Daily Digest: I won an award, Oregon dreads Medicaid cuts, & poetry by Laura Da'
I won a journalism award.
I found out yesterday that I'd won an award in the Society of Professional Journalists' 2024 Excellence in Journalism contest for the Pacific Northwest region that includes Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho (oh, hello Cascadia!) My April 2024 feature for PubliCola, "Seattle Police Knew Officer Who Struck and Killed Pedestrian Had 'Checkered History' But Hired Him Anyway" won a first place award in the Crime and Law Enforcement reporting category for small publications. I'm deeply honored and grateful to my editor Erica Barnett for helping me improve my writing and committing to publishing my work. And to all of you who've helped support my work as an independent journalist, I offer a sincere thank you.
Small, independent publications are critical to publishing investigative journalism and niche reporting that larger legacy media outlets often neglect. If you can, consider supporting PubliCola with a subscription, or buying a paid subscription to this newsletter. Every contribution helps. To those who've bought subscriptions to Cascadia Journal, thank you. You're helping ensure that journalism that asks hard questions of people in power continues.
--Andrew Engelson
Oregon will be hit hard by Medicaid cuts
As Republicans in Congress move forward on a huge budget bill that slashes funding for Medicaid and Obamacare, OPB reports that Oregon could be hit harder than most states. Oregon, which has one the lowest rated of uninsured people in the US, could see 20 percent of people enrolled in Medicaid losing their coverage. Oregon Capital Chronicle notes that Oregon stands to lose $16 billion in health care funding over 10 years, including cuts to gender-affirming care, loss of health through Planned Parenthood, and health care guarantees to people regardless of immigration status.
Checking up on ICE detention
The Seattle Times reports that three Democratic members of Congress from Cascadia paid a surprise visit to the ICE detention facility in Tacoma to check on conditions and the status of people held there. Unlike what happened in Newark, the visit went ahead without conflict, with reps Pramila Jayapal, Maxine Dexter, and Emily Randall having a look around and criticizing the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. In related news, OPB reports on a Portland resident who was sent to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma despite a federal judge blocking the transfer. The person, known in documents as O-J-M, is a trans woman who has applied for asylum from Mexico, where she is at risk of murder by drug cartels.
Paddling the Duwamish River to learn its history and damage
The South Seattle Emerald has a great feature on a cool program: free guided kayak paddling trips on Seattle's historic and polluted Duwamish River. The program, the River Access Paddle Program, highlights Indigenous history of the river as well and promoting ongoing cleanup of the waterway, which was declared a Superfund site in 2001.
Poetry by Laura Da'
I'm a big fan of poet Laura Da', a lifelong resident of Cascadia who's a member Eastern Shawnee Tribe and who is curator of Seattle's Poetry in Public program, a collaboration between the Seattle Public Library and 4Culture to promote local poetry all over the city. In the 2024 issue of the great Cascadia literary journal Moss, you can read Da's poem "Mother Stills the Crop and Halts the Tilling of the Land," a gorgeous hymn to nature and history on the shores of the Salish sea.
Crossing into Swinomish territory the estuary
tideland is soft as suede work gloves.
--Andrew Engelson
