MAPLE LEAF: Campfire USA, a national youth organization, is currently selling its property at 8511 15th Avenue Northeast to Prescott Development, which plans to turn the site into duplexes and cottage-style homes. Residents in the Maple Leaf neighborhood, concerned that Prescott will not preserve the 80-year-old "urban forest" surrounding the historic Waldo building that Campfire currently occupies, have banded together to oppose the sale. Marlo Mytty, president of the Maple Leaf Neighbors group, claims that Campfire "didn't make a concerted effort to contact the community" and discuss its plans. The old firs that sit on the Campfire site tower over the neighborhood, providing a woodsy juxtaposition to the new townhomes being built along Roosevelt Way on the opposite side of the Maple Leaf Reservoir.

Jackie Peterson, Campfire USA's director of communications, says Campfire is planning to relocate and sell the Waldo building site—originally built as a sanatorium in 1924—because it is too rundown and expensive to maintain. Plans to renovate or rebuild on the site were deemed too expensive and Peterson says that now "was an opportune time to put the property on the market." Peterson adds that Campfire "communicated with the neighborhood" and "listened to their concerns," although Mytty claims that Campfire's only published notice to neighbors appeared in the Puget Sound Business Journal.

Michael Luis, a consultant at Prescott, states that "the plan we submitted to the city shows us saving some of the trees."

Mytty says her neighborhood group "[has] yet to see that plan."...

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON: A group of University of Washington student activists from the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) is requesting that the university sign an agreement pledging support for the Worker Rights Consortium's (an organization that monitors producers of textiles manufactured for sale in the U.S.) Designated Suppliers Program (DSP), ensuring that Husky-branded hats, hoodies, and sweatpants are sweatshop-free.

According to SLAP coordinator April Nishimura, a chanting, sign-waving crowd of 150 students marched across UW's quad and Red Square on April 27 "to ensure the clothes UW [sells]" are made by workers who can "organize and make a living wage." SLAP set a deadline of May 1, International Workers' Day, for UW president Mark Emmert to agree to participate in the DSP.

Emmert issued a noncommittal commitment on April 30, stating that the university has pledged to "serious[ly] and timely consider [the] implementation of the DSP." Nishimura calls Emmert's statement "important progress." However, SLAP is troubled by Emmert's use of the word "consider." Nishimura says that SLAP "will not be satisfied" until Emmert fully commits to the DSP, and she adds that SLAP will be "taking action in the future." —Js