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Resource Report 1 - P.O.W.E.R. · Resource Report

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  Music
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  Hello and welcome to Resource Report, where we share with you important information about local nonprofits and resource organizations
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  that support the community we share, produced by Pathways to Agency.
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  I am your host, Rainmaker. Today we will find out all about a wonderful organization called POWER.
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  I met with board member Kevette Palmas and community organizer Mary Vent.
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  While sitting with them in downtown Olympia, I felt comfortable in their cozy office.
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  They gave me highlights and understanding of their deep and touching history, discussed the power structure of their organization,
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  and described the most prominent and exciting skill building workshop currently in effect.
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  Later, we will also be finding out about a few of the groups within Power, such as the Alchemia Feminist Economic Collaborative and the Child Care Collective.
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  Also in this hour, we will find out more about their outreach, advocacy, and personal involvement by hearing their own relatable stories that brought them to work with Power.
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  It was in hearing their stories that I really came to understand the important work that they and everyone who becomes a part of the POWER family do.
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  Whether they are board members, volunteers, or members of the community in need, it is the kind of work that puts the unity in community.
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  I also asked them about how to contact them for help and to volunteer and donate.
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  Here is POWER.
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  I am interviewing two members of POWER here.
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  POWER is Parents Organizing for Welfare and Economic Rights.
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  And we have Mary.
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  Hi.
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  Introduce yourself.
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  My name is Mary Vent. I am a long-time member of POWER, a former board member, and the current community organizer.
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  Awesome.
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  Hi. My name is Kevette Palmas. I have been with POWER for four years now, and I am a board member.
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  Awesome. Okay. I would like to know a brief history of Power and WROC: Welfare Rights Organizing Coalition.
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  Tell us who you are.
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  POWER is an organization of low-income parents and allies.
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  I am just giving you our mission that are working towards a world where poverty is eradicated and children and caregiving are honored.
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  Let me introduce here briefly Monica Peabody, who Mary referenced often throughout the interview.
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  She is one of the founding members of POWER along with Kat Sullivan, and was the former executive director.
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  I am going to get on our website because our history, why was it here for our whole history, but I do know about it.
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  Well, and people can go to your website too and read about the history as well.
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  It is www.m.mammapower.org.
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  On our website it talks about how WROC ended up folding and Jean Coleman, who was the executive director at the time, was dying of cancer.
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  So I never met Jean Coleman. I came in after she died, and at that time we had a full staff actually, because she left a legacy donation when she died.
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  And so a lot of the people, well the people that have been here before me, like Monica, Shelley, Kat, they all knew Jean.
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  And I guess Monica was with Jean when she was on her deathbed, just taking in information on how to run Power.
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  And now people will say, oh Jean says this or Jean did that, and I feel like her spirit is being passed down to me even.
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  Like in a family, like you know your mother's recipes.
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  The legacy.
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  Yes, the legacy of Jean Coleman is still going.
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  And her money disappeared a long time ago, so we didn't have a staff for a long time, but her legacy is like a strong foundation in this organization.
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  Yeah, that's awesome.
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  And so I'd like to know about the different services you offer.
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  I understand that you have advocacy, welfare, witness, and outreach, and legislative and policy change.
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  Is that right?
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  Yes, I'd say it's been a little while since we've done legislative work.
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  I think last time the legislature, I went as part of the interfaith work stay, but I just kind of went as a citizen.
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  I've gone before with POWER.
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  I'd say that's something that we haven't really done as a group for a while.
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  And when we do Monica, who's our former executive director, we don't have an executive director anymore because we do what we call a flat, non-hierarchal leadership systems.
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  Oh yeah.
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  But she's like the one that kind of leads us through it when we do it because she's an expert at that sort of thing.
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  I love that. I'm a little familiar with that kind of structure. Yeah, it's cool.
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  Yeah, it's like it's something you work at, you know, because we're coming from this world.
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  We're just not used to it, right?
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  But it feels right to do things that way.
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  Yeah, it's more natural and community oriented.
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  Everybody has a voice. Yeah.
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  Yeah, it's like you're meeting together and like, you know, figuring out problem solving and deciding different kinds of, you know, things that y'all are doing in unison with each other.
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  Not one person is making all the decisions. Right.
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  Is that how that works? Yes.
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  So like even at a board meeting, people can show up that aren't board members and they can say, you know, their voice matters too.
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  I love that. That's how we make the community strong. Right. Yeah.
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  Okay. What about that? And the outreach?
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  Outreach is something in the past we used to do at the welfare office.
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  We don't really do it there anymore because they don't let us. They don't let us do it inside.
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  We may try to appeal that at a later date. We used to go straight into the welfare office with coffee and pastries and stuff.
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  But then for a little while we didn't have a staff at all and we were volunteer run.
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  So we just, our services dwindled down. And when we came back to do it, they were like, nope, you don't get to do it anymore.
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  But we still leave our brochures there and we do outreach at food banks.
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  I've done it at like community feeds outreach where we just go with coffee and tell people about our organization.
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  I mean, I guess you could call what we do services, but we don't really.
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  We're more like community organizing than providing services.
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  Like so like Alchemia isn't a service. It's a group. Okay.
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  And so do you know what I mean? Kind of. I'm like, okay.
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  We provide allyship and support. Oh, what does that look like?
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  That looks like like if somebody had to go to a meeting with their welfare worker and they were intimidated
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  and they might feel like they were not getting their rights met, we would go with them and maybe not even say anything.
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  We just have found that people when they have somebody with them, they'll get treated better.
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  You'll get your you'll get your rights met. Like people aren't going to try to pull something on you if you have a witness.
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  And we've done that even with people that have had CPS calls.
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  We go and, you know, just make sure people are being treated fairly because we know that people will be stigmatized because of poverty.
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  Yeah. And that's the reason that why a lot of people end up losing their kids or a lot of white people wind up in jail
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  is just because of poverty. You know, so to have somebody there kind of witnessing it does help a lot.
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  Validating people and their experiences and showing up for them, letting them know that they have support and they're not alone.
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  Yeah, you're not alone. So important. Yeah.
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  Because otherwise you just have all these experts telling you what your life is about.
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  And you're the expert on your life. They're not the expert. Yep. Yep.
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  That's that's some that is so powerful. That is some big important work you're doing.
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  Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.
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  Like that makes just speaks my soul same.
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  Let's see. And we have all the workshops.
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  Kiki, do you want to talk about the workshops? Kiki's been organizing them.
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  Yeah, we have nine types of workshops, skill building, rights and economic systems, poverty awareness, personal storytelling, power down,
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  movement building, legislative advocacy, working with the media, leadership development.
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  That's all listed on your website. Are all of those workshops still active?
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  They are. We mostly have been prioritizing the sock monkey workshop, Sock Monkeys for Social Justice.
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  This gives people in our community an opportunity to come in and to not only using a writing workshop,
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  learn how to tell their stories, but they're also able to create monkeys out of reused goods in order to visually display their story,
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  which is really awesome. And we provide the supplies.
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  We even we recently started the writing workshop, which has been super helpful with helping people with writing their stories.
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  Skill building. We have been working with.
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  Well, I'm living testimony of the skill building because when I first started with power, I am an artist.
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  I have been doing art for 30 years, but I never had the opportunity to really display my work and be active in the community using my work until I worked with power.
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  And with the with them, provide helping with child care with them, helping with honestly emotional and self building.
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  I was able to actually see it within myself to be able to give back to my community.
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  So it's it's been wonderful. Such an amazing healing journey.
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  And you just gave me the little highlights. You didn't go into the deep dive.
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  I want to hear your story. Well, my story is.
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  I am a formerly single mom, now happily married mother of three kids, originally from Detroit,
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  who has experienced traumas that could be a bestseller if it were a book.
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  And as a result, I really did not see much of myself as a person or what I could contribute outwardly.
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  Ever since starting with Mary with POWER
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  I understand why they call it POWER because you're able to by participating in the workshops, by engaging in with the community,
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  you're able to see how you fit in as an individual with the bigger picture.
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  And it's just little things, little things like I didn't realize how much I was being held back by not having child care.
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  That's huge. That is huge.
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  And those things will keep you forever busy. Yes. And all three of my children are neurodivergent.
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  They're on they're on the Spectrum. So I feel that I have same experience.
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  Just having a couple of hours a week of respite to gather one's mental has been absolutely amazing to the point where, yeah, now I'm running workshops.
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  I used to participate in the workshop. Now I run the workshop. It's awesome.
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  And I get to engage with different members of my community and hear their stories and relate and empathize and help them find their voice in various ways.
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  It's it's it's truly a wonder.
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  It feeds the soul to empower other people while empowering yourself. Exactly.
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  I love that. I love that so much. I'm so glad for you. Thank you.
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  You are listening to Resource Report and my interview with Power. We will be right back after a brief message.
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  POWER, Parents Organizing for Welfare and Economic Rights is an organization of low income parents and allies advocating for a strong social safety net while working toward a world where children and caregiving are truly valued and the devastation of poverty has been eradicated through workshops, education and information.
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  POWER helps ensure that being poor doesn't mean hopeless isolation for parents and children. Power has an information hotline, holds regular meetings, special events and workshops to enable parents to navigate the often confusing social services system.
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  To find out more or to get involved, you can contact POWER locally at 360-352-9716 or toll free at 866-343-9716 and online at M.MAMApower.org.
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  Another big thing, we participated in the Poor People's Campaign March back in March.
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  And I grew up hearing about the Poor People's Campaign and their ties to Martin Luther King Jr. but to actually be able to participate. It was like a spiritual experience, honestly. You know, just to see all these other, all these hundreds of people who have come together to fight for us.
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  And we are us. And to realize how many of us there are. Getting to a part, I got my food handlers license to help make hundreds of meals for the, sorry, a thousand meals for the day. Peanut butter and jelly.
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  The teamwork. Being able to engage with members of my community that are otherwise forgotten. Phoenix. It just, it has been honestly absolutely life changing. I am a new person and it is thanks to POWER and I am so grateful for it.
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  It's fabulous. Such good news.
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  I mean, I have this similar story. Where, I mean, when I first came to POWER I mean the fact that they even had child care was what got me back. Like, how do you empower low income parents? Will you share the load? You know, so there was child care here. And that's what brought me back. But, like, we would come here and this was, you know, 2011.
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  And we would have our important meetings and talk about, you know, important stuff. And usually nobody will think what we're saying is important because we're not, quote, successful. While people took care of our kids.
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  It was just, it felt really validating, you know. Yeah. Definitely. Because I always knew that my, like, I knew that from when I was a child, I knew that my grandmother's work was important. Yeah. Taking care of everybody.
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  And she didn't get credit as being important, you know. But here, like, you know, that's part of our mission to honor caregiving. It's an important job and the people that do it matter. The people that do it deserve to be able to do other things too, you know.
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  Yeah, going over your website, I totally got that vibe that y'all are like all about changing the narrative around that. Changing the narrative, yeah. Yeah. Shifting the paradigm.
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  That's what the original, like, manager of the Olympia Child Care Collective, he called it a radical paradigm shift. I love it. Yeah. And he said when he first started doing child care, he had never taken care of children before. He wasn't from a family with a lot of kids.
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  And, but he wanted, he wanted to be part of making the world a different place. Yeah. And so that's what I did. And he, like, recruited, at that time, it was a lot of, like, men that were doing the collective, you know, he recruited them. Yeah.
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  Wow. So yeah, let's, welfare mamas would be in this room doing important meetings and the guys would be in there. That's awesome. It's not exactly like that anymore, but it's, it is like that still. That was a good start to a paradigm shift. It really was. It was. Yeah, it really was. Yeah.
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  I'd say all of our, most of our providers are, are women or non-binary people at this point, yeah.
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  Tell me more about this, this child care collective. How does it work? Like how do, how, tell me like, like what is, you know, how does a regular day happen? Like what is the process? People, how do people, you know, receive this service?
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  Well, you come to our, our workshops and we'll have child care for you and you can even, I mean, it works in a lot of different ways. Like there's people that have their own providers and we'll just pay. We pay, we pay grandparents, you know.
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  Okay. So the child care is for people who are coming to your workshops, but what if somebody just really needs child care to get their life together, but aren't going to a workshop? Do y'all, do y'all have that?
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  Well, we have what's also, we don't have just child care, but we have what we call open workshops.
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  Okay. And like you can use that time to just get your life together. Like open workshop is, it's whatever you need to do. So if you need to bring your DSHS paperwork, if you need to do a resume, if you need to finish your art project, it's whatever that parent needs to do that they don't have time to, because they're taking care of other people every second of their life. And the open workshop gives parents the space to do that.
• 21:02
  That's fabulous. That is an amazing resource right there. It's like when you were in high school and you could choose to have like study hour or something instead of going to a different class and you just use that class to like work on other homework.
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  Yeah. And so that's what it is. Yeah. We've helped people with their like DDA paperwork, how to talk for humanity paperwork, just all different things.
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  Okay. So in that time, people can also, you know, just, just get help navigating different processes for things.
• 21:37
  Yeah. And if they're here and they're filling out something, if they need me to look up stuff to help speed it along, I could do that too. You know?
• 21:44
  That's, that's really awesome. That is a boon for neurodivergent people.
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  Really? Yeah. I never thought about it like that, but we, we have a lot of neurodivergent people here. There's a big overlap between disability, neurodivergency and poverty.
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  Yeah. When you have like severe ADHD and you forget all the time and you can't like keep track of your schedule and you miss appointments, you know, you need support to like keep, keep that all structured.
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  Yeah. Yeah. You get overwhelmed with all these processes, having to make phone calls and schedule things. Oh my God. It's so overwhelming.
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  Yeah. And y'all help people with that. Then the procrastination starts and then you get more, you know, just piles up.
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  And then now, now you're like ready to jump off a bridge. That's crazy. Yeah. Sounds like you can relate.
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  I had to learn my own tools to keep myself together. And, and that is one of the things that I advocate for is, is helping people find tools like that.
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  And that's a very good tool that you offer. Yeah. I just came about because, you know, just because that was like, you know, what I was hearing a lot from caregivers is I have all this stuff to do, but I don't have time.
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  And I was like, well, that's our next workshop. Then it's open workshop. It's whatever they need to do. They can do it here. I love it. Yeah. That's fabulous.
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  Poverty awareness. Monica has this sheet. It's called welfare myths and facts. And there's all sorts of myths about people. They stay on it for years. They become lazy.
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  Most, most people that are on welfare are black and brown, bloody blah. And then we give you the facts. What's really the real deal. And I don't have that sheet with me.
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  That's okay. That's okay. That's important to know that that's empowering to break down those stereotypes.
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  Workshops.
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  Yeah, I would say it's been a while since we've done economics one on one or reproductive justice workshops.
• 24:05
  Legislative advocacy is where we've taken, you know, we've just met up and we're going there and we've had people testify, you know, before their lawmakers or just even just, you can just talk to them.
• 24:19
  If you walk up to them in the Capitol building, which I've done before, that's kind of like when you're, you know, y'all support people going to appointments and things. Right. Basically the same. But it's like that.
• 24:31
  Okay. So for you like walk them through it because there is, you know, which I'm still kind of rusty on it. You know, last time was like the only time I went without Monica.
• 24:40
  And even then somebody will see how lost you look and they'll walk you through it. So yeah, because there's people that are just so excited to get people in. They're like, I'll help you. You know, yeah, that's good.
• 24:51
  It can be really intimidating when people like they're fighting for their kid, you know, in court with whatever, you know, they're divorcing or CPS or whatever, you know, and the way you present yourself is so important, you know, and then having you guys there to just be present and help walk through processes.
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  That eliminates so much of that fear. And then people can compose themselves for that face, you know, that's so good.
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  And the types of services you provide, what do people lack the most understanding and awareness about how prevalent poverty actually is, how close they are to how much closer they are to the houseless person on the street than they are the billionaire they see on TV and how that viewpoint limits us all as a society from actually
• 26:03
  achieving equity of actually achieving, not a utopia, but just a decent way of living.
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  You know, like, the people are so busy being temporarily embarrassed billionaires that they can't see how much we all hate poor people.
• 26:33
  But how we are also poor people. Yeah.
• 26:38
  And I don't mean to laugh because it is very serious but it's just, it's one it's it we really really need to refocus on seeing the humanity and each other.
• 26:49
  I think, I think, definitely.
• 26:52
  Anything to add, we say the question over again. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:56
  In the types of services you provide what do people lack the most understanding or awareness about.
• 27:03
  I mean pretty much did what he said, like, others like that internalized self hatred, and that I'm not like the other poor people, or that kind of thing, or I made, or even just being hard on yourself like I made that mistake well a lot of people made mistakes
• 27:22
  they just didn't, you didn't have anything to fall back on when you made your mistake.
• 27:26
  One time when I first, when I was first interning here, and I was very good at abuse the system I was like so, and I was very new I was so embarrassed.
• 27:37
  And finally I said but did you need the money like, did you benefit, would your life have been worse. Did this help you get on your feet and he was like, yeah.
• 27:46
  You acknowledge self awareness. He benefited in a good way, you know. Yeah, yeah. That was, that was some good work you did with him there. Thank you.
• 27:57
  We're like the best people we're doing it for all the people, you know. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah, like, there are people who have like this idea that, you know, the stigma around just going to the food bank, they don't want to be seen at the food bank.
• 28:13
  You know, but they need it. They don't want to acknowledge it. I love the food bank. Yeah. I see all my friends at the food bank. Yeah. The staff is so nice, you know. Yeah.
• 28:32
  What do people struggle the most with? Like, as, as poor people as from being in poverty. The, the, the issues that y'all work with. Housing is the number one thing that people struggle with. Yeah.
• 28:46
  Poor people and even more middle income people even are really, really struggling with housing. Yeah. Housing is an issue. From the time I was a kid housing literally costs like twice as much as it used to.
• 28:58
  So you used to be able, if you had a welfare check, you had an apartment. Right. And now a welfare check doesn't cover an apartment. Yeah. So. Yeah. It's too darn high. It is. Yeah. And then childcare since, and especially since most of our, not most, but a high percentage of our people are neurodiverse or their kids are neurodiverse.
• 29:17
  So it's really, it's hard to find childcare for even your most, you know, typical child, but it's, it's almost impossible for people that have disabilities, the kids with disabilities. What, what services of yours get used the most? Would you say it's the childcare?
• 29:33
  It's the childcare. Yeah. Because it's childcare is at every event. Yeah. So if we have a workshop, we have childcare. If we have Arts Walk, childcare is here all day. We have two full days, childcare all day.
• 29:59
  You are listening to Community Powered Radio on KAOS 89.3 FM Olympia, a service of the Evergreen State College. I am your host Rainmaker and this is Resource Report, where we share important information about local nonprofits and resource organizations.
• 30:18
  That message we will hear board member Kevette Palmas tell us her story about the Alchemia Collaborative, followed by information about how to connect with power for support, volunteering, and donation.
• 30:34
  Hey, this is Craig Chiquiso with a little helping of my guitar.
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• 31:29
  Welcome back to Resource Report by Pathways to Agency. Let's listen to Kevette Palmas, board member of Power, tell us all about the Alchemia Feminist Economic Collaborative.
• 31:59
  What is the Alchemia Feminist Economic Collaborative?
• 32:09
  It's an organization started by one of the moms that used to be here. And it used to be the women's economic collaborative, but now it's called the Alchemia Feminist Economic Collaborative. And it was for, it started because people were sick of going to the legislator and asking for enough and never getting it.
• 32:35
  So they said we want to start our own side hustles, businesses, use our talents, work it around our family, which is just as important as a job, except for you know you need the job to pay to take care of your family, right?
• 32:49
  And it's, Kiki's a member, an entrepreneur, who's really like skyrocketed in Alchemia.
• 33:17
  Gosh.
• 33:20
  When I first started, I barely had the time of day to even think about creating.
• 33:30
  I now have over 75 pieces of different works and arts that I can sell, and are allowed, and can sell through Arts Walk twice a year, which is amazing to me.
• 33:53
  I started, when I started I had my art on the wall which was like a huge honor to me to even see that. And now I've got a tent, and I'm able to engage with the community even more so.
• 34:11
  Like, it's like I feel like I'm in the big leagues. It is so exciting. And it's thanks to Alchemia.
• 34:24
  I have done research into what it takes to be a artist that does markets. It's a lot of work. The barrier to entry alone. Oh yeah. The cost, the needed energy. It's almost like gatekeeping.
• 34:45
  It is totally gatekeeping. Right, like you got to have $500 to get a corner table in order to maybe be an event that, well they try to sell it like, oh, there'll be 10,000 people there. They don't know.
• 35:02
  They don't know. But you're paying, like, thanks to Alchemia, I'm able to do what they do. It almost leaves me speechless with how amazing of an opportunity I've been presented.
• 35:18
  I have branding. I am a name. Art by Kevette. It's amazing.
• 35:26
  I'd love to hear that. That makes me feel so good to hear that.
• 35:30
  Most of our members are artists, but it is all different businesses. Like, we have a bookkeeper, we have musicians. Helsing Junction Farm is an Alchemia member. For a while we called them our, we would call them our anchor, because they're the ones that really make them money.
• 35:45
  I had come out for the spring arts walk, and I swung by here, and there were a whole bunch of tents and tables in your parking lot. So some of those, was that Alchemia? I saw a lot of different handmade things.
• 36:00
  Yeah, there was a lot of Alchemia members out there, but we also had like different organizations out there. We had PiPE there. Last time, I think maybe PiPE was the only outside organization we had last time.
• 36:14
  Phoenix is Integrate. Oh, Overdrawn. We had Overdrawn too. I'm forgetting them, sorry.
• 36:20
  So Alchemia has organizations that are members within the organization. Overdrawn is one organization that's local, and it's disenfranchised, houseless, and formerly houseless, mostly guys doing art. And then Azure does the Bum Jug Collective, which is literally just like street artists, unhoused street artists, travelers, you know.
• 36:49
  And Azure does mostly upcycled materials, so Azure will just find trash and make something beautiful out of it.
• 36:57
  So y'all are kind of collaborating with different groups with that collaboration? Yeah.
• 37:02
  Okay, oh that's cool. I mean, it's only like, those are the only other two groups within the group.
• 37:21
  Best way to find out about our workshops is Facebook. We also have a newsletter, but Facebook is like where you're going to hear it first when we have workshops coming up. Definitely check out the Facebook page. Yeah, and a lot of times I'll do them in advance.
• 37:35
  We're kind of slowing down because I have to get ready for our board retreat and our annual letter, so we won't be having any workshops until December. Okay, that's really good to know.
• 37:47
  Let's see, oh, donations. What kinds of donations do y'all accept or need? Well, we mostly don't like stuff. Like people sometimes will drop us off toys or clothes on our front. We don't need that because we don't have that kind of storage here.
• 38:01
  Okay. Yeah. Unless it was like a very special toy, you know what I mean? Yeah. That we agreed that we wanted.
• 38:09
  But we could use, I mean, sometimes we need office equipment. We've had computers donated. We could use a printer right now, actually. And then of course, cash or gift cards too. We can always spend gift cards on like food for events, you know.
• 38:26
  If people do have office supplies to donate, would you recommend them reaching out to you first to discuss what they are? Yes, definitely. Because for the most part, we don't even really need that. You know, we have very limited space here. We definitely need a printer though.
• 38:41
  Okay. We have one printer and it does black and white one-sided. Oh, okay. Yeah. We need volunteers. Volunteers. Yeah. Volunteers, badly. Tell me about volunteering.
• 38:54
  It can be kind of whatever it is you want to do and also what we need. So we could use somebody to redo our website right now. We have a closet that needs to be cleaned out. I would like to train somebody to do outreach and advocacy.
• 39:13
  I would like to train more people to do that.
• 39:16
  Is there anything else you want to say about that, Kiki?
• 39:20
  I think that's about it. We need people. We need the community to help the community.
• 39:27
  We're literally all in this together and everyone can come in and play to their strengths. You don't have to be the best at everything. You don't have to even be a jack of all trades. If you've got one good skill, come. You're welcome.
• 39:44
  That's it. Do you all have any kind of scheduling structure or what does it look like if somebody says, hey, POWER I want to come and volunteer and this is what I can do?
• 39:56
  I would say when it's a good day for you to come in and we just figure it out. Okay. My schedule, I'm the only paid employee. I'm the community organizer. I'm part-time. My schedule is pretty flexible. I do have kid obligations, but it's fairly flexible.
• 40:13
  Normally I have a kid today. His dad has him. Actually, he goes to school. I drop him off and I pick him up. His dad has him today. He stayed home sick.
• 40:24
  Right on. If somebody does need support for anything and they reach out to you, how do you all meet with them? Here. I would meet with them here. Come down here? Yeah. Okay. We're located at 309 Fifth Avenue, Southeast Olympia, 98501. We're right next door to Rainy Day Records.
• 40:49
  Yeah. Y'all are sandwiched nicely between Orca Books and Rainy Day Records. Nice. Just a few blocks from the inner city transit bus station. And y'all have a cute little parking space so people don't need to worry about parking meters. Right. Well, if there's room, which there's plenty this morning, right? Yeah.
• 41:08
  All right. Is there anything else that y'all want to share? I think I said it earlier in that we are all in this together. We are our community and it will only be as strong as we allow it to be. Yep.
• 41:29
  I would like to say that this organization is for parents and allies. Sometimes I've heard people say, oh, this, you know, it's not really a good fit for me because I'm not a parent. But that's not true. Like we've all are part of the community. It's parents and allies. We've all been children. You know, so it's the issues that are important to power affect everybody.
• 41:52
  Absolutely. All right. Thank you very much. I really appreciate having this time with you. Thank you. I appreciate you. I know that our listeners will very much be glad to hear about this.
• 42:22
  You've been listening to my interview with Kevette, Palmas and Mary Vent from POWER, parents organizing for welfare and economic rights. We have one more message and then some last words about the closing of our interview. So stay tuned. We'll be right back.
• 42:52
  Are you ready to rediscover some of the biggest forgotten hits of days gone by? How about the stories behind some of your favorite forgotten songs? Then get ready for a blast from the past.
• 43:07
  Every shot, every, oh, still shot. Here's some of what you.
• 43:21
  Do you want to make love?
• 43:23
  Or do you just want to fool around? Just let your love flow like a mountain stream. When you're in love with a beautiful woman. Who's that lady? Who's that lady? Have you never been that low? Have you never tried?
• 43:53
  I remember.
• 43:55
  Sooner or later, love is going to catch up. Sooner or later, girl, you got to give it. Rock me gently. Rock me slowly. Take it easy. Don't you know?
• 44:11
  Tune in to Blast from the Past every Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. with DJ Jimmy Inferno and you'll hear some of the biggest forgotten hits of yesteryear only on 89.3 FM. KAOS, Olympia Community Radio.
• 44:41
  I had a wonderful time interviewing Kevette and Mary and on the way out they let me take some pictures of them and of all the things I missed when I first came in. You can see some of what I described on their own Facebook page and the pictures I took are posted on the Pathways to Agency Facebook page.
• 45:07
  Inside the cute building nestled between Orca Books and Rainy Day Records at 309 Fifth Avenue Southeast in downtown Olympia painted a deep red orange with bright flowers and a colorful mesmerizing bird is a cozy wood paneled reception room filled with creative projects and information.
• 45:28
  Immediately to the right of the door is a stand of local honey for sale at a 10% discount with some amazing and creative art from the Bum Jug Collective.
• 45:38
  Filling the adjacent wall are hung the sock monkeys, each lovingly created with their stories right next to them. You can see an example of one in the delicate pink and feathered fluff of Mary's own Grandma Minnie sock monkey and story.
• 45:54
  Seeing the monkeys melted my heart then filled it with love. On the wall opposite is arranged hanging and on a table all manner of artful creations that just looking at them for a moment inspired me.
• 46:08
  To the left of the door is hung important information and an active petition you can sign about tenants rights and the cost of rent.
• 46:26
  Check out their website mamapower.org to learn more about Power and follow them on Facebook by typing in search parents organizing for welfare and economic rights.
• 46:42
  There you can find out about when their workshops are coming up with the events tab. Be on the lookout for an open workshop announcement coming up in December. Give them a call at 360-352-9716 and you can email them at info at mamapower.org.
• 47:12
  That's it for today's Resource Report produced by Pathways to Agency. At Pathways to Agency we are driven by the belief that everyone should have the tools and support to achieve their goals and thrive in their communities.
• 47:30
  Our mission is to bridge the gaps in understanding, accessibility, and trust by connecting individuals to resources and sharing information and processes that can lead to personal and community growth.
• 47:45
  Resource Report offers information about existing and emerging nonprofits and resource organizations. Find out more at pathwaystoagency.org.
• 47:56
  Also, for up to two weeks you can still listen to today's show by going to kaosradio.org and finding the archive in the program's drop down in the menu. You can also find our shows archived indefinitely on rss.com.
• 48:14
  Check our Facebook page for updates for our next show where we will hear all about an organization also downtown called Peer Olympia.
• 48:32
  KAOS Radio is not responsible or liable for any views or opinions expressed in the interviews conducted by Resource report. Till next time, and thanks for listening.
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  Music
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  Music
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  Music
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  you