Cascadia today: tribes lose half of federal funds + Seattle mayor want more money for cops + yay Seattle Mariners!

Tribes in Cascadia to lose half of funding from feds

Investigate West confirms what Indigenous leaders have been warning about for months: a report from Portland State University found that cuts to federal funding by Republicans this year will likely result in the elimination of half of all the federal funding to tribes in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. The cuts will be devastating to Indian country in Cascadia, with huge impacts on health, education, and environmental resilience. The article notes that many of these programs fulfill treaty obligations the US has committed to.

As we build an independent Cascadia, it's essential that Indigenous communities are deeply involved and consulted and that we honor and exceed the obligations the US has to repairing the destruction that colonization has had and continues to have on tribes and First Nations in the Northwest.

Seattle mayor wants even more money for cops

The Urbanist reports on Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell's proposed budget, which includes a boost in the sales tax to increase police funding by $34.5 million, even as he continues to trim other departments to deal with budget deficits. This, as the city and SPD are weighing whether to re-introduce police officers to Seattle high schools, including Garfield, where there have been a number of fatal shootings in the past two years. The city is debating using levy money that was supposed to be for violence prevention programs to fund having at officer at the school, something students are pushing back on:

“This is money from people’s property taxes that’s supposed to go to our underserved schools, our underfunded schools that need a lot more funding. Instead, that money is going to go to police officers.” --Seattle Student Union member Leo Falit-Baiamonte

BC Conservatives are a jumbled mess

The Tyee reports on internal squabbles inside the BC Conservative party leadership: as it prepared to take vote on whether to retain party leader John Rustad, it kicked out MLA Elenore Sturko, who represents Surrey-Cloverdale, accusing her of adding fraudulent members to the party. Sturko, a vocal critic of BC's harm reduction approach to the fentanyl crisis, says she was "absolutely blindsided" by the move.

OR struggles to fund workers assisting those in need

An article at Oregon State Standard looks at the crisis facing Oregon's system of eligibility workers – who help those in need determine if they qualify for food and housing assistance and apply for it. In related news, Real Change looks at what Seattle's United Care Team does with items confiscated in its increased sweeps of homeless camps: mostly, it throws more than 90 percent of people's belongings out, including personally valuable items. And OPB reports that Portland shelter are short $11 million thanks to state funds that were promised but never materialized.

Seattle Mariners win division title for first time in 24 years

Congratulation to the Seattle Mariners, Cascadia's Major League Baseball team, for winning the American League west for the first time since 2001. Catcher Cal Raleigh hit his 59th and 60th home runs of the season in the clinching game against the Colorado Rockies, capping off a season for the record books. Good luck in the playoffs! In other sports news, the Stranger reports on Seattle women's soccer teams in the new USL W league, a pre-professional women's soccer league with 93 teams across North America. Among the teams in Seattle are the the West Seattle Rhodies and Salmon Bay FC and, which is co-owned by several Seattle Reign players and the owner of Rough and Tumble, a queer bar in Ballard focusing on women's sports.