Written
I first encountered stories through written words, so it’s no surprise that written words were how I first told stories. From typewriter keys to computer keyboards, I’ve typed countless words to create stand-alone pieces. Here are few.
CHOP/CHAZ
“… The people have given the area a new name: CHOP, the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest. Some claim CHOP is the Capitol Hill Organized Protest. Others still call it CHAZ, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. …”
Photo: Sabin Gilman
Photo: Rosette Royale
HIV/AIDS in Western Washington
People in Seattle and Western Washington responded to the dark days of the early HIV/AIDS crisis, a period that roughly spanned the early 1980s to the mid 1990s, the best way they knew how: by banding together. Amid the grief of losing close to 3,300 people during that time period in King County alone, public health officials became energized, community members mobilized, and organizations arose to combat a swift and deadly disease. Fear raged, victories were notched, controversies erupted.
‘Beloved’ Campaign Combats Gun Violence
With Activism, Art — and Love for Community
For Chamel Simmons and her extended family, Thanksgiving 2012 is remembered not for its food, but for its incalculable grief.
Though Simmons spent the holiday with her immediate family in Federal Way, she still felt connected to relatives in her birthplace of Richmond, California, a city of roughly 100,000 in the San Francisco Bay Area. That’s where she had a host of cousins, aunts, and a grandma. Even though they were separated by some 800 miles, they kept in touch.
One relative Simmons spoke with regularly was a cousin, Armond Brown Jr. Brown, 21, a star football and basketball player, was deeply committed to family. He was raising his 1-year-old son. He’d also been recently hired at Denny’s, and Thanksgiving marked his first shift on the job.
Steven Farmer took an HIV test—because a Washington court forced him
Image courtesy Chris Smith
Steven Farmer, a Seattle airline steward often praised for his leading-man good looks, found himself unwittingly cast as villain and victim in a real-life legal, moral, and medical drama in 1988, when he became the first person in Washington state forced to take an HIV test. The test followed a divisive trial in which Farmer, a gay man, was convicted of two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and two counts of patronizing a juvenile prostitute. After his positive test result was read in court, and covered in the media, he was sentenced to 7.5 years, outside the standard sentencing range. Farmer appealed. The state's Supreme Court ruled that the compulsory HIV test violated Farmer's constitutional rights, but still upheld his lengthy sentence. His health deteriorated in prison, which led Gov. Mike Lowry to grant him clemency. Seven years after his forced HIV test, Farmer died in hospice of complications of AIDS.
“Whoever he becomes, that’s OK because that’s who he is”
Genderqueer/Gender-variant flag, designed by Marilyn Roxie
Five-year-old Zach stands barefoot in the middle of his bedroom, faced with a dilemma: Should he wear the pink dress or the powder blue? Both are long princess-style affairs, the first displayed on a hanger held by his mother, Rebecca, the second, slightly wrinkled, pulled from the top of a dresser by Zach himself.
“Or would you rather wear your witch’s outfit?” his mother asks him, nodding at a black polyester costume in the closet, its neckline trimmed in orange.
“No,” Zach says. “I think I want the blue one.”