Spokane’s 1910 free speech battles

How cold has your family been? Hopefully, they are not suffering in this pandemic year, or even your lifetime, but reflect on your family however many generations they have been in America, or perhaps throughout your family’s history: For how long has comfort been the norm?

In 1909 in the Skagit Valley, in Seattle, in Spokane, would your ancestors have hopped freights and hitched rides in the back of wagons as day laborers, with all the possessions they owned rolled up in their blanket slung over their backs?

Many of them probably did, as did countless unknown others. Award-winning novelist Je...