One year ago, human rights activists breathed a temporary sigh of relief when Obama ordered the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, a review of detention center policies, and an end to coercive torture techniques by January 22, 2010. One year later, the deadline has passed and 196 prisoners remain in the detention facility that has come to represent the US’s repressive torture techniques and indifference to international law. The administration has yet to set a new date for closure of the prison.

Andrew Birawri was a senior in high school when American troops bombed his city, beginning the War, which would later become the Occupation, in Iraq. The next year Andrew enrolled at Baghdad’s University of Technology to study mechanical engineering. “At the time I didn’t know I would be leaving, so I decided to carry on with my education until it got worse for me and for my family.” That point came in 2006, when the violence in Baghdad made life too dangerous for Andrew’s family to continue living there.

In Fall of 2007, a friend of mine named Hudson Muñoz approached me in Red Square. At the time, he was coordinating the student group sesame (Students Educating Students About the Middle East—now renamed the Mideast Solidarity Project). Hudson invited me to be part of a project that the group wanted to develop to have a student who had been displaced from their education in Iraq finish up at Evergreen for free. “I’m all about it,” I told him. I didn’t know then what I was getting myself into.

“Conditions at the NW Detention Center are inhumane and violate international law and the US Constitution.”
—OneAmerica, www.WeAreOneAmerica.com

Checkpoints are often seen as a distant reality, occurring in countries far from this one. The truth is that there are checkpoints right here in Washington State.

If you wanted to change the policies of the Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC), it would help to be Andrea Robbins. No, she isn’t a high-power ceo with a politician in her pocket, nor does she hold an official government position. She graduated from Evergreen last year and now works at the school’s Center for Community Based Learning and Action (CCBLA) through AmeriCorps vista. She is also one of the “key holders” (volunteer coordinators) for Olympia Books to Prisoners, an organization that fills requests for books from incarcerated people all over the country.

Judging by the provocative headline, one could imagine some deep-rooted CxPJ animus lurking behind this tale—but it isn’t so. True, the headline is an overstatement. But had the story occurred in our little publication’s lifetime, we would have steadfastly stood by our Cooper Point Journal compatriots, for once. The cast of characters in this true story includes the CPJ, one ass-kicking feminist, a “pornography-peddling” state legislator, Bart Simpson, and—yes, somewhere down the line—Evergreen’s Labor Center.
The year was 1995, and this was what happened:

Evergreen students have never been timid in standing up for their rights and beliefs. With so many battles going on at once, it is important that students not become fractured but reinforce attitudes of mutual support. While tuition hikes and budget cuts will likely be taking a leading role in the coming months, the Student Code of Conduct remains a hotspot and a potentially uniting struggle for Evergreen students.

On Dec. 9, Gov. Gregoire released a budget proposal that drastically cut state tuition assistance, including the State Need Grant program. About 20% of the Evergreen student body relies on the State Need Grant. Testimonies to the Governor from students poured in. Below is one such testimony. It is important to recognize that LeAnn Brinkman’s story is not unique.

I’m a single mom to six children, four of them still school age (16, 9, 7 and 6) and in the home.