Daily Digest: Bezos whines from beg buttons, Oregon homelessness on the rise
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Hacked beg buttons broadcast Bezos bitching about taxes
The most important news of the day is that a prankster hacked some pedestrian beg buttons at crosswalks in Seattle and programmed them to play a message from "Jeff Bezos" asking city residents not to tax the wealthy. Sadly, SDOT has "corrected" the issue. Meanwhile, the Seattle Times reports that Microsoft has been behind a huge lobbying campaign to prevent Democrats in the legislature from raising taxes on the wealthy. Washington State Standard reports that Democratic attorneys general, including Nick Brown of Washington, met in Denver and warned folks that the US is on the precipice of a constitutional crisis. New flash: it's already gone over the cliff.
More people living without shelter in Oregon
OPB reports that a new study found that the rate of homelessness in Multnomah county climbed 26% in the past year, to 14,000 people. And in Grants Pass, Oregon – where a policy banning camping outside made its way to the US Supreme Court – a judge halted the city's anti-homeless ordinances until it provides more accomodations to homeless people with disabilities. At Eugene Weekly, a former employee of CAHOOTS, which provided a non-police response to people in mental crisis, laments the loss of the nationally recognized program to budget cuts. "We have been denied a long-sought home for angry compassion," he writes.
Returning cultural burns to Okanagan forests
IndigiNews has a great feature about how the syilx people of the Okanagan region of central British Columbia are bringing controlled burns back to their forests. The practice, which not only improves the health of the ecosystem and reduces catastrophic wildfire risk, is also a way to connect with traditions that go back hundreds of years. "“My grandma would be the one to tell everybody when to burn. She was the fire-keeper, I guess you could say," said one fire technician.
BC Distilleries prepare for trade war
At the Georgia Straight, British Columbia distillery owners talk about how their business is threatened – but also strengthened locally – but Trump's petty trade war. "I can’t stress how much all this tariff shit feels like the beginning of the pandemic," says one.
-Andrew Engelson