The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents January 2025 Wrapping It Up: Final 2024 Election Results Pam Crone The final tally wasn’t in when we summarized the 2024 Washington State election results in the December Advocate. Some races were too close to call, and seats of retirees were yet to be filled. We can now report on the final results and the composition of the 2025 Legislature. New faces and big Democratic majorities highlight the new session. Washington State Senate The Democrats flipped a seat in the 18th Legislative District. Senator-elect Adrian Cortes replaces Ann Rivers and gives the Senate Democrats a 30-19 majority. Cortes beat Brad Benton, son of former Senator Don Benton. As noted in December, Sen. Jamie Peder- sen, 43rd Leg. District, is the Senate’s new majority leader. Additional new senators are Deb Krishnadasan succeeding Emily Randall in the 26th Legislative District, and former Rep. Tina Orwall appointed to fill the seat formerly held by Karen Keiser in the 33rd. Washington State House Democrats in the House also picked up a seat giving them a 59-39 majority. Adison Richards beat former Representative Jesse Young to take one of the House seats in the 26th Leg. District. Richards replaces Republican Spencer Hutchins, who did not run for re-election. 2025 Session Calendar Session begins Jan. 13 and runs for 105 days. Policy Committee Cut-off in the first house is February 21 Bills must be out of their house of origin March 12 Policy Committee Cut-off in the second house is April 2 Bills must be out of the second house April 16 Session ends April 27 PSARA Dates of Note Legislators began pre-filing their bills Dec. 1. These bills will be formally introduced in the House and Senate on January 13. See our website at psara.org for the link to pre-filed bills. The Government Relations Committee is finalizing PSARA’s 2025 legislative agenda, to be unveiled at the Legislative Conference on January 7. Featured speakers will be former House Speaker Frank Chopp and Senator Bob Hasegawa. Thanks to all our members who have completed and submitted the legislative survey. Please mark your calendars for our in-person Lobby Day in Olympia on March 18. Stay tuned for action. Pam Crone is a retired lobbyist and Chair of PSARA's Government Relations Committee (GRC). < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents February 2025 The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and Mass Deportation Anne Watanabe What comes to mind when you hear “alien enemies?” Hostile green creatures, Klingons threatening the Starship Enterprise, or – French people? Congress passed the Alien Enemies Act in 1798 during a US “quasi war” with France (naval hostilities that were never officially declared as war). Enacted during a time of fierce anti-French sentiment and fear of espionage and sabotage, the Act granted sweeping power to the president to detain and deport non-natives. This law, together with three other acts, formed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Even amidst 18th Century anti- French hysteria, the laws were controversial. Three of the four acts were quickly repealed or allowed to sunset. But the Alien Enemies Act remains in effect to this day. Why should we care? Because today anti-immigrant sentiment runs high, and incoming Presi- dent Trump campaigned on promises to use the Act to detain undocumented immigrants and carry out mass deportations. The Act states: “Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, and the President makes public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, re- strained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.” The Alien Enemies Act has only been used three times. During the War of 1812, President Madison used it to require British nationals to report extensive information about themselves to the government. During World War I, President Wilson used the Act (newly amended to include women as well as men as “alien enemies”) to register hundreds of thousands of German nationals, and to place several thousand in internment camps – in some cases up to two years after fighting had ended. During WWII, President Roosevelt used the Act to detain and/or deport thou- sands of German, Italian, and Japanese nationals (Executive Order 9066 and military orders were used to incarcerate Japanese American US citizens). Despite lacking connection or loyalty to a former homeland (even German Jews who had fled Germany were included) noncitizens were treated as “alien enemies” based on national origin. If President Trump attempts to use the Alien Enemies Act to achieve mass deportations, he will of course face vigorous challenges. The Act refers to a “declared war” and has only been invoked during wartime. With its lack of procedural safeguards concerning detention or deportation, the 1798 Act runs counter to established principles of due process and equal protection, and it conflicts with modern immigration law. And yet… The Act also refers to an attempted or threatened “invasion or predatory incursion” by a foreign nation or government. The President has described undocumented immigration as an “invasion,” perhaps laying the ground- work to use the Act during peacetime. The state of Texas did this in its clash with the Biden Administration, arguing that unlawful immigration constitutes an “invasion” allowing the state to use extraordinary measures. Several judges declined to decide whether an “invasion” had occurred, viewing this as a “political question” for the executive branch, not the judicial branch, under the doctrine established by the US Supreme Court in Baker v. Carr (1962). The potential thus exists for the judiciary to stand down when a president creates a pretext for using the Alien Enemies Act. For a deeper dive into this issue, the Brennan Center for Justice has an excellent legal analysis on its website: The Alien Enemies Act | Bren- nan Center for Justice. The sweeping powers granted by the Act may appeal to politicians who wish to detain and remove immigrants while bypassing hearings or other legal protections. If people can be treated as foreign enemies based on national origin, then due process, habeas corpus and other protections under domestic and international laws may be denied in the name of national security. In 2023, Senator Mazie Hirano and Rep. Ilhan Omar reintroduced their “Neighbors Not Enemies” Act (SB 1747/ HR 3610) to repeal the Alien Enemies Act (as of this writing, three Washington representatives have signed on). Politicians will still have other deportation tools at their disposal, but repeal of the Alien Enemies Act will protect immigrants from the abusive power of an 18th Century law -- so that we remain a nation of neighbors, not enemies. Anne Watanabe is Chair of PSARA's Race and Gender Equity (RaGE) Commit- tee and a member of PSARA's Executive 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 September 2025 What Do People in the US think About Climate Change? Peter Harris What do people in the US think about climate change? The large majority of people in the US see global warming and want the government to act. This holds across the country, in all states, even those run by Republicans. This has been shown for years in surveys conducted by the Climate Change Communication program at George Mason University and Yale, easily found online. This holds everywhere. A globe- spanning survey by the 89% Project of international newsrooms showed that the very large majority of people in all nations want their governments to do more to fight global warming. The 74% in the US is a lower percentage than almost every other nation. How much are people aware of these opinions? Why does this matter? People who care about global warming tend to think others don’t care. This is part of what prevents climate action. People are more willing to act when they see that others care. Per the 89% Project: “We’re sitting on an enormous potential climate movement...It’s latent. It hasn’t been activated or catalyzed. But when you break through these perception gaps, you help people under- stand that they’re not alone...Making people aware of this would help a lot and bring hope. [A lot] of people are self-censoring and not fighting or voting [for climate action] because they think that their ideas are not in the zeitgeist.” The same holds for politicians. Elected officials greatly underestimate the number of constituents who care about global warming. “You might think their political antennas are finely tuned to public opinion, but they are not – sometimes wildly underestimating public views. . . If we can make politicians more aware of what the people in their country want, they mightactually act on people’s preferences.” Why does reducing climate change have a low political priority? The lack of awareness of public opinion is one reason. Another is the misinformation skillfully produced by the fossil fuel industry. A third reason may be that the environmental impacts of climate change are often confused with environmental problems we’ve addressed before. These have mainly been things we directly created and try to directly solve, often successfully. The problems can be big or small, but they are addressed case by case. In contrast, the climate change caused by humans is an indirect result of greenhouse gas emissions and is global in its impacts. The impacts are new and growing fast and have the potential to damage life on earth. There can only be a global cure. It is easy to see this as outside the scope of government action and beyond our choices in voting. The solution may be recognizing that a global cure will come from hundreds of local actions, from individuals reducing power consumption, to states and nations replacing fossil fuels with solar and wind power. State actions can be popular. The strong political support in Washington for the Climate Commitment Act is a good example. The CCA was protected by voters in soundly rejecting I-2117. It was protected again by the state legislature in a tough bud- get process. How much are people aware of these opinions? Why does this matter? First, we can share our views with friends, neighbors and colleagues. Ask them what they think about global warming. If they care, tell them you care too, and that most others agree. Second, we can share this information with all of our elected officials. This will back up the good positions many have taken, encourage more of the same, and at least stimulate some thought by those who have not supported climate action. Third, we can move from the general to here and now. When a political issue directly or indirectly affecting the climate is on the table, tell the decision makers how many of their constituents want action on global warming. Use the data. Fourth, we can repeat this in next year’s elections. Tell all state and federal candidates the majority view of their constituents and ask for their positions on any climate actions at hand. Publish their responses or non-responses. In all this, do not be discouraged by the federal government’s insane denial of climate change. Trump and the billionaires he serves care more about putting money into their already stuffed pockets than protecting a livable world for their own grandchildren. But the public is opening its eyes. Opinions are the result of the occasions for expressing them. Every day, each of us can add a little weight. Peter Harris is a member of PSARA's Climate and Environmental Justice Committee. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents October 2025 How WISeR Will Enable Companies to Profit from Pain – A Retired Physician’s Story Jaisri Lingappa, MD PhD As a retired and otherwise healthy physician, I recently endured weeks of intense pain this summer due to a herniated disk, which developed out of the blue without an obvious cause. This pain was beyond anything I had previously experienced – I am generally quite stoic, but these episodes reduced me to tears in the middle of the night. Disk herniation is a common spine condition that causes intense back pain and sciatica. The herniated (bulging) disk impinges on a spinal nerve causing inflammation that in turn increases pressure on the nerve leading to worse pain and inflammation in a vicious cycle. Epidural steroid injections are simple outpatient procedures that are performed in a few minutes without general anesthesia but must be done by a specialist using fluoroscopy (real- time X-ray imaging) to guide the injection to the site of the herniation. By delivering anti-inflammatory steroids to the exact site of the herniation, the epidural injection reduces the inflammation, thereby breaking the vicious cycle of pain and providing short term relief, often to a dramatic extent. In the long term, the patient’s immune system can trim the bulging disc, leading to a full recovery, but it is difficult for that healing process to begin when a patient is struggling with the vicious cycle of painful inflammation worsened by daily activity or impaired sleep. Thus, epidural steroid injection is a straightforward and minimally invasive procedure that can play a critical role in management of a common form of back pain. Pain specialists spend years learning when and how to use this important tool. Shockingly, “epidural steroid injection for pain management” is one of the 17 procedures that will soon require prior authorization for patients in Original (Traditional) Medicare in Washington State, thanks to a new program called WISeR(1) about to be instituted by Dr. Oz, the new Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS). My herniated disk prevented me from sleeping for more than 90 minutes at a time without severe pain for much of this past summer. Because my Washington State town lacks practitioners who offer epidural injection, I tried other approaches for pain relief, including nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications, oral steroids, and intra- muscular steroid injections. But after seven weeks of repeated setbacks and severe sleep deprivation, I searched outside our area for the procedure. Because I am on Original Medicare, I was able to choose the best physician for this purpose regardless of location or network affiliation. A highly regarded pain specialist an hour away was able to schedule the initial visit in two weeks and the procedure, which included a diagnostic and therapeutic component, a week later. Within days after the procedure, I was sleeping pain-free for the first time in 10 weeks, and a couple days later I resumed my previous level of exercise. A month out from the procedure, I continue to be pain-free and my spine appears to be well on its way to healing. Under the new WISeR program, Washington State residents on Original Medicare will need prior authorization (PA) to obtain epidural steroid injections for pain management in the future, along with 16 other procedures - a list that could grow over time. Authorization will be decided by companies that use AI to make decisions and will gain profit through denying authorizations. This approach will be modeled on the current use of PA by Medicare Advantage (MA). MA, which is offered by for-profit insurers as an alternative to Original Medicare, has gained attention for the use of PA as a mechanism for enhancing corporate profits(2,3). “Data submitted by MA insurers show that 81.7% of prior authorization denials were overturned in 2023” upon appeal according to a recent article from Healthcare Uncovered (4). The success of most appeals shows that prior authorization denials are often medically inappropriate – in which case why is CMMS replicating MA programs already proven to be problematic (5) and imposing them on Original Medicare? I cannot begin to imagine how much worse it would have made my life to endure weeks or even months of additional excruciating pain and sleep deprivation while awaiting prior authorization and perhaps even an appeal. Is this what our country has come to? Will seniors now be forced to endure pain and illness, while knowing that relief used to be easily available if their physician deemed it necessary? Important procedures will soon be out of reach because our government allows corporations to reap huge profits by denying necessary healthcare. Citations: 1. WISeR Model RFA. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. P. 20. https://www.cms.gov/files/document/wiser-model-rfa.pdf 2. Medicare Advantage Plans Often Deny Needed Care, Federal Report Finds. Reed Abelson, The New York Times, April 28, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/ health/medicare-advantage-plans- report.html 3. Insurers Pledge to Ease Controversial Prior Approvals for Medical Care. Reed Abelson, The New York Times, June 20, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/ health/health-insurance-prior-authori- zation.html 4. CMS is Trying to Expand Prior Authorization in Traditional Medicare Even Though All Data Points Say That’s a Bad Idea. Rachel Madley, Healthcare Uncovered, July 7, 2025. https://healthcareuncovered.substack . com/p/cms-is-trying-to-expand-prior- authorization 5. About the Current Prior Authorization System. AMA Website FixPrior- Auth. https://fixpriorauth.org/issue Jaisri Lingappa is a retired physician and professor of global health, and a member of PSARA's Level the Playing Field task force. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents March 2025 Organizing for Immigrant Human Rights Cindy Domingo Every day for the last month we have been assaulted by the Trump administration’s coup and the dismantling of our government that upholds our US democracy. However, nothing is more heart breaking than the media coverage of handcuffed and shackled immigrants, many of them children, being loaded onto planes for deportation. US citizens are being questioned and asked for birth certificates and pass- ports because they spoke Spanish in public or looked like they were Mexican or Latino. Weare again hearing about parents being deported leaving their children behind. Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents sit outside nonprofits that serve predominantly Latinos merely to intimidate clients, striking fear in employees that one day they won’t see particular beloved people because they were deported. On the legal front, Trump has cut legal aid funding that assists immigrants in their asylum requests. They fled countries where they faced economic hardships and violence. Funding has even been cut for lawyers of children unaccompanied by parents when they crossed the US southern border, leaving them vulnerable to human and sex trafficking. Trump ran on a platform blaming the ills of our society on undocumented immigrants of color. Unemployment, the housing crisis, lack of money for social services, gang and gun violence, and drug addiction are all a result of our southern border not being secure. According to Trump, President Biden and Vice President Harris allowing thousands of “bad” immigrants into our country. Congress followed suit in late January when they passed the Laken Riley Act, named after a Georgia nursing student who was murdered last year by a Venezuelan man. That act, passed with bipartisan support, including Washington State Congresswomen Marie Gluesencamp Perez and Kim Schrier. It is a broad sweeping law that allows for the detainment of non-citizens for almost any crime, including shoplifting. Non-citizens can include DACA students and people on special visas, like the Temporary Status Program. Trump has also canceled funding for refugee resettlement programs that are impact- ing Ukrainian, Sudanese, and other peoples fleeing war torn countries. In Washington State, this is having a devastating impact even though we have one of the best refugee resettlement programs, initiated by Republican Governor Dan Evans in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Washington State's legal aid programs have already been cut due to Trump and Elon Musk’s cuts to federal funding, and ICE has stepped up the numbers of deportees flown out of King County International Airport. However, Trump’s mass deportation of immigrants and refugees has not gone without a response by the immigrant rights communities, labor movement, legal community, and others. But it will take a mass movement, a broad united front, to both protect immigrants and refugees and project a vision of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Standing for Democracy (see February issue of The Retiree Advocate) aims to build that united front by calling for a conference in April/May to bring together all those who want to stop the mass deportations, and to support immigrants and refugees who are the target of Trump’s inhumane immigration policies. Building for this conference has already begun enabling groups who work in their own silos to work together. Participants for planning include Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), Casa Latina, Washington Immigrant Rights Network (WAISN), One America, LELO/A Legacy for Equality Leadership and Organizing, Pride At Work, PSARA, Washington State Labor Council, King County Labor Council, AFT Washington, UFCW 3000, SEIU Local 6, Unite Here Local 8, APALA Seattle, Communities for Colleges, the Offices of King County Councilmembers Teresa Mosqueda, Jorge Baron, and Rod Dembowski, the Office of Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Community to Community, and other community organizations. If you are interested in planning this conference and ongoing work with Standing for Democracy, please contact Cindy Domingo at cindydomingo@gmail.com or Moon Vazquez at jmoom57@earthlink.net Committee meetings have been scheduled for program, site/logistics, and outreach. Cindy Domingo is PSARA's Co-VP for Outreach and a veteran activist with LELO/A Legacy for Equality Leadership and Organizing and APALA (Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance). < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents February 2026 Who Owns Your Care Choices? Katie Harris George Orwell’s 1984 envisioned that Big Brother, our government, would be watching us and managing our lives by that year. We didn’t get there in 1984, but, that same year, two companies in the private sector were laying the groundwork to do just that. Forty years later, these companies are reaping the fruits of their vision and controlling significant aspects of our lives and health. In 1985, I happened upon a 1984 annual report for National Medical Enterprises (NME). It was a shocker. The company trumpeted a growth model called vertical integration. NME intended to buy companies, procuring all goods and services a hospital needed. They would source goods and services from companies they owned, at prices they set. They bought psychiatric hospitals, rehabilitation centers, nursing homes, and acute care centers. They bought companies providing diagnostic equipment, hospital beds, lifts, wheelchairs, and linens. 1984 was also the year that NME moved into health plans, becoming the second largest investor-owned health care company. This enabled NME to control patients’ access to benefits and fees for medical insurance, as well as the price of everything the patients might need. But NME became mired in scandal. In the 1990s, it had to sell its specialty hospitals after its psychiatric hospitals committed fraud. It then rebranded as Tenet Healthcare, today capitalized at almost $17 billion, with assets of $8.3 billion. But in this universe, $8.3 billion is small potatoes. Also in 1984, a relatively small company called United Health-care went public. Fast forward forty years. In 2025, United Health Group’s (UHG’s) revenues are $435 billion, up 10.48% over 2024. It ranks #3 on the Fortune 500 list of U.S. companies. UHG has swallowed up more than 2,700 companies. It is Orwellian and very Big Brother. UHG has diversified its holdings to include whether we are eligible for care, what care we’ll receive, where we’ll obtain it, how much we’ll be charged, what information we’ll receive about our care, and how our data will be shared. And this strategic approach has landed UHG on Forbes’ List of Most Admired Companies for fifteen consecutive years. Our data is a marketable asset for UHG. Wendell Potter, whose Sunlight Report on United Health Group analyzes UHG’s acquisitions, reports, “The company increasingly even controls much of the information we have available to us online about medical care and health insurance. One of its transactions created RVO Health, which is now a massive, privately held digital media and marketing company that reaches more than 300 million people every month, and manages more than 100 news and information sites.” Potter also notes that information sources appearing to be independent often are not; for example, UHG operates Health-markets, an online site that appears to provide unbiased insurance information, despite its inherent conflict of interest. Vertical integration is hitting specialized caregiving industries, too. For example, Redwood Family Care Network (RFCN) provides residential programs, community homes, specialized home care, community supports, day programs, employment supports, and behavioral services. On a given day, a client might proceed from a community home to a day program, and then receive therapies and job coaching, all under RFCN’s umbrella, while appearing to receive services from discreet providers. The rapid pace of consolidation affects service quality, as well as the bottom line. Since 2020, my family has experienced issues three times. My mother required caregiving in New York. A small agency provided aides, supervision, and medical coordination. Then the company was bought out. Mom’s care went sideways. A social worker, assigned to oversee her care, worked for a different agency under the same umbrella. My mother’s caregiving agency didn’t supervise the social worker, and the social worker wasn’t supervising Mom’s aides. My daughter, who has disabilities, is in Supported Living, a DSHS program. Her service provider was bought out by a company offering diversified caregiving services. Staff turnover was astonishing. My daughter’s home had five managers in three months. She missed appointments. Her household supplies disappeared at an impressive rate, and the promised inventory system wasn’t implemented. I transferred my daughter’s care to another provider. Within weeks, her new provider was bought out by yet another company for $835 million. The purchasing company added 14,000 to its client base of 50,000 in 40 states. The company tells us that nothing will change. But, actually, my experience is that it just takes the purchaser a while to implement changes. As for now? I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Please join me for a deeper look at the impacts of vertical integration in health and caregiving industries in upcoming issues of The Advocate. If you have examples of your own that you’d like to share, please send them to organizer@psara.org and put Vertical Integration in the subject line. Katie Harris is the Retiree Advocate's copy editor and a member of the Retiree Advocate Editorial Board. < Back to Table of Contents

She Walks Miles in Other People’s Shoes, Part I Interview With Maureen Bo Angie Bartels interviews PSARA member and labor organizer Maureen Bo on her life experiences and work in organized labor Read

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents June 2025 We Remember Iris Rosechild Editor's Note: The Advocate mourns the passing of our friend and colleague Iris Rosechild. Iris volunteered as a proofreader for the Advocate for many years, and her way with words made the Advocate a better publication. She always kept us laughing and was a pleasure to work with. We'd like to share a remembrance of Iris by her friend Carla. Iris Rosechild, born Iris Chaya Golub in Brooklyn, New York, Oct. 27, 1943, died at the age of 81 in Seattle in the hospital, nine days after a fall in her apartment. Her father, Barry Golub, came from Russia when he was 11 to join his father here in America. He was an interior house painter, and his father was a tailor. Her mother, Rose Golub, was a housewife and the first generation from Austria. Rose and Barry spoke Yiddish to each other and were Socialists. Iris was the youngest of six daughters. Her Jewish identity was very important to her. Iris left home at 17 to be a bohemian with her boyfriend in Greenwich Village. Her favorite place was the Caricatura coffee house. She moved to the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco in the 60’s, became a flower child, and protested the Vietnam War. Eventually she moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington and graduated with a BA in Women’s Studies. She was the first coordinator of the Feminist Therapy Referral Service, which was started by her partner, Cameron Justam, in 1976. Before that she was a counselor at the YWCA. Iris had a small business selling fashionable hats called Mad about Hats in the Bon Marché in downtown Seattle. She also sold socks in a business called Café Socks in Pike Place Market and in the former Broadway Market on Capitol Hill. She returned to New York to take care of her father and her sister who were dying. She earned a Master’s in Grief Counseling at Pace University. She got a job as a counselor in New York helping the homeless find permanent housing. She loved her job but quit to return to Seattle and Cameron. She did proofreading since 2018 for the Retiree Advocate, where her keen sense of the rhythm of words was appreciated. This was just one of her many volunteer commitments. She volunteered for the Seattle International Film Festival, the Seattle Jewish Film Festival, as well as Seattle Town Hall. She and Cameron have been in a lesbian film group for five years. She had an inimitable sense of style in everything she did. She had a signature sense of humor. She made great chicken soup. She was a reader and big library user. She was warm and caring for other human beings. She was a big animal lover. Her most recent pet, Cozmo, was a three-legged orange female cat who Iris doted on. Iris is survived by two sisters, Dorian and Ruth, four nieces, one nephew, and her partner of 49 years, Cameron. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents September 2026 Spokane Below My Wings, Lost in Smoke, All Ashes Tim Wheeler The plane took off from SeaTac airport, climbing steeply, banking to the east, headed for Baltimore. I did not have a window seat, yet I could see through the starboard cabin window snowy Mount Rainier and Mount Adams, awesome volcanic peaks that sometimes erupt like Mount Saint Helens did in 1980. “We must be flying above Ellensburg by now,” my fellow passenger in the window seat said. “But the smoke is so thick, I can’t see anything. No Ellensburg. No Columbia River. Just smoke.” Even from my aisle seat I could see far to the southern horizon, Oregon, Idaho, California, Utah, all engulfed in a blanket of dense smoke from runaway wildfires. Spokane fire (photo: PNWDaily.com ) Half an hour later, we must have been flying over Spokane, although we saw only smoke below us. We had just been reading about the “Old Trails” wildfire that destroyed 560 homes in the suburbs of Spokane, each of these dwellings valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars, even a million dollars or more. I was one of a thousand delegates, alternates, and guests who attended the Washington State Democratic Convention, June 20-21, staying in a hotel right on the banks of the Spokane River. We all cheered Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) calling on all of us to join in the nationwide get-out-the-vote drive to oust the MAGA Republican extremists in the midterm elections Nov. 3, Representatives and Senators who serve the oil and gas corporations. These lawmakers support Trump’s wars on Venezuela, Iran, Gaza, and Lebanon, that reap trillions in fossil fuel profits that heat the planet, turn forests tinder dry, and ignite the fires that make planet Earth uninhabitable. As a student at the University of Washington in the 1960s, I had friends from Spokane who knew and loved the great African American lawyer and peace and justice activist, Carl Maxey. In his memory, there is a “Carl Maxey Center” in Spokane today, fighting back against all forms of racist and sexist oppression in the “Inland Empire.” In the spring of 2000, my dad and I drove over to Spokane to cover an infamous lockout of the union steelworkers at the Kaiser Aluminum complex at two towns just north of the city, Trentwood with an aluminum rolling mill employing about 1,000 workers, and the neighboring town of Mead, where an aluminum smelter employed about 1,000 workers. Henry J. Kaiser is remembered as an “enlightened” CEO who bargained with his shipyard, steel, and aluminum workers. But after he died, Kaiser’s enterprises were taken over by a gang of corporate cutthroats whose obsession was maximum profits -- the workers, their union, and community be damned. These gangsters brought in permanent strikebreakers, housed in barracks surrounded by high chainlink fences --scabs kept like prison inmates with the sole aim of busting the United Steelworkers Local 338. The new union busting management instigated measures so extreme the workers went out on strike September 30, 1998. In 1999, still refusing to bargain at plants in Washington State, Ohio, and Louisiana, Kaiser turned it into an illegal lockout. Finally, a settlement was reached October 23, 2000. Ultimately, the USWA filed a lawsuit and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled against Kaiser, ordering them to pay the workers more than seven million dollars in damages. Even so, it came at a huge cost for the workers. Kaiser permanently closed down the aluminum smelter in Mead, destroying a plant that employed as many as 1,000 workers. Only the Trentwood rolling mill remains today, still employing about 1,000 workers represented by USWA Local 338. Well over half the aluminum in the United States is manufactured in Washington State because electrolysis is at the heart of turning bauxite into aluminum. The hydroelectric power generated by the Bonneville Power Administration’s dams on the Columbia River is the key to Washington’s aluminum production. Spokane holds other memories. In November, 1909, the Free Speech Movement led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) erupted in Spokane. Jobless workers, also known as “hoboes,”“vagabonds,” and “bindlestiffs,” rose in mass street protests against a racket by employment agencies in Spokane that charged the homeless, starving workers a dollar for a job as a logger or farmworker for one or two days. The employer would squeeze as much labor as he could at starvation wages, then fire the worker who was forced to return to the employment agency that charged him another dollar. It was a “vicious circle” for every homeless, toiling bindlestiff. The IWW decided to organize these workers. They staged mass street rallies with the workers, standing on soap boxes to denounce this giant swindle. The rallies became bigger and bigger. Finally, the Spokane City Council enacted a statute outlawing public speaking. IWW responded by calling for “Wobblies” to come from all over the nation to join in the “Free Speech Movement." The Spokane jail was jam-packed, so full that the US Army came to the rescue, allowing the arrestees to be incarcerated at the local military base. Among the most powerful speakers to come to Spokane to speak was Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, then an IWW organizer, one of the most effective leaders of garment and textile worker strikes in Passaic, NJ, and Lawrence, Mass. She delivered one of her fiery orations and was arrested. When she was released, she stepped up onto the soapbox again and denounced the filthy, overcrowded, Spokane jail. The male police officers who ran the women’s wing of the jail had turned it into a brothel, Gurley Flynn said. The public support for the Free Speech Movement became so powerful that the Spokane City Council repealed the ban on public speaking -- a victory for freedom of speech and also for the right of workers to organize. These were my thoughts of Spokane as we flew above the incinerated houses in Old Trails. Spokane must be rebuilt! We can’t afford to squander $1 billion each day of our tax dollars on Trump’s illegal war against Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, when our cities and towns are being destroyed by wildfires and corporate shutdowns. Tim Wheeler is a veteran activist and journalist and one of the leaders of PSARA's Clallam County organizing committee. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents September 2026 The Tech Tools of ICE: Drawing Inferences About Us Katie Harris All over the country, people are hopping mad. The source of their ire: street cameras owned by Flock – all 120,000 of them. You may have seen the company’s signs that feature a line of waddling ducklings. Benign? Actually, no. A few things set the Flock cameras apart. First, they are simple and solar-powered, requiring no infrastructure to set up. That makes them very at-tractive to police departments. Forty percent of police departments around the country have contracts with Flock. Second, they are used for controversial purposes. For example, Flock cameras capture not only your license plate, but your location, vehicle color, roof rack, and bumper stickers. In 2025, Flock was found to be reporting data gleaned through municipal contracts through an informal relationship with ICE. The Seattle Times reports that, in addition to tracking immigrants, police officers have used them for personal purposes, such as tracking the movements of their relationship partners. Third, they are interconnected. The platform provides a real-time map of your activities, gleaned without your knowledge or consent. The interconnection, inferences drawn, and absence of consent are what set apart the current generation of technology tools deployed by ICE. In August’s Retiree Advocate , I began exploring the tech tools used by ICE and other government entities that are becoming more widely used to surveil activists, journalists, and communities, as well as immigrants. A recent report, The Tech Behind ICE: Oligarchs, Immigration Enforcement and the Threat to Democracy , (Mijente, Just Futures Law, Surveillance Resistance Lab, 2026), provides extensive detail about those surveillance tools and describes their implications for our privacy and daily lives. Last month, I described technologies that hack cell phones, trace location, and build portraits of our locations, habits, relationships, calendars, and priorities. In this month’s article, I’ll look at tools we know exist, but don’t think of in the context of immigration enforcement. The first of these is the sale of your information by data brokers. You’re aware of the unsolicited mailers you receive when it’s time to renew your insurance, and the ads that pop up on your computer screen when you’ve typed in a key word. The sale and purchase of our data is largely unregulated – and it’s prolific. This industry generates $250 - $330 billion in sales per year. The largest of these ICE data broker contractors are NexisLexis and Thomson Reuters. They have developed huge inventories of data ranging from credit histories to background checks to property and court records. ICE synthesizes the data with information from other government agencies, generating comprehensive portraits of individuals, their daily lives, relationships, strengths, and vulnerabilities. Accurint, a platform of a LexisNexis subsidiary, holds 37 billion records, including the personal data of 95% of Americans. In 2021 alone, ICE made 1.2 million searches of that database. Thomson Reuters, which has a “risk mitigation” contract with ICE to keep ICE agents from harm, also provides information on the social media presence of immigrant justice activists. An Equifax subsidiary tracks data in real time related to jailing bookings and releases, enabling ICE agents to be on site when a person they are targeting is released. Homeland Security also contracts with data analytics companies. These firms dissect voluminous data sets to draw inferences about how people will act. One platform, RAVEn, checks faces against immigration documents, workplace audits, and driver licenses, all without any notification to government entities or to the people being surveilled. DSHS owns the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology System (HART), the repository for biometric data gathering, such as iris scans. However, the system is mired in controversy; Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policy, is orienting data collection to align the system’s capabilities with the administration’s immigration enforcement strategies. Another tech tool used for surveillance is web scraping. Web scraping involves extracting data from sites across the internet, linking the data, and creating portraits of individuals, which are, of course, for sale. These portraits are used to target individuals for surveillance and deportation. Accuracy is reportedly not a priority and the process is rife with civil rights abuses. Zignal is one such web scraping tool. It analyzes billions of social media posts, every single day, to identify whether people constitute threats. Its primary use in the US is for immigrant deportation. The company also has a contract with the Israeli military, for which it provides “tactical guidance” in Gaza. Another tool, Fivecast Onyx, gathers information from social media and generates suppositions about “sentiment and emotion.” A tool called RECON tracks internet usage, collecting personal information gleaned from internet providers, to develop detailed, dynamic portraits of users. In next month’s Retiree Advocate , I’ll look at other technologies deployed by ICE and other government entities. Future articles in the series will explore the revolving door and conflicts of interest between tech company leadership, tech sector leadership, and government leadership. Finally, I’ll explore the strategies needed to build the movement to dislodge the surveillance state. < Back to Table of Contents

The Retire Advocate < Back to Table of Contents July 2026 No War on Cuba! Cindy Domingo General and retired president Raul Castro In 2024, during Donald Trump’s second presidential campaign, he promised to avoid “endless wars” and to be the “peace president.” And then, in his inaugural address, Trump said his administration’s success would be measured “not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars that we never get into.” However, here we are, immersed in a war with Iran, against a backdrop of an unsettling military invasion of Venezuela that resulted in the illegal kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, the continuation of the Russian war in Ukraine, and now, the threat of a military invasion of Cuba. In the April issue of the Retiree Advocate, I reported on the oil embargo the US has implemented on Cuba. Since January, only one oil tanker has reached Cuba. This has resulted in continued electricity blackouts ranging from 22 hours per day up to 36 continuous hours. Without gas and oil, there is no electricity. Universities and schools have all but closed down and workers cannot get to work, since there is little to no transportation. Without refrigeration, people must search for food every day to feed their families. Food cannot be brought into the cities because trucks have no gasoline, and garbage has gone uncollected, causing a public health crisis. More than 80% of Cuba’s water pumping equipment depends on electricity, and so, oftentimes, there is no water available. One of the most serious and tragic outcomes of the long term US blockade and the recent oil crisis is the dismantling of the healthcare system that was, at one time, along with Cuba’s free education system, the pride of the country. Cuba had a healthcare system that rivaled developed countries’ systems. In 2019, at Havana’s William Soler Pediatric Hospital, over 10,000 operations a year were performed, and by 2025, that number was less than 2,000, according to Dr. Fernandez, a pediatrician at the hospital. Infant mortality has almost doubled due to the lack of nutritious food and prenatal vitamins for the mothers. Equipment and medications to treat low birth weight in infants are not available. Many women have decided not to have children, due to the difficult conditions now facing people in Cuba. Earlier this year, Volker Turk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights commented on US sanctions, “Policy goals cannot justify actions that in themselves violate human rights.” The suffering of the Cuban people is being manufactured by the US, and people are dying. Already over one million Cubans have left the island out of desperation, seeking better living and working conditions. In response to the US’s illegal and genocidal war against Cuba, international and US communities have come together to form a broad coalition to condemn US policies towards Cuba. Last May, a campaign called “No War on Cuba,” was created by international brigades that went to Cuba during the May Day celebrations. Countries around the world have pledged to send material aid to Cuba, while US organizations are also continuing to raise money to send material aid and organize delegations. Over 150 people from the US are going to Cuba in August to celebrate Fidel Castro’s 100th birthday, bringing two charter airplanes filled with material aid. Other organizations are doing advocacy work to pressure Congress to end the war. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal traveled to Cuba in May with Congressman Jonathan Jackson from Illinois and has been leading work within Congress to change US foreign policy towards Cuba. The pretext for a US military invasion is being set. The recent charging of former Cuban President Raul Castro for alleged murders of four Cubans, who were continuously warned after invading Cuban airspace, and the misinformation that Cuba purchased 300 drones with the intent of bombing the US, are setting the stage for hostile actions from the US. However, Cuban President Diaz Canel has stated that Cuba will exercise its right to defend its country and its national sovereignty, while offering to hold diplomatic talks. Organizations around the world are preparing for US direct military action in Cuba. If you are interested in being part of a rapid response network, should the US militarily intervene in Cuba, please email womenandcuba. org. To find activities to participate in, please go to www.nowaroncuba.org . Cindy Domingo, PSARA's CoVP for Outreach and covening leader of Standing for Democracy, is a respected leader and activist in many labor and community organizations. < Back to Table of Contents