Politics - SemiQuin Centennial

Wake Up America

Can’t you see?

It’s time to
Defend Democracy!?
Take a stand
Give a shout
It’s time to vote
The fascists out!!

CLICK HERE☝

Rally - Good Trouble July 4, 2026

Saturday July 4, 2026 - Vancouver, WA - Good Trouble Saturdays - Making good trouble because our community deserves safety, dignity, and a government that works for the people and not one that terrorizes them.

SOUND ON🎧

CLICK HERE ☝

Rally - Banners Over I-5 July 3, 2026

Friday July 3, 2026 - Vancouver, WA - Banners Over I-5 Rally on the Evergreen bridge over I-5 Freeway. Wake up America! If you’re not outraged with what’s happening, you’re not paying attention!

SOUND ON🎧

CLICK HERE ☝

Rally - Banners Over I-5 June 26, 2026

Friday June 26, 2026 - Vancouver, WA - Banners Over I-5 Resistance Rally on the Evergreen Blvd bridge over the I-5 Freeway. Wake up America! If you’re not outraged with what’s happening in America, you’re not paying attention! 

SOUND ON🎧

CLICK HERE ☝

Rally - Banners Over I-5 June 19, 2026

Friday June 19, 2026 - Vancouver, WA - Banners Over I-5 Resistance Rally & Celebration of Juneteenth on the Evergreen Blvd bridge over the I-5 Freeway. Happy Freedom Day! Wake up America! If you’re not outraged with what’s happening in America, you’re not paying attention!

SOUND ON🎧

CLICK HERE ☝

Book Review - Animal Farm

Title: Animal Farm
Author: George Orwell
My Rating: 👍👍👍👍👍

My Review: According to the Internet, Animal Farm "is widely considered a literary classic and one of the most influential political satires of the 20th century".  The book was first published in 1945 and uses a fictional farm setting to critique totalitarianism and the corruption of power. The story starts somewhat innocently with disgruntled farm animals taking over a farm. They then setup a somewhat egalitarian system where each animal is considered equal. Things evolve and through various means of deception, the pigs take over and the farm ends up becoming a dictatorship much like when the humans were in control. I enjoyed this book but found it to be frightenly similar to what is happening in America now.  This book should be required reading for all ages. 

Description (Audible): George Orwell's classic satire of the Russian Revolution is an intimate part of our contemporary culture, quoted so often that we tend to forget who wrote the original words. It is an account of the bold struggle that transforms Mr. Jones' Manor Farm into Animal Farm, a wholly democratic society built on the credo that All Animals Are Created Equal. Out of their cleverness, the pigs Napoleon, Squealer, and Snowball emerge as leaders of the new community in a subtle evolution that bears an insidious familiarity. The climax is the brutal betrayal of the faithful horse Boxer, when totalitarian rule is re-established with the bloodstained postscript to the founding slogan: But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.

Book Review - The Worst Hard Time The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

Title: The Worst Hard Time The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

Author: Timothy Egan
My Rating: 👍👍👍👍👍
My Review: Timothy Egan is one of my favorite authors. I've read several of his books and they're all great. This book is one of his best. It tells the tragic story of the 1930s dust bowl and the people who lived through it. This book is especially prescient and shows how easy it is for humans to destroy our environment and how we need to be more aware of how our actions affect the planet. I loved this book. 

Description (Audible): In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan’s National Book Award–winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows.

The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, he does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, “the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect” (New York Times). In an era that promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst Hard Time is “arguably the best nonfiction book yet” (Austin Statesman Journal) on the greatest environmental disaster ever to be visited upon our land and a powerful reminder about the dangers of trifling with nature.

KU Common Books - Timothy Egan speaks at The University of Kansas about his book "The Worst Hard Time The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl"  (1:14:00)

Oklahoma Horizon TV - Timothy Egan discusses his book and the sense of urgency behind capturing these stories before they are lost to history (6:40)

Rally - Banners Over I5 June 12, 2026

Friday June 12, 2026 - Vancouver, WA - Weekly Banners Over I-5 Resistance Rally on the Evergreen Blvd bridge over the I-5 Freeway. Wake up America! If you’re not outraged with what’s happening in America, you’re not paying attention!

SOUND ON🎧

Rally - D-Day / Democracy Day Bannering June 6, 2026

June 6, 2026 - D-Day / Democracy Day Rally on the Evergreen Blvd bridge overlooking I-5 Freeway. In commemoration of the 82nd Anniversary of D-Day, Indivisible & Visibility Brigade hosted D-Day / Democracy Day - A nationwide day of overpass actions against fascist billionaires, corporate greed, and forces threatening our democracy.

SOUND ON🎧

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Rally - Banners Over I-5 June 5, 2026

Friday June 5, 2026 - Banners Over I-5 Resistance Rally on the Evergreen Blvd bridge overlooking I-5 Freeway. Wake up America! If you’re not outraged with what’s happening in America, you’re not paying attention.

SOUND ON🎧

Click Here ☝

Book Review - This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism and Corruption are Ruining the American West

Title: This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism and Corruption are Ruining the American West 
Author: Christopher Ketcham
My Rating: 👍👍👍👍👍
My Review: Outside magazine described this book as “A big, bold book about public lands . . . The Desert Solitaire of our time.” Based on that review and the fact that Desert Solitaire is one of my all time favorite books, I decided to give it a read. I loved this book but I have to say, it's depressing. It's hard to understand why people are so bad at protecting America's public lands. Public lands and the flora, fauna and things that depend on it are finite and once they're gone, they're gone.  

Description (Audible): The public lands of the western United States comprise some 450 million acres of grassland, steppe land, canyons, forests, and mountains. It's an American commons, and it is under assault as never before.

Journalist Christopher Ketcham has been documenting the confluence of commercial exploitation and governmental misconduct in this region for over a decade. His revelatory book takes the reader on a journey across these last wild places, to see how capitalism is killing our great commons. Ketcham begins in Utah, revealing the environmental destruction caused by unregulated public lands livestock grazing, and exposing rampant malfeasance in the federal land management agencies, who have been compromised by the profit-driven livestock and energy interests they are supposed to regulate. He then turns to the broad effects of those corrupt politics on wildlife. He tracks the Department of Interior's failure to implement and enforce the Endangered Species Act--including its stark betrayal of protections for the grizzly bear and the sage grouse--and investigates the destructive behavior of U.S. Wildlife Services in their shocking mass slaughter of animals that threaten the livestock industry. Along the way, Ketcham talks with ecologists, biologists, botanists, former government employees, whistleblowers, grassroots environmentalists and other citizens who are fighting to protect the public domain for future generations.

This Land is a colorful muckraking journey--part Edward Abbey, part Upton Sinclair--exposing the rot in American politics that is rapidly leading to the sell-out of our national heritage. The book ends with Ketcham's vision of ecological restoration for the American West: freeing the trampled, denuded ecosystems from the effects of grazing, enforcing the laws already in place to defend biodiversity, allowing the native species of the West to recover under a fully implemented Endangered Species Act, and establishing vast stretches of public land where there will be no development at all, not even for recreation.

Description (Smithsonian): Christopher Ketcham’s This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism and Corruption Are Ruining the American West is a powerful and provocative examination of the forces shaping public lands in the American West. Drawing on years of investigative reporting, Ketcham argues that a combination of political influence, corporate interests, government mismanagement, and entrenched myths about the cowboy lifestyle have contributed to the degradation of some of America’s most treasured landscapes. 

Rally - Banners Over I-5 May 29, 2026

 Friday May 29, 2026 - Banners Over I-5 Resistance Rally on the Evergreen Blvd bridge overlooking I-5 Freeway. Wake up America! If you’re not outraged with what’s happening in America, you’re not paying attention.

SOUND ON🎧

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Rally - Banners Over I-5 - May 22, 2026

 Friday May 2, 2026 - Banners Over I-5 Resistance Rally on the Evergreen Blvd bridge overlooking I-5 Freeway. Wake up America! If you’re not outraged with what’s happening in America, you’re not paying attention.

SOUND ON🎧

Click Here ☝

Book Review - Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization

Title: Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization

Author: Bill McKibben
My Rating: 👍👍👍👍👍
My Review: I can't believe I'm saying this but, Bill McKibben and this book give me a SMALL BIT of hope that humanity could potentially mitigate a human-caused climate crisis by replacing fossil fuels with solar, wind and battery power.  I was a little dismayed to learn that China is light-years ahead of the US in the development of solar, wind and battery power and is actually able to daily deploy the equivalent power of one coal-fire power-plant with solar energy. China is also rapidly improving solar, wind and battery technology and becoming the dominant source for alternative energy. By contrast, the Trump administration is doing the exact opposite and even going out its way to prevent development of solar, wind and battery technology. Time is running out and humans need to break their addiction to fossil fuels as soon as possible. Thankfully there is a solution and, according to this book, that solution is solar, wind and battery power. This book is a must read for anyone who cares about climate change. 

      

Description (Audible): Every eighteen hours, the world puts up a nuclear power plant's–worth of solar panels. At the same time, combustion continues to melt our poles, poison our bodies, and drive our global inequality. And it is no longer necessary: For the first time in 700,000 years, we know how to catch the sun’s rays and convert them into energy.

In Here Comes the Sun, world-renowned author Bill McKibben tells the story of our sudden spike in power from the sun and wind. McKibben traces the arrival of plentiful, inexpensive solar energy, which, if it accelerates, gives us a chance not just to limit climate change’s damage, but to reorder the world on saner and more humane grounds. Getting there means overcoming obstacles like Big Oil, but McKibben sees a chance for a new civilization: one that looks up to the sun, every day, as the star that fuels our world.

Democracy Now -Bill McKibben talks about Renewable Energy, “Sun Day” & the “Last Chance” for Climate

Media Santuary Book Club - Bill McKibben talks about the power of solar energy and his book "Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization"

 

Description (ChatGPT): Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization by Bill McKibben is an urgent yet surprisingly hopeful look at the climate crisis and the rapid rise of renewable energy. McKibben argues that while global warming can no longer be fully stopped, the explosive growth of solar and wind power offers humanity a real chance to prevent the worst outcomes and build a fairer, more sustainable civilization. Blending science, politics, and personal storytelling, he makes complex climate issues accessible without losing their seriousness.

What sets the book apart is its balance of realism and optimism. McKibben does not minimize the dangers posed by fossil fuels and political resistance, but he also refuses to accept climate doom as inevitable. The result is an inspiring and thought-provoking call to action that encourages readers to see clean energy not just as a technological shift, but as an opportunity to reshape society for the better.

Rally - Banners Over I-5 - May 15, 2026

Friday May 15, 2026 - Banners Over I-5 Resistance Rally on the Evergreen Blvd bridge overlooking I-5 Freeway. Wake up America! If you’re not outraged with what’s happening in America, you’re not paying attention.

SOUND ON🎧

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Rally - Banners Over I-5 - May 8, 2026

Friday May 8, 2026 - Banners Over I-5 Resistance Rally on the Evergreen Blvd bridge overlooking I-5 Freeway. Wake up America! If you’re not outraged with what’s happening in America, you’re not paying attention

SOUND ON🎧

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Rally - Banners Over I-5 - May 1, 2026

Friday May 1, 2026 - Banners Over I-5 Resistance Rally & May Day March on the Evergreen Blvd bridge overlooking I-5 Freeway. Wake up America! If you’re not outraged with what’s happening in America, you’re not paying attention. 

SOUND ON🎧

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Rally - Banners Over I-5 - Nov 21, 2025

Vancouver, WA Friday November 21, 2025 - Banners Over I-5 Rush Hour Resistance sign waving on the Evergreen Street bridge overlooking I-5 during 4-5 PM rush hour. If you're not upset with what's going on in America now, you're not paying attention.
SOUND ON🎧

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Rally - Banners Over I-5 Apr 17, 2026

 Friday April 17, 2026 - Banners Over I-5 Resistance Rally on Evergreen Street Bridge overlooking I-5 Freeway. Wake up America. If you’re not outraged with what’s happening in America, you’re not paying attention

SOUND ON🎧

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Rally - Banners Over I-5 - Apr 10, 2026

Friday April 10, 2026 - Banners Over I-5 Resistance Rally on Evergreen Street Bridge overlooking I-5 Freeway. Wake up America. If you’re not outraged with what’s happening in America, you’re not paying attention

SOUND ON🎧

Click Here ☝