Dear Friends,

This summer Window Seat has been busy supporting documentation projects with two local organizations: SafePlace and The Community Farm Land Trust. Both projects remind me of our community's deep commitment to the collective care of people, places, and animals. These stories also highlight that public history can be understood as a web of connections rather than simply a linear progression through time.SafePlace has provided safety and support to survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence since 1981. Last month I filmed interviews with 5 women who were instrumental in its founding. These are powerful stories of women with lived experience working together to change the way we talk about and support and advocate for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.

SafePlace was conceived as a student project in the Evergreen State College Community Advocacy Program that was taught by Russ Fox and Hap Freund in the mid-1970s. Though intended as an assignment to conduct a needs assessment and hypothetical program proposal, the students working on the project launched a real program that has continuously served the community since that time.

Russ Fox is also a founding member of the Community Farm Land Trust, an organization established in the mid-1990s to preserve local farmland. We've crossed paths with Russ through various documentation projects we've done with the CLFT over the years. The CFLT's most recent project is an effort to preserve Fido's Farm, a 100-acre farm in the Evergreen Valley just East of Olympia. We loved spending time on this beautiful farm this summer and learning more about the history of agriculture in our area.

The video we produced for the CFLT was shared at their annual Farms Forever event last month.  You can watch the video and learn more about the founding of the CFLT further down in this newsletter. SafePlace will share excerpts from these interviews at its Starlit Soiree on Saturday, October 3, and it has hopes for additional ways to share this history. You can also read more about the early history of SafePlace from memoirs written by Susan Davenport and Carolyn Byerly (women interviewed this summer for the project) in the online publication Olywa Days of Change: A Community Memoir in Many Voices.

We're looking forward to another year of documenting and sharing these webs of connection through our Community Roots Initiative. More on expanding access through our new partnership with The Evergreen State College Archives this fall. As always, reach out any time.  

Until soon,

Elaine Vradenburgh

Director

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