By William Walker

Many of you probably have never seen or heard of a TV show called Flipper. I’m sure that there are probably clips of the show on YouTube if you’re interested in checking it out. This program aired back in the sixties and unfortunately was a huge hit for the three seasons it was on. Basically, it’s Lassie except with a porpoise instead. The unfortunate part was that the audience couldn’t get enough of these three trained porpoises that played Flipper in the show. Aquariums throughout the world soon wanted and acquired porpoises, dolphins, and smaller whales as attractions. These animals proved to be extremely smart and could learn any number of tricks that would astound an eager public to spend their hard-earned money to see them perform.

Back in the seventies, a great injustice was done to the orcas of Puget Sound, also known as the Salish Sea. A round-up commenced of J, K, and L pods in Penn Cove near Coupeville Washington. The purpose is to separate the young killer whales from their pod families to be eventually sold off to entertainment parks and aquariums around the world. A few of these whales died from the trauma brought on by this horrible act of greed on that day.

The Lummi Indian tribe of western Washington considers killer whales as their ancestral brothers and sisters. And has grieved over the loss of these members of their tribe ever since. The captured whales on that day are all gone except for one. Her stage name at SeaWorld in Orlando Florida is Lolita. Her Lummi name is Tokitae And she has been a captured ambassador of her species ever since.

Being a Green Party member also means being spiritually green for me as well. And as a writer for the Green Party, I hope to incorporate ideas that I feel can help to bring back balance and natural harmony to our shared experience. In this case, that means joining the Lummi Nation and all the tribes of Washington state in righting this injustice. And that injustice is to bring Lolita/Tokitae back home to live out the rest of her years in her ancestral waters where her maternal mother is still very much alive and still swims to this very day.

I propose an alliance between the Lummi Nation and the Green Party in an effort to make this happen. A nonbinding initiative in 2023 be brought to the people of Washington state demanding the return of Tokitae to the Salish Sea.

An initiative such as this, though lacking any enforcement power of its own, would still bring the matter of Tokitae’s forced entrapment in Florida to a national audience, and perhaps even a world audience at the same time. She deserves our support and the chance to live out the rest of her life, no matter how short or long, with her Salish Sea family. I know that we can make this happen for her so I’m asking for your support!

I’ve been a Green Party member for many years. And in some of those years I remembered to pay my annual dues and in other years I was never sure when my dues were actually due. I must admit, my failure to remember is pretty much because of advancing age. My memory needs a tune-up from time to time.

And unfortunately, the Washington State chapter did not have my email address to remind me when the time came to pay up. Now they do!

As many of you are aware the Green Party does not accept corporate donations. We don’t want to be beholden to any corporate sponsor who expects political favors in the future. In essence we, the members, are our own PAC. I guess you could refer to us as the GPAC. And I’m sure you are also aware that running a political party is extraordinarily expensive.

And that leads me up to my Green Party challenge. I recently paid my 2022 dues of twenty-five dollars for this current year. And, as I said above, I have no idea how many years of dues I actually missed. With that in mind I recently donated one hundred and fifty dollars to the Washington State chapter of the Green Party. My challenge to the rest of the members in this state who may have also missed a few payments is to donate one hundred dollars between now and the end of October.

I realize that times are tough right now and that money is tight for almost all of us. And this is true for me as well. But though I am on disability I feel that the cause and our core values must be expanded to a wider audience. If we don’t get our message out and support the cause then we aren’t fulfilling the needs of the people who stand to gain from our efforts.

Please show your green heart and help fund our state chapter. Gaia needs us as well now more than ever. Her environmental needs are being dismissed and belittled. We can’t wait any longer to take action!

Thank you!
Bill Walker

By Keene Short, Whole Washington volunteer

Unlike most countries whose development has gone unhindered, the United States has an exclusively privatized health insurance industry. This means that private corporations are legally allowed to decide a patient’s fate based on the profitability of their continued existence through even the most inexpensive procedures, even in the most progressive states.

Fortunately, there are grassroots organizations, both local and national, working to overturn this unjust system from the ground up. Whole Washington currently seeks to establish the Washington Health Trust through a grassroots ballot initiative in Washington State, using the same political tool that led to the legalization of statewide recreational cannabis.

This is one of the most radical approaches to universal healthcare, but of course we need to frame this in the context of the nationwide healthcare justice movement. As advocates like Tim Faust, Bernie Sanders, and many Green Party candidates and organizers have intimated, and as countless Americans have testified, the for-profit health insurance regime is a form of relentless exploitation, bleeding people of financial resources and social and emotional security.

In other words, our fight is rooted in solidarity. Our fight is grounded in and necessarily tied to solidarity with others fighting against the private insurance regime. Whole Washington wages a battle that is politically specific but not ideologically unique, as healthcare justice advocates have fought similar battles from California to Maine, and similar movements have made strides in even the reddest of states like Idaho and Missouri.

Ours is not a fight of values, nor ideology, nor political leanings, but material conditions. We are fighting for what we need to survive, which is the freedom that healthcare justice will bring.

We need 400,000 signatures from Washington state citizens by December to put I-1471 on the ballot in November of 2023. This will give us a year between the Midterms and the Presidential election to focus exclusively on healthcare, giving us a chance to highlight the benefits of universal healthcare, ultimately giving us a chance to prove, not just locally but nationally, that healthcare justice was the way of the future decades ago.  

We can win this fight, but we need to win this moment first and foremost. We need all hands on deck to help us collect signatures. This is not a matter of political expediency or endorsement. This is the moment for solidarity. Please join us in our fight as a volunteer or a donor. Together, we can win one of the most crucial and current battles for healthcare justice in a country nearly ruined by privatized health insurance.

Here are three things YOU can do to help us reach our goal together.

1. Volunteer to collect signatures. This is THE MOST URGENT task right now. We have until December to reach 400,000 signatures from across the state. Right now, this is the name of the game!
2. Host a bin or host a petition at a business. We’re distributing blank petitions and receiving filled petition sheets in bins, which you can keep at your home, so volunteers can pick them up and drop them off as needed. Another alternative is to hold petition sheets at your business, if possible, so customers can sign as they come and go.
3. Spread the word! Take a petition sheet to work, or a family barbecue. Spread our posts on social media. Make sure your fellow Washingtonians know that Whole Washington is fighting for their freedom from the health insurance lobby, and we can only do this together.

Visit the Whole Washington Get Involved Page to find information about all the above and more. We can win this fight, but we need to act NOW more than ever.