The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents September 2025 Rest, Recharge, Find Joy in Our PSARA Community and Resist Facism! In-Person Concert Featuring Janet Stecher, Mark Aalfs, and Peter Costantini Saturday, October 25th We are delighted to welcome back by popular demand PSARA members Janet, Mark, and Peter on October 25th from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. The concert will be held in the Beaumont Room of the Bay Vista Residential Tower on the sixth floor, 2821 2nd Avenue, Seattle, WA 98121. Appetizers and sparkling waters will be provided. Bring a dish to share if you would like. Janet, Mark, and Peter have played for us over the years and will once again lead us in song with some of our favorite tunes from the labor, peace, civil rights, and climate justice movements. Janet Stecher has been a figure in topical music in Seattle through her participation in the singing group Shays’ Rebellion, and in the duo Rebel Voices, with Susan Lewis. She conduct- ed the Seattle Labor Chorus since its founding in 1997 to 2019. She was also a longtime Board Member of the Pacific Northwest Labor History Association. Janet was a member of Musicians Local 76-493, and a recipient of the Joe Hill Award, granted by the Labor Heritage Foundation of Washington, DC. The award, named after labor organizer and songwriter Joe Hill, is a lifetime achievement award for persons who have contributed to the successful integration of arts and culture in the labor movement. It is granted to persons based on their dedication, participation, and promotion of labor, labor arts, culture, organizing, and/or history. Previous recipients include artists Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, Anne Feeney, and labor organizer Cesar Chavez. Mark was active in the late 1970s, volunteering to support the United Farmworkers. He spent four decades working in the energy industry, managing green power and green building programs. His greatest satisfaction has been working with the large community of energy efficiency and renewable energy workers and citizens of the Pacific Northwest to achieve historic levels of energy efficiency and renewable energy acquisition. For Mark, music has been a part of his life, always inspiring, energizing, and encouraging others to stand together for our social fabric and democracy. Peter arrived in Seattle from the East Coast in 1973. He Joined Mark and other bright lights of the Seattle protest music scene. He spent 20 years working construction and was active in two locals of the Laborers International Union. He was a founding member of the Seattle Tenants Union and sat on the executive board of the National Tenants Union. Peter spent most of his life involved with the immigrant justice movement, spent 20 years in the software industry, and at the same time was a journalist producing several specials on Mexico and Nicaragua for MSNBC News and later for Inter Press Service, a Roma-based non-profit newswire. We are joyful our PSARA family can be together again to sing along with Janet, Peter, and Mark and recharge ourselves to continue our fight against fascism. For more information, watch for PSARA email updates. If you don't get regular emails from PSARA, please email organizer@psara.org to get on our email list. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents April 2026 Capitol Outlook 2026 Pam Crone PSARA is celebrating a major advocacy win with the passage of SJM (Senate Joint Memorial) 8002. SJM 8002 sends a strong message to our federal leaders to level the playing field between Original Medicare and private Medicare Advantage plans. The measure passed the Senate with a unanimous vote, and the House followed with a strong 64–32 vote, including support from several Republicans. After being signed by the House Speaker and the President of the Senate, the memorial was sent to the Office of the Secretary of State. From there, it was officially transmitted to the President, Members of Congress, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services—delivering our state’s message directly to Washington, DC. And that message is simple: Medicare beneficiaries deserve a real choice in their healthcare. PSARA led the advocacy effort behind this measure, working with Senator Bob Hasegawa and state legislators to highlight the need to level the playing field between traditional Medicare and private, for-profit Medicare Advantage plans. We can do this by recouping the billions lost to overpayments, fraud, and abuse in Medicare Advantage and returning those funds to the Medicare Trust Fund. What SJM 8002 Calls For The Legislature is urging the federal government to level the playing field between Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage, so seniors and people with disabilities aren’t penalized for choosing traditional Medicare. Specifically, the memorial calls on the federal government to: End the 20 percent copay in Original Medicare and create a reasonable out-of-pocket cap on medical costs. Add dental, vision, and hearing benefits to Original Medicare—benefits already allowed in Medicare Advantage plans. Rein in excessive administrative costs and profits in Medicare Advantage. Recover billions lost to overpayments, fraud, and abuse in Medicare Advantage and return those funds to the Medicare Trust Fund to strengthen and improve Original Medicare. SJM 8002 gives PSARA another strong tool as we continue working with our Congressional delegation and organizing in our communities. We urge Congress to take up Level the Playing Field legislation and give Medicare Beneficiaries a real choice. A Few Last Words on the 2026 Legislative Session High drama marked the final days of the 2026 legislative session. Sine die on Thursday, March 12, ended a momentous session with the passage of a Millionaires Tax. PSARA has advocated for years for the introduction of an income tax to help right-size our regressive tax system. After the 24-plus hour debate, the House passed its version and sent it back to the Senate for final passage. The Governor seems comfortable with the bill as passed and will sign it. Kudos to all of you who have lobbied long and hard for this vast improvement to our tax code. The Millionaires Tax creates a 9.9 per-cent tax on household income above $1 million a year, impacting only the wealthiest households in our state—roughly 21,000 filers. It won’t take effect until January 1, 2028, with payments beginning in 2029, and the threshold will adjust with inflation. This tax will generate an estimated $3.5 to $4 billion each year to invest in the things Washington families actually need: schools, childcare, healthcare, and stronger communities. Before that can happen, there will be litigation and a likely initiative, either this year or next, to repeal it. PSARA will be joining allies to defend the tax over the coming months. The Legislature released its final Operating Budget on 3/11. Overall, the final budget spends $80.2 billion in general funds. Check out the PSARA website for a final tally of our legislative wins and losses. Much work lies ahead. Please join us for a virtual session wrap-up and look ahead on May 27 at 1 p.m. Pam Crone is a retired lobbyist and Chair of PSARA's Government Relations Committee. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents January 2026 Fossil Fuels Have Put Us in an Existential Fix Jefl Johnson “The Oil and gas industry makes $3 billion a day in pure profit. Generates over $4.3 trillion dollars a year in revenue. It is the seventh largest industry in the world ranked above food production, automobile production, coal mining, and at $1.4 trillion, the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t even crack the top ten. The industries listed above oil and gas are completely dependent on oil and gas. The more they grow, the more we grow. That’s the scale, that’s the size of this thing.” This is the opening monologue by the independent oilman character, Tommy Norris, played by Billy Bob Thornton, in the Taylor Sheridan‘s TV production, “Landman”. Exact numbers or not, they are staggering. And the amount of climate and species damage caused by fossil fuels is even more staggering. Since the signing of the Paris Climate Accord in 2016, the world’s major banks have lent approximately $7.9 trillion dollars to the fossil fuel industry, 20 percent of which has gone toward fossil fuel exploration and expansion. These numbers are real and are also staggering. In December 2024, one month prior to Trump’s second inauguration, six major U.S. banks (JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs) withdrew from the United Nations sponsored net zero banking alliance. This gives new meaning to Trump’s expression “burn, baby burn.” As our planet gets hotter every year, the interest on our credit card payments, our checking and savings accounts, and our pension funds are financing climate disaster. Can we do something about this? Yes. Should we do something about it? Absolutely! Easy first steps are to bank on the community level. We can do our banking and get our credit cards from credit unions, financial companies that don’t loan money or buy the debt of fossil fuel companies. But if we really want to make a difference, we can organize around getting our private and public pension funds to stop investing our pension dollars in fossil fuel assets. We can organize around getting the Washington State Investment Board (WSIB) to stop investing the 18 pension funds they oversee in fossil fuel assets. While the WSIB makes it difficult to precisely identify how much of their assets are invested in fossil fuels, a reasonable estimate is $6-8 billion directly invested in fossil fuels and at least as much in indexed funds that contain fossil fuel investments. All told, somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-7% of the WSIB portfolio. Why is it so important to divest, or to use a less pejorative financial term "rebalance," WSIB assets out of fossil fuels? Right out of the chute, fossil fuel assets continue to underperform the overall stock market. Since the end of the last bear market, October 2022, the Standard and Poor index of funds grew by 92 percent, while fossil fuels pulled up the rear at 17 percent. You don’t need to be a math major to understand that our pension assets would earn more money if they weren’t invested in fossil fuels. But given the real and palpable urgency of reducing carbon emissions and slowing down and reversing climate disaster, if a well-respected fund like the WSIB rebalanced their portfolio out of fossil fuels it would send a clear message to other institutional investors that you can earn great returns while also protecting our planet. Not too shabby of a rationale. As a species, humans are great at making excuses not to do something. Particularly when billionaires and their representatives tell us there is a better way. Engage, they say, don’t divest. A cursory reading of the history of the corporate response to asbestos and cigarettes should be fair warning. Simply engaging corporations in a discussion around lowering carbon emissions will kill us on a grander scale than anything we have known before. Climate disaster is the greatest existential crisis there is. The situation that we are in right now recalls for me two sayings I am quite fond of. The first by our dear friend Michael Righi, recently passed, who used to say “every billionaire is a policy failure.” We have to stop taking our advice from people who benefited the most from extractive industries and who will be the least impacted by climate disaster. The second is by humorist and social commentator Will Rogers. Rogers used to say, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Acknowledging that fossil fuel investments have put us in an existential fix is a first step. Now it’s time to stop making it worse, time to stop digging! Over the next several months I will continue to research and write about ending the financing of climate change. In the meantime, if you are persuaded by this article or the group of essays I wrote last year, “Protecting our Assets, Protecting Our Asses”(visit our website at psara.org and click the image on our homepage) then please write letters, emails, or postcards to our political leaders (Governor, Lt. Governor, State Treasurer, Director of Labor and Industries) and to our union leaders and tell them it is time to act. Jeff Johnson is Co-President of PSARA and a retired President of the Washington State Labor Council < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents July 2025 The “Big, Ugly, Cruel Bill” Michael Righi The actual name for Trump’s domestic policy bill is One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). It is hard to imagine the sycophancy of Republicans, who named it that in order to please our Dear Leader. The bill is not finalized yet, and there are still some differences between the House and Senate versions, but Republicans have crafted it with a variety of gimmicks so that it can be passed on a majority vote with narrow Republican majorities in both houses. A War on the Public Good It is a tax cut bill for the rich, but it’s much more than that. Buried within its more than a thousand pages is the right-wing plan for the future, a war on the public good. Public institutions, collective care for the planet and each other – all of that is to be flattened. There are too many examples. What follows are just a few. Start with the militarization of immigration policy, which we are seeing in the news and on our streets daily. It started with ICE performative cruelty; the bill would add $150 billion to Stephen Miller’s mass deportation campaign. That’s 10,000 more masked and armed ICE goons and a massive increase in detention facilities. That is a police state intruding into our communities. Funding tax credits for clean energy or tax cuts for the wealthy? It’s clear what has to go. Not only will OBBBA cut clean energy programs, it would grant a tax break to oil and gas companies, essentially exempting them from a corporate minimum tax. The bill establishes as a goal to have school voucher programs in every state, despite the fact that these have been voted down several times, even in deep red states. Despite being pushed and funded by institutions like the Gates Foundation, studies of voucher schools prove they underperform public schools. Is that the point, to punish poor and working class families? There’s more, but let’s get to the tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. OBBBA mainly extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, plus some “lipstick on a pig” additional cuts for overtime pay and tips. The bill slashes Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps, cuts that fall overwhelmingly on working class families. This is unprecedentedly ugly. Past Republican-sponsored tax cuts favored the wealthy and increased inequality. But they didn’t actually take from the poor. The OBBBA benefit cuts reduce the income of the poorest by about $2,000 per year while raising the income of the richest 10% by $12,000. The decline in well-being likely for the lower half of the income distribution would then be similar to a severe recession. Low-income folks are even worse off when tariffs, which are also regressive, are factored in. This is how Republicans are becoming the “party of the working class”. They will piss on you, and explain that it’s raining. And it’s your fault. The Yale School of Public Health estimates that OBBBA will lead to 51,000 additional deaths annually. Debts and Deficits Republican claims that tax cuts will unleash economic growth and so raise tax revenue are complete hogwash; no study, not one, has found any validity in trickle-down economics. That’s just more rain. Reliable analysis of OBBBA predicts it will raise the national debt by somewhere between $3 and $6 tril- lion over the next decade. That’s a wide range, but of course there is a lot of uncertainty. Let’s review some principles. Having the government spend more than it gets in revenue (run a budget deficit) was crucial in 2008, to prevent the financial crisis from becoming a depression. It was crucial in 2020 when COVID shut down the economy. It would also be great if it funded investments in clean energy, schooling, housing or infrastructure. But running deficits to fund tax cuts for the already wealthy? That is what has been happening for the last 45 years, driven by the demands of the rich unwilling to pay even modest taxes. Are deficits and debt becoming a problem? Yes. Bond investors are going to require higher interest rates to lend to the government. Interest costs are becoming a larger and larger part of the government’s budget. Higher interest rates are going to make it harder to buy a house or car, or for governments and firms to build climate investments. Usually it is Republicans who are the “debt scolds”; they use fear of debt to oppose social programs. If they were really worried about debt, they would go after tax cheats (that’s $600 billion a year) and refuse further tax cuts for the rich. But they won’t. They are hypocrites. Will the Trump clown show have serious consequences for the economy? Will ‘the bond market” get nervous about debt and restrain the orgy of tax cutting? It’s not clear yet, but it would surely be a lot better if OBBBA were trashed. That is what would happen in a democracy. Michael Righi is a retired economics professor and a member of the Retiree Advocate editorial board. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents February 2025 Make Crypto Great Again Michael Righi Who bought the 2024 election? We all know about Elon Musk. But there was another huge source of election cash – cryptocurrency (it’s not really currency) firms and their wealthy owners. Crypto Political Action Committees (PACs) spent $265 million on the elec- tion, the most of any “industry.” What did they get for their money? FairShake, a crypto PAC, helped defeat critic Katie Porter in the California Democratic primary. FairShake, along with AIPAC, helped defeat progressives Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman in their primaries. Crypto money’s biggest win was taking down Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, the Democratic leader on the Senate Banking Committee. They also helped Trump, who, back in the day, derided crypto as “thin air,” But recognizing a good scam, Trump and family are now all in. Besides Musk, Trump is surrounding himself with crypto parasites, from J.D. Vance to Paul Atkins (SEC appointee) and Howard Lutnick (Commerce). And who knew we needed an AI and Crypto Czar (David Sacks)? Rug Pulls and Wash Trading If it’s not currency, what is it? Currency, or money, is a social construct we have developed to buy and sell things and services. This may sound weird, but money is based on trust – trust that the bank where you deposited your pay will make payments when you write a check (old school) or use a card or a digital payment system. Or trust that the government will accept payment in the currency it prints and make depositors whole if a bank goes belly-up. In addition, the central bank will rescue the financial system as a whole if private banks or finance institutions threaten a collapse or depression. That’s what happened in 2008. Neo- liberal deregulation allowed bankers to create and speculate (“innovate,” they call it) on a whole slew of risky financial derivatives. These crashed in value, and the private banks were bailed out by central banks buying their bad assets. Financial fraud was revealed, but no one went to jail. Banks and bankers were bailed out, and homeowners were not. So in 2008, a private group created Bitcoin, a digital currency that was supposed to bypass the corrupt top-down financial institutions and allow users to make payments directly to each other. Did that work? Well, not really. Extremely complicated computer verification of transactions makes it impossible to use crypto to buy a cup of coffee or your groceries. It is not money. But hundreds and thousands of companies now issue cryptocurrency and crypto tokens. So what are they? They are “investments” of a very peculiar kind. They are not shares of stock in a company that produces or owns some thing. They are just pieces of digital code that are being traded back and forth in what is a gambling economy. Crypto shills said it would go up in value forever. Influencers pushed it. This became a perfect opportunity for fraudsters to create a token, get inter- net posters to push it, then pull the rug out by selling at the top, leaving small investors to take the loss. Or buy and sell tokens back and forth from one account to another, driving up values, then getting out. Casino Capitalism Covid meant too many folks were isolated in front of their computer screens, trying to make the big score. This culminated in the Super Bowl ads of 2022, with Matt Damon and Kim Kardashian helping to push crypto to $3 trillion. Then, the inevitable crash came in May of that year and wiped out $2 trillion of that value. Of course, the “whales” were not wiped out; smaller investors were. From 2015 to 2022, 75 percent of crypto investors lost money. Speculative investments enrich only the already wealthy. We do have to recognize what crypto actually is good for. Because crypto holdings are pseudo-anonymous, trans- actions are hidden. So it is useful to opioid traffickers, tax avoiders, money launderers, ransomware hackers, gun runners, and anyone trying to avoid international sanctions. We have plenty of reasons to want to limit crypto and its scammers and criminals. But crypto businesses want more, and the incoming administration is poised to give it to them. They want “light-touch” regulation that would mainstream them. They do not want to be prosecuted for fraud, as many of them should be. They want crypto to be designated as a special asset, not a security with all the investor protections that implies. With very light legitimizing regulation, they could draw in millions from our pension funds and other traditional investment funds. That would mean their booms and crashes and fraud would have a more significant impact on the traditional financial system, the one we use. Yes, we need to reform that system with stricter regulation and new initiatives like postal accounts and public banks. But we also have to protect it from fraudsters and casino capitalists. Michael Righi is a retired economics professor and a member of the Retiree Advocate Editorial Board. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents March 2025 Protecting our Assets and Protecting Our Asses Jeff Johnson "We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks, and dead ideas. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.” Arundhati Roy, “The pandemic is a portal,” Financial Times, April 3, 2020 Novelist Arundhati Roy likens the Covid pandemic to a portal which allows us the opportunity to make the same mistakes again and again or to envision a new world where we listen to and fight for our better angels. I believe her poignant imagery and prose brilliantly describe the choice we have facing climate change. Scientists have discovered five past catastrophic events in our history where the diversity of life has plummeted - five periods of species extinction. Given the current rate of species decline and cataclysmic climate disasters, some are arguing that we are entering the Sixth Extinction. The question is, are we just doomed? Or can we mitigate climate change? I believe that if we act thoughtfully, focus on the common good, and act with sufficient urgency, we can go through the climate portal fighting for an equitable, just, and sustainable economy and world. “Protecting Our Assets and Protecting Our Asses” is the first in a series of articles makingthe case for divesting from fossil fuel assets and investing in Green New Deal solutions. The Challenge In January 2016, fresh from being part of the US labor delegation to the Paris Climate Accords, I testified before the Washington State House Environmental Committee, saying that “climate change is an existential crisis.” Speaking as president of the Washington State Labor Council,AFL-CIO, I received raised eyebrows by a number of committee members and a few knowing nods from others. Eight years later, the horrifying devastation caused by hurricanes Helene and Milton in the Southeast and the multiple forest fires around Los Angeles should have convinced even the most skeptical among us that human-caused climate change poses an existential threat to life as we know it. Never, in our lifetimes, has the planet issued such a clear and resounding clarion call to do something. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that we are being told to leave fossil fuels in the ground; to make massive investments in non-fossil fuel renewable energy sources; to electrify our transportation infrastructure; to practice large scale regenerative agriculture; to invest in systemic energy retrofits to public and private buildings; and to figure out a global plan to address the accelerating climate refugee crisis. Unprecedented crises require unprecedented changes. We should invest in Green New Deal projects as if there were literally no tomorrow. Because if we don’t, our tomorrows will be pretty bleak. The Benefit Washington State Initiative 1631 was an attempt to go through the climate portal in an equitable, just, and sustainable way. Had 1631 passed, about $1.5 to $2.0 billion of clean energy projects a year would have been decided by a majority vote of environmental justice, labor, tribal, and environmental community leaders. These projects would have created tens of thousands of jobs with high labor standards – project labor agreements, prevailing wages, apprenticeship utilization standards, and local hire provisions. The initiative would also have created a “Just Transition” fund providing wage replacement, health care and pension benefits, and retraining benefits to displaced workers, keeping both workers and communities whole during the transition period. And of course, carbon emissions would have dramatically fallen, and there would have been no dubious carbon offsets to deal with. What Else Initiative 1631 was defeated by over $30 million contributed by the fossil fuel industry to sway the vote, and by not enough people recognizing the threat that climate change poses to our jobs, income, lives, and property. What has become increasingly clear is that climate change is a job killer, a budget killer, and a species killer. Every additional dollar invested in fossil fuels contributes to arable land becoming increasingly scarce; shrinking fresh water reserves; a further loss of jobs, lives, and property; and tens of millions of climate refugees fleeing for their lives. There is a moral imperative to divest from fossil fuels, since every dollar in- vested in fossil fuels accelerates climate disaster. There is an economic and budgetary imperative to divest from fossil fuels, since every dollar spent cleaning up climate disasters is a dollar not spent on education, health care, addressing poverty and inequality, affordable housing, or public safety. This, of course, translates into thousands of lost jobs and a declining quality of life for most of us. There is a fiscal imperative to divest from fossil fuels, since fossil fuels are consistently underperforming other assets. Sometime in the future, fossil fuel assets will become stranded assets. Financial prudence should, if nothing else, dictate replacing underperforming fossil fuel assets with climate-affirming assets with a promise of higher returns. I have hope that in Washington State we are prescient and bold enough to go through the climate portal by investing in the clean energy economy as if there were no tomorrow. We should dramatically reduce our public and private consumption of fossil fuels and divest our state funds and public and private union pension funds from fossil fuels as well. There is still time left to make good choices. How about we save our assets and our asses at the same time. Jeff Johnson is a former President of the Washington State Labor Council and the Co-President of PSARA. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents March 2025 Behind the Scenes of the WA Coal Act Mary Lou Dickerson and Barbara Carey The Washington Coal Act, SB 5439, is now in the Senate Ways and Means Committee and is unlikely to progress towards passage this year. The Act re- quires our state’s public pension board, the WSIB, to divest from coal and stop making new investments in coal as well. We should not be surprised or disappointed. Significant bills very often take a few years to pass, and this bill has already gathered unexpectedly broad and enthusiastic support during this difficult session. It generated thousands of supportive emailsto senators and developed a coalition of 10 active organizations backing it. We have made huge progress. Bills have a two-year life span. We will take that time to continue to build support and understanding of the need to divest fromthis deadly, dirty, energy source that contributes to climate change throughout the world, including right here in Washington. We will use the interim to raise important issues and question some of the WSIB's claims to legislators. We are enormously thankful to Senator Noel Frame (D-36), who sponsored the Washington Coal Act with six co-sponsors during thecurrent legislative session. The Board provided input to Senator Frame after the bill was introduced, claiming that the WSIB had only $119 million invested incoal and had reduced its exposure to coal from 0.33 percent in 2012 to 0.07percent in 2024. The chair of the Ways and Means Committee’s legislative assistant sent an email to some of the bill proponents saying Sen. Robinson would not be scheduling ahearing for the bill because the WSIB is reducing its coal investments and will probably continue to do so. Unfortunately, the method used by the WSIB to classify coal holdings only takes into account companies whose primary sourceof revenue is thermal coal, according to the MSCI Global Industry Standards Classification (GCIS). This method eliminates giantconglomerates whose huge coal operations may, nevertheless, be dwarfed by their other trading businesses. In contrast, the Global Coal Exit List (GCEL), used in the proposed WA Coal Act, is internationally recognized and used byinvestors, banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and asset management companies around the world to get a clear viewof major coal operations worldwide. Investors representing almost $20 trillion in assets use the GCEL to evaluate theirinvestments. The GCEL turns up $2.6 billion in WSIB coal investments. That’s 24 times more than the WSIB counts in its coal holdings! The GCIS used by the WSIB makes it almost impossible to track substantial coal investments, while the GCEL provides a clear,annually updated status of major coal operations. The WSIB representative also posed the argument to Senator Frame, in an email opposing the WA Coal Act, that some WSIB coal investments “fall in the category of ‘brown-to-green’ investments, whereby companies are actively transitioning fromgreenhouse gas-in- tensive energy production or consumption to renewable energy sources.” WSIB’s example of such an investment, NTPC Ltd, is the largest power company in India – mainly coal-fired plants! That’s a bitshocking. NTPC’s generating capacity of 71 gigawatts is equivalent to 92 Centralia coal plants. While it claims to be adding 60 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2032, it is currently its coal production by the equivalent of 11 Centralia coal plants – not including its many subsidiaries. That certainly doesn't sound like a brown to green investment. The Washington Legislature passed the Clean Energy Transition Act in 2019, which bans the use of coal for energy inWashington after 2025. How is it that a state agency completely stonewalls against the intentions of the Legislature byrefusing to even acknowledge that there are ways it could better align with climate policies and simultaneously up theirgame in complying with their fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of their beneficiaries? This is not politics, this is prudence. Pensions are tasked with acting in the long-term best interest of beneficiaries, not makingshort-term gambles. Coal is dying out in the US and is being replaced by much less expensive renewables. Coal is not a good long-term investment. The long-term outlook for US coal is a steady downward trend. According to the Institute for Energy and Economic FinancialAnalysis (IEEFA), it’s possible that all the remaining US coal capacity could be shuttered by 2040. Britain, where the first coal plant was built in 1882, has already closed its last coal plant. Coal produces more green-housegases than any other energy form – not to mention toxic emissions that researchers estimate have caused 460,000 prematuredeaths in the US between 1999 and 2020. Fiduciary duty is a hallmark of the WA Coal Act. The WSIB is good at making investments with healthy returns. California andOregon have both passed coal divestment bills. CalPERS’ returns increased nearly $600 million in 2022 according to Wilshire, CalPERS’ consultant. Moving $2.6 billion from coal over 3-5 years into other investments is not a large ask for WSIB’s $200 billion portfolio. Many thanks to all the PSARA members who wrote to their senators about this significant issue. We ask you to continue toadvocate with us as we move forward toward passage. Mary Lou Dickerson is a former Washington State Representative, PSARA member, and Third Act Washington Policy Lead. Barbara Carey is a Divest Washington co-leader, PSARA member, and Washington State PERS3 Retiree. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents January 2026 Book Review: The Trees are Speaking: Dispatches from the Salmon Forests, by Lynda V. Mapes Lisa Dekker Recent efforts in Clallam County, and elsewhere, to protect our remaining legacy forests from logging, led me to this recently published book. Per Stephen Kropp, founder of the Center for Responsible Forestry, coined the term, ‘legacy forest’ means a “naturally regrown, mature forest that preserves the biological, functional, and structural legacies of the forests they replaced.” Although not everyone respects this relatively new term, we know that there are other legacy forests scattered throughout the publicly-owned lands in Washington, managed by the Department of Natural Resources. In fact, these legacy forests already have great value as they cool the air, hold carbon, and harbor wildlife. Precisely why these forests matter is eloquently described in the first part of Mapes’ book as she travels to regions in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. Through interviews on site and forest walks with luminaries like Dr. Jerry Franklin, often called the "father of modern forestry" through his work at the University of Washington, we learn how research has radically changed our understanding in the space of just 60 years. Likely due to their dark understories with little sun, older forests with big trees went from once being described as “biological deserts,” to currently being recognized as the complex, life-giving, carbon-capturing, watershed- preserving treasures we know them to be today. In the chapter titled “Salmon Forests,” she travels for a week among both the remaining healthy forests and the desolate clearcuts of Vancouver Island, with Teresa Ryan (traditional name Sm’hayetsk) an indigenous knowledge and natural science lecturer at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and Susan Simard, an eminent forest ecologist, also at UBC. Both Ryan and Simard are part of the Mother Tree Project, a crew of researchers looking at the changes in soils, especially the decline in the amount of carbon in soils of areas that have been clearcut. Simard has also led the project’s deep dive into examining the richly complex soils of the uncut forests, bringing insight into how the trees connect via the mycorrhizal fungi network between them. Also evidence of the value of older forests are the proven, "sustainable" traditions of the Tribes, stewards of these lands and forests for centuries before colonization. Their practices and protocols recognized that care for the forests meant that the forests would care for them. New evidence for this appeared in a paper published in 2022, based on an archeologic study done in the land of the Nuun-chah-nulth peoples of British Columbia, (whose family ties and culture extend down to the Makah reservation in northwest Clallam County.) Botanists and archaeologists found that “old growth trees [still there] are witnesses” to the fact that these people were more than hunter-gatherers and that they “took care of and managed…forest gardens abundant with crab apples, berry patches, and wild rice root crops.” At the same time, because they stripped off only narrow pieces of cedar bark for shelter and clothing, these same cedar trees lived on for centuries. In the preface, Mapes declares that “The need for a paradigm shift is readily apparent.” After presenting data and real-world accounts to justify that shift, she ends with examples of successful restoration projects, new ideas for community solutions, and a belief in the potential for people to change their way of thinking. This should encourage the reader to hope, as does the author, for a “new ethos of conservation, based on reciprocity and respect in our relations with one another, and with nature.” < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents June 2026 Louisiana v. Callais: The Supreme Court, Jim Crow, and Voting Rights Anne Watanabe On April 29, the US Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais , eviscerating the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The VRA was enacted in 1965 to protect voters from racially discriminatory election practices. After the ruling, Louisiana Governor Landry ordered immediate suspension of an ongoing primary election for a House seat; the state senate plans to eliminate one of the Black-majority districts. At the time of writing, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia were redrawing or planning to redraw voting district maps, no longer constrained by the VRA. The Callais decision will have major impacts on the midterm elections and beyond. To fully comprehend this decision, it’s helpful to review the VRA’s history and purpose. In 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified, prohibiting federal and state governments from denying or abridging a citizen’s right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” But a Jim Crow nation quickly resurrected barriers for Black voters, ranging from poll taxes to violent mobs. After the horrific attack on civil rights marchers on Bloody Sunday in Selma in 1964, President Johnson signed the VRA into law on August 6, 1965. The federal government immediately began enforcing the VRA. States, particularly in the south where nonwhite voters were in the majority, created new maps that reflected racial populations. The VRA includes two sections, Sections 2 and 5, that were once powerful weapons protecting voting rights. Section 5 included a “preclearance” provision requiring states with a history of racially discriminatory voting restrictions to submit changes to election laws or electoral district maps to the federal government for review. These “covered” states were required to show the changes were not discriminatory. In its 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder , the Court nullified Section 5. It concluded that gaps in turnout between Black and white voters had narrowed, rendering invalid the formula used to determine which states were covered. The justices pointed to high Black voter turnouts in 2008 and 2012, conveniently ignoring the possibility that the candidacy of President Barack Obama had driven Black voter turnout rates to high levels. A Brennan Center study found that the turnout gap greatly increased in the 10 years following the Shelby decision in the formerly covered states. Section 2 prohibits race-based vote dilution, meaning states may not create district maps depriving a group of nonwhite voters of an equal opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. In 2022, the state was successfully sued by voters who argued that Louisiana was “packing” Black voters into a single voting district and diluting their votes - the 2020 census showed that Black Louisianans comprised one-third of the state’s population. The state redrew its map in 2024 to create a second Black-majority voting district. A group of white voters challenged that map, leading to the Callais decision. The Court concluded that the 2024 map violated the Constitution by taking race into account, and that the VRA did not authorize this consideration. Justice Alito, writing for the majority, proclaimed that Section 2 required a showing that the state “intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.” Regardless of a map’s impacts on nonwhite voters, a challenge which “cannot disentangle race from the state’s race-neutral considerations, including politics" will fail. In other words, unless state officials confess that their intent is to disenfranchise nonwhite voters (rather than other political groups), no relief is available. Callais now makes it nearly impossible to enforce Section 2. Southern states are redrawing their voting maps, but the gutting of the VRA runs deeper than federal seats in southern states. State and local offices, school boards, etc., are all affected. In Washington State, GOP lawmakers seek to undo a map redrawn pursuant to a court ruling that an older map diluted Latino votes. Washington enacted a state voting rights act in 2018, and last session, the Washington Legislature passed a preclearance law. But it is at least arguable that under Callais , such laws could be challenged as being racially discriminatory. What can we do? There are no easy answers, but the threat to our democracy is immediate. Increasing voter turnout, especially in states redrawing their maps to weaken nonwhite votes, is essential. Civil rights groups, including the NAACP, ACLU, and others, are filing lawsuits to overturn “Jim Crow” redistricting. Please stay informed and engaged in state and national efforts to protect the right to vote. PSARA will alert members to these efforts, and we welcome your ideas and participation. And for now, our board members, civil rights leaders Larry and Rhonda Gossett, advise us all to “Keep hope alive!” Anne Watanabe is Chair of PSARA's Race and Gender Equity (RaGE) Committee. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents March 2025 Trump Revives Gunboat Diplomacy Mike Andrew In a rambling inaugural address, Don- ald Trump denounced the US-Panama treaty that turned over the Panama Canal toPanamanian sovereignty. “We have been treated very badly from this foolish gift that should never have been made,” Trump said. “And Panama’s promiseto us has been broken. The purpose of our deal and the spirit of our treaty has been totally violated,” Trump claimed as he threatened to take backcontrol of the canal by force. "The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation,” he continued, “one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.” Earlier this month, Trump doubled down on his aggressive threats against Panama. “China is running the Panama Canal that was not given to China, that was given to Panama foolishly, but they violated theagreement, and we’re go- ing to take it back, or something very powerful is going to happen,” Trump told reporters on February2. Consciously or not, Trump’s remarks hark back to the era of Teddy Roosevelt, the granddaddy of US imperialism, and foundingfather of the Panama Canal. Roosevelt was a protégé of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, the theoretician of US naval power. Mahan envisioned a US strategicallyprotected by an enormous navy controlling the oceans that bordered it on east and west. Mahan and Roosevelt noticed that US warships took too long to sail from their bases on the east coast, around the southern tipof South America, to the Philippine theater of the Spanish American War. This observation led them to take an interest in aFrench project to build a canal through Central America, linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Wouldn’t it be great, theysaid to themselves, if US warships took only half as long to sail to newly acquired US colonies in the Pacific! When Roosevelt unexpectedly became President in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley, he decided to buy out theFrench company that had been working – with very little success – on the canal. After that, the only remaining hurdle was theapproval of the local government. Panama was then a province of Colombia, so the US began negotiations for rights to build a canal and install troops to occupy landon both sides of the project. Roosevelt deemed this necessary because his primary interest in the canal was military. The canal was intended to be the US Navy’s primary communications link between its Atlantic and Pacific fleets, and therefore the USmilitary had to control it. Colombia, however, had other ideas. The Colombian government showed little enthusiasm for foreign troops permanentlyoccupying part of its sovereign territory. The canal negotiations stalled on this point. Roosevelt was not deterred by petty problems like national sovereignty. The US made contacts with Panamanian secessionists and, with the intervention of US warships and marines, sponsored a new, independent Panama. Needless to say, the new Panamaniangovernment signed the desired treaty giving the US rights to the canal and the so-called “Canal Zone.” Fast forward 75 years to 1977.Panama, now a long-established independent country, resented the contin- ued presence of UStroops bisecting its territory. At the same time, technological advances – especially the introduction of aircraft – made the canalroute far less important militarily than it had been in 1903. Therefore, Jimmy Carter saw a political benefit in returning the Canal Zone to Panama, with no corresponding militarydownside. The two countries concluded a treaty to transfer the canal to Panama that took effect in 1999. What does Donald Trump hope to gain by threatening to take back the canal? Maybe he just wants to look like a tough guy inhopes of pleasing his MAGA audience. Maybe he hopes to intimidate other countries into falling in line with his foreign policy.Maybe he wants to provoke a small scale war to justify suppressing domestic dissent. In any case, Trump's reversion to the gunboat diplomacy of a bygone era benefits no one, certainly not the Panamanian people,and not the people of the US either. Mike Andrew is the Executive Director of PSARA and Editor of the Advocate < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents August 2026 JCIJ and the Incredible Accompaniment Program An Interview with Dina Burstein and Dick Stein, Part 2 Bobby Righi and Angie Bartels Riverton Park United Methodist Church During the Biden administration, a huge number of immigrants were coming into the Seattle area to already overcrowded homeless shelters. Word got out that a church in Tukwila would accept immigrants and they would find them a place to sleep in a tent or on the floor of the social hall. Late one night, Jen, a Seattle police and community resource officer, found a couple in downtown Seattle wandering the streets with no place to go. She knew of the church, so she brought them there. People started appearing at the church seeking shelter. Some people had a scrap of paper with the church’s address scribbled on it, and they would just appear. The numbers of immigrants arriving at the Riverton Church grew and grew until there were tents set up all over the grounds and people were sleeping in every nook and cranny. There were hundreds of people on site and it developed into an unhealthy situation which was not sustainable. The City of Tukwila was not pleased with what was happening at Riverton and began passing ordinances limiting the number of people allowed on site. These ordinances did not name the church specifically, but it was obvious what they intended. The health department also got involved but basically did nothing. Volunteers from JCIJ (Jewish Coalition for Immigrant Justice) and other groups in the private sector stepped in and began providing resources to meet the migrants’ needs and prevent the situation at Riverton from being an absolute disaster. People in support of the church and the immigrants worked really hard and finally got money from the county and the state. Many volunteers, including Jen from the SPD, were working more than full time supporting the Riverton program, while doing their own full-time jobs. Pastor Jan Bolerjack was working day and night to make the community sustainable and healthy. JCIJ members helped pull together volunteers to enroll the children in school and help with homework. It was a massive operation. JCIJ tried to fill in wherever they saw needs arise. They recruited legal volunteers, some of whom were immigration attorneys, to provide free legal services to the hundreds of people living at Riverton. From that came a monthly asylum clinic and a weekly Monday clinic, for help completing immigration forms, all staffed and organized by volunteers. Riverton Church, all the while, was really kicking butt organizing for the community members (CMs) living there. Getting government support was a long and arduous process so several non-profit organizations and volunteers helped to fill the immediate needs. The makeup of the Tukwila City Council changed over time so JCIJ had some supporters there, as well as on the county council and in the state government. A massive organizing effort resulted in funding for housing so the hundreds of people living at the church could be relocated to hotel rooms and eventually apartments. It was an incredible community of people taking action to care for the immigrants and JCIJ was there through it all. JCIJ Grows Dick said he sometimes felt impatient at the slow pace but, “It was well-thought-out from the beginning, and we’ve been able to grow and develop as the program moves along”. About a year and a half ago, Dina was the sole Dispatcher, there was one person doing Intakes for Spanish speakers and Dina did all of the others - Angolan, Congolese, etc. As the number of accompaniment requests grew, it became clear that more people were needed for Dispatch and many more for Intake. “So we began defining roles,” Dina said. “We increased the number of Dispatch volunteers to five and Intake volunteers increased to five also. The number of volunteers in Intake has increased even more and our definition of each role continues to evolve as we get feedback from the volunteers and as ICE changes its strategy.” “Today we have a paid executive director, one half-time person and another person working 80%. The half-time person is acting as the lead Dispatcher and all of them are doing an amazing job,” Dina said. “We have non-profit status and the vast majority of our funding comes from private donations.” “We have to respond to changing ICE tactics”, Dina continued. “ICE agents used to come to court, now they don’t. They then instituted a program called pretermission which canceled asylum applications and sends immigrants to third countries like El Salvador to apply for asylum. El Salvador has no asylum program so immigrants may be sent to prison. Now DHS has stopped filing new pretermission cases, but they are prosecuting the cases already in process. DHS has also raised the fees for work permits, new asylum applications and their yearly renewal. They constantly roll out changes that we have to deal with. Fortunately, we have a dedicated team of immigration lawyers who stick with us and teach us about these changes. We then take that new information and incorporate it into how we’re preparing the CM, or how the CM could respond in court.” “Volunteers who can roll with that kind of development stay in the program,” Dina and Dick explained. “The process is not static and we continue to tweak things here and there as needed. But what hasn’t changed since working with the Church Council are the values and principles that guide the way we interact with people, with each other, volunteers, and CMs, so that respect and love is communicated. We believe it is very important to truly listen to the CM and allow the CM to be in charge while we follow their lead, realizing and respecting the amazing pluck, courage and suffering that it took for them to get to where they are and to communicate that consistently. We spend a tremendous amount of time training new volunteers about cultural humility, allowing the voice of the CM to be first. And that will never change.” Bobby Righi is Co-Chair of PSARA's Climate and Environmental Commitee. Angie Bartels is PSARA's Membership VP Dina Burstein and Dick Stein are PSARA members. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents December 2025 We Remember Linda Warren Sadly, we have to report that Linda Warren, wife of our long-time PSARA Executive Board member Mike Warren, passed away on October 23. PSARA members will remember her accompanying Mike to all the PSARA events. She was, as Mike said, “always there.” If we were fortunate enough to sit by her at PSARA sing-alongs, we remember she had a lovely voice. When she attended Smith College, she sang in their Glee Club, touring Europe with them. Later, Linda sang in the choirs of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, Seattle First Baptist Church, and Temple De Hirsch. She even joined a medieval madrigal group, Pastime Singers. Linda earned a BA in psychology from Smith College, a Masters in Social Work from the UW, and worked for more than 40 years as a dedicated social worker at Harborview and Highline hospitals. Through this work, she met Mike, and eventually they married. Deepest sympathies to Mike and all the Warren family. < Back to Table of Contents