Telling Stories, Sharing Memories Together
The tribe, the campaigns, the whole zeitgeist
Kay’s array of talents was impressive. Not only was she an effective and insightful leader and an amazing gardener she could sing like an angel. Whenever I hear “Angel from Montgomery” I remember listening to Kay playing guitar and singing this song on the porch of her house on Queen Anne.
The summer of 1978 was an active one for the anti-nuclear movement. Greenpeace of course did its own campaigns to stop the testing of nuclear bombs in various places, but that summer our GP core of staff, regular volunteers and friends from Seattle formed an affinity group to take part in several key actions in our region. The first biggie was the Live Without Trident protest in May where some of us went over the fence, got detained in the gym during the day, were driven to Tacoma and released so we of course went back the next day to do it again so we could actually get arrested. Kay was a support person for that action so it was wonderful to see her at the courthouse (twice) offering us snacks as soon we were released from custody. A month later she joined the front-line group to protest the construction of the Satsop nuclear power plant. I wasn’t there for that one, but I loved hearing the stories and seeing the photos showing that our very own affinity group was the first one to be arrested. The people I recognize in them are John Hatten (second to left with the back pack), Kay (wearing the Crabshell Alliance t-shirt), Bruce, Beth Van Fassen, Poy Chinn, and Joe Lubisher. Apologies to the other folks I don’t know or can’t remember. It’s cool that this photo from the Seattle P-I was autographed by Kay, Bruce and Poy.
Here’s a terribly simplistic history: Greenpeace was started by a collection of activist hippies, Quakers, and journalists in Vancouver BC in the early 70s. They originally tried to stop to nuclear bomb testing in Alaska and Polynesia through high-profile disruptive campaigns, but only achieved serious notoriety in the US when they used the same tactics to confront Soviet whaling operations off the Pacific coast in the mid 70s. Greenpeace in Vancouver freely encouraged environmental activists throughout Canada and the US to set up Greenpeace offices, and launch their own campaigns. They wanted to build a movement.
But though Vancouver was amazing at direct action and publicity, highlighting assaults on nature by designing campaigns that embarrassed the people responsible for the degradation, they were less adept at politics. And fundraising. The campaigns cost money. The office in San Francisco, by contrast, discovered how to use direct mail solicitations, based on those confrontations, to raise millions of dollars. While Vancouver took out loans.
They made one attempt to pull all the offices together, and create a unified Greenpeace entity, structured to give Vancouver control. US offices resisted the perceived threat to their autonomy, and the attempt failed. But the bottom line was the debt, and San Francisco’s bank account. The air was stinky all over. When Vancouver’s loans came due in the late 70s, there was talk of a lawsuit.
Nobody particularly cared about Greenpeace Eugene, or Santa Cruz, or Denver, or Seattle. But the office manager of the tiny Seattle office, a girl from Tacoma named Kay, thought all the threats were stupid. She had no mandate but did have an idea. She collaborated with Dick Dillman, a radio operator in San Francisco office, and launched a plan. She called the Portland office, and suggested that they come to Seattle, along with everyone else, so we could work out a deal to avoid all the bullshit. Then she called Denver. And Eugene And everyone else on the West Coast. And finally San Francisco, who asked “Who’s coming?” “Everyone.” “Is Vancouver?” “Of course! There wouldn’t be any point otherwise.” Then she called Vancouver, and told them the same thing about San Francisco.
Everyone came. GP Seattle rented an old Catholic convent, and we all brought casseroles to feed the attendees. Two days of talk. Didn’t do any good. Nobody was smart enough, or mature enough, to address the real fiscal issue, or to compromise. Idealists. The meeting failed, and Vancouver sued later that year.
My point is: Kay had no particular status, and the Seattle office was small potatoes in the Greenpeace universe (this was way before Amazon, and Microsoft and Starbucks were just startups at that point). But she got all the offices to do what should have been the right thing, basically by calling them all and saying “You better come. All the cool kids are gonna be here!” She saw a trainwreck looming on the horizon, came up with a plan to avoid the mess, and used her considerable charm to put it in play. It worked, but then it failed, oh well, and so she moved on.
A year later she was running Greenpeace USA, another trainwreck. But that’s a different story…
Greenpeace was launched in 1971, in Vancouver BC, to stop a US nuclear bomb test in Alaska. Over that decade its success prompted the establishment of Greenpeace offices all over two continents. An overarching international organization was started in Europe in the late 70s, by David McTaggart, also from Vancouver.
In 1972 and 1973 McT had sailed a 38-foot wooden ketch, the Vega, into Moruroa Atoll in the South Pacific, where France conducted atmospheric tests of nuclear bombs. In ’72 the French navy rammed the Vega, and in ’73 they boarded the sailboat, beat crew members, seized the vessel, and jailed the protesters. It became an embarrassment for France, especially after their claims of a peaceful arrest were disproven by photos of their attack, taken on the sly. David later sold the Vega to fund legal efforts to hold France accountable for both the assault, and the nuclear destruction.
In 1980 McTaggart was the chairman of Greenpeace International. The French were still using their Polynesian colony for nuclear testing, and David wanted the Vega back. It was sitting in decay in a moorage in Lake Union, Seattle. McT purchased the boat, and recruited Kay Treakle, who had no marine experience, to get the Vega ready for a return to Moruroa.
After a ton of research, Kay had the Vega towed to the Olympic Peninsula, to Port Townsend, which was a center of wooden boat culture in the Salish Sea. She hired Melanie Johnson to oversee the overhaul of the Vega. When the boat was seaworthy, McTaggart sent a Dutch sailor he’d met to deliver the vessel to San Francisco, where it’d be prepared to sail to New Zealand, and then back to Moruroa.
Not all of McTaggart’s recruits were as capable as Kay. The Dutch skipper, an endlessly cheerful guy, brought along a local navigator from Port Townsend, who was using old-school navigation: dead reckoning. Use charts, note your speed, direction, currents and the wind, and plot an estimation of your location to get from A to B. Kay and I, who’d never been on the open ocean in a sailboat, came along for the delivery. We knew nothing. And got seasick, to boot.
After recovering, there was no land in sight, as we followed the coast, on our way south. Or so we thought. After a couple of days sailing, while looking for Cape Mendocino, an open-ocean tug came over the horizon, motored towards us, and gave us a case of beer, which apparently is what you do if you encounter someone on the high seas. We were also informed of our true location: many hundreds of miles off the coast, and way off course.
There is a correction to compass readings that navigators make to account for a deviation produced by magnetism in the earth’s crust. It’s called the declination. At our location it was something like 21 degrees, which local sailors would subtract from their compass reading to determine their true direction of travel. Our navigator instead added it to the bearing. So we were 42 degrees off course, which took us deep into the open ocean. The captain never checked the navigator’s plot of our course.
Not quite freak-out time. The Vega is a worthy vessel, and we have some agency. Kay told the skipper to head due east until we picked up the coast. But having screwed up, and badly wanting to be captain of the Vega when it sailed to Polynesia, he talked her out of it so he could make up lost time by sailing directly to San Francisco. This is hard. If you are completely dependent on someone who has a skill set which you lack, how do you proceed, even after they’ve fucked up? Oh well, we’ve all made mistakes…
We encountered the coast at night, seeing lights on the shore under a heavy cloud cover. The Dutch captain and the navigator proudly proclaimed we’d reached Marin County. They even claimed to be able to see lights on Mt. Tamalpais, and San Francisco Bay was just on the other side. I could see maybe 20 lights ashore, and it looked like a fishing village to me. But Kay had the definitive observation. “Y’know, you’d expect that a city as big as San Francisco would cast a lot of light on the undersides of those clouds at night. And I see nothing.” The clouds were all dark. And when we approached, it was indeed a small town.
That’s when we got scared. It’s one thing to make a simple error. It’s entirely another to be so inept that you project non-existent geographic features onto an empty landscape. It’s harrowing to be dependent on someone who is delusional. So what do you do?
Kay’s response was to confront the captain, and demand that he explain, and justify every subsequent decision he made. It was a slow and painful additional day and a half, following every buoy and navigational bell, using their cadence and charts to identify our location amid the islands approaching the Bay. The captain totally focused on the task, since he knew every step was being scrutinized.
When we docked downtown, Kay told the captain and navigator to go get breakfast. And we walked down the dock to greet Alan Thornton, the campaign coordinator, who was wondering why we were two days late. She immediately said “Fire that idiot, and don’t let him anywhere near the Vega”. Which is exactly what happened.
Greenpeace Seattle was wonderfully, and stupidly, open to all. We invited participation from anyone who walked through the door… well, not quite anyone. There were a few idiots and stoners, who were ignored, not invited to help, and who generally went away. It was a Darwinist culture: people volunteered to do tasks, and if they were good at it, they were given more responsibility, and then more, until we became dependent on them for whatever role they fulfilled. Which is when they generally said: “I need to get paid”. That’s kind of how we got our staff. Natural selection.
The decision-making body was the Steering Committee, which met on Thursday evening, and involved anyone who was actively performing a job, volunteer or otherwise. Amazingly, we decided everything by consensus: we’d talk decisions out until everyone agreed, or abstained, or was too exhausted by the interminable discussions that they shut up. Still, the process did help build confidence in what we were doing, albeit at the expense of a lot of talk.
Money was an issue. We raised funds initially by staging a walkathon, but that revenue went directly to support a campaign to confront Soviet whalers. Rent, mail, utilities, office supplies, travel, and salaries were funded through donations, memberships, and merchandise sales. A very limited income stream. So the Steering Committee viewed every requested expense as competition for funds that could support campaigns. We were really cheap.
Which bring us to the Great Typewriter Caper. We picked up staff one position at a time, as need developed, and as funding allowed. We reached a stage where a half dozen of us were sharing desks, and jointly using a donated manual typewriter, which generally had a line waiting to use it. Kay proposed purchasing an electric typewriter, which, since they were far quicker, would more than double our capacity to compose copy. The Steering Committee weighed the request, back and forth… “But we need the money for a banner, for the seals, for a bookkeeper…”
After a month of indecision, and in total opposition all office protocols, young Kay Treakle thought “this is bullshit!”, walked down the Ave to the University Bookstore, and bought a brand new IBM Selectric, carried it into the office, plugged it in, and began typing a letter. When she was done, Jon was waiting to use it. Then Julie. Then Campbell. Nobody said a thing. Not one word. And at the next Steering Committee meeting, Kay submitted the receipt for reimbursement, which was immediately approved. Since everyone had already used the damned thing, how could they complain?
Incredibly minor, but classic Kay. She saw a problem, saw group equivocation that made no sense, assessed that action would lead to a resolution, took that action, and never looked back. Work in the office was far more efficient, the Steering Committee could still argue interminably, and her action added to the trust we all came to have in her leadership.
