higher education by $300 million but did not say how to pay for it.

The Associated Press and Seattle Times staff

OLYMPIA — A group of Washington state senators vowed Tuesday to increase funding for higher education by $300 million but declined to say how they would get the money at a time when lawmakers are struggling to balance the budget.

Republican Sen. Michael Baumgartner, who developed the plan supported by a GOP-dominated coalition, said it is possible to write a budget that balances state spending while increasing funding for state colleges and universities. He said it will be a matter of prioritizing where government dollars go.

“We’re going to make higher education a priority,” Baumgartner said.

Lawmakers already face a more than $1 billion shortfall in the next two-year budget cycle and are separately under court order to expand funding for K-12 education.

The senators also propose to require a 3 percent reduction in tuition for in-state students. They say this would help manage the long-term financial concerns in the state’s prepaid-tuition program, known as GET, for Guaranteed Education Tuition.

Senate Democrats said they were encouraged that the GOP-leaning majority is embracing increased funding but want to better understand the details of the proposal.

“The bottom line is, we’re open to the conversation — We’re not sure the numbers will add up,” said state Sen. David Frockt, D-Seattle.

Margaret Shepherd, director of state relations for the University of Washington, was also waiting for more specific details. However, both she and Frockt said the $300 million appears to largely include money already expected to go to the institutions for general growth.

Shepherd said the proposal adds only about $75 million in new money to the system and that gain is offset by the loss in tuition dollars. Frockt said he thought it would only add about $42 million to $58 million, after the loss of tuition dollars was factored in.

“It will not provide adequate funding for the investments that we need to make in order to provide a high-quality education for our students,” Shepherd said.

Washington’s university presidents said earlier this year that the schools would freeze tuition for two years if lawmakers would add $225 million in extra funding to the system.

The coalition’s plan would award $50 million of the new higher-education money to schools based on how well they did on certain performance metrics, such as the number of undergraduates in degrees such as science or engineering, the retention rate of first-year students, and the average time it takes to complete an undergraduate degree.

Baumgartner said the aim was for the money to go to programs that directly benefit students, and not to faculty salary increases. Most state college faculty have not had a raise in four years; the UW has said that raising faculty salaries this year is a priority.

Frockt also said the $50 million for improving performance is too low to provide much incentive. “I think if you spread it across the system like peanut butter, it’s not that significant,” said Frockt, who himself proposed a bill — which died — that would have created an incentive performance fund.

The proposal would also expand the State Need Grant, the state’s largest grant program for low-income students, by 7 percent, to serve an additional 4,600 students. The State Need Grant currently serves about 70,000 students, but the state has estimated that 30,000 additional students qualify but receive no money.

Associated Press writer Mike Baker and Seattle Times higher-education reporter Katherine Long contributed to this report.

‘Still a huge wound’: remembering Green River killer’s victims

The Organization for Prostitution Survivors, a new Seattle nonprofit, is working to raise money and build public support for a permanent memorial to the victims of Green River killer Gary L. Ridgway. The effort has the support of U.S. Congressman and former King County Sheriff Dave Reichert.

By Sara Jean Green, The Seattle Times

PHOTOS BY ERIKA SCHULTZ / The Seattle TimesNoel Gomez, a former prostitute who co-founded the Organization for Prostitution Survivors, is raising money for a memorial to the victims of Green River killer Gary L. Ridgway, who has pleaded guilty to 49 murders. "I feel like they are my sisters," Gomez said.
PHOTOS BY ERIKA SCHULTZ / The Seattle Times
Noel Gomez, a former prostitute who co-founded the Organization for Prostitution Survivors, is raising money for a memorial to the victims of Green River killer Gary L. Ridgway, who has pleaded guilty to 49 murders. “I feel like they are my sisters,” Gomez said.

By the time a pimp put Noel Gomez to work on the streets of Seattle in the early 1990s, the Green River killer had slowed his killing spree of girls and women, many who were also caught up in the dark underworld of prostitution.

“But he was still out there and whenever I worked Pacific Highway or Aurora Avenue, I was very aware that the next car I got into could be the Green River killer’s,” said Gomez, 39, who has been out of the life for seven years now. “I was obsessed with him getting caught.”

She recalls watching “Judge Judy” on TV in her Queen Anne apartment in November 2001 when the program was interrupted by a breaking-news alert: Gary L. Ridgway, a then-52-year-old truck painter from Auburn, had been arrested. Gomez cried at the news.

Now, nearly a dozen years later, long after Ridgway pleaded guilty to 49 murders, Gomez and Peter Qualliotine are working to raise money and build public support for a permanent memorial to the girls and women Ridgway strangled and discarded.

The two are co-founders of a new Seattle nonprofit, The Organization for Prostitution Survivors (OPS). They are hosting a series of community engagements at libraries and community centers throughout the year to help educate the public about the dynamics of prostitution and the extreme sexual violence that prostituted girls and women endure.

In addition to the community engagements, Gomez and Qualliotine are holding weekly art workshops for prostitution survivors and plan to display their works in quarterly art exhibits. The women’s artwork, they said, will influence and inform the design of the memorial.

OPS has so far raised about $10,000 of its $225,000 goal. The money will be used to launch the fledgling organization, pay for supplies and salaries (Gomez and Qualliotine have been working for free), provide housing, job skills and other services to survivors of prostitution and go toward funding the design and siting of the memorial.

“In my world, in the world I roam in … it has not gone away,” Gomez said of the trauma caused by the Green River killings. “I think there’s a lot of people who don’t think about it or even know about it. But what people don’t understand is that in certain circles, it’s still a huge freaking wound.”

Gomez, a chemical-dependency professional who works with juveniles in the King County Juvenile Detention Center, previously worked for The Bridge Program, a Seattle residential-recovery center for prostituted youth.

Qualliotine, who also worked for The Bridge, designed one of the country’s first “john schools” in Portland for men who have been arrested for patronizing prostitutes. The schools examine men’s accountability in creating demand for prostitution.

U.S. Congressman and former King County Sheriff Dave Reichert has pledged to help Gomez and Qualliotine. As a 31-year-old detective in 1982, Reichert began investigating the Green River cases.

Reichert said he thought about a memorial for the victims years ago, but worried the grief was still too raw for families who had to relive horrible memories every time a new victim was found.

There has been no closure for the families whose daughters’ lives were violently cut short, he said. And for law-enforcement officers, there are aspects of the killings that they’ll never forget.

“When you collect remains for years and years and years, and sometimes multiple bodies in a week, those thoughts and visions never go away,” Reichert said. “ … This is about the victims, the families and the relatives — they’re the ones who have lost loved ones — but this has meaning for the detectives, too.”

The Green River killings were “the worst serial murder case in the nation,” with 51 confirmed victims and dozens of other slayings believed to have been committed by Ridgway, he said. More than half of Ridgway’s victims were 18 or younger.

But Ridgway, who preyed on prostitutes and runaways, “doesn’t have the name recognition Ted Bundy has,” Reichert said, referring to the Northwest serial killer who raped and killed female college students in the 1970s. He believes that’s because of the social stigma attached to those involved in prostitution.

“People were driving to and from work on Pacific Highway or Aurora Avenue or First Avenue and they were never seeing these young girls on the street,” he said. “There were hundreds of them — you couldn’t miss them — but no one saw them.

“Then they disappeared and no one missed them,” Reichert said.

Maybe Seattle and the county can embrace the idea of a memorial to the victims “as the community’s recognition that they failed these kids and for the future, maybe we will remember our failure,” he said.

Reichert, who as a teen ran away from home to escape his abusive, alcoholic father, said 90 percent of Ridgway’s victims were on the streets because of the abuse they suffered in their own homes.

“There’s a reason those girls were on the streets,” he said. “And it’s still happening.”

It was true for Gomez, whose physically abusive, alcoholic father kicked her out when she became pregnant at 15.

And it was true for Debbie Estes, one of Ridgway’s youngest victims, who along with her two siblings was sexually abused for years by a relative, said Estes’ sister, Virginia “Jenny” Graham, of Spokane. After Estes ran away from home, it didn’t take long before she fell under the control of a pimp, Graham said.

The last time Graham saw her sister, Estes and her best friend Becky Marrero — another Ridgway victim — had stopped by the family’s Federal Way home to pick up some of Estes’ things.

Soon after, Estes was raped and pistol-whipped by a serial rapist. She was set to testify against him when she disappeared on Sept. 20, 1982.

Estes’ body was found almost six years later, on May 30, 1988, in Federal Way. She had just turned 15.

Marrero was 20 when she disappeared from a SeaTac motel on Dec. 3, 1982. Her body was discovered in an Auburn ravine December 2010, years after Ridgway had admitted he killed her.

“When these particular girls were being killed, it was like no one cared,” said Graham, a married mother of three. “You couldn’t go anywhere without people talking about it, at the grocery store or wherever. I heard some of the cruelest things being said, like: ‘It’s her fault for being out there.’

“But what people didn’t realize was my sister didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t go home,” Graham said.

Graham and Reichert are working together to contact other victims’ families and hope to meet with them to discuss the memorial.

“It’s for healing, it’s positive and it will happen, I have little doubt,” she said.

 

To learn more

For more information on The Organization for Prostitution Survivors and to donate to the Green River Victims Memorial, visit www.seattleops.com. The website includes a video about the effort.

Community engagement

The next OPS community engagement will be held the second week of April, and the first art exhibit is planned for early May. Dates and venues haven’t been confirmed yet, but information will be available on the OPS website.

The Organization for Prostitution Survivors

Markets pledge not to sell genetically-modified salmon

Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s are among those who won’t sell the engineered salmon despite an FDA finding that it would be as safe to eat as conventional salmon.

By Andrew Pollack, The New York Times

Several supermarket chains have pledged not to sell what could become the first genetically modified animal to reach the nation’s dinner plates — a salmon engineered to grow about twice as fast as normal.

The supermarkets — including Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s and Aldi — stated their policies in response to a campaign by consumer and environmental groups opposed to the fish. The groups are expected to announce the chains’ policies Wednesday. The supermarket chains have 2,000 stores in all, with 1,200 of them belonging to Aldi, which has outlets stretching from Kansas and Texas to the East Coast.

“Our current definition of sustainable seafood specifies the exclusion of genetically modified organisms,” a spokeswoman for Aldi said in a statement that also said the policy might evolve over time.

She said the company would not comment further.

The salmon is now awaiting approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which in December concluded that the fish would have “no significant impact” on the environment and would be as safe to eat as conventional salmon. The agency is accepting public comments on its findings until April 26.

Under existing FDA policies, the salmon, if approved, would probably not be labeled as genetically engineered. The agency has said that use of genetic engineering per se does not change a food materially.

The campaign by the environmental and consumer groups suggests that the salmon could have trouble winning acceptance in the market, assuming consumers could identify it.

“Consumers do not want to eat genetically engineered fish, and stores are starting to pick up on it,” said Eric Hoffman, food and technology policy campaigner for Friends of the Earth, one of the 30 organizations that sent letters to retailers asking them to promise not to carry the salmon.

Other organizations involved include the Center for Food Safety and Consumers Union.

Still, the 2,000 stores covered by the pledges so far represent only a small fraction of the estimated 36,500 U.S. supermarkets, and some already had policies against genetically engineered seafood. Whole Foods, which recently announced that all genetically engineered food sold in its stores would have to be labeled by 2018, caters to consumers more likely than most to pay higher prices to avoid genetically modified ingredients.

Hoffman said he was confident that other grocers, including some more mainstream ones, would sign on.

“We haven’t heard any solid noes from anyone,” he said.

Ronald L. Stotish, chief executive of AquaBounty Technologies, which developed the salmon, said of the pledges: “I would be disappointed, but it’s their right. No one will ever be forced to purchase our products.”

But he added, “We think we have a safe and healthy product that we hope will be given a chance to be fairly judged by consumers.”

The fish, the AquAdvantage salmon, is a farmed Atlantic salmon that contains a growth hormone gene from the chinook salmon and a genetic switch from the ocean pout that keeps the transplanted gene continuously active. The salmon can grow to market weight in as little as half the time required by other farmed Atlantic salmon, AquaBounty says.

Critics say that the fish has not been tested adequately for safety and that it might outcompete wild salmon for food or mates should it ever escape. AquaBounty says its fish are sterilized and would be grown in inland tanks, with little chance of escape.

The groups against the fish say that Marsh Supermarkets, with about 90 stores in Ohio and Indiana, and PCC Natural Markets, with nine stores in Washington state, had also agreed not to carry the genetically modified salmon. Marsh did not return calls seeking verification.

AquaBounty, which is based in Maynard, Mass., has been close to running out of money. Friday, shareholders approved the sale of new shares worth $6 million, which the company has said would be enough to keep it afloat for at least another year.

Most of the new shares are being acquired by the Intrexon Corp., bringing its stake in AquaBounty to 53.8 percent. Intrexon specializes in synthetic biology, an advanced form of genetic engineering, and is controlled by Randal J. Kirk, a biotechnology entrepreneur.

Pope Francis urges protection of nature, weak

By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press
Gregorio Borgia / Associated Press.Pope Francis gives the thumbs up to the crowd as he arrives in St. Peter's Square for his inauguration Mass at the Vatican on Tuesday.
Gregorio Borgia / Associated Press.
Pope Francis gives the thumbs up to the crowd as he arrives in St. Peter’s Square for his inauguration Mass at the Vatican on Tuesday.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis laid out the priorities of his pontificate during his installation Mass on Tuesday, urging the princes, presidents, sheiks and thousands of ordinary people attending to protect the environment, the weakest and the poorest and to let tenderness “open up a horizon of hope.”

It was a message Francis has hinted at in his first week as pontiff, when his gestures of simplicity often spoke louder than his words. But on a day when he had the world’s economic, political and religious leadership sitting before him on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica for the official start of his papacy, Francis made his point clear.

“Please,” he told them. “Let us be protectors of creation, protectors of God’s plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and of the environment.”

The Argentine native is the first pope from Latin America and the first named for the 13th-century friar St. Francis of Assisi, whose life’s work was to care for nature, the poor and most disadvantaged.

The Vatican said between 150,000-200,000 people attended the Mass, held under bright blue skies after days of chilly rain and featuring flag-waving fans from around the world.

In Buenos Aires, thousands of people packed the central Plaza di Mayo square to watch the ceremony on giant TV screens, erupting in joy when Francis called them from Rome, his words broadcast over loudspeakers.

“I want to ask a favor,” Francis told them. “I want to ask you to walk together, and take care of one another. … And don’t forget that this bishop who is far away loves you very much. Pray for me.”

Back in Rome, Francis was interrupted by applause several times during his homily, including when he urged the faithful not to allow “omens of destruction,” hatred, envy and pride to “defile our lives.”

Francis said the role of the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics is to open his arms and protect all of humanity, but “especially the poorest, the weakest, the least important, those whom Matthew lists in the final judgment on love: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison.”

“Today amid so much darkness we need to see the light of hope and to be men and women who bring hope to others,” he said. “To protect creation, to protect every man and every woman, to look upon them with tenderness and love, is to open up a horizon of hope, it is to let a shaft of light break through the heavy clouds.”

After the celebrations die down, Francis has his work cut out for him as he confronts a church in crisis: Retired Pope Benedict XVI spent eight years trying to reverse the decline of Christianity in Europe, without much success.

While growing in Africa and Asia, the Catholic Church has been stained in Europe, Australia and the Americas by sexual abuse scandals. Closer to home, Francis is facing serious management shortcomings in a Vatican bureaucracy in dire need of reform.

Francis hasn’t offered any hint of how he might tackle those greater problems, focusing instead on crowd-pleasing messages and gestures that signal a total shift in priority and personality from his German theologian predecessor.

On Wednesday, Francis may give a hint about his ecumenical intentions, as he holds an audience with Christian delegations who attended his installation. On Friday, he will put his foreign policy chops on display in an address to the ambassadors accredited to the Holy See.

Saturday he calls on Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo, the papal retreat south of Rome, and Sunday celebrates Palm Sunday Mass, another major celebration in St. Peter’s Square.

He then presides over all the rites of Holy Week, capped by Easter Sunday Mass on March 31, when Christians mark the resurrection of Christ, an evocative start to a pontificate.

Francis, 76, thrilled the crowd at the start of the Mass by taking a long round-about through the sun-drenched piazza, shouting “Ciao!” at well-wishers and kissing babies handed up to him.

At one point, as he neared a group of people in wheelchairs, he signaled for the jeep to stop, hopped off, and went to bless a disabled man held up to the barricade by an aide and kiss him on his forehead. It was a gesture from a man whose short papacy so far is becoming defined by such spontaneous forays into the crowd that seem to surprise and concern his security guards.

“I like him because he loves the poor,” said 7-year-old Pietro Loretti, who attended the Mass from Barletta in southern Italy. Another child in the crowd, 9-year-old Benedetta Vergetti from Cervetri near Rome, also skipped school to attend.

“I like him because he’s sweet like my Dad.”

The blue and white flags from Argentina fluttered above the crowd, which Italian media initially estimated could reach 1 million. Civil protection crews closed the main streets leading to the square to traffic and set up barricades for nearly a mile (two kilometers) along the route to try to control the masses and allow official delegations through.

At the start of the Mass, Francis received a gold-plated silver fisherman’s ring symbolizing the papacy and a woolen stole symbolizing his role as shepherd of his flock. The ring was something of a hand-me-down, first offered to Pope Paul VI, the pope who presided over the latter half of the Second Vatican Council, the meetings that brought the Church into the modern world.

Francis also received vows of obedience from a half-dozen cardinals — a potent symbol given Benedict XVI is still alive and was reportedly watching the proceedings on TV.

A cardinal intoned the rite of inauguration, saying: “The Good Shepherd charged Peter to feed his lambs and his sheep; today you succeed him as the bishop of this church.”

Some 132 official delegations attended, including more than a half-dozen heads of state from Latin America, a sign of the significance of the election for the region. Francis’s determination that his pontificate would be focused on the poor has resonance in a poverty-stricken region that counts 40 percent of the world’s Catholics.

In the VIP section was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, the Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, Taiwanese President Ying-Jeou Ma, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, Prince Albert of Monaco and Bahrain Prince Sheik Abdullah bin Haman bin Isa Alkhalifa, among others. All told, six sovereign rulers, 31 heads of state, three princes and 11 heads of government were attending, the Vatican said.

Francis directed his homily to them, saying: “We must not be afraid of goodness or even tenderness!”

After the Mass, Francis stood in a receiving line for nearly two hours to greet each of the government delegations in St. Peter’s Basilica, chatting warmly and animatedly with each one, kissing the few youngsters who came along with their parents and occasionally blessing a rosary given to him. Unlike his predecessors, he did so in just his white cassock, not the red cape.

Among the religious VIPs attending was the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Bartholomew I, who became the first patriarch from the Istanbul-based church to attend a papal investiture since the two branches of Christianity split nearly 1,000 years ago. Also attending for the first time was the chief rabbi of Rome. Their presence underscores the broad hopes for ecumenical and interfaith dialogue in this new papacy given Francis’ own work for improved relations.

In a gesture to Christians in the East, the pope prayed with Eastern rite Catholic patriarchs and archbishops before the tomb of St. Peter at the start of the Mass and the Gospel was chanted in Greek rather than the traditional Latin.

But it is Francis’ history of living with the poor and working for them while archbishop of Buenos Aires that seems to have resonated with ordinary Catholics who say they are hopeful that Francis can inspire a new generation of faithful who have fallen away from the church.

“As an Argentine, he was our cardinal. It’s a great joy for us,” said Edoardo Fernandez Mendia, from the Argentine Pampas who was in the crowd. “I would have never imagined that it was going to be him.”

Recalling another great moment in Argentine history, when soccer great Diego Maradona scored an improbable goal in the 1986 World Cup, he said: “And for the second time, the Hand of God came to Argentina.”

Campaign contributors honored by United Way

By Julie Muhlstein, The Herald

EVERETT — United Way of Snohomish County celebrated its 2012 Community Caring Campaign with a recent dinner honoring top fundraisers. The campaign’s total, due in July, is expected to be slightly higher than in the previous year.

The agency that provides grants to 102 programs through 39 nonprofit organizations reported total revenue of $9.95 million in 2011.

The 2012 campaign saw a slight increase in revenue, said Neil Parekh, the local United Way’s vice president of marketing and communications. Despite the slow economy, revenues have held steady in the past few years, he said.

“We so appreciate that Snohomish County always works together as a community. It’s a testament to our county’s caring and can-do spirit,” said Dennis Smith, president and CEO of United Way of Snohomish County, in a statement after the March 6 dinner at Comcast Arena’s Edward D. Hansen Conference Center.

The Community Caring Campaign is the agency’s primary source of revenue. It includes contributions to campaigns organized at area workplaces, the Combined Federal Campaign, and the Employees Community Fund of Boeing Puget Sound. United Way also raises money for its endowment, seeks grants, and works with lawmakers to obtain state and federal money for efforts here.

The largest contributions to the 2012 campaign came from the Employees Community Fund of Boeing Puget Sound, with a gift of $1.86 million, and the Boeing Co., which donated $800,000. Together, they were named co-winners of the Premier Partner Award.

There was a tie for the President’s Award, the top organizational prize presented. The two winners were the Fluke Corporation and UPS.

Parekh said Fluke conducts an annual campaign that benefits six United Way agencies around the country, including the one here. Fluke’s local campaign raised more than $246,000, a 25 percent increase over the previous year. Since 2008, employee and corporate giving from the Fluke Corporation has totaled $1,042,952. Parekh said Fluke’s effort is United Way’s second largest local corporate campaign.

Fluke also provides a big crew of volunteers for United Way’s annual Days of Caring. Many of them working at Camp Fire USA’s Camp Killoqua near Stanwood.

“The folks at Fluke have a history, a legacy of community participation. It was important to John Fluke when he founded the company,” said Jim Lico, president of the Fluke Corporation. The Everett-based Fluke Corporation, which makes industrial testing equipment, is now a subsidiary of the Danaher Corporation.

Lico said United Way team leaders at Fluke have done a good job in recent years getting the word out to employees about campaign participation. “United Way is a great way to engage in charitable giving, an easy way,” Lico said.

The other President’s Award winner, UPS, is a longtime national partner with United Way and a past winner of United Way’s Spirit of America award, Parekh said. Locally, UPS corporate and employee giving has exceeded $400,000 since 2008, he said.

Parekh said UPS held a campaign kickoff event at Safeco Field and its employees increased their United Way participation by 44 percent, with their donations up 59 percent. There are UPS locations in Everett and Arlington.

Jessica Scrace, an area spokeswoman for UPS, said the business has been a United Way partner for 31 years. “Last year we were very proud to become the first company to have given over $1 billion to United Way nationally,” Scrace said.

Community Transit CEO Joyce Eleanor, chairwoman of United Way’s 2012 campaign, said that with all the donations the agency was able to help hundreds of thousands of people. Programs helped by United Way of Snohomish County serve about 330,000 people annually.

The dinner was also a welcome for Marysville Mayor Jon Nehring, chairman of the 2013 United Way Community Caring Campaign.

Below is the full list of award winners:

President’s Award: The Fluke Corporation and UPS.

Executive of the Year Awards: Phil McConnell, executive director Work Opportunities; Jerry Goodwin, CEO and president Senior Aerospace AMT, Absolute Manufactuing and Damar AeroSystems.

Premier Partner Award: The Boeing Co., and Employees Community Fund of Boeing Puget Sound.

Positive Change Award: Everett Public Schools; Jamco America, Inc.; and Premera Blue Cross.

Local Community Hero Award: Vine Dahlen PLLC; Target, Marysville; Tulalip Gaming Organization.

Labor Partnership Award: Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1576; International Associations of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 130.

Best New Campaign: American Girl.