Two Signs from Everett, Washington

You never know what you'll run across in an American town.


This labor temple is in Everett, Washington, which was the site of the Everett Massacre in 1916. According to the Wikipedia,

[There was] an armed confrontation between a mob, led by local Sheriff Donald McRae, and Industrial Workers of the World members. The IWW members were on the steamer Verona and sought to land, but Sheriff McRae denied them his permission. Shooting broke out and at least five IWW's were killed and two in the Sheriff's mob were killed, though they might have been accidentally shot by others in their allegedly drunken group.

The hand-painted sign on the labor temple is clearly much more recent than that era -- I'd say 1940s at the earliest, but probably a bit later. It has been lovingly maintained.

Lest you think Everett is the next best thing to the People's Republic of Madison, here is another sign I saw just a few blocks from the labor temple:


I'm amused by the contrast between these two signs. Not so much their messages, but how one was hand-painted with obvious craft and attention to readability and word emphasis, while the other was thoughtlessly computer-generated, completely without differentiation among the words. It's hard to read, too.