Olympia Time – History, politics, people of Oly WA

Facing the soft xenophobia of Emmett Watson

May 10, 2025 / Emmett O'Connell / 1 Comment

Governor Tom McCall of Oregon and Emmett Watson, the Seattle newspaper columnist I’m pretty sure my parents named me after, occupy a distinct corner of Pacific Northwest history. Both stood (figuratively and, at one point, literally) on the border of our region and asked people not to move here.

But in doing so, they provided air cover for a kind of xenophobic politics that helped cities across the region lower their density limits. Decades later, this became a fatal flaw in our politics and society.

Watson’s approach, from the 1960s through the 1990s, was often humorous and irreverent. He aimed to preserve Seattle’s unique, somewhat quirky character in the face of rapid growth and the perceived homogenization brought by newcomers and big development. He created the fictitious organization “Lesser Seattle” and its mock intelligence arm, “Keep the Bastards Out” (KBO), as playful rebukes to the ambitions of the real “Greater Seattle” boosters and Chamber of Commerce types.

McCall’s message, especially his famous “Visit but don’t stay,” was more direct and environmentally focused. Though charismatic and good with a soundbite, his core concern was growth management to protect Oregon’s environment. His message had broad implications for potential transplants, but his justification was rooted in ecological preservation more than the cultural anxiety that animated Watson.

Watson was definitely funny. And McCall, to Oregonians, was inspiring. But let’s focus on Watson, his impact on our culture, and most importantly, his jokes. He made sure to say that Lesser Seattle and KBO were fictitious, anyone could be the chair, and it was all just a joke.

But the joke was the power.

Jokes are gateways. Seemingly harmless humor targeting certain ideas can desensitize people and create a climate where more extreme rhetoric becomes acceptable. The humor acts as social lubricant, lowering defenses and making strong beliefs sound less shocking.

That’s exactly what happened in our Seattle-centric, Western Washington community. Watson would be cited again and again in letters to the editor as a humorous canary in the coal mine about growth.

Meanwhile, during the same period Watson was writing in earnest, city after city and neighborhood after neighborhood sought and received downzones: larger minimum lot sizes, bans on anything larger than single-family homes, all in the name of “preserving character” and controlling growth.

And again, we don’t need racist intent to have racist outcomes. These local zoning rules, implemented from the 1970s onward, pushed Black families out of whole neighborhoods in Seattle as white homeowners who benefited from post-World War economic growth looked for housing and drove up property values. In Olympia, we have whiter, less populated neighborhoods because we didn’t allow them to grow.

During the same period that Emmett Watson was playfully advocating for “Lesser Seattle” and the fictional “Keep the Bastards Out,” national media narratives were also shaping perceptions of Seattle in the context of racial tensions elsewhere. James Lyons points out in “Selling Seattle,” that following the Los Angeles riots in 1992, Seattle was increasingly portrayed as a desirable and safe haven for white middle-class professionals, a “white oasis” in contrast to the perceived urban decay and racial unrest of cities like Los Angeles. This media framing, while not explicitly espousing exclusionary policies, subtly reinforced an image of Seattle’s whiteness that was protected by exclusionary zoning, as a positive attribute, potentially providing an unconscious backdrop for the further arguments for downzoning that would later exacerbate our housing crisis.

Watson tried to turn serious when talking to author Jonathan Raban late in his career. He started with a joke about the unseriousness of the Lesser Seattle movement, but pivoted to argue for downzoning and neighborhood character, zoning as a tool for protection. Raban, who had moved to Seattle as an already well-known writer and quickly became one of its most insightful and loving critics, pushed back. His words ring even truer now as we try to reverse the policies that led to today’s housing crisis: “…I am very skeptical about zoning laws and many forms of planning. You see, cities have their own organic existence. They evolve naturally as the years go by.”

The fatal error in Watson’s and McCall’s thinking was that California (already experiencing population growth pressure from immigration and a booming economy in the 1960s and ’70s) started ratcheting down zoning density before Oregon and Washington did.

The increased housing costs cited by Cascadian slow-growthers as proof of California’s “insanity” were not a symptom of too much growth, but of housing scarcity. And in response, we put the same shackles on ourselves: cutting housing production, driving up home prices and rents, and contributing to a coast-wide homelessness crisis.

One of the most hilarious twists in this story? McCall and Watson weren’t even revolutionary. They were just the latest copy of a long Cascadian tradition: the impulse to shut the door behind you.

We don’t even need to go back to overtly racist policy to see the pattern. Take an early political race. Michael T. Simmons, arguably the first American to settle in what’s now Western Washington, co-founded Tumwater and led an overland party that arrived when the only competition was Indigenous tribes and the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Just a decade after his 1845 arrival, Simmons ran for congressional delegate as an independent. His main issue? That too many “newcomers” were taking over local political parties and that the “old settlers” needed a voice to preserve their history.

He’d been here ten years. And already, Simmons was the “old settler.”

After SB 5400’s first run and the future of the debate over public media in Washington State

May 3, 2025 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

SB 5400 was a significant piece of proposed legislation. It envisioned a state-funded grant program that could have provided crucial support to journalism organizations.

However, the bill didn’t make it past the Senate Fiscal Committee, preventing it from reaching the Rules Committee and subsequently the Senate floor. As a fiscal bill, there was always a possibility of its sudden reappearance, but that didn’t happen.

One of the most encouraging aspects of any bill, including this one, is the community of support that rallies around it. In this case, the wide range of individuals and groups who testified in favor of SB 5400 presents a valuable opportunity to organize and advocate for more profound reform of public media in Washington State, especially as federal support diminishes.

Surprisingly, the most impactful development regarding public media in Washington State was the unexpected creation of a digital ad tax, an idea I suggested in my original testimony supporting SB 5400.

This development apparently stemmed from Governor Ferguson’s resistance to a general wealth tax, which led the legislature to seek alternative revenue sources.

Digital Ad Tax

Washington lawmakers passed SB 5814, a bill that imposes state and local sales taxes on a broad spectrum of advertising services. This includes digital ad creation, campaign planning, performance analytics, and online ad placement.

The tax aims to generate revenue by treating advertising services similarly to other taxable professional services. The bill defines “advertising services” broadly but specifically exempts those offered to newspapers, broadcasters, and billboard advertisers.

I’ve encountered criticism suggesting that our tax will “suffer the same fate” as Maryland’s pioneering digital ad tax. However, this seems like unwarranted pessimism, as Maryland’s ad tax appears to be faring well in its legal challenges.

It’s worth noting that Maryland’s digital ad tax has performed favorably in the courts so far, winning its only decision to date.

Last summer, a federal judge in Baltimore dismissed a First Amendment challenge to Maryland’s Digital Advertising Tax Act (DATA), which taxes digital advertising revenue. U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby ruled that the plaintiffs, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and major tech trade groups, failed to demonstrate that the law’s prohibition on passing the tax on to customers through line-item fees or surcharges was broadly unconstitutional. She emphasized that the law had numerous constitutional applications and therefore did not violate the First Amendment on its face.

This decision followed earlier dismissals of other legal claims against the law, including those based on the Internet Tax Freedom Act and the Commerce Clause. Despite the court’s repeated upholding of the tax, tech companies continue to challenge it in Maryland’s Tax Court, hoping for a favorable ruling by fall.

Fundamentally, a digital ad tax addresses the core of the journalism crisis. Legacy publishers, particularly local newspapers, have overwhelmingly lost the advertising battle against online ad technology. Giants like Google and Meta, in particular, have used monopolistic tactics to dominate the entire advertising ecosystem, making it difficult for marketers to make sound business decisions while also supporting journalism.

Aside from dismantling the ad tech monopolies (which I will discuss later), taxing their perceived ill-gotten gains for the public good is the next most logical step for a state government lacking monopoly enforcement power. While the revenue from this tax isn’t currently earmarked for supporting public media, that’s a focus we can pursue in the future.

Change in Rhetoric

The most disappointing aspect of SB 5400’s journey was the noticeable shift in rhetoric among its supporters during the second public hearing and afterward. I began to see proponents argue that users posting links to news stories on social media platforms somehow constituted theft by these companies. The League of Women Voters’ summary of the second SB 5400 hearing stated: “(Tech giants are)..taking content the outlets produce without providing compensation and by siphoning off critical ad revenue from them.”

While the second part of this statement is true (they are indeed harming journalism by capturing ad revenue), the narrative surrounding “taking content” significantly misses the mark and establishes a policy objective I find deeply problematic.

This is the same rhetoric I’ve seen used to justify a link tax, similar to the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA).

Jeff Jarvis offered an excellent critique of the failed California link tax. He argues that the premise behind the CJPA and similar legislation is the false notion that linking to and quoting news constitutes theft. In reality, links benefit publishers by driving audience to their content, acting as free promotion. These laws fail to acknowledge the value that platforms’ links provide to publishers.

If platforms benefit from links to journalism, why did Meta reduce links to hard news in 2023?

Jarvis also emphasizes that links are fundamental to the internet’s architecture, enabling conversation, community, commerce, and collaboration. He agrees with Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, who testified that charging for links undermines the principle of free linking and could render the web unworkable. Vint Cerf, another internet pioneer, also stated that requiring payment for links undermines the internet’s fundamental principles. He concludes that making links a bargaining chip ill-serves users and citizens and that a link tax could fragment the web, isolating California’s internet from the rest of the world.

When the link tax was debated in California, it created a division among supporters of public media, pitting for-profit legacy media, especially newspapers, against largely digital non-profit upstarts.

Without a united front, we are likely to see corporate interests prevail, as they did in California, where they essentially created a donation scheme instead of meaningful public media support.

Here are two other takes on links taxes that are worth your time:

Why Link Taxes Like Canada’s C-18 Represent An End To An Open Web

Why Google and Facebook Don’t Owe Publishers $14 Billion a Year

Google Ad Case

I want to briefly acknowledge that the once-distant possibility of the federal government breaking up ad tech monopolies may be drawing closer. Amidst all of this legislative action, a federal court ruled that Google is indeed a monopolistic actor in digital advertising.

A federal judge determined that Google unlawfully monopolized key digital advertising markets, specifically the Publisher Ad Server and Ad Exchange sectors, violating Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. The Department of Justice and 17 states alleged that Google employed exclusionary practices to stifle competition and maintain its dominance. The court agreed, finding that Google harmed rivals and limited publisher choice, but rejected a claim related to advertiser ad networks due to a lack of market definition.

The court will consider remedies next fall, with the DOJ likely seeking structural separation and behavioral restrictions, such as prohibiting self-preferencing. Judicial oversight is also anticipated.

Back to the Link Tax

A link tax system implicitly assumes that the ad tech monopoly held by Meta, Google, and other large programmatic systems will persist and that news organizations will be content with receiving a small portion of the revenue to keep journalists employed.

The true objective should be to dismantle the ad tech monopolists and enable publishers of all kinds to sell their own advertisements without any single organization controlling the entire ad tech stack. Failing this, taxing revenue from online ads and distributing it to support journalism is a much more direct policy approach.

Why are legacy media outlets more inclined to support a system that allows monopolies to endure? Why are newspapers specifically seemingly okay with monopolistic behavior, as long as it provides financial support?

Because they have been in the past.

Consider the Joint Operating Agreements (JOAs) of the 1970s, which supported journalism by creating local monopolies.

Joint Operating Agreements (JOAs) were effectively exceptions to U.S. anti-monopoly (antitrust) law, established through the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970. These agreements allowed two competing newspapers in the same city to merge their business operations while maintaining independent editorial control. Typically, such collaboration between competitors (on printing, distribution, advertising sales, and other business functions) would violate antitrust laws designed to prevent collusion and preserve market competition.

Here’s how JOAs functioned as legal exceptions to monopoly laws:

Under traditional antitrust law, direct competitors cannot legally combine business operations (like ad sales or production) because it reduces competition, risks price-fixing, and often leads to monopolies. Such behavior would typically be considered anti-competitive under the Sherman Act or Clayton Act.

The Newspaper Preservation Act (NPA) specifically exempted newspapers from antitrust enforcement in certain cases. Lawmakers argued that the decline of newspaper circulation, especially in evening editions, meant that in many cities, only one paper would survive unless cost-cutting measures were allowed. The Act permitted competing newspapers to enter a JOA that pooled their business functions but maintained distinct editorial voices.

As documented in “The Chain Gang,” the era of JOAs was also marked by the decline of smaller newspapers that tried to operate alongside growing national chains, often aided by JOAs. During that time, local newspaper giants used predatory pricing, exclusive advertising deals, and the spread of false rumors to eliminate smaller rivals.

While the Act was intended to protect small or struggling papers from closure, critics argue that large media chains benefited the most, often absorbing or outlasting local competitors within JOAs. Over time, many JOAs dissolved as readership declined, digital media grew, and chain consolidation continued. In several cases, the supposedly “competing” papers ended up under shared ownership or folded entirely.

The Act created a rare legal space where business collaboration between competitors was explicitly allowed—a direct exception to the norm of antitrust enforcement. However, instead of safeguarding editorial diversity in the long run, the result was often further media consolidation and the eventual disappearance of the very newspapers the law aimed to protect.

If we continue down the path of proposing a link tax, the likely outcome is a deal that no one on the pro-journalism side desires and that primarily benefits the tech giants.

After journalism advocates disagreed over approaches (dividing their efforts between a link tax and a digital extraction tax), tech giants found a backdoor. A closed-door agreement between California lawmakers and Google to support local journalism fell short of expectations, benefiting Google by shelving more impactful legislation in exchange for a comparatively small financial commitment. This agreement has been widely condemned by journalists, community publishers, and advocates who argue that the funding is insufficient, lacks focus on localism and diversity (especially for ethnic media), and includes unrelated initiatives like an AI accelerator.

By prioritizing a less burdensome solution for the tech giant over the significant needs of a struggling local news ecosystem, the deal leaves many supporters of journalism feeling disappointed and under-served. The outcome underscores the power imbalance between Big Tech and community voices in shaping policies related to the future of news.

Therefore, when we revisit the idea of public media in Washington next year, the focus should be on unifying the potential division developing between the different approaches.

Who could own what and who owned what

April 26, 2025 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

Sometimes I have an idea (like a few weeks ago) to figure something out, put together a research plan, execute it, and still come up seriously short. That’s exactly what happened the last couple of weeks as I tried to dig into the Alien Land Law and how it worked in Olympia.

One piece of our particular brand of Pacific Northwest racism that I left out of my post a few weeks back was, of course, the Alien Land Law. It existed for nearly our entire history, lasting until 1966, and undergirded much of how we treated racial minorities in the Pacific Northwest.

Long Background on Alien Land Laws

The Alien Land Law in Washington State, rooted in the state 1889 constitution and subsequent legislation, prohibited land ownership by residents ineligible for citizenship. Though seemingly race-neutral in its language, its primary aim was to disenfranchise non-white immigrants, particularly Chinese and Japanese individuals.

Initially, territorial law encouraged non-citizen land ownership to attract white settlers and foreign investment. However, economic anxieties among white laborers and farmers, combined with a rising tide of anti-Chinese sentiment, soon led to laws restricting land ownership for those deemed “ineligible to citizenship,” effectively targeting Asian immigrants who were barred from naturalization under federal law. Later iterations of the law focused even more directly on Japanese immigrants, further restricting their ability to lease or even hold land through their American-born children.

The question I had was: if the laws in Washington forbade Chinese and Japanese families from owning land, how did they operate businesses in Olympia during this era? The Olympia Historical Society points out that dozens of businesses across Olympia were operated by Asian families, though apparently not controlling the land underneath the businesses.

One method involved leveraging their U.S.-born children, which leads us into a reflection on today’s debates about the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship.

Washington State’s Alien Land Laws initially targeted non-citizen land ownership, focusing primarily on Chinese and later Japanese immigrants. While the original laws didn’t explicitly address land ownership by the U.S.-born children of these immigrants—who were birthright citizens under the 14th Amendment, a loophole soon emerged. Families began purchasing land in their children’s names, allowing parents barred from owning property to indirectly control it through their citizen offspring.

In response, the legislature passed additional laws, notably in 1923, specifically stating that land held in the name of a child of an ineligible alien would be considered held in trust for the parent, effectively closing the loophole. In 1925, the Washington State Supreme Court case State v. Hirabayashi reinforced this interpretation, ruling against the transfer of land-holding stock to second-generation Japanese American children when their parents retained control, deeming it an evasion of the Alien Land Law.

This situation created a direct conflict with the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. While the 14th Amendment unequivocally granted citizenship to those born within the United States, the Alien Land Laws limited the practical benefits of that citizenship, especially the right to own and control property. It highlighted the tension between the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship and state-level efforts to maintain racial discrimination.

This history dovetails with contemporary legal battles surrounding birthright citizenship, particularly efforts by the Trump administration to reinterpret the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. Just as past lawmakers sought to create exceptions to citizenship rights based on parental status, current arguments attempt to carve out similar exceptions, revealing a recurring tension between constitutional principles and efforts to impose discriminatory limitations.

So Where Does That Leave Us in Olympia?

Who did own the land underneath those businesses?

What I was trying to find out was who the non-Asian families were who supported Asian-owned businesses by leasing or renting land to them. The real research (narrowing it down through property records on microfilm) will take some time. I’ll get to that eventually. For now, I’m content just sketching out the context.

Leasing or renting to Asian families did not escape the notice or ire of Olympia’s more racist white residents. From an Olympia Tribune editorial in the 1890s, we see a call for the expulsion of Chinese residents by legal means, especially by encouraging property owners to refuse to rent to them. The editorial reflects widespread fears among white laborers about job competition and portrays the Chinese community as an unwanted and growing threat. It even calls for the creation of a citizens’ association to coordinate exclusion efforts, promoting the motto: “Olympia for Olympians.”

From a separate, sympathetic article about the populist “People’s Party,” also from the 1890s: “We believe that those who patronize the Chinese are enemies of their white brethren, and we favor strict exclusion and entire letting alone of all Chinese and their sympathizers.”

When I poked around the same newspaper archives looking for records of who owned the land underneath Asian-owned businesses, I came up short. I can only assume that while business relationships were practical and necessary, they were considered perilous enough that few people talked about them openly.

The land owned by Sam Fun Locke’s family at the corner of Columbia and 5th is a good example of this land record puzzle. Locke was one of Olympia’s most successful Chinese businessmen, often called “The Mayor of Chinatown.” After his death, the property was passed along to his descendants. I can pick up the property transfers starting in the 1940s but can’t trace anything definitive before that.

I can, however, track the locations of his businesses through phone directory records, which makes it possible to compare them with land ownership records. That way, I could eventually find out when exactly Locke’s family came into possession of the land, and whether the same family owned it while Locke operated his business there.

So, there’s still more work to do. But this week, at least, I was able to lay out the policy and legal landscape before diving deeper.

Don’t think of an Olympia

April 12, 2025 / Emmett O'Connell / 1 Comment

One of my longtime hobby horses on this blog has been the use of “Olympia” as a metonym, for reporters, politicians, and activists, when what they really mean is “the state legislature” or, more broadly, “state government.” I usually approach the issue from two angles.

First: this is my town. Keep our name out of your mouth. Almost no one uses “Olympia” in a flattering way (and I’ll get to that) but seriously, stop. I know you don’t literally mean us, but you’re still saying our name. I especially object when people shorten it to “Oly.” Please don’t.

Second: words really do matter. We should be intentional with them.

Like I said, this gripe has been with me a long time, but it’s been years since I wrote about it. In fact, this is the 10th anniversary of my last post on the subject. Maybe my attention waned. Maybe the use of “Olympia” as a metonym declined. But I’ll tell you what: this year it feels like it’s surged. Again, maybe it’s just me noticing it more, but I can’t go half a day without hearing “Olympia” blamed for some godawful statewide thing.

And sure, I’ve been guilty of writing about state government and the legislature more than usual on what’s supposed to be an Olympia-centric blog. I could argue that local journalism and the state flag are close to my heart, so it’s excusable. But really, the only excuse is: it’s my blog and I do what I want.

Language matters

The title of this blog is a nod to the Bush-era Democratic messaging handbook Don’t Think of an Elephant. It’s about the importance of language, how words shape thought and frame our understanding.

Since I last tackled this topic, I’ve changed. I’ve developed a regular mindfulness practice and read a lot more philosophy. One quote from Marcus Aurelius recently was the core idea that brought me back to this issue:

“Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions.”

When we constantly refer to state government simply as “Olympia,” we shape public perception into something vague, distant, and impersonal, just as Marcus warned. If the image we hold is a faceless force, we begin to believe that’s all government is. Words frame reality, and careless ones distort our sense of agency and accountability.

Using “Olympia” as a stand-in for the state government isn’t just lazy writing; it’s a framing choice that affects how we think about power. It turns government into something abstract and remote. When “Olympia” becomes the bad guy, we allow ourselves to see government as something that happens over there, not something we are connected to or responsible for.

But that’s not how government works. I hate to explain all of middle school civics to you, but only three of Washington’s 147 state legislators actually represent Olympia. The rest are elected from equally-sized districts all across the state. They are not from Olympia.

A special warning for leftist folks and other pro-democracy types: this kind of rhetorical distancing undermines the idea of collective responsibility. If “Olympia” is just a bunch of detached politicians, then it’s not our fault what they do.

For conservatives, it can reinforce long-held suspicions that government is an adversary. Either way, the result is the same: a less functional democracy. The decisions made in that supposedly faraway place are made by people we elected, and they affect all of us. So it’s worth staying connected.

How we can actually change this

Now, I’d be dishonest if I didn’t acknowledge the impact a place can have. Legislators do come to Olympia for months at a time, and it’s probably true that they’re shaped by the professional and social ecosystem that forms around them here. So yes, for a portion of the year, they’re part of Olympia. A little.

But that doesn’t have to be the case.

Recently, in the other Washington, there’s been a debate about proxy voting. A bipartisan push in the U.S. House sparked by a Republican congresswoman who experienced postpartum complications is seeking to allow new parents to designate a proxy for voting. This is a half step to full remote voting. The proposal gathered enough signatures to force a floor vote but was blocked by Speaker Mike Johnson and conservatives who saw it as unconstitutional and too reminiscent of pandemic-era practices.

Washington State actually operated as a mostly remote legislature longer than many others. We had full remote voting, and still do in some cases. And while reviews were mixed, some of the accessibility improvements for both lawmakers and testifiers have stuck around.

If you are a legislator voting remotely, you’re voting away from Olympia, in the community that represents. That can be a good thing.

All of this connects to a bigger question: can legislative bodies still represent the people effectively, given how much populations have grown? The U.S. House has been capped at 435 members for over a century, even as the population has more than tripled. That means each representative now serves far more people than originally intended, making real connection harder and weakening democracy.

The same is true in Washington State. Our legislature has been the same size since the 1960s, when the state had 2.8 million people. Now we’re over 8 million. We’ve almost tripled in population but not in representation.

We could double the size of the legislature. And if there isn’t enough room for everyone to work in Olympia, they could do what so many other state employees do: work remotely from their hometowns.

Tips for Journalists Covering Washington State Government: How to Use “Olympia” Thoughtfully

Do you need to write about the state legislature or state government? Otherwise compelled? Here are some tips.

1. Be specific whenever possible.

“Olympia” often obscures more than it reveals. Instead of Olympia passed a law, say the state legislature passed a law. Or better yet, House Democrats passed a bill or Governor Inslee signed the legislation. Precision helps your audience understand who actually did what.

2. Recognize the diversity within state government.

“Olympia” is not a single voice. It includes legislators, the governor, dozens of agencies, lobbyists, staffers, reporters, and more. One label can flatten the complexity of real debates and decision-making.

3. Don’t use “Olympia” as a scapegoat.

When something goes wrong, it’s easy to blame “Olympia.” But vague blame makes it harder for the public to know who’s responsible or who they should contact to make change.

4. Consider how the word lands.

To people outside the capital, “Olympia” may sound like an abstract bureaucracy. To people in Olympia, it’s home. Using the name as shorthand for dysfunction alienates a whole community.

5. Geography? Fine.

You can always cop out and say “in Olympia” rather than just “Olympia.” This would be “Democrats in Olympia” rather than “Olympia Democrats.”

Used with care, language connects people to their government.

Used lazily, it can push them away. “Olympia” might be convenient, but a functioning democracy deserves better than convenience.

No Narcissus in our time. On history, HB 1576 and love of our communities

March 22, 2025 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

Narcissus died while staring at the pool. Confounded by the unreal beauty reflected in the pool, he wasted away while ignoring his own actual need to eat. That is what feels like is going on now with the debate between preserving history and the housing crisis.

For many people, Feliks Banel is to Western Washington history what Cliff Mass is to weather, or at least what Mass was before he ventured into controversial territory. Even more than Knute Berger on PBS, Banel’s segments on KIRO Radio reach a broad, commercial audience. His chosen topics often shape how we discuss and understand the history of our region.

Over the past few years, Banel’s non-KIRO Cascade of History radio show has frequently focused on the preservation of built structures. Examples include a gazebo in Everett, a house in Sumner, Memorial Stadium in Seattle, and a school in Parkland.

Most recently, Banel highlighted the debate around HB 1576, a bill that would prevent individuals who do not own a property from initiating the historic landmarking process for that property. Currently, this practice is only allowed in Seattle and Tacoma. Because these cities are among the largest in Washington, the ability to landmark a property against the owner’s wishes can be misused to block development that could radically improve our housing crisis.

This essay isn’t about the bill itself. Instead, it’s a letter to historians and local preservation activists passionate about this issue. It’s also a reflection on history itself, how we understand it, preserve it, and should approach it as people interested in history.

The Pitfalls of Local Control and Historic Preservation

The effort to federally landmark an entire neighborhood in Seattle shows the overlap between restrictive zoning and historic preservation.

In Wallingford, homeowners recently attempted to establish a federally designated historic district. While framed as a preservation effort, it would have functioned as a modern form of restrictive covenant, blocking affordable housing and density while maintaining exclusive, high-value single-family zoning.

This highlights a broader issue: land-use regulations, including historic preservation, are often wielded to maintain privilege rather than serve their stated purposes. Just as restrictive zoning laws have long hindered affordable housing, historic district designations can become tools for exclusion, reinforcing systemic inequalities in housing access by freezing exclusive uses in place.

This is why historians should tread carefully when engaging in issues of local control, which has historically been used as a method of exclusion.

Two quotes from the HB 1576 public hearing stand out:

“It’s ridiculous to think the state would dictate local land-use decisions.”
“Historic preservation is, at best, a local decision.”

These arguments echo the broader rhetoric of local control in land-use decisions. As I’ve written before, local control often benefits the wealthy and white while harming poorer and non-white communities. If we can make historic preservation arguments without relying on local control, we should.

Historians, of all people, should understand how local control has been used to exclude marginalized groups from communities. We must not repeat this mistake in the name of preserving buildings.

History as Growth, Not Stasis

This essay is ultimately about history and how we’ve historically grown as communities. For most of human history, until the last century, communities grew without what we now call “zoning.” Many of our most historic neighborhoods reflect this slow, gradual growth. We didn’t build massive neighborhoods all at once, nor did we stand in the way of new developments simply because they were new.

My favorite building in Olympia is at the corner of 10th and Capitol. It’s a historic single-family home that has been subdivided into apartments, with a restaurant attached to the front. All of these changes happened over decades after the construction of the initial house. It reflects the changing needs of the property owner, the neighborhood and our community. This kind of adaptive growth is how our cities evolved for much of history. Communities change, needs change, and our approach to history should reflect and document these changes, not resist them.

More People, Fewer Things

We should focus less on preserving the built environment and more on understanding human needs and historical context.

This idea is reflected in how Olympia recently redefined what we mean by “neighborhood character.” We changed the term in our local planning documents from preserving homogeneity and resisting change to promoting inclusivity, sustainability, and adaptability.

We shifted from defining character as a static built environment to character meaning as a community that reflects our values.

In this way, our community character is still being built. It’s defined by how we make decisions for everyone, even those who don’t live here yet. Paraphrasing what Bono once said about music, “When we glorify the past, the future dries up.”

When we choose to encase a building in glass, we freeze a piece of land in time. It will never reflect who we are becoming—only who we were.

In Olympia, we’ve redefined “neighborhood character” to focus on our values as people, not on preserving structures built at a specific moment in time.

A Final Note to History Lovers

To my history-loving friends, I offer this: Release yourself from things.

Historic character lies in our values, not our architecture. As Epictetus said, “You are not your body and hairstyle, but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.”

While architectural historians may disagree, we are not our buildings. We are our people.

And to borrow a phrase from the debate on parking in Washington State, we are in a housing crisis, not a history crisis. Housing affordability and homelessness are the crises of our times. Preserving history should not be used as a tool to worsen these crises.

Or rather, we are in a history crisis, but it is not a crisis of preserving too few buildings. Preserving too many buildings from a past we are trying to distance ourselves from is part of the history crisis we are currently in. The debate between historians and non-historians over preserving statues, rewriting our understanding of colonial history, or grappling with our racist legacy is the real historical crisis we face.

If anything, preserving buildings without context dampens the deeper understanding of our past that is possible.

Narcissus’s obsession with his reflection causes him to neglect his own well-being and ultimately leads to his demise. Similarly, an excessive focus on preserving historic buildings while ignoring the housing crisis can result in neglecting the well-being of current populations. This neglect manifests in rising homelessness, unaffordable housing, and social inequality, as resources and attention are diverted away from solving these critical issues.

History is not about freezing our built environment in time but about understanding how our communities grow, adapt, and reflect our values. By focusing on inclusivity, sustainability, and the needs of all people, not just preserving structures, we honor the true spirit of history. Embrace change, learn from the past, and ensure our decisions today create a more equitable future.

What I’m doing here and how you can help

March 16, 2025 / Emmett O'Connell / 1 Comment

This post is about the broader purpose of this blog and the kind of work I’ll be doing here and on other platforms moving forward.

Many of you already know (I don’t exactly hide it) that my day job involves communications for a county office that, among other responsibilities, runs elections. The last few years have been a roller coaster. Balancing my work and my non-work interests has been challenging because my job intersects with the nonpartisan role of the office I serve. At the same time, I have a deep interest in local politics and government. I want to keep engaging with those topics here because they matter to me, and hopefully to my community.

Since my podcast partner stepped back, I’ve struggled to find time and focus for this blog and the podcast. I’ve also had broader, non-local thoughts rattling around in my brain that didn’t quite fit within an Olympia-centered framework. I posted some of them here anyway, but I knew I needed a better approach.

I also want to acknowledge that last year was rough for me. The election in Thurston County went smoothly, but election season is always an enormous weight. We did well because we started preparing years ago and went into overdrive months before Election Day. After certification, I took a longer-than-usual winter break. Mentally, I unplugged from my projects one by one. I read a lot, but far less news.

In December, I injured my knee, which kept me from my usual running and soccer routine. Instead, I walked a lot. That gave me time to listen to audiobooks and read in a more sustained way than I had in years. It also gave me space, toward the end of my break, to reflect on what I wanted to turn back on and how.

I’ve also developed a daily journaling habit. I can’t overstate how helpful it has been in organizing my thoughts and improving my focus.

Now that I’m wrapping up phase one of “turning things back on,” I want to outline the plan:

1. Re-establish the blogs as a weekly-ish writing habit and develop an email newsletter.

I now actively maintain two blogs:

Olympia Time: This blog has been around for about 20 years, starting on Blogger before Google acquired it. I recently moved it to WordPress. The focus remains Olympia, though I’ll occasionally write about Washington State politics. If you’ve followed me for a while, you know the drill.
A general blog: This one covers everything else, Irish identity, broader political ideas, and more.

The goal is to post on one of these blogs every weekend. Occasionally, when I have both time and ideas, I’ll post on both.

Technically, I want these blogs available via RSS and ActivityPub. Olympia Time works well in that regard; the non-local blog, less so.

2. Email newsletter

After a few weeks of writing, an email newsletter feels sustainable. It will include content from one of the blogs or other writing I’ve done, along with links to interesting pieces I’ve come across.

Since I design the newsletter myself, it takes more effort than using Substack or Ghost. While I’d rather use a simpler platform, I like my blog and don’t want to switch to Substack for several reasons. Moving everything to Ghost might make sense eventually, but for now, I’m happy with how things are working.

3. The Olympia Standard

This has been the most disappointing part of my non-work projects over the past few years. I had an amazing podcast partner, and there’s no replacing her work ethic and vision. I’ve kept the podcast on life support, but it’s been almost a year since I released an episode. The long-form interview format wasn’t sustainable, and recording at home led to a poor listening and recording experience (sorry, Jemmy).

Here’s the new plan: I’m now a member of TC Media, which gives me access to their new podcast studio. I’ll reserve an hour every Friday to record something—sometimes a written piece (like the Cory Doctorow podcast), sometimes an interview (like the old Olympia Standard but shorter, around 30 minutes), or sometimes a local news rundown (similar to the Centralia Chronicle’s News Dump).

The key change is consistency: I’ll record every Friday, regardless. If I can schedule a guest, great. If not, I’ll record a solo episode. This means guests will need to plan further in advance, and some episodes will be adapted from blog content.

If you’re interested in being involved—as a guest, guest host, or fill-in host—let me know. I won’t be doing candidate interviews myself anymore, so I’ll need help with those. I’ll also cover the cost of the podcast studio.

4. Social media

I’m aiming for a cleaner break here. The past few years, based on my experience at the business end of disinformation, have radicalized my views on social media platforms. I left X a while back and recently put my Meta accounts on ice. I’m most active on Bluesky and Mastodon, though I also check Reddit and need to engage more on the Olympia Discord. We need more alternatives to centralized platforms. This leads me to #5.

5. Other projects (Help wanted!)

This category includes projects I’ve put on the back burner or haven’t started yet. The biggest one is Funding Local Journalism. Last summer, I asked some folks to help me get this off the ground, but terrible timing (election season) and my lack of skills got in the way. There’s still a lot of work to do, but I recognize my limitations in leading it. This will take time.

Another idea is a local social network to replace Facebook’s community role. Right now, nothing competes with Facebook for local organizing, which is why I haven’t deleted my Meta accounts entirely, I need to monitor activity there and sometimes actually dip in. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Other models exist, like Front Porch Forum and old email democracy forums. However, building something like this requires project management, tech skills, and community organizing, areas where I need help.

Wrapping it all up

At the core of everything is this blog. It has been here for nearly half my life, so it makes sense to center my efforts around it. With a second blog, a podcast, and a weekly newsletter, I’m tying my content together in a more structured way.

The bigger community projects, funding journalism and creating alternative local networks, are where I need the most help. We need ways to support reporters and free ourselves from billionaire-controlled social media platforms. That’s work I can’t accomplish alone.

6 . Extra bonus. Poetry.

I started writing poetry and I’ll start releasing it soon. The goal is one poem for the Olympia Poet Laureate project by the end of April. And a small book of a dozen by the end of the year.

The Ku Klux Klan in Olympia and what we should remember

March 9, 2025 / Emmett O'Connell / 8 Comments

Where do you think the largest Klan rally in Olympia was held?

How big was the largest Klan rally in Olympia?

If you think a few hundred people on the Capitol Campus, you’d be wrong.

On September 10, 1927, 2,000 Klan members rallied with burning crosses just behind Lincoln School at the old Stevens Field. For present-day Olympians, this might seem shocking, especially since the higher-profile Capitol Campus is so close by. And given Lincoln’s progressive reputation today, it’s hard to imagine the Klan ever feeling comfortable in its vicinity.

At the time, Stevens Field was a major community facility. It was a large, box-like Pacific Northwest athletic stadium, home to Olympia’s school and community sports teams, including the high school football team and a minor league baseball team. While visitors today might assume that the Capitol Campus is the center of Olympia’s civic life, locations like Stevens Field, and the sites that have since replaced it, were actually where our community gathered.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the 1920s, the rise of the Klan in the Pacific Northwest, and the legislative legacy it left in Washington State and the nation. There are important lessons in the legacy of the Klan and how we stood by and watched. This is a piece of Olympia and Washington’s racist history that I left out of my longer essay a few weeks ago.

More than 2,000 knights of the Ku Klux Klan marched from the Capitol Campus into the heart of Olympia, Stevens Field. And 10,000 Olympians lined the streets to watch.

They had met at Legion Hall downtown and then marched from the Capitol Grounds to the stadium. For weeks leading up to the event, fiery crosses burned throughout Thurston County in preparation for the convention.

Dr. H.W. Evans, the Imperial Wizard of the nationwide Klan, was the main speaker. Charles I. Singer, Olympia’s city engineer, was the event’s “master of ceremonies.” Throughout his life, Singer worked for the state Department of Transportation, was a city inspector, and later became the city engineer. His wife was a regular in the Olympian’s social columns and was a champion women’s golfer. They lived in Northeast Olympia, just a few blocks from Roosevelt School. Singer was also the director of the Thurston County Radio Club. I can’t find any other references linking him to the Klan, but membership was often secret. Either someone with Singer’s profile was an active Klansman, or the Klan was so accepted in Olympia that the city engineer would step forward to emcee their event on an ad hoc basis. Neither scenario is comforting.

Ten thousand Olympians watched over 60 Klan chapters march. If Olympia had wanted to stop them, they could have.

A contemporary newspaper account described the march:

Led by their regal officers mounted on two white horses and a fiery cross in advance, the klansmen made up a parade more than a half-mile long, one of the largest ever seen in the city. Klans from all over the state were in the line of the march, Grays Harbor, Tacoma, Olympia, Elma, Chehalis, and Centralia being noted among them.

The Olympian devoted twice as much space to covering the Klan’s purpose in 1927 as it did to covering the rally itself. The paper observed: “Today, though, it was asserted, a great many people in Olympia, one typical American community, had just about forgotten that there was a Klan until announcement of the state meet was made.”

By 1927, interest in the Klan in Washington State had begun to wane after peaking in 1924. Even combining the size of the marchers and spectators (about 12,000 people) the event was much smaller than the Klan mega-rallies of just a few years earlier. The Olympia rally may in fact have been the Klan’s last major rally in Washington State.

Many historians link the Klan’s decline to the defeat of Initiative 49, a proposed law that would have required children to attend public schools, effectively targeting Catholic education. Its failure at the polls marked a turning point in the Klan’s influence in Washington politics.

The Klan also declined due to national scandals and corruption within its leadership. Nationwide, its membership plummeted from two million to just a few hundred thousand within a year.

However, this decline came after the Klan had already achieved its biggest legislative victory: a sweeping overhaul of U.S. immigration laws.

Support for Initiative 49 was strongest in two regions: Southwest Washington, from Grays Harbor to Cowlitz County, and Central Washington. It was no coincidence that the chief architect of the Klan-backed 1924 immigration law was a eugenicist congressman from Aberdeen, Rep. Albert Johnson.

In an interview with The Olympian after our 1927 rally, the national Klan leader openly took credit: “Dr. Evans stated that the Klan was largely instrumental in securing legislation to curb immigration…”

Rep. Johnson and the Klan had a mutually supportive, though not necessarily formal, relationship. Johnson, a staunch eugenicist and anti-immigration politician, independently championed restrictive immigration laws, culminating in the 1924 Immigration Act. While his xenophobic views predated the Klan’s rise in the 1920s, the organization strongly endorsed him, seeing his policies as aligned with their nativist agenda. Nationally, the Klan prioritized his reelection, and contemporary reports acknowledged its backing of his legislative efforts. Though it remains unclear whether Johnson was a Klan member or direct ally, he undoubtedly benefited from and welcomed its political support.

The 1924 Immigration Act was rooted in racism, eugenics, and nativism. It built on earlier immigration restrictions, such as the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1917 Immigration Act, by further limiting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and outright banning Asian immigration. The law’s architects, Johnson and Senator David Reed, sought to preserve America’s racial and ethnic “purity” by restricting non-Nordic immigration—a stance championed by eugenicists and nativist groups like the Klan. The act disproportionately targeted Catholics, Jews, and Asians, reflecting widespread fears of economic competition, cultural differences, and radical political ideologies. Though it faced some opposition, particularly from the Japanese government and a few U.S. lawmakers, it passed with overwhelming support, reinforcing white supremacy in U.S. immigration policy for decades.

Our focus today should be on the laws the Klan wanted, the public standing by and watching them work, not just their hoods and fiery crosses. By fixating on the spectacle of the Klan in the Pacific Northwest, we risk ignoring the real, long-term impact they had on communities here.

I really appreciate this passage from Trevor Griffey:

Historians have ignored these 50,000-person events and downplayed the significance of the Washington state Klan because the organization lost probably 90 percent of its members in the year after its 1924 super-rallies. This fact is supposed to attest to the overall liberal nature of the Pacific Northwest, as if the Klan rallies had been mere passing fads. What little has been written about these rallies has been for small regional historical societies or provided material for a chapter in a book called Eccentric Seattle.

By emphasizing the bizarre and the marginal, and by measuring the Klan’s success in political rather than cultural terms, these histories have overlooked what is perhaps the more disturbing aspect of this part of Washington state history. While Klan robes and jargon about Kligrapps and Konventions may have been exotic or even preposterous, and the Klan itself ultimately proved to be unpopular, the massive attendance at Klan rallies also demonstrated the everyday quality of white supremacy and Christian nationalism in the Pacific Northwest. They showed that the politics of intolerance could be made remarkably palatable by simply dressing it up as a form of entertainment.

At Klan rallies, common expressions of American patriotism were saturated with KKK references in an attempt to make the two synonymous, and mass spectacles served as a vehicle through which an otherwise arcane set of secret society initiation rituals and bizarre Klan jargon could be made tolerable. It was a way of hiding the Klan’s distinctive form of intolerance in plain view, making it unremarkable or even normal. The speaker at the Seattle/Renton July 14 rally could call forth ‘an army of Christ’ to ‘demand the continued supremacy of the White Race as the only safeguard of the institutions and civilization of our country,’ yet this language of racist Christian patriotism went unchallenged and unreported in local media and individuals’ memoirs, which focused more on attendance figures and traffic jams.

The Ku Klux Klan did not invent white supremacy or Christian patriotism, or even pioneer their fusion. It failed in its political ambitions, but it also demonstrated how people’s everyday racism, fear of foreigners, and intolerant Christianity could be channeled through mass marketing and popular entertainment into a toxic politics of hate masked as the highest form of patriotism.

By ignoring our historical connection to the Klan and the 1924 Immigration Act, we are acting much like the 10,000 Olympians who watched peacefully as 2,000 Klan members marched by, secure in the knowledge that the organization was on its way out.

The Klan was indeed fading in 1927, but their legacy had already been cemented. The counties that had voted “yes” on a bill specifically targeting Catholic immigrants had also delivered nationwide, race-based immigration reform. By that point, the Klan wasn’t needed as a vanguard anymore—the war had already been won.

If we ignore this history today while debating policies to combat institutional racism, we risk underestimating just how easily these systems can persist. We allowed Klan members to melt back into our communities, separating the rallies from their massive impact on our policies. We’ve forgotten who they were because they stopped burning crosses, but we shouldn’t ignore the laws they passed.

Lessons Learned About Changing the State Flag from the Short-Lived HB 1938

March 1, 2025 / Emmett O'Connell / 1 Comment

HB 1938 had a brief but illuminating journey: introduced, heard in a public hearing, and then left to expire without a vote out of committee. While its quick demise might seem discouraging, the process provided valuable insights and reasons to be hopeful for future efforts to redesign Washington’s state flag.

1. Sometimes You Don’t Need to Say Everything in Your Heart

Reflecting on the debate, I realized (thanks in part to a KUOW interview with a vexillologist) that centering the discussion on George Washington was the wrong approach. The focus should have been on what a new flag could look like, rather than defending or attacking a historical figure. My own blog post being picked up by the Daily Mail (which I admit had a certain appeal to me as an Irish American) probably distracted from the core issue and didn’t serve the movement well.

2. It Really Doesn’t Have Anything to Do with George Washington

Despite how much time the bill sponsor and I spent addressing concerns about Washington’s presence on the flag, the bill itself never mandated his removal. The design competition had no predetermined outcome, a point emphasized by many testifiers. The opposition’s fixation on Washington overshadowed the actual intent of the legislation: to allow for public input and a democratic design process.

3. Lots of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

The number of people signed up for the public hearing was pretty stark: 11 people signed in support, one was neutral, and 37 opposed the bill. Yet, those who actually showed up to testify were more evenly split in favor of change. Leading up to the hearing, the Republican caucus and aligned groups worked hard to stir up pro-Washington sentiment. I even saw a pro-gun rights channel discussing the bill. But when it came time to show up and testify, opposition voices largely lacked the passion or patience to engage. Meanwhile, pro-change advocates were more invested and willing to participate. While the decision to let the bill die this year is understandable, the nature of the testimony suggests there is a foundation to build upon in the future.

4. History Repeats Itself

Ironically, the argument over Washington’s place on the state flag mirrors the debate from 102 years ago when the very idea of a state flag was controversial. A 1913 bill similar to HB 1938 aimed to create a state flag but failed due to opposition from veterans’ groups, who saw it as unpatriotic and a challenge to the national flag. It wasn’t until a decade of advocacy, led in part by the Daughters of the American Revolution, that Washington finally adopted its current flag in 1923.

5. This Idea Is Far from Dead

If the primary opposition consists of defending Washington’s image and feigned confusion about what vexillology even is, I welcome the next iteration of HB 1938 or a similar bill. Over the past few weeks, several pro-new flag advocates emerged on short notice. Moving forward, it will be exciting to see who else steps up in support of a new, more representative flag for Washington State. The conversation isn’t over, it’s just a start.

Dick Abram and the circle of history

February 22, 2025 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

I originally read this as a part of an episode of the Olympia Standard about a year and a half ago.

If you’re a well-informed Olympian, you’re probably familiar with Olympia’s Depression-era “Little Hollywood,” a shack town that existed in the 1930s. Its name was likely an ironic nod to the bustling Los Angeles suburb already then at the heart of the movie industry.

You might also know that Little Hollywood was torn down in the early 1940s to make way for Capital Lake, as most of it consisted of float houses anchored in the old Deschutes Estuary.

But let’s rewind to 1935, at the height of the Great Depression. Olympia hosted what could be called a proto-Capital Lakefair, known as the “Pagan Frolic.” The event included the crowning of Queen Juno and Dan Cupid.

Dick Abram, a contestant in an old-time fiddle contest at what was then known as Priest Point Park, didn’t win first place (which would have earned him $10) or second (a new fiddle). Abram, an itinerant cabinet maker, was living in the old wooden Washington School at Legion and Eastside, the site of what is now the Old Armory. In fact, he lived there until construction workers nearly demolished the building before moving to Little Hollywood.

It was then that Abram became the unofficial “mayor” of Little Hollywood. He rallied shacktown residents to ensure they were counted in the 1940 census.

Though Abram wasn’t originally from Olympia, he was born outside Akron, Ohio, and had lived in Texas and Nova Scotia, he eventually made Olympia his home. He was widowed in 1932 while living in the city.

Abram’s life ended tragically on Christmas Day in 1943, when he was struck by a car near the corner of Fourth and Cherry, where city hall now is. His death was the culmination of years of hardship. As the “mayor” of Olympia’s largest and longest-standing homeless encampment, which was then known as a “shack town” or “Hooverville,” Abram’s life embodied the struggles faced by many during the Great Depression.

In 1937, Olympia residents began to push back against the presence of Little Hollywood. When a local real estate broker first complained about the shack town’s residents living on public land, the city attorney drafted an ordinance to remove them. However, it wasn’t until 1942 that Little Hollywood was completely cleared out, with its float houses and shacks burned to the ground. Abram was forced to move, and his new residence was an unknown address somewhere “north” of Olympia.

Then people started hitting Abram with their cars.

In the following year, 1943, while walking downtown, Abram was struck by a car being driven by another human twice. The second time he died. On Christmas Day, a 20-year-old driver didn’t to see Abram crossing the intersection. The driver turned himself in at the police station but was cleared by the coroner, who determined that Abram had stepped out too quickly and that the driver was not at fault.

Behind Abram’s death were civic efforts to disband Little Hollywood and to resist the construction of low-income housing in Olympia.

At the same time forces were aiming at Little Hollywood, the federal government had offered half a million dollars to fund housing, but Mayor Truman Trullinger and his “Olympia Housing Committee” rejected the offer. Three days later, Trullinger announced the final destruction of Little Hollywood. Despite acknowledging a housing shortage, especially for individuals like Abram, the city opted not to accept the federal funding.

Today, the events surrounding Dick Abram’s life, from his role in Little Hollywood to his death, are largely forgotten in Olympia’s collective memory. But the path taken by those involved, the fiddlers at the Pagan Frolic, the mayors, and the lost half-million dollars for public housing, shaped our community in ways we still feel today. This isn’t just a story about the ongoing struggle with homelessness; it’s a story about Abram’s journey through Olympia. He came to the city, found a home, led his community, and played the fiddle. He was removed by the city and died as a result of those circumstances, with a federal housing offer turned down by the very officials who could have given him a better future.

We’ll leave it there. We have enough discussions ahead about how we continue to avoid the tragic circumstances of Dick Abram’s death. But rest assured, there are still “Mayor Dick Abrams” in Olympia, because we have too much of “Mayor Truman Trullinger” in our community.

There was a contest in 1914 to design a new flag. No one said "the head of Washington."

The Washington State flag is deeply and historically bad and we should change it

February 15, 2025 / Emmett O'Connell / 26 Comments

Earlier this week, Representative Strom Peterson introduced House Bill 1938, which proposes a comprehensive process to redesign our state flag.

This bill closely aligns with the ideas I outlined a few months ago. Both proposals aim to replace our current flag, a design often criticized for its complexity, lack of relevance, and uninspired “seal-on-a-solid-color” format, with something more representative of who we are as a state today.

While the bill and my idea share a common purpose, they differ in execution. The legislative bill favors oversight by the Washington Arts Commission, while my proposal places leadership with the Secretary of State, which currently serves as the custodian of all our state symbols. In balance, it’s probably better for the arts community to lead the charge.

The Relative Privation Fallacy: Why Symbols Matter

As of this writing, I am only one of two people signed up to testify in favor of the bill. The balance is largely on the con (by almost 20).

I expect the strongest argument against this bill is that we have bigger problems and that revisiting our flag wastes the Legislature’s time. This is a classic example of the Relative Privation Fallacy, also known as the “Not as Bad as” fallacy or “Appeal to Worse Problems.”

This happens when someone argues that a problem shouldn’t be addressed because there are bigger or more serious problems elsewhere. It dismisses legitimate concerns by comparing them to other issues, rather than addressing them on their own merits.

For example:

“You need to eat the food on your plate; there are starving children in other countries.”
“How can you complain about the Seahawks’ running game when there’s visible homelessness?”

While prioritization is important, this argument falsely suggests that working on one issue means ignoring all others. In reality, multiple issues can (and should) be addressed simultaneously. It also rejects the idea that we can have nice things.

We all know that symbols matter. Without much prompting, we can all think of negative controversies about symbols.

If symbols didn’t matter, we wouldn’t worry about racists in Ohio waving Nazi flags on overpasses? No one would fly a Trump flag from their truck while honking annoyingly through downtown Olympia (This happens more often than you’d think) if symbols didn’t matter.

We can also think of positive relationships with flags:

When we went to the moon, we planted a flag.

Our national anthem is a song about a flag.

Establishing a broad-based, open, and public process to create a new flag that represents the entire state does not mean we’re ignoring all the other issues facing us.

Our Flag: Historically Uninspired and Not Our Own

Right now, Washington’s flag is uninspired. It was not the result of a broad public process but rather something we arrived at late, 34 years after statehood.

While state flags existed before the 1890s, it wasn’t until the Chicago World’s Fair that the state flag craze really took off. By the time Washington chose its flag in 1923, only four other states didn’t have one.

But arriving at things late is part of our history. We’re also in the habit of letting national symbols and decisions dominate us. A 1913 effort to establish a state flag commission was nixed because we didn’t want to overshadow the national flag.

Even the current design of the flag, adopted in 1915 and made official in 1923, reflects the fact that we didn’t even really choose our own name.

When the bill to create the new territory reached Congress in 1853, they overruled our local preference. Kentucky Representative Richard H. Stanton proposed an amendment to change the name from “Columbia” to Washington, in honor of George Washington. Stanton argued that naming the territory after a national hero would better reflect the nation’s (not the territory’s) ideals and unity. No one, it seems, suggested to Stanton that if he liked Washington so much, he should volunteer to change Kentucky’s name. Despite the lack of input from the people who actually lived in the region, Congress approved the amendment, and the territory was officially named Washington.

The imposition of “Washington” highlights a recurring theme in the region’s history: the tension between local autonomy and federal authority. While the name honors a national figure, its origins reflect a moment when the voices of the people living in the region were overlooked.

I’m not saying we need to go as far as changing the state’s name (that would be crazy! looks around), but we don’t need to underline it with a state flag.

You could almost say we’re fiercely ambivalent about the name and symbolism of our state. Because they were largely chosen by outsiders, we don’t focus on how our symbols could actually be important to us.

There’s a deep, hidden-in-plain-sight reason for this ambivalence. While Oregon and California became states before the Civil War, Washington maintained a “failure to launch” status for decades.

Washington spent more time as a territory than any other state in the lower 48. This extended period of territorial governance profoundly affected our development and identity. Unlike other territories that quickly transitioned to statehood, Washington’s path was slower and more complicated, shaped by geographic isolation, economic challenges, and political neglect.

Probably our best historian, Robert Ficken, argued that this prolonged territorial status fostered a sense of ambivalence among Washingtonians. Cut off from the rest of the country by the Rocky Mountains and lacking significant infrastructure, the territory was historically dominated by outside economic forces, generally from Chicago or California.

Ficken highlights that the push for statehood only gained serious momentum after the completion of the trans-Cascadian railroad in the 1880s. The railroad connected Washington to itself and the rest of the nation. Before this, the region’s internal isolation made it difficult to grow on our own without outside investment or assert our political voice.

If so many decisions were made outside of Washington State for us, why would we care?

State name? I’m sure there are bigger fish to fry.

Dumb state flag? Why do we need one? If we need one, who cares what it looks like? It makes sense that we’ve internalized not wanting anything nice of our own.

A Flag for the Future

So, the strongest argument for keeping the current flag is that it exists (we don’t need to expend any effort), that it’s old (seemingly historic), and that it accurately features the person our state is named after (Get it, Washington?). But even our state’s name was not our own choice. The flag serves as a reminder of that, but it doesn’t tell us anything about who we are today.

HB 1938 is not just a rejection of our current flag; it is an opportunity.

It gives us the chance to engage the public in a meaningful way and to choose a symbol that truly represents Washingtonians. Our state deserves a flag that is not just something we inherited, but something we can be inspired by.

Let’s seize this moment to create a flag that reflects the beauty, diversity, and spirit of Washington. After all, symbols matter, and so do we.