From ANDRAS JONES: Today’s installment of our deep, dark solstice Pop Oracle session with singer-songwriter Vivian Cook welcomes longtime KAOS DJ Brett Clubbe. Brett was recently suspended from KAOS after 20+ years on the air because he chose to oppose corruption and abuse at the station. Like so many others over the years, he and his broadcasting partner, Jose Luis Gutierrez, were unceremoniously barred from the station without any explanation to listeners why their popular show simply vanished from the air. It’s a familiar pattern. Station management abruptly makes the decision to suspend a programmer (or programmers), the reasons for the dismissal are arbitrary and misleading, the programmers are given no process to challenge the claims against them, or to say goodbye to their audience, and the message is sent to all the other programmers that if they are not in the good graces of management they will simply be gotten rid of and no one at the station or the college will do anything about it. Beyond being a horribly unprofessional way to run a radio station, consistently betraying your audience’s loyalty by disappearing popular shows, it’s a situation that is rife for abuse. An institution committed to fostering creativity in an environment that is safe for all would take steps to address this. Sadly, The Evergreen State College, is choosing the same strategy around this situation that got them into so much trouble last year with Brett Weinstein and the Day of Absence protests. In that case, instead of the administration getting in the middle of the situation and taking responsibility for making sure that everyone was heard, they “allowed things to take their course” which led to the loss of at least two popular professors, at least one costly lawsuit, a campus targeted by white supremacists, months of bad press, a drop in enrollment, and yet another self-inflicted psychic wound on a community wrestling with issues of intersectionality, inclusion and resistance to the forces of “settler colonial capitalism”. There is a movement growing in Olympia to address this and if you’re interested in being a part of it please get in touch with me on the book of Face where I’ll direct you to those who are doing the organizing.

TAKE ME TO THE WATER

I took the rock out of my pocket and threw as hard as I could
But even doing all of that didn’t seem to do me any good see I
I get that you’re never gonna call and I
Think you might not have loved me at all
Still I got to be your downfall
So it wasn’t a complete lull

Take me to the water
Wrap me up in the waves
Rid me of this sanity
Knock me out of the haze see I was
Stuck between a rock and you
There wasn’t much either of us could do
Now I gotta say I’m over you
Well that’s exactly what I plan to do

Found myself a nice boy who doesn’t make me burn
Yeah I’m gonna make it work though I know I have a lot left to learn and I
I really want to be his wife
Really want to start my new life
Yeah I’m so down with your strife
I don’t care if you pull out the knife I say

Take me to the water
Wrap me up in the waves
Rid me of this sanity
Knock me out of the haze see I was
Stuck between a rock and you
There wasn’t much either of us could do
Now I gotta say I’m over you
Well that’s exactly what I wanna do

But this town is so full of ghosts
And I hear their voices in the leaves in the trees but I love yours the most and I
I know that the blade did the damage but
I did the work
And while the blood is rushing through my hands
I see you built our house on this fork I say

Take me to the water
Wrap me up in the waves
Rid me of this sanity
Knock me out of the haze see I was
Stuck between a rock and you
There wasn’t much either of us could do
Now I gotta say I’m over you
Well I don’t think that could ever be true