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The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents September 2025 We Remember Michael Righi Mike Andrew, Karen Richter, Robby Stern Michael Righi, member of the Retiree Advocate Editorial Board, veteran activist, and retired economics professor, died in July. His passing is a huge loss for PSARA and the Retiree Advocate, and a person- al loss for his many friends in and out of PSARA. PSARA sends our deepest condo- lences to Bobby Righi, an equally great activist, writer, and friend. Below, some PSARA leaders who worked closely with Michael share memories of him. Mike Andrew: I don’t remember when I met Michael Righi. He was the kind of person who, once you talked to him a couple of times, you felt like you’d always known him. It may have been in 2012, when I first started working for PSARA, or it may have been before that, in the context of economic or climate justice organizing. He was passionate about both. In any case I was delighted to find out that we shared a political pre-history in the New Communist movement in the 1970s. Michael was wicked smart, but not a show-off about it. He was wickedly funny too. And he was more than willing to turn his droll sense of humor against billionaires and the politicians who abetted them. “Every billionaire is a policy failure,” was one of his favorite taglines. As editor of the Retiree Advocate, I appreciated his ability to take complex economic issues and explain them in simple – but not simplistic – terms any reader could understand. And all in 750 words! I know our readers appreciated it too, because every one of them, without exception, when they heard that he’d died, exclaimed “Oh no! What will we do without his articles?” I also appreciated the fact that Michael – and Bobby too – would pitch in to help with whatever was needed. He could explain cryptocurrency, carry a banner in a march, set up chairs for an event, or stick mailing labels on the latest issue of the Retiree Advocate . He was completely selfless that way. I last saw Michael at Tim Wheeler’s book reading on July 26. I was expecting to see him again a few days later to plan the new issue of the Retiree Advocate. It didn’t work out that way. I’ll miss him. Karen Richter: Michael was a generous and caring person and great friend. His articles in the Advocate helped so many of us understand the complexities of economic justice issues. He had a great sense of humor and was a talented cook. He made the best pizza and paella I ever tasted. Michael was always there when we had rallies, demonstrations, and marches no matter what. He always showed up to help with everything – our mailing parties, membership meeting, concerts you name it he was there. He was one of the best people I've ever known. I will miss him dearly. Robby Stern: Michael was one of the most decent and thoughtful men I have ever known. He was a good and beloved man with an outstanding sense of humor. He played a very important role in our collective work and was someone I was always glad to see and spend time with. As a member of the Retiree Advocate Editorial Board, his good humor, insights, and compassion were consistently present in our deliberations. He helped to make the meetings fun and productive and was a very significant part of creating a quality newsletter month after month. He and Bobby have been an amazing couple and served as a model of lifetime progressive activism. It was always a delight to interact with the two of them at street actions, fundraising events, PSARA meetings and other events supporting the movement for social and economic justice. Michael was both incredibly funny and at the same time determined to provide his good thinking on what we could do in that moment in the fight to create a more just world. As a progressive economist, his monthly articles in the Retiree Advocate were clear and easily readable, not an easy thing to do when discussing economic issues. He helped many of us better understand what forces were at work in our economy that sharply tilts in favor of the very rich and powerful and the avaricious multinational corporations. He also wrote with underlying compassion about how it should be as opposed to how it is. He was an ever-present activist in our efforts to change how the economy works as well as fighting for worker, climate, racial, and gender justice. We will miss Michael enormously and will honor him by carrying on the work he chose as his lifetime mission. Michael will live on in our hearts, our memories, and our thinking about what we should do next to resist autocracy and fascism and build a better world. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents February 2026 The Fight for Medicare in 2026 Robby Stern The attack by the Trump administration and their Republican sycophants on healthcare coverage will land with tragic consequences on a very large number of people in the US. With compassion for the suffering caused by the Trumpian attacks and determination based on belief in social and economic justice, the movement for Improved Medicare for All will grow and become more and more vocal. Meanwhile, our fight to preserve and expand original public Medicare will continue, as will our educational work exposing the consequences of for-profit Medicare Advantage (MA) and the introduction of the WISeR pilot program. We know the drive for increasing profits leads to abuse and fraud by the insurance companies. Requiring frequent prior authorizations (more than 50 million in 2024), upcoding, cherry picking and lemon dropping (i.e. offloading sicker patients), and offer-ing a limited network of providers are all about profit. The growing trend of large corporations like United Health Group owning subsidiaries like Optum that employ provider networks and/or pharmacy benefit managers create multiple opportunities to extract profit from the Medicare Trust Fund. Their practices will continue until we build a strong enough movement to stop them. The WISeR pilot program began on January 1, 2026 in Washington. That’s bad news. It expands the use of prior authorization in Original Medicare, adding 17 procedures. It also introduces the use of private, for-profit corporations to determine whether these 17 procedures will be covered by Medicare. These corporations are required to use AI to make the determination and will be paid a larger reimbursement for denials. The good news is that our education and advocacy work has been very effective, and our members have made a big difference. Most recently, Sen. Patty Murray introduced S. 3480, a bill prohibiting the Secretary of Health and Human Services from implementing the WISeR pilot program in Medicare. There are 18 Senators co-sponsoring the legislation including Sen. Cantwell. Sen. Murray’s bill is companion legislation to Rep. DelBene’s legislation in the House. HR 5940 also bars the Secretary of Health and Human Services from implementing WISeR. Introduced in November, HR 5940 has 38 co-sponsors, including all the Democratic representatives in Washington, except for Rep. Glusenkamp Perez. We will try to get her support in 2026. It is unlikely these bills will pass in 2026, but they are a good organizing tool. Our work in 2026 will include building momentum to end WISeR before the scheduled six-year termination date. PSARA is a member of the national Reclaim Medicare Coalescence, which includes a number of organizations that have a significant presence in Washington, DC, and wide national outreach. The coalescence has adopted as a goal the introduction of the Level the Play-ing Field legislation, hopefully in 2026. Members of the coalescence also play a major role in researching and exposing the abuses of the Medicare Advantage corporations, and they advocate for regulations and legislation to put an end to these abuses. We are all working to terminate WISeR, and many of the organizations in the Reclaim Medicare Coalescence support Rep. Jayapal’s Improved Medicare for All legislation (HR30069). Here are some things our members can do to help in the coming year: Help us find venues where we can educate and advocate about leveling the playing field, about achieving Improved Medicare for All, and ending the abuses and fraud of Medicare Advantage. If you or someone you know has a personal story of problems related to the healthcare being provided by a Medicare Advantage plan or if you are on Original Medicare and have a personal story related to the use of prior authorization in the WISeR program, please email organizer@psara.org to let us know. Personal stories are powerful. We will not use your name unless you give us permission. When you receive emails urging you to contact elected officials, please continue to respond with action. For example, we will be working to have legislation introduced in Congress to level the playing field related to benefits between Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage. We are educating and advocating for the legislation to set an affordable cap on out-of-pocket costs in Original Medicare, making it unnecessary to purchase Medigap insurance. It will also include hearing, dental, and vision coverage. When the legislation is introduced, we will need assistance in getting co-sponsors from the Washington Congressional delegation. In the state legislature we will be educating and advocating for the passage of SJM 8002, which puts the state legislature on record calling for Congress to stop the fleecing of the Medicare Trust Fund by Medicare Advantage and level the play-ing field between Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage. We want Medicare beneficiaries to have a real financial choice between the public plan and the private for-profit plans. We will also support efforts to restore the cuts to Medicaid. Will Parry, the former inspirational leader of PSARA, would frequently sing the song "Carry It On," made famous by Joan Baez. In 2026, we will resist attacks on Medicare and Medicaid and demonstrate there is a better way. We will carry it on. Robby Stern is President of the PSARA Education Fund and a member of PSARA's Executive Board. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents December 2025 AARP, United Health Group, and WISeR Robby Stern On October 21, Wendell Potter, a former high ranking health insurance executive and whistle blower, wrote the following in Healthcare Uncovered , the newsletter of the Center for Health and Democracy. "In 2024, United Health Group (UNH) -- the nation’s largest health insurer -- paid AARP a one-time upfront royalty payment of just over $9 billion for the rights to use AARP’s name in marketing Medicare Advantage-type plans and Medicare supplement policies. According to financial statements for AARP, this windfall came as part of a restructured deal with UNH’s insurance unit, United Healthcare, extending their partnership for an additional 12 years and recording a balance of about $8.72 billion in deferred revenue as of December 31. "What makes a deal like this so troubling is its implication: the organization that millions of older Americans consider their trusted advocate -- AARP, with its packed magazines and covers featuring Bon Jovi, Samuel L. Jackson, and Sally Field -- is in fact functioning as a multimillion-dollar marketing arm for an insurer whose business model increasingly depends on enrolling seniors in private Medicare plans." A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found that Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollees will have access to approximately 50% of the healthcare providers that Original Medicare (OM) enrollees can access in regions across the country. In addition, the study found that OM enrollees were more likely to receive care in the highest-rated hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. In 2023, the number of prior authorization requests to MA insurers was approximately 50 million and frequently were determined using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Prior authorization is rarely used in OM. The corporate MA insurance system poses significant risks for beneficiaries because of delays and denials of care resulting from prior authorizations. Corporate Medicare Advantage also threatens the viability of the entire Medicare system. MA costs the Medicare Trust Fund approximately 35% more per beneficiary than OM. According to MedPAC, a nonpartisan congressional agency that provides Congress with analysis of the Medicare program, MA overcharged the Medicare Trust Fund in 2024 an estimated $84 billion dollars. AARP is being paid to promote United Healthcare’s Medicare insurance which threatens, along with the other MA plans, the financial future of the Medicare system. United Healthcare is by far the largest corporate for-profit MA insurer. In March, 2025, United Health was estimated to have nearly $10 million MA enrollees. The insurer was compensated an average of $5,000 per enrollee. AARP provides a significant customer base and credibility to United Healthcare. No wonder AARP has been paid just over $9 billion for a 12-year agreement. How does this financial relationship impact AARP’s decision making? We can only speculate, but WISeR presents an interesting case study. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and an agency within CMS, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), have initiated the WISeR program to expand artificial intelligence (AI) prior authorization to 16, and maybe more, medical procedures in Original Medicare (OM). This unwelcome expansion in the number of prior authorizations in OM will still be a small fraction of the number in MA. Despite the fact that healthcare providers and patients have expressed strong dislike for practices that intervene between the provider-patient relationship, CMS plans to proceed with the WISeR pilot program beginning January, 2026. Private companies who will determine the required prior authorizations in OM must have AI capability to be eligible to engage in reviews for the WISeR program. These companies will be paid based on the amount they save the Medicare system, i.e. higher compensation for denials. What is AARP’s position on WISeR? According to an AARP spokesperson, they are “watching carefully." The organization states it supports efforts to address Medicare fraud and abuse, which is the public justification for WISeR by CMS. AARP also states it prioritizes the health care of older Americans and that nobody should be denied legitimate, medically necessary treatment. Nice words, but we know that AI prior authorization does deny medically necessary treatment frequently in MA and that one of the most consistent users of AI prior authorization is United Healthcare. Regarding fraud and abuse, MedPAC noted there is approximately $5.8 billion in treatments that may be unnecessary. Compare this to the MedPAC estimate of $84 billion in overcharges by corporate MA insurers. On the AARP website WISeR is listed as one of the changes to Medicare in 2026. They acknowledge that “If successful, the pilot project could lead to wider uses of prior authorization in original Medicare...” They state the experiment in six states, including Washington, could involve up to 6.4 million beneficiaries. AARP goes on to provide CMS’s justification for the program. They then state “Technology companies that participate will be paid based on savings from denied medical claims, which has drawn the ire of the American Medical Association and consumer organizations.” Note, it has not drawn the ire of AARP, which one might think is a consumer organization. The final paragraphs in the posting state: “The pilot project comes amid concerns from lawmakers, government watchdogs, and others that Medicare Advantage plans’ prior authorization procedures can create burdens for caregivers, who have to figure out how to appeal, and risk the health of patients by delaying or denying care that would otherwise be covered under original Medicare.” If we believe the concerns of caregivers and consumer organizations to an expansion of AI prior authorization in OM are legitimate (and PSARA emphatically does), we question the failure of AARP to support those of us in this fight. To quote Wendell Potter in his discussion of the relationship between United Health and AARP: “All this being said, AARP taking money from a giant corporation is not the least bit unusual in Washington. And advocacy on behalf of consumers and patients requires resources. But when an organization is simultaneously lobbying Congress on Medicare and cashing billion-dollar checks from the largest Medicare Advantage insurer, it’s no longer just an advocate for consumers and patients.” Robby Stern is President of the PSARA Education Fund and a member of PSARA's Executive Board. < Back to Table of Contents

Read American Medical Association’s (AMA) In Opposition to the Medicare WISeR Program

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents September 2025 Workgroup on Data Centers Convened This Year Anne Shields Data centers provide the infrastructure, computing resources, and efficient cooling systems needed to train and run complex AI models. In February, Governor Ferguson issued an executive order commissioning a workgroup to recommend policies on data centers in Washington State. The workgroup will report on their findings about how data centers impact our state's economy, tax revenue, energy use, tribal resources, and the environment. The next workgroup meeting is scheduled for late September. You can follow workgroup membership, meetings, and materials on this webpage: https://dor.wa.gov/about/data-center-workgroup PSARA members on Third Act WA’s Power Up Team are partnering with the all-volunteer Washington Clean Energy Coalition to monitor workgroup proceedings and develop recommendations. The preliminary recommendations to the workgroup will include: WA emissions goals upheld. Data centers operating in Washington State should be powered by renewable energy. Data centers should not com- promise goals in reducing emissions specified in the Climate Commitment Act and the Clean Energy Transformation Act. No cost increases for WA customers. Data centers should not increase the cost of electricity for residential or commercial customers in our state. No financial support through our taxes. Local and state tax increases should not contribute to the construction and operation of data centers. No adverse impacts on nearby WA communities and habitats. Data centers should not affect the availability of clean water in nearby communities, as happened elsewhere, or harm fish and wildlife by releasing heated water into the environment. Public information available on costs and benefits. Builders and operators should be required to provide timely and transparent data on the costs and benefits of data centers. The public needs sufficient information to understand how these facilities will meet their obligations before construction begins. Electric service capacity and resiliency intact. Data centers should not reduce grid capacity or resiliency during extreme weather events or natural disasters. If you’d like to get involved in the coalition’s work on data centers or other utilities and electrification projects, contact Chris Goelz or Anne Shields on the PSARA Climate and Climate Justice Committee to learn about ways you can contribute to these efforts. Anne Shields is a member of Third Act and an active member of PSARA's Climate and Environmental Justice Committee < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents January 2025 Tariffs Are Not Evil, They Are Just a Tool Michael Righi Trump is “Tariff Man,” right? He appears to love them. Therefore, one would think, tariffs are wrongheaded. But then, what about Biden keeping and extending Trump’s tariffs? And why do several of our national unions support the judicious use of tariffs as part of a pro-worker economic policy? Let’s start at the beginning. A tariff is a tax collected by the government on imports from other countries. The tax is collected from the importer. But who really pays it? Controversy and simplistic claims start here. Does the exporter (from China, say) lower its prices and absorb a loss in profits in order to remain competitive? That is Trump’s assertion – since China is supposedly devastating our economy, along with immigrants and liberal elites, he is planning to punish China with even higher tariffs than the ones he and Biden have already implemented. Another possibility, the position usually taken by mainstream economists, is that, like any tax, the tariff is just passed on by, say, Walmart or whoever the importing corporation is, in the form of higher prices. That would mean consumers pay, not “China.” (We have to be careful here, since some imports are produced overseas by US corporations taking advantage of low wages, not by Chinese firms.) So, it’s complicated. Trump putting an across-the-board tariff on Mexico would likely raise grocery prices, since we import much of our fresh produce from Mexico, and production within the US or elsewhere could not immediately ramp up to replace Mexican avocados, for example. Much like the Washington State sales tax, those price hikes would disproportionally hurt lower-income families, who spend a much bigger percentage of their income on food. A Brief History of Tariffs Targeted tariffs are a different story. The early independent United States raised tariffs against British textiles and manufacturing in order to develop its own industry. A country doesn’t become prosperous for very long by just exporting raw materials and not diversifying into manufacturing. In the post-WWII period, developing countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, and then China used tariffs as part of their industrialization strategy. But US corporations, and neoliberal policymakers, used US financial and military power to “negotiate” low tariffs and free trade to give US capital access to markets and the ability to ship jobs to low-wage countries. But now that China produces 35 percent of the world’s manufactured goods, and the US share is down close to 10 percent, things have changed. Neoliberalism has been shown to benefit US corporations and elites and devastate working families. Now the US needs an industrial policy. Carefully targeted tariffs have to be part of that. To be clear, tariffs are only one tool. Industrial policies should include tax incentives and subsidies for research and innovation. The Inflation Reduction and Chips Acts, and infrastructure spending, all under Biden, have done some of that. But we have to do more – you cannot just shovel money and protection to US corporations. They will just raise prices and buy back stock and raise CEO pay and dividends to wealthy stockholders. There have to be targets for investment; goals for carbon reduction; requirements for unionization, wages, and job training; and worker participation in decision making. Yes, the list is long – the time of corporate plundering has been long. Back To Tariff Man None of that is what Trump has in mind, of course. He thinks he can restore US domination through intimidation. Or bluff and threaten and use tariffs as a symbolic “I’m on your side” to divert attention from tax and regulatory cuts. So he is threatening Mexico (and Canada?) with tariffs unless they do something about immigration and fentanyl exports. He threatens Brazil and others for moving away from using the US dollar in foreign transactions. Trump is telling other countries to play ball or get whacked. He is using US workers to support an America First agenda. But he has no intention of supporting unions or limiting the freedom of capital to do what it wants. We need fair trade, not free trade. Smart tariffs would penalize imports of nickel from toxic Indonesian mines, imported BMW’s from the factory that pays Mexican workers $1.50 an hour, and any import that contributes significantly to climate change. Tariffs are a tool that can be used judiciously, as part of an overall strategy to support working-class jobs and wages and training and innovation. But we do not want to buy into America First. We want trade policy that benefits all workers. 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 September 2025 Deceit, Resistance, on Social Security’s 90th Birthday Steve Kofahl Thursday, August 14, marked the 90th anniversary of the passage of the Social Security Act. At his Oval Office event, President Trump asserted that the Administration had eliminated the federal taxation of Social Security benefits and improved customer ser- vice at the Social Security Administration (SSA). Both claims are false. His “One Big Beautiful Bill” provides a tax deduction of as much as $6000 for some beneficiaries, but about half of them will still pay taxes on their benefits when the tax deduction offset is considered. The SSA Chief Actuary finds that the loss of Trust Fundincome resulting from this legislation advances the date when the Trust Funds will be depleted by six months, from early 2034 to late 2033. The deportation of undocumented workers may advance the date by another six months, according to some analysts. Trumplied when he previously asserted that undocumented workers receive benefits, and that 235,000 of them had been removedfrom the beneficiary rolls this year. Undocumented workers pay Social Security taxes on their earnings, but are ineligible to receive benefits under the Social Security Act. More deportations mean less income to the Trust Funds. The alleged service improvements are a ruse, a product of changes in both SSA field office procedures and the Agency’s displayof service data. Workers have been repeatedly redirected to address high-profile workloads and backlogs, at the expense oftheir regular assigned duties. Field Offices no longer take benefit applications on a walk- in basis. Instead, visitors are scheduled for a future telephone interview that will likely be several months later. The delay is not measured or reflected in public-facingperformance reports, nor is the public harm acknowledged. To make matters worse, SSA launched a flawed 800# chat-box in April. It too-often responds to a different question than the one asked by the caller, fails to route the call to a live agent when requested, and/or terminates the call. Absent a caller’s intent to file and date of contact being documented by SSA, there can be a permanent loss of benefits because there are strict limits on retroactivity. The National Academy of Social Insurance has released an initial report documenting the inherent problems in utilizing artificialintelligence (AI) at the SSA, and continues to study the subject, but SSA Commissioner Bisagnano is committed to expanding its use, no doubt to justify steeper future staff cuts. Increasing the use of AI in making disability determinations at the SSA is aparticular concern, because of accuracy and equity issues. A trained human, who is not pressured to deny an application or appeal, must always be the final disability decision-maker. The American Federation of Government Employees, National Council of Social Security Field Operations Employees (AFGE Council 220) led over 50 actions on August 14. It revealed that benefit applications increased 18% between January and May, that in 46 states over 10% of SSA staff was lost in the 12 months ending in March (9% in Washington State), and that more than 30% of offices lost more than 10% of their staff. SSA has shed 7,000 employees, with staffing at a 50-year low. Senators Cassidy (R-LA) and Kaine (D-VA) have proposed creation of a $1.5 Trillion private investment fund over five years that would be placed in escrow for 70 years to “save” Social Security. Treasury Secretary Scott Bes- sent (like Bisagnano, a Social Security Trustee by virtue of office, charged with protecting the Trust Funds), called Trump’s $1,000 tax-deferred accounts for newborns a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security.” We need to make it crystal clear to our elected representatives that we will not tolerate any privatization of our earned Social Security benefits, that Congress should “scrap the cap” on earnings subject to the payroll tax, and that SSA staffing and personalized service must be fully restored ASAP! Steve Kofahl is a former President of AFGE 3937, representing Social Security Administration workers, a member of PSARA's Executive Board, and a Co-Chair of PSARA's Social Security Task Force. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents January 2026 PSARA 2026 Legislative Agenda Click here to download PSARA Leg. Agenda pdf Click here to download talking Points PSARA is a multi-generational grass roots organization advocating for all people, and seniors in particular, being able to live their lives with economic security, dignity, and respect. Healthcare PSARA believes that comprehensive, affordable, accessible, and culturally appropriate health care is a fundamental human right. Promote Leveling the Playing Field in Medicare, SJM 8002 Protect against healthcare program cuts and advance immigrant health equity and food security (budget) Regulate the use of Prior Authorization in healthcare decisions, SB 5395 / HB 1566 Climate and Environmental Justice PSARA supports the right of all people to live and work in a clean and healthy environment. Divest Washington State Investment Board funds from fossil fuels, No Coal Act SB 5439 Increase environmental justice by improving government decisions, Curb Act HB 1303 / SB 5380 Create standards for Data Center operations Fiscal Reform and Revenue PSARA supports a state budget that is transparent, pays a living wage to state workers, and provides services that help our people, economy, and environment thrive. Support progressive revenue HB 2100 Well Washington Fund Housing and Homelessness PSARA supports keeping people housed, building more low-income housing, and preventing homelessness in the first place. Workers’ Rights and Economic Justice PSARA supports legislation that promotes healthy families and workplaces. Extend unemployment benefits to undocumented workers SB 5626 / HB 1773 Expand Working Families Tax Credit HB 1214 / SB 5768 Strengthen Paid Family & Medical Leave financing Promote Washington Future Fund pilot (Baby Bonds) SB 5541 Provide greater security to Washington workers against ICE practices on the job (Immigrant Worker Protection Act) SB 5822 / HB 2015 Community Safety and Justice PSARA supports legislation that promotes community safety and justice for all of our community members. Ensure proper identification of law enforcement (No Secret Police Act) SB 5855 / HB 2173 < Back to Table of Contents

Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action (PSARA) Archive collection of PSARA Advocate Newsletters (a monthly publication) on current issues in the area of Social and Economic Equity, Environment, Labor Justice. Advocate Newsletter Print Version

Rev. Dr. Robert Jeffrey, Sr. Jayza Duhon Celebrate Juneteenth with PSARA Saturday, June 14, 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. New Hope Missionary Baptist Church PSARA welcomes all to our annual Juneteenth celebration on Saturday, June 14, from 1–3 p.m. We are honored to hold our event at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, located at 124 21st Ave, Seattle. The Rev. Dr. Robert Jeffrey, Sr. and his congregation have graciously allowed us to have this celebration at their beautiful historic Black church in the heart of Seattle’s Central District. Our theme this year is “With Hope We Unite, Resist, and Overcome.” The Juneteenth holiday celebrates the historic day of June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Texas to declare the end of slavery, some two years after Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Today, as waves of racial hostility and injustice sweep across our country, we gather on this day to stand together and lift each other’s spirits while we renew our commitment to resist and overcome racism and hatred. Our celebration includes presentations by Rev. Jeffrey, Sr., MLK Labor leader Shaunie Wheeler, PSARA leaders Claude Burfect and Larry Gossett, and musical performances by members of the New Hope Choir and soloists Jayza Duhon and Laila West. We will have books on display, curated by Rhonda Gossett, and refreshments for attendees. We are grateful to the Abe Keller Peace Education Fund for a generous donation to help us put on this event. Please join us on June 14 at 1:00 p.m. for this special event! BACK TO THE ADVOCATE

PSARA Oral Histories Project: Larry Gossett Return to Oral Histories Main Page Larry Gossett Interview PSARA Advocate February 2023 Page 4 Part I March 2023 Page 9 Part Ia July 2023 Page 8 Part II August 2023 Page 8 Part IIa A Story of the Great Migration North (As described by Larry Gossett) By Angie Bartels Larry Gossett is a former King County Council member, a longtime activist, and a member of PSARA's Executive Board. Angie Bartels is PSARA's Membership VP. This story is part of a series of interviews she's doing with PSARA members. Angie Bartels is PSARA's membership VP. This is one in a series of interviews she's conducting with members of PSARA. The Gossett family joined the Great Migration of Blacks leaving the old Confederate States between World War I and the end of World War II. Nearly 6,000,000 Black people headed for northern cities during this time period. Joining this historic migration were Nelmon and Johnnie Gossett. Johnnie was born in Nigton, an all-Black town- ship in southeast Texas.Nelmon was born in Marshall, a very small country town also located in southeast Texas. They had met while students at Texas College, a small historically Black college located in Tyler, Texas. The only work available to Black young adults was picking cotton, so that is what Nelmon was doing in May, 1944, whenthe white boss paid him only one dollar for working from sunup to sundown. Nelmon was no fool – his slip said he wassupposed to get $1.75 that day. He protested to the white boss man and demanded his full pay. The white man replied,“Boy, you don't talk to me like that. You're not going to get no $1.75, nigger. You keep talking, I'm going to whip your assand have you put in jail!” Nelmon was extremely upset and wanted to argue. But he knew there was no way he could win, given the operations of the Jim Crow south. He went home to his new wife, Johnnie, and said, “Honey, we're getting out ofhere, this is it! These white folks are crazy. We are going to leave before I do something I will regret or die from… Where's that place where your sister Editha moved to?” Johnnie said she and her husband Woodson had moved to Seattle, Washington. Nelmon didn’t know where Seattle was, but he knew it was up north. Editha told her younger sister that her husband justgot a job in the war industry up in Seattle. She said they were hiring Negroes in the lower-pay- ing jobs. Nelmon and Johnniepacked their things and joined the Great Black Migration to northern cities. It was mid-July, 1944, when they got on the Greyhound bus heading to Seattle. They had a box of chicken to eat when they boarded the bus in Tyler. Neither of them knew how far Seattle was. After aday on the bus, they got scared and asked the driver, “How much longer before we get to Seattle?” He said, “It will takeabout one more day.” They both wondered, “Oh, my God, where is this place?” The bus driver explained that they weregoing up near Canada, which made them even more nervous. They didn't know what to do, so they just stayed on the busthat sec- ond day and eventually disembarked in Seattle. Nelmon got a job working at Todd Shipyards making $8 a day, way more money than he had ever made picking cotton down South. When they arrived in Seattle, Johnnie went to a doctor and found out she was pregnant with their first child. The only clinicthat would accept her as a low income patient was Thompson Clinic, located on East Broadway Street near the old KingCounty Hospital. When Johnnie, Nelmon, and Editha arrived at the clinic with Johnnie in labor during the early morninghours of February 21, 1945, the white nurse at the front office immediately saw that Johnnie was a “colored girl” and toldher she would have to pay $175 for childbirth care. Nelmon didn’t have any money on him, so the staff said Johnnie and Editha could stay, provided that Nelmon went home and brought back the money. They agreed, and Nelmon went to see if hecould hustle the money up. In the meantime, Johnnie’s water broke while they waited for a room. When the nurse announced to Johnnie and Editha that a birthing room was ready, they were told that this was the roomthey used “for colored girls.” As they walked into the dark and dingy room, the nurse went on, “You colored girls are always having babies, anyway.” The nurse went on with her ignorant and stereotypical lecture, “You colored girls know theroutine.” Then she left the room. Johnnie was only 20 years old and Editha was 26. Neither of them had ever had a baby.They just looked at each other in fear and anxiety. They were young Black women from the South, so they didn’t speak up.And unfortunately, they really didn't know anything about having babies. Johnnie’s labor intensified, and she thought that she had to go to the bathroom. There was a bedside commode, so Edithahelped Johnnie onto it. Johnnie felt like she was having “the worst bowel movement ever.” She kept pushing, and suddenlya baby popped out. The young women were stunned! The nurse had left the room, and neither Johnnie nor Editha knew what to do. Johnnie remembered that she had seen a movie recently with Nelmon in which a baby was born. She remembered the doctor slapping the baby’s behind to get it to cry. So Johnnie slapped her baby’s behind, and itbegan to scream. After the newborn started screaming, then and only then, did a nurse run into the room and finish thebirthing process of properly cutting the umbilical cord, etc. Johnnie finally asked, “What is my baby?” The nurse said he was a boy. Upon Nelmon’s return, he was told that he had aboy. Johnnie and Nelmon proudly named their baby boy Lawrence (Larry) Edward Gossett. Nelmon and Johnnie went on to have five other children: Brenda born in ’47, Ricky in ’49, Glen in ‘52, Theresa in ’53, andPatrick in ’55. And in spite of the ugly racism that weighed against them, they continued to have high hopes for their six children. Johnnie and Nelmon Gossett, Larrry’s parents, stayed with Johnnie’s sister, Editha, the first three months they were in Seattle. In October of 1945, they were lucky enough to secure a one-bedroom apartment in Duwamish Bend, a low- income housing project located in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle. During the end of World War II, it wasn’t easy for a newly married Black couple to move from the deep rural South to a bigNorthwest city like Seat- tle. Both Larry’s parents had lived their entire lives in rural Texas, where the racial restrictions wereenforced in an ironclad fashion. In addition to Larry’s parents receiving slave wages for jobs they did in Texas, it was illegalin the South for most Blacks to quit their jobs without the permission of their white bosses. Johnnie and Nelmon Gossett, Larrry’s parents, stayed with Johnnie’s sister, Editha, the first three months they were in Seattle. In October of 1945, they were lucky enough to secure a one-bedroom apartment in Duwamish Bend, a low- income housing project located in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle. During the end of World War II, it wasn’t easy for a newly married Black couple to move from the deep rural South to a big Northwest city like Seat- tle. Both Larry’s parents had lived their entire lives in rural Texas, where the racial restrictions were enforced in an ironclad fashion. In addition to Larry’s parents receiving slave wages for jobs they did in Texas, it was illegal in the South for most Blacks to quit their jobs without the permission of their white bosses. Larry said, “When my parents left the South, it was a veritable police state – they had to use separate toilets, water fountains, and restaurants. Blacks were treated as being inferior to ALL white people, and the police kept them under control.” In the North, the white man’s rules weren’t as restricted. Larry’s parents could eat in any restaurant they wanted. They could drink from any water fountain and use any toilet available. Neither of them was called “Nigger” in the days after they migrated to Seattle, but some of the fears learned down South remained within their consciousness. Around December of 1945, Larry’s parents got on a Seattle bus to ride downtown. The bus was very crowded, so they were not able to sit together. Johnnie sat in one of the horizontal seats, while Nelmon sat nervously nearby in a vertical seat next to a white man. After a few more stops, the white man next to Nelmon disembarked. About half a mile later, a young white woman boarded the bus and took the seat next to Nelmon. After a few more stops, Johnnie looked over at her husband and saw he was sweating profusely. Then she heard him say, “Johnnie, we gotta’ get off this bus. I am not feeling well.” They immediately got off the bus, and Johnnie nervously asked Nelmon if he needed her to try and get an ambulance. Nelmon responded, “No, I don’t need an ambulance, honey. The problem is that was the first time in my life I had ever sat next to a white woman, and I was scared to death.” This is a classic example of Black reaction to the ways of white folks in the North versus the South. Larry’s Daddy knew that if had he sat next to a white woman in the South – anywhere in the South – he would be attacked, beaten, jailed, or pos- sibly lynched. In Seattle, Larry’s Dad wasn’t sure what could happen to him if a white woman sat next to him. His southern conditioning made him very scared. By 1956, Nelmon had the best blue- collar job of his life – working for the United States Post Office in West Se- attle. And he had accumulated enough money to buy the family’s first house. Nelmon told Johnnie, “Honey, I want to look for a house out here close to the West Seattle Post Office, so I don't have to drive a long distance to work.” At that time, most Black people in Seattle lived in the Central Area, but Nelmon wanted a house in West Seattle close to his new work place. He went to not one, but two white realtors, both of whom told him the same thing: “If I show a Negro a house in West Seattle, I will get run out of business. But I will show you a house in the Central Area.” The first time he heard this, Nelmon got really mad and went home and devised a new approach. He decided that he would approach a second realtor differently than he did the first. He confidently told the second guy, “I'm looking for a house.” The realtor said, “Okay, why don't we take my car and check a few out.” Nelmon thought they were going to drive around West Seattle, but instead, the realtor drove onto 35th Ave SW headed towards the West Seattle Bridge. At this point, Nelmon knew his cause was hopeless and resolved that he would not get a house in West Seattle. Instead, he bought a house on the corner of 18th and Alder, right smack dab in the middle of the Central Area, where all their new neighbors would be Black. The Gossetts learned that white people in Seattle practiced de facto segregation. “There were no laws saying you can only live in the Central Area, but that was the only place a white real estate agent would dare show you a house. After that experience, Daddy started calling Seattle “up south.” He controlled his anger and got on with it, always working to get the best for his family where it could be gotten. For the first time in his life, Larry was enrolled in an elementary school that was 98.6 percent Black. “The only thing white about that school was the teachers, nothing else,” Nelmon said. But Larry, Brenda, and Ricky adjusted quickly and attended Horace Mann Elementary. Larry made a lot of friends at his new school. His friends introduced him to the Rotary Boys Club, where they played ping pong and basketball. In the 7th grade Larry was sent to mostly-Black Washington Junior High School. There he played on the varsity basketball team as a 7th and 8th grader. “When I was in 11th grade, my daddy purchased his second home on Beacon Hill. I transferred to Franklin High School, which by 1962 was 85 percent white. That was the first time that I consciously went to school with a majority of white kids, and I wasn't as scared as my daddy. I rapped on the white girls and they were responsive. That was an interesting phenomenon because when white man rules, you can't power talk to no white girl. I was an athlete. I wanted to stay at Garfield because I was a basketball player, they were a fabulous team and the kids I grew up with. But I enjoyed Franklin High School in ‘63. Now, I didn't have no racial consciousness or anything like that. “I dated white girls, many of them. Also, some of the white girls started the Larry Gossett Fan Club when I made the varsity Basketball Team at Franklin High School. They wore buttons that said Gossett Fan Club and they were 99 percent white. There was one Chinese girl who became a city council member, Cheryl Chow. She was in the Gossett Fan Club and went to high school with me. My sister kind of got fed up. One day, we’re just sitting around after school and she said, ‘Big Brother, so embarrassing. He doesn't shovel any coal, just snow.’ So Momma didn't know what Brenda was talking about so she says, ‘Brenda, doll, while we were living in High Point, your daddy and Larry shoveled coal into that furnace so we would have heat!' And my sister Brenda got upset with me. ‘Momma, he doesn't go out with any Negro girls, he only goes out with white girls!’ Momma said, 'Oh, that's what you mean! Well, honey, he can go out with whoever he wants.' Poor Brenda left the room in disgust. “I was an athlete in high school, and that had its privileges. I got pretty good grades because I wanted to play college basketball, even though I was very short, 5’7”. So I told my daddy that I wanted to go to junior college because I thought that would be my best chance to start in basketball. And Daddy said, ‘I have something else in mind for you Larry. I've already checked your grades. Your grades are good enough to get into the University of Washington.’ My daddy was the first person I ever heard reference the University of WA as the University of Washington. ‘And that's where I want you to go, boy.’ Daddy called me boy, I don't know where he got that from! And I said, ‘No, Daddy, I want to go to junior college.’ And then Daddy looked at me and said, ‘Boy, now I got to thinking. I'm gonna’ take you to the Registrar’s Office at the University of WA and enroll you.’ And I don't know if you're aware of this but back in the fifties and early sixties, you don't be saying ‘no’ to your black parents. I was 17 so I didn't talk back to Daddy. “The next week he set an appointment with the Registrar and he took me to the University of Washington. The Registrar and Daddy went over my transcripts and she said, ‘Yeah, Larry's grade point average is right up there. But he needs to take geometry.’ I'd had algebra and you couldn't get in the U back in those days without geometry. So Daddy said, ‘What can we do, because I'd like to get him in.’ And she said, ‘Okay, I will enroll him in the University beginning winter quarter, but not in September of ‘64. Then she turned to me and said, ‘I need you, this summer and fall, two quarters, to enroll in geometry at Central Seattle Community College.’ We were living on Beacon Hill then, so I could get over to Broadway easily. ‘But he has to get at least a C in geometry.’ Daddy said, ‘Yes, I'm going to enroll him in school to start winter quarter.’ So, I got a C both quarters, and they let me in the UW in January ‘65. So that's how I got to be at the University of WA. And I knew that I was way too small to try to be able to make the team at the UW. I wanted to but I didn’t get there until January, the third month of basketball season in college. So I didn't even try out. I just focused on becoming a graduate of the University of Washington.” Part II: Black Power Captures Larry Gossett’s Soul While in Vista The American war in Vietnam was escalating in 1965 as President Lyndon Johnson doubled the number of men drafted into the armed services. During this time, selective service requirements, deferments, and exemptions changed rapidly in the government’s efforts to make the draft appear “fairer.” By 1966, a draft lottery was instituted, which no longer provided exemptions to college students. Young men were all given a draft number between 1 and 366, corresponding to their birthday, and lower numbers were called up first. It was at this time that Larry Gossett's life changed dramatically. “I found out in late fall of 1965 that there were only two ways you could avoid the draft, and that was to join the international Peace Corps or the domestic Peace Corps, which was called VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America). The international Peace Corps required a two-year commitment to serve poor people abroad. That made me nervous, because I had never been outside the boundaries of the United States. I had lived my entire life in Seattle, except for the brief period of time that I lived in Los Angeles. But because I learned that VISTA was only a one-year commitment for volunteers to live and work in a poor urban or rural area in the US, I decided to apply. That felt right to me, and fortunately, I was accepted. I became a VISTA volunteer in March of 1966 and was sent to Toledo, Ohio, for three months of training. “All our training instructors were professors or graduate students at University of Toledo. We lived and worked in the Black community of Toledo during our VISTA training. Like most cities in our country, Toledo was racially segregated. I lived on Door Street, and everybody on that street was Black and lived in big ghetto houses reminiscent of those located in the Central Area of Seattle. “Our instructors gave us an interesting list of exciting and inspiring books to read. The most memorable was The Other America, by Michael Harrington, an awe-inspiring historian. His book was very enlightening as it told the truth about what it is like being poor across our nation. I had never read any book like this before, and it had a surprisingly dramatic impact on me. This book made me realize the extent of poverty in Appalachia, among the poor Mexicans, and of course, poor Blacks and Whites. Mr. Harrington’s writing made me empathetic and caring about being poor in America. We were then assigned to read highlighted parts of Manchild in the Promised Land, by Claude Brown, another book which raised my awareness about a poor, young Black kid growing up in Harlem. The streets he had to survive on were far tougher than anything I had experienced in Seattle or even knew existed in our country. Once again, I was surprised by the feelings of anger and frustration I felt about what I had read. “Then our VISTA trainers introduced us to Before the Mayflower, a History of Black America, by Lerone Bennett Jr, one of America's top Black historians. This book, more than any other, made me realize how little of Black history I knew, especially being a third-year university student. I was already a junior at the UW but had never had a class that exposed me to reading this kind of history. Our VISTA instructors had us discuss what we read with them, but the process that proved most meaningful to me was the discussions following our reading of Rules For Radicals, by Saul Alinsky. I realized quickly why this book was a central part of our assigned readings. Mr. Alinsky got right to the point about what a VISTA volunteer’s duty and responsibility must be: “To serve and organize the poor, so that they will desire to be on the front lines in the battle to combat, eliminate, and liberate themselves from the crushing impact of poverty in America.” “By the end of the 12-week training period, my thinking about being poor in the United States was changing, and I had not yet been told where I would be sent as a VISTA volunteer. The head VISTA instructor finally approached me and said, “Mr. Gossett, you are going to be a VISTA in New York City.” He told me I would be working for an anti-poverty program called the Lower East Side Narcotics Center. He explained, “You’ll be working with young addicts and kids who were on the track to possibly becoming drug addicts.” I said, “WOW!” He concluded by explaining to me, “You will hopefully organize an anti-drug youth center for kids under 15 years old on the Lower East Side of Manhattan Island. “I became very excited but nervous about my VISTA placement. I had just turned 21 and had never been east of Idaho before I flew into Toledo a few months before. Now I was about to be sent for a year to the biggest city in the United States, the Big Apple, New York City! “Little did I know that my year in VISTA would become what I still consider to be the signature experience of my life. My flight from Toledo landed at LaGuardia Airport in mid June, 1966. I took a taxi straight to the Lower East Side Narcotics Center. When I got there, a staff person was awaiting my arrival. She had put together a nice packet of information about the agency for me. She had already told me on the phone that the agency had found temporary housing for me at the Henry Street Settlement House, located only a block from the agency. My room did not have a private bathroom, but it was very modern, comfortable, and secure. It was a cool place to spend my first few months living in New York City. Larry was certain his year in VISTA was going to be an important and meaningful life experience. To start it off, he told his family and friends back home in Seattle that he arrived in New York City just two weeks before Stokely Carmichael, the National Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), articulated a call for BLACK POWER. The phrase spread through all of New York City very quickly, but he reported that it had gone through Harlem like wildfire. Given the trajectory of his life, he felt it had been very fortuitous that he landed in a city so nice they named it twice: New York, New York. In retrospect, he felt very fortunate that he got there at about the same time the Black Power movement arrived. He remembers visiting Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant, and greeting groups of Black people on the streets with the salutation “Black Power!” Larry said, “I remember greeting people in shops and at the office, ‘Black Power, man, Black Power!’ Everyone in the Black community began greeting each other with the phrase Black Power! so how could I have not been impacted by all of this? “I loved my work with the Lower East Side Narcotics Center, especially the satisfaction I got from setting up a youth center on 5th Street between Avenues C and D. This street was one of the poorest on the Lower East Side. About 80 percent of the youth we served were Puerto Rican and 15 percent were Black. Two other VISTAs worked on the project, and five NYU students came down regularly to volunteer and work with us for school credit. We built a very effective program for about 300 kids who joined the 5th Street Clubhouse within the first month of advertising the club's opening. We set up some of the best English-Spanish tutoring programs, which teachers identified as the best they had ever observed. We took hundreds of kids on field trips that emphasized cultural exposure. I remember in the fall of 1966 taking a group of Black and Puerto Rican youth to the Apollo Theatre to see Gladys Knight and the Pips. As soon as Gladys came out on the stage she said, ‘Black Power Y’all!’ Our youth from the Lower East Side loved it. The whole audience broke out in thunderous applause, responding ‘Black Power’ to her at least 15 times. On the subway home, the kids kept saying ‘Black Power’ including the 9 of the 12 kids who were Puerto Rican, not African American. I loved and learned from these very memorable experiences. Most of these youth had never experienced or thought that they would ever experience a successful drug resistance program. Juvenile counselors would come and check out our program and then work to replicate it. “I think that the Puerto Rican and Black history lessons we taught at the clubhouse raised all of these kids' consciousness about being Black and Puerto Rican in New York. These interventions made a huge difference in whether or not these kids passed their school classes. It also enabled them not to fight against their own people. In this regard, I was surprised how quickly they learned and remembered Puerto Rican and Black creators, who invented things like the concept of zero, the invention of the stop light, and filters that keep electric lights burning for a long time. They loved stories about the Black Buffalo Soldiers and the role they played in the West after the Civil War." Despite the sense of enjoyment I got from working with all these youth on the Lower East Side, I always had a special yearning to work in Harlem. I found out, after about six months of working exclusively on the Lower East Side, that VISTA was looking for supervisors to lead the expansion of their programming in Harlem. Our efforts on the Lower East Side made me a frequent visitor to the office that coordinated VISTA work in the five Boroughs of New York City. So when they found out I would be amenable to working in Harlem, we were able to work a plan where I supervised VISTAs in Harlem for four days a week and continued working about two days a week on the Lower East Side. I was excited because I was already spending a lot of time going to Black Power meetings and demonstrations in Harlem, organized specifically around the unjust effort by the US Congress to kick Adam Clayton Powell out of his House seat where he had been representing Harlem for over 20 years. They accused him of womanizing and missing important meetings. His constituents let it be known that they did not support his expulsion, but Congress successfully, for a short while, voted him out of his seat and called for a new election to replace him. “Harlem was the largest Black ghetto in the United States in 1967. I was told that more than 565,000 people lived in Harlem, nearly all of them Black, Puerto Rican, or Dominican. At the same time, Seattle had a population of about 600,000. But Seattleites occupied land about one hundred times larger than the 45-blocks-long and seven-blockswide space that Harlem occupied. “I was assigned to supervise four VISTAs at Harlem Youth, Inc. The first thing we did was a door-to-door survey on the most crowded block in Harlem. That block was 117th Street between Lenox and 7th Avenue. (Today, Lenox Avenue has been renamed Malcolm X Blvd.) We were also assigned to set up youth programs for kids 11 to 15 years of age on three other blocks: 122nd, 137th, and 143rd Streets. Our survey of 117th Street revealed that about 9,000 people lived in oldand dilapidated eight- and nine story tenement buildings. We couldn’t believe it was possible to have that many people living on one block. I had this same curiosity on the Lower East Side, so I got eight young students at NYU to help me go door to door on 5th Street between Avenues C and D. That block had an estimated 6,000 people living on it. About 1,000 were youth 10 to 15 years of age. This concentrated poverty really impacted and astonished me. I thought it unbelievable that any human being would be forced to live in overcrowded spaces, like the Lower East Side and Harlem. I'm from Seattle, where we had 250 people living on both sides of the street. Yeah, they were all Black, but in Harlem, they were all Black too. In Harlem and on the Lower East Side they had five, six, seven people living in every tiny one- and two-bedroom unit, on every floor, in these roach- and rat-infested tenement buildings that occupied every block. I read in the Amsterdam News, the Black newspaper of Harlem, that 60 percent of all the Black people in Harlem lived below the poverty line. “This survey made me dig out an article I had read in the summer of 1966, in The New York Times. It said that if every person in the United States were to live in New York City, and the population of each block would be based on the average number of people living on the average block in Harlem, which at the time was about 7,000 people, all 300 million Americans would fit on just one-half the blocks in New York City. This was a shocking reality to me, the estimate of how crowded these conditions in Harlem and the Lower East Side were. “In his autobiography, Malcolm X said that on average, two to three Blacks were killed every week in Harlem by police, that Blacks owned no more than two percent of all the stores on 125th Street, and that there was only one high school, Franklin, serving 565,000 people in Harlem – and nearly 70 percent of the students in Harlem dropped out of school by the 9th grade. These school statistics really shocked me. I recalled that in Seattle there were 12 public and 4 Catholic high schools, while Harlem had only one. That's how oppressed and segregated the African American population was in Harlem.” Larry became a frequent visitor to Michaux’s bookstore, (technically called the National Memorial African Book Store, but known to the community as Michaux’s), Harlem’s premiere bookstore, located on 125th Street. This bookstore was a great reservoir of Black history and culture. Larry started reading everything he could afford to purchase on Malcolm X and on past and present great Black writers, who wrote about the experiences of Black people in Harlem during the 20th Century. “One of the clerks in the bookstore with whom I had struck up a friendship said to me one day, ‘Larry, you should read something a little broader than just Black history. You seem to be serious about social movements. Why don't you read Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels? Why don't you read the Communist Manifesto?’ I replied, ‘Where I grew up, everyone says that Communism is bad and evil.’ He said, ‘You have to broaden your horizons. You need to be able to make interconnections between the struggles of poor people here in Harlem, Seattle, and with other places around the world. Karl Marx and Fred Engels will provide you with some good food for thought that you should be aware of. “His persistence had an influence on me, so I bought the Communist Manifesto. I took it home and read it, and went back to the brother who had urged me to read it. I said, ‘Wow, I wonder why I was never encouraged to read this at the UW!’ ‘What made the most sense to you, my man?’ he asked. You have to remember, I'm a descendant of Africans brought to America to work as chattel slaves for 246 straight years for no pay. It made sense to me when they said, ‘the people who do the work in any society or community ought to have a major say in determining where the fruits of their labor go and for what it is spent.’ Maybe they call that communism or whatever, but it made a lot of sense to me. I was thinking, why was I so scared to read stuff about socialism before? “In short, when I left Michaux’s bookstore, VISTA, and NYC at the end of my year and a half in VISTA, I was a radically changed man – philosophically, dress, attitude, values, everything. I even changed my name from Larry Gossett to Oba Yoruba. I would never go back to being bourgeoisie and brainwashed again. VISTA had changed me, the Black Power movement had captured my soul, and I was down for the cause and the people. “At the end of my VISTA term, I wanted to go back home. Many VISTAs stayed in the community that they worked in, but I always had the intention of going back home to Seattle. I landed in Seattle on September 15th, 1967, and my mother and youngest brother, Patrick, came to the gate of the airport to pick me up. But guess what happened? Both walked right by without recognizing me. I had a lot of hair, a big natural, and I wore a dashiki and African beads, and like other Black Power advocates, I wore sunglasses. Finally, I said the magic word, ‘Momma.’ She and Patrick recognized me by my voice. Momma looked at me and said, ‘Larry, is that you, boy?’ She kept calling me Larry, and I should have waited until I got home, but I said, ‘Momma, my n ame is Oba Yoruba.’ And she said, ‘Yuba who? Boy, I gotta get you home so your daddy can see you.’ I smiled confidently and walked to the car with Momma and my little brother, Patrick. “The entire Gossett family embraced the changes I had gone through, after a while that is, and supported me in my work for social justice through the Black Power movement we were about to establish on the campus of the University of Washington and in Seattle's Black community."

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