DSHS Institutions Closures

Both the Senate and House budgets propose closures of RHCs. Frances Haddon Morgan Center, Yakima Valley School, Rainier, have all been named with an end goal of closing them all. Take action now. Each day has been a seesaw with a different RHC targetted. Providers have been bringing their clients to testify against the RHCs. They look forward to the closures and the property as a means to put more money into the community. We cannot bring our clients to the legislature or even disclose their names without fear of termination. That leaves our dear ones without a voice to save their homes. The parents and advocacy groups are fighting hard as are some of our members. It is not enough. We need you!

There should be a continuum of care for the developmentally disabled. Please plan to come to Olympia Monday or any day next week. The legislature will work on the budget and members are needed here until 8 pm most nights. Whatever shift you work, whatever your days off are, you DO have time to be here and you are needed now. The closures will be the end of living wage jobs for hundreds of working families. The closure results for our clients is even more dire. Please help.

Whether the legislature attempts to close services for youth, elderly, disabled, or mentally ill - an injury to one is an injury to all. Be present for the fight!

Rally April 4 2011 Martin Luther King Park

Remarks of Carol Dotlich at Martin Luther King Park April 4th 2011

Forty three years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood with AFSCME sanitation workers in Memphis Tennessee. They were public servants subjected to unsafe working conditions and no power at the collective bargaining table. Dr. King came to give them power. Dr. King said, “The struggle for public workers and the public services they provide and their collective bargaining is a moral fight. “
Dr. King’s message was right in 1968 and it is right today.
Need is not the crime. Greed is the crime.
1% of the wealthiest today control the hearts and minds of American politics.
Need is not the crime. Greed is the crime.
Public servants – teachers, police, park rangers, firefighters, social workers-these are not the enemy.
Need is not the crime. Greed is the crime.
Organized labor-collective bargaining built the middle class in America.
Today our country is at war against crime in many countries. At home, in American, corporations are funding a war on American families. This is a war on the working class – a war on folks who just want to go to work every day, send their kids to school, put food on the table, one day retire in dignity and enjoy the fruits of all those years of labor. This war attacks their retirement funds, their healthcare plans and even social security itself.
If today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive, and I wish he were, he would be standing with us against the corporations and the union busting politicians, and the robber barons and he would say to us now as he said then: “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity.”
Brothers and sisters – Need is not the crime. Greed is the crime.
Today heaven sheds its tears for all those who share the dreams and vision of Dr. Martin Luther King for we have not realized that dream. Heaven cries out for justice for workers. It reminds us that we must stand today as Dr. Martin Luther King stood in 1968 – we must stand for justice-we must stand for working America-we must carry on the dream!