Book Review: ‘Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Life in Contemporary Palestine’

Jobs, Journalism, Justice

Contributing Writer

Articles by Mike Wold

Illustration by Jon Williams, Real Change

Book Review: ’Feminism’s Forgotten Fight: The Unfinished Struggle for Work and Family’

By Mike Wold | May 1, 2019

Author Kirsten Swinth addresses the victories and defeats of second-wave feminism

Many Real Change readers may know about “second-wave” feminism — the upsurge in the 1960s and 1970s that won the right to abortion, made workplace discrimination against women illegal and changed the assumption that men were the providers and women the housekeepers. But some readers didn’t live through that period, and they may have bought into the stereotype that the movement was about supermoms who tried to have it all by raising families while having full-time careers, a prescription that resulted in stress and burnout. ...

Book Review: ‘No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs’

By Mike Wold | April 3, 2019

Author Lezlie Lowe highlights how city planners often neglect to address public bathroom policy

What makes a city livable? Urban planners talk about public spaces, pedestrian access, good transit, parks and more. But they almost never talk about public toilets. And that, says Lezlie Lowe, is a problem. As she puts it, “Public bathrooms are private spaces that reveal public truths.” ...

Book Review: ’Beyond the Rebel Girl: Women and the Industrial Workers of the World in the Pacific Northwest, 1905-1924’

By Mike Wold | March 20, 2019

Author Heather Mayer chronicles the contributions of women in organized labor in the PNW

A hundred years ago, Washington and Oregon were hotbeds of labor radicalism. The most radical union of the time, the Industrial Workers of the World (or “Wobblies”), was almost unique in its politics. Unlike the more mainstream AFL (American Federation of Labor), it welcomed and recruited women and people of color, including Black people and Chinese immigrants, who were otherwise almost universally rejected by American labor. ...

Vendor Bryant Carlin prepares for wildlife photography assignment

By Mike Wold | March 13, 2019

In November, Real Change profiled vendor Bryant Carlin and his plans to spend most of this year in the Olympic Mountains photographing wildlife and landscapes.

Those plans are still on; in fact, the donations to Conservation Made Simple have been so great that Bryant is extending his trip by a couple of months. He credits his Real Change customers for some of that. ...

Abias 'Sonny' Crosby. Photo by Randall E. Partin.

Vendor Obituary: Abias Crosby

By Mike Wold | February 27, 2019

The former Marine sold Real Change in Greenwood

Abias “Sonny” Crosby died of a stroke in September 2018, at the age of 65.

Sonny was well-loved in the Greenwood community, where he sold Real Change for many years. Customer Randy Partin would watch Sonny interact with other customers. “I’m an observer of life, being a photographer, and I would watch all these people one by one come and talk to him,” said Partin. “He was a magnet.” ...

Personal connections have proved pivotal for Real Change vendor Yemane Berhe

By Mike Wold | February 6, 2019

Yemane Berhe has a family spread out across the globe. Originally from Eritrea, he lives in Seattle. His two sons live with their mother in Washington, D.C. So do two sisters, a nephew and a niece. His brother and sister, who have been living in Kenya, just got visas to work in Australia. His mother and another sister just moved to Sudan. He hopes his mother will continue on to Australia to stay with his brother. And he still has family — two sisters and one brother — in Eritrea. ...

Book Review: ’Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi’

By Mike Wold | February 6, 2019

The capital of a state dominated by a history of White supremacy is in the midst of a radical transformation

lf someone were looking for an epicenter of radical social change in this country, you might send them to somewhere on the West or East Coasts, maybe Seattle or the Bay Area or Vermont. But would you send them to Jackson, Mississippi? ...

Book Review: ’Unsheltered: A Novel’

By Mike Wold | January 2, 2019

Barbara Kingsolver takes on climate change, evolution, class, religion and science — all under one roof

Barbara Kingsolver once said that when she writes a novel, she starts with the plot. However, “Unsheltered” is instead a novel that’s constructed around a strong metaphor — two families, separated by 150 years, living in the same location in houses where mistakes in construction mean that, at some point, repair is impossible. The houses must be torn down and something else put in their place. ...

Book Review: ’What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City’

By Mike Wold | December 12, 2018

When Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha discovered that what streamed out of Flint, Michigan’s faucets wasn’t safe to drink, she set out to inform the public. On the way, she ran into a toxic cover-up at the highest levels

When Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha had an old college friend over for a barbecue, she wasn’t expecting to get drawn into a protracted fight with the city, the county and the state over what became known as the Flint water crisis. Up to that point, she’d believed, as she put it, that the “men in white coats” knew what they were talking about when they said Flint’s water was safe to drink. ...