Cascadia today: Alaskans protest dictators + ICE spreads tuberculosis & Cannonball lands in Seattle
Alaskans to protest arrival of dictators
According to the Alaska Beacon, sixteen protests in support of Ukraine are scheduled to take place across Alaska as authoritarian leaders Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin meet today at an Air Force base in Anchorage to discuss the fate of the war Russia has been waging in Ukraine since 2022. In Cascadia, protests are planned for Gustavus, Juneau, Ketchikan, Petersburg, and Sitka. More than 1,500 people in Juneau demonstrated against presumptive king Donald during protests in June across North America.
WA lands commissioner accused of retaliation
KUOW reports that a staffer for the WA Department of Natural Resources, has filed suit against the state, claiming that hat after reporting domestic violence by a fellow employee, was ignored by commissioner of public lands Hilary Franz, a Democrat. Meanwhile, the Oregon House narrowly failed to pass a censure of Rep. Dwayne Yunker, a Republican accused of misconduct and retaliation. Since Yunker spends a lot of time on the floor attacking LGBTQ people, it doesn't really matter if the measure failed, the guy's still an asshole. In Seattle, after Katie Wilson pulled ahead in the mayor's race with 51 percent of the vote, some establishment Democrats are considering switching their endorsements. Maybe that's because rather than doing anything meaningful to address housing affordability or climate change, Bruce Harrell has focused on pressing issues like rich property owners' complaints about a queer nude beach.
Nike guy gives money to fight cancer
Phil Knight, the Oregon-based co-founder of Nike, and his wife are pledging a whopping $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University to fund research into curing cancer. That's all well and good but let's be honest: the Trump administration is carpet bombing health science funding in the US, and Cascadia needs a plan to tax the wealthy in our region and support top-tier medical research that happens in the Pacific Northwest. Relying on the kindness of billionaires isn't a solution.
Tuberculosis at ICE jail
Washington State Standard reports that a case of highly contagious tuberculosis was detected in someone detained at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. Meanwhile, Oregon quietly ended a Medicaid program designed to assist people getting out of prison, and the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre in Victoria is plagued by hordes of mice, the Tyee reports. Jail and prison are almost never solutions for people with drug problems, mental health issues or who live in homelessness – in my recent report for PubliCola, I found that Seattle Republican city attorney Ann Davison's "tough on crime" approach is largely perfomative and ineffective.
Fraser River sockeye return exceeds expectations
The Tyee reports that returning runs of sockeye salmon on British Columbia's Fraser River this season are expected to be at nearly six million fish – twice the numbers biologists and Canada's Dept of Fisheries and Oceans expected. Many biologists attribute the strong showing to a decline in net-pen fish farms, many of which have closed and the province plans to eliminate by 2029. Fish farms, which Washington acted to ban earlier this year, spread disease from non-native salmon to native runs. Commercial and Indigenous fishers are still waiting, however, for the feds at DFO to significantly open the runs to fishing, the Tyee notes. One commercial fisherman noted the Canadian government's disregard for the needs of fishers in Cascadia:
“we’re going to be buying Canadian fish caught by American fishermen while Canadian fishermen just continue to go bankrupt.”
Cannonball: Seattle's newest, wildest art space
Cascade PBS cover the grand opening of Cannonball, a sprawling, vibrant and wacky new art space in a former Bed, Bath and Beyond store in downtown Seattle. A collaboration between the folks who produce Seattle's Bumbershoot arts and music festival and the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, the 66,000-square-foot complex will include huge gallery spaces, a dance club, an active Indigenous carving center and 9-foot foot long bucking mechanical nudibranch by artist Stephanie Metz – I cannot wait to ride it! The whole project came together at an astonishing pace and is the brainchild of Greg Lundgren, a Seattle artworld fixture who was behind the now defunct Museum of Museums and one of my favorite bars in Seattle, the Hideout.
--Andrew Engelson
