‘Wes Browning: One personality to serve you since 1991’

Real Change
Washington gets $23 million to combat fentanyl crisis | Artists sought for public works projects | 5-year-old Seattleite’s lemonade stand raises $17,000 for Maui wildfire survivors

By | August 30, 2023

Washington gets $23 million to combat fentanyl crisis

In response to an increase in drug overdoses, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded $23 million last week to Washington communities.

The grants to King and Snohomish counties, along with one to the Washington State Department of Health, are directly aimed at addressing the drug overdose crisis, developing new methods of monitoring data on drug overdoses, increasing harm reduction services and reducing health disparities. ...
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Real Change
Seattle’s budget shortfall should fall on the rich

By Cary Moon | August 30, 2023

On Aug. 7, the Revenue Stabilization Workgroup offered its findings of potential new progressive revenue for the city of Seattle. The group, founded by the Seattle City Council and Mayor Harrell in 2022, was charged with identifing equitable solutions to fill the growing gap in revenue needed for the City’s General Fund. The group screened 63 potential ideas against evaluation criteria and came up with nine possible new sources of revenue.

There are a lot of politics swirling around this, and below is my take.

TL;DR version: Go get that money! ...
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Real Change
Come on, Barbie, let’s overthrow the patriarchy

By Jill Mullins | August 23, 2023

The “Barbie” movie (which this column includes spoilers for) is an incredible phenomenon. It grossed $1.2 billion dollars in sales, making it one of only 29 movies to achieve this milestone, according to the New York Times. It broke the prior record with how fast it achieved this, beating a “Harry Potter” movie by two days. This alone would be remarkable, but it is the first time a movie directed by a woman — Greta Gerwig — has achieved this breakthrough. ...
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Real Change
I don’t know how else I could have ended up with an aumakua!

By Dr. Wes Browning | August 23, 2023

The fires in Maui have been horrifying. I fear that the final death toll will be more than a thousand people. My heart goes out to everyone who has suffered from loss.

I have a dim memory of Maui from early childhood. Sometimes, when I was a toddler, my parents arranged a car trip across the island. I don’t know how. We were living on Oahu, not Maui. Was there a ferry? Was the car a loaner? Anyway, my whole memory was of miles of cultivated fields. It looked too corporate. ...
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Real Change
Drug reform has a second chance — to be better

By Jazmyn Clark | August 23, 2023

In June, the Seattle City Council rejected a proposal that would have criminalized drug use and possession in the city’s code and authorized the City Attorney to file criminal cases in municipal court. It was the right call. Community members criticized the proposal as a continuation of the failed policies of the racist War on Drugs, relying on criminalization to address a profound public health crisis plaguing our state. ...
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Real Change
No more ‘I’m fine’

By Piper Lauri Salogga | August 16, 2023

There’s a particular habit we humans seem to have that always gets under my skin. It’s the “How are you?”/“I’m fine” interaction. You know what I’m talking about, right?! That way we ask the question — “How are you?” — without really caring about the response.

We’re simply asking it out of habit, or because we think we should, or because we don’t know what else to say and silence doesn’t seem like an okay option. And for those of us on the responding end, it too often doesn’t really feel like we can tell the truth. ...
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Real Change
Why stop at driverless cars? How about pilotless helicopters, too?

By Dr. Wes Browning | August 16, 2023

According to headlines this morning, San Francisco will experiment with driverless taxis. I think it’s a great idea!

I was a Seattle cab driver for five years, from May 1982 to May 1987. While I have a lot of interesting memories of that time, I think it would have been better had I not been in the cars. In fact, after I crashed six different cabs, I made a deal with the Department of Licensing that I wouldn’t crash anymore if they would just replace my driver’s license promptly with a state ID. Which they did. I was so relieved. ...
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Real Change
We must demand media accountability in a time of broken trust

By Ken Gillgren | August 16, 2023

Way back in 1970, when I was a senior in high school, I attended an elective class on mass media and learned you can’t assume something is true just because it showed up in The New York Times. The entire class was about the ways in which logical fallacies, appeals to emotion and other tools for influencing public thought and opinion have long lurked in the channels of mass media — including those we have come to see as authoritative and the presumptive “guardians” of public integrity and truth. ...
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Real Change
Sweltering in silence

By Hanna Brooks Olsen | August 9, 2023

Neighbors complain about RVs; they don’t care about the people inside

When I was a kid, my family of five traveled by truck. In the cab of our Ford pickup, my parents rode with the windows down, the hot, dry air of the Central Oregon high country pelting them in the face. Meanwhile, my siblings and I played a game of chicken, trying to see how much we could open slim, horizontal sliding windows of the canopy before the wind sucked them out onto the highway. The whistling was deafening, but having the windows closed was worse. ...
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Real Change
‘Wes Browning: One personality to serve you since 1991’

By Dr. Wes Browning | August 9, 2023

My cover picture on Facebook has been a fake Real Change cover showing me with those words. It was created in 2014 by Jon Williams, our graphic designer at the time, for the in-office purpose of introducing staff to vendors. There were different fake covers for all the staff members.

We were all asked to pose for Jon to photograph us. I struck a kind of kitschy Soviet realism propaganda-poster pose, with me optimistically gazing up over the horizon. ...
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