This post is part of the series 13 Ways of Looking at the Northwest. You can find the initial post here.
By Heather Lowcock, Project Archivist, NHPRC Grant – News Tribune Collection
In one of my favorite Ada Limón poems, the speaker calls out to the reader: “What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No. No, to the rising tides....What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain for the safety of others, of the earth, if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified, if we launched our demands into the sky....”
The News Tribune photographs and other Northwest Room collections provide examples of different ways to stand up and look at activism.
Salvadoran Civil War
During the 1970s, El Salvador experienced growing social unrest due in part to income inequality, lack of reform, and government repression. Elections were blatantly manipulated and government forces attacked protesters. By January 1980, the violence had increased between the government and opposition guerilla groups, resulting in the deaths of 1000 people per month that year, including Archbishop Oscar Romero by a military death squad. Before a UN-brokered peace accord in 1992, it’s estimated that 75,000 civilians were killed or “disappeared” and countless others experienced torture and sexual violence.
The U.S. provided substantial military aid in the name of national security throughout the civil war. Some of this military aid included the training of military leaders like Roberto D’Aubuisson, head of the Salvadoran death squads, at the School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning. After the peace accord, evidence of an SOA training manual revealed the targeting of religious workers and others for imprisonment, torture and death. The UN Truth Commission also reported that many members of the death squads, including those who killed Archbishop Romero, trained at SOA.
In 1987, Salvadoran Maria Teresa Tula, of the human rights organization Co-Madres, spoke at the University of Puget Sound and Pacific Lutheran University. After her husband’s murder, Tula was abducted twice where she was beaten and assaulted. Tula was able to escape El Salvador with her children and was seeking political asylum in the U.S. when she spoke in Tacoma.
As stories like Tula’s spread, so did protests calling for the end of U.S. military aid. In 1989, 25 people crowded the offices of Congressman Norm Dicks in Tacoma to protest the murder of six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter. Dicks was in Washington, D.C., but listened to the demands of the group via conference call. The following week, over 100 protestors marched to the offices again, carrying coffins, crosses, and signs in memory of those killed. Dicks, who at the time had voted to continue aid to El Salvador, sent letters to Congress and the President of El Salvador seeking a full investigation.
In 1998, Rev. Bill Bichsel was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for trespass and damage to government property. During a protest, Bichsel “edited” a sign outside Fort Benning, with “Home of SOA, School of Shame.” Bichsel’s protests began after listening to Salvadoran refugees at St. Leo’s Catholic Church during the civil war and continued after the peace accord. In a letter to supporters after an earlier conviction, Bichsel wrote, “The policies of our country that support the School of the Americas lead directly to the deaths of poor people in Latin America. By our stumbling efforts, we are trying to uncover the mentality which supports the SOA. It is the same mentality which encourages the scapegoating and abuse of the poor in this country.” The SOA was closed in 2000, but reopened in 2001 as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
To learn more about Tacoman Rev. Bill “Bix” Bichsel and his advocacy for people in Tacoma and around the world, including his work at Guadalupe House and his protest of the invasion of Iraq by chaining himself to the Tacoma District Courthouse in 2003, check out ORCA or visit the Northwest Room.
Safe Streets Campaign
“I accept responsibility.” An early morning meeting in October 1988 brought together 23 community leaders and Tacoma city councilman Dennis Flannigan. The meeting, initiated by Flannigan, sought to gain a clearer sense of the issues facing a cross-section of Tacoma. Flannigan recalls, after much discussion, the group narrowed their focus to issues of gangs and drugs and acknowledged each of their roles as part of the problem but also part of the solution. They stood up at the end of that first meeting and stated to each other: “I accept responsibility.”
Over the next few weeks, conversations continued and a community forum was scheduled. In January 1989, an estimated 1,600 people attended the forum at Foss High School. Greg Kleiner, the Safe Streets Prevention Partnership Program Coordinator in 1994, recalled the key questions asked of the community members during the forum discussion groups: “What do you see the problem as and what are you willing to do to solve it?” As the Safe Streets Campaign took shape, these questions and their answers informed the mission. Both Flannigan and Kleiner in 1994 described the Safe Streets Campaign, as it became known, as an organizational tool--less of an institution and more of a movement seeking to assist communities with their own strategies. While some objectives and structures were established, the solutions were often grassroots-based and implemented by community networks. Churches, schools, government officials, and nonprofit leaders participated in workshops and youth forums discussing strategies and establishing block groups and projects.
Early projects included volunteers painting over gang-related graffiti and community groups picketing outside houses known for drug-related activity. Other early objectives included redirecting substance use and violence in youth via programs and activities at places like the Boys and Girls Club and YMCA. Having personally experienced the violence and isolation of substance abuse and crime, Charles Carson began volunteering with Safe Streets in 1989. While working full-time and finishing school, Carson spoke at schools, telling students about his own experience and recruiting other youth to participate in activities at the East Side Boys and Girls Club. In 1991, Carson established the Late Nite program at the Tacoma YMCA, a program that continues across the country today. In a 1990 News Tribune article, Carson, then 19, shared about the significance of these spaces: “the club is always a place I can go…it’s a place where I can meet other people like myself.”
In 1990, Lyle Quasim, the director of Safe Streets, acknowledged some of the challenges--"it’s a tail-chasing work”--as positive action in one area then reveals new issues, and as those issues continue, Quasim notes, “people look for somebody else, [but they] need to hold themselves accountable.” That early accountability kept the Safe Streets Campaign going. Reflecting on the cascade effect of the Safe Street early efforts, Quasim in 2007 described how once [people] “learned to solve one problem, there is an appetite to solve [others]...peace in the neighborhood comes from concern not just about being against something but learning to be for something.” The Safe Streets Campaign continues to support the community work of Tacomans today.
While activism often requires more than a protest march or picket line, the News Tribune photograph collection includes a variety of images from protests, strikes, and demonstrations including protests related to the AIDS epidemic, abortion, and the Trident nuclear submarines at Bangor Naval Annex.
For more archival materials on activism, explore the Sallie Shawl Papers, the Arthur J. Miller Papers, and the Michael K. Honey Civil Rights, Social Justice, and Community History Papers as well as many of the collections in our digital Community Achives Center, including the Black Lives Matter Mural Project and the Sulja Warnick Papers.
The digitization and processing of the News Tribune Photograph Collection was supported by a grant from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission at the National Archives.
Sources:
Bartley, Nancy. (1987, November 13). Co-Madres: embattled Salvadoran widow stumps for peace, human rights. The News Tribune.
Center for Justice and Accountability. El Salvador. https://cja.org/where-we-work/el-salvador/
Clark, Brian. (1989, November 18). Protesters hit Dicks’ Salvadoran votes. The News Tribune.
Corbett, Christine. (1980, April 5). Tacoma priest says Mass while jailed. The News Tribune.
Eskenazi, Stuart. (1989, April 4). ‘Streets’ group set to devise programs. The News Tribune.
Flannigan, Dennis. (1994). The Safe Streets Campaign: Tacoma and Pierce County Respond to Youth Violence [oral history transcript]. Tacoma Community History UWT Student Projects (CAC4003). Tacoma Public Library, Northwest Room, Tacoma, WA, United States.
Honey, Michael K. (1947-). El Salvador. Michael K. Honey Civil Rights, Social Justice, and Community History Papers. (Box 2). Tacoma Public Library, Northwest Room, Tacoma, WA, United States.
Kleiner, Greg. (1994). The Safe Streets Campaign: Tacoma and Pierce County Respond to Youth Violence [oral history transcript]. Tacoma Community History UWT Student Projects (CAC4003). Tacoma Public Library, Northwest Room, Tacoma, WA, United States.
Limón, Ada. (2018) The Carrying. Milkweed Editions.
Loris, Allison Slow. (1998, May 28) Radical Father. Tacoma City Paper.
McClelland, Kamilla K. (1990, February 7). Reformed Addict: Club’s Youth of the Year recruits at-risk street kids. The News Tribune.
News Tribune staff. (11989, November 23). Marchers protest Salvador aid. The News Tribune.
Plante, Mary. (1998, October 17). Bichsel wouldn't trade convictions for freedom. The News Tribune.
Quasim, Lyle. (2007). Activism is about taking action: An Oral History with Lyle Quasim [oral history transcript]. Tacoma Community History UWT Student Projects (CAC4003). Tacoma Public Library, Northwest Room, Tacoma, WA, United States.
Safe Streets Campaign. About Us. https://www.safest.org/
Scott, Hilda. (1998). Tacoma priest protests SOA injustices: Father William Bichsel awaits sentencing. Tacoma Reporter.
Seago, David. (1990, February 16). Complacency latest Safe Streets foe. The News Tribune.
Walton, Jim. (1994). The Safe Streets Campaign: Tacoma and Pierce County Respond to Youth Violence [oral history transcript]. Tacoma Community History UWT Student Projects (CAC4003). Tacoma Public Library, Northwest Room, Tacoma, WA, United States.
