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My grandmother met Harold Washington once. I was young when she told me the story, so I don’t remember every detail. What I remember is what she kept: a mug he gave her, which she held onto until the day she died.

I grew up on South Shore Drive, sold the Sun-Times for a quarter at a paper stand at 75th and Stony Island, right in front of the KFC, and graduated from Hyde Park Academy. I did not know then that I would spend my career studying the civil rights terrain Washington had walked. But I understood, even as a child, what it meant that he was there.

I am thinking about him now.

Harold Washington served barely two terms in Congress before becoming Chicago’s first Black mayor in 1983. In that brief time on Capitol Hill, he did something that does not get remembered often enough. From the House Judiciary Committee in 1982, he helped lead the extension of key sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, including protections requiring jurisdictions with documented histories of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing their voting rules.

The Congressional Black Caucus chose Washington to manage that bill on the House floor, where he spent seven weeks in hearings fighting to keep the enforcement mechanisms that protected Black voters from states that would prefer to be rid of them.

He won that fight.

Now, more than four decades later, we are fighting it again.

I am recalling Mayor Washington because of the efforts by President Donald Trump and many Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, a proposed federal election law that would make it much tougher for many citizens to vote and is currently stalled in the U.S. Senate.

States curtail voting rights

Republican governors in Florida, Mississippi, Utah and South Dakota have already signed bills requiring documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration or citizenship checks, with similar legislation passed in Tennessee. Five states, Arizona, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, will have show-your-papers requirements in place for the 2026 midterms.

In New Hampshire, the law has already produced its intended effect: In 2025 town elections, married women who did not have their marriage license on hand could not register, with at least one woman required to come back three times.

The infrastructure of exclusion does not require a federal law to take effect. It requires the threat of one, and the states that were waiting have already moved.

Washington would have recognized this immediately. The Voting Rights Act extension he managed in 1982 was not a symbolic gesture. It was a structural intervention, closing the door on states that wanted to escape accountability for their documented histories of discrimination.

The SAVE Act opens that door again, not with a return to literacy tests or poll taxes as such, but with a documentary requirement that functions identically: neutral on its face, devastating in its application and concentrated in its harm on the communities Washington spent his life trying to bring into the democratic process.

Washington’s 1983 mayoral campaign brought together Black voters on the South and West sides, Latino voters long excluded from the machine’s benefits and progressive white voters who believed Chicago could be something other than what it had always been.

His campaign was powered by a voter registration drive that added nearly 100,000 new voters to the rolls before the primary. He understood, instinctively and strategically, that expanding access to the ballot was not a prelude to political power. It was political power.

The SAVE Act would dismantle the registration infrastructure Black and Brown turnout campaigns depend on. Only 6% of voters register in person at an elections office. Washington’s coalition was built on the other 94%.

What Washington’s record demands of us

Washington deserves a reckoning, not a commemoration. He knew that formal equality was not enough, that the machinery of democratic participation had to be actively maintained against those who would narrow the circle.

His mug sat on my grandmother’s shelf for decades. She was not a politician. She was a Black woman on the South Side of Chicago who met a man running for mayor and felt, maybe for the first time, that he was talking to her. He gave her a mug. She kept it her whole life.

That is what is at stake. Not abstractions. People. The kind of people who keep a mug for decades because a politician made them feel like they mattered.

Harold Washington fought this battle once, from the Judiciary Committee floor, in seven weeks of hearings most people have forgotten. We are fighting it again, this time against a bill that would quietly push millions back out of the process, with six states already implementing versions of it before Congress even acts. The least we can do is remember who showed us how.

Donathan L. Brown, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Northeastern University, a former U.S. Fulbright professor, and the author of five books on civil rights and voting rights. A native of the South Side, he graduated from Hyde Park Academy.

Washington state is currently experiencing an early-season flare-up of wildfire activity, particularly in the southeastern and central parts of the state, as well as the Upriver Fire, a fast-moving incident East of Spokane.

A combination of an ongoing statewide drought emergency and critical fire weather—including a strong, dry cold front with high wind gusts—has caused several fires to grow rapidly over the last few days.

The most significant other current active blazes include:

Omak Lake Road Fire: Things are moving fast up there right now. As of this afternoon (Wednesday, June 17), the Omak Lake Road Fire has officially merged with the nearby Kartar Fire, creating a massive blaze that has already burned roughly 6,500 acres on Colville Reservation land.
Tule Fire (Yakima Region): Ignited on June 14 south of Toppenish, this is currently the largest wildfire in the state, having ballooned to approximately 20,665 acres with 0% containment. It is burning primarily in dry grass and brush and has been producing a massive smoke plume that is impacting air quality throughout the Columbia River Gorge.
Juniper Dunes Fire (Franklin County): This fire has burned over 10,577 acres and is 10% contained. It has pushed into the challenging, roadless terrain of the Juniper Dunes Wilderness area, making ground access difficult for crews.
A Red Flag Warning remains in effect across much of Eastern Washington due to sustained high winds and low relative humidity, meaning any ongoing fires face an extreme risk of rapid spread, and new starts can ignite easily.

Is smoke from around the state forecasted to arrive in NCW?

Right now, North Central Washington is in the clear. The active wildfire smoke is staying well away from the Wenatchee Valley and surrounding areas, and local air quality remains firmly in the “Good” category.
The main reason for this breaks down to wind direction and fire locations:
Westerly Winds are Our Friend: Strong winds blowing from the west across the Cascades are actively dispersing air over NCW and pushing regional smoke eastward.

Where the Smoke is Heading Instead:

South: Earlier this week, massive plumes from the Tule Fire down in Yakima drifted west/southwest into the Columbia River Gorge and Portland-Vancouver metro.
East: With the current wind shift, smoke from the large fires in the Columbia Basin (like Tule and Juniper Dunes) is now being carried east toward the Tri-Cities, Walla Walla, and the Palouse.
North/Northeast: Up north, the Kartar and Omak Lake fires east of Omak are causing localized downwind smoke impacts, but the smoke is drifting east toward Nespelem and the Coulee Dam rather than dropping south into Chelan or Douglas counties.
Because these breezy, dry conditions are expected to persist through the rest of the week, weather and air quality officials note that intermittent smoke impacts will mostly be a concern for communities situated directly downwind (east) of the active blazes.

Where can I look online to see where wildfire smoke is coming from?

A few years ago, I discovered a Canadian website that not only shows you where wildfire smoke is coming from, but also how the smoke forecast will affect you in the coming days. It comes from the BC Wildfire Service.
Click on this helpful wildfire smoke map and bookmark it.
A couple of things to know about this BC Wildfire Service website.
1) When you first find the smoke map, select the Smoke Forecast button.

The map will come to life, showing where current wind conditions are directing wildfire smoke and where it is forecast to travel in the coming days.
2) Since it’s a service of the BC Wildfire Service, it doesn’t provide any information on fires here in the US, but it does show where smoke is forecast to come from any wildfires north and south of the border.

Where can I find updated information about wildfires in Washington?

The Watch Duty app for any device.
The Washington DNR fire dashboard is active throughout the fire season and shows up-to-date information on wildfires affecting Washington state.
View a full-screen version of the DNR fire dashboard with this link.