Daily Digest: Kshama's running for Congress, suing oil companies for heat deaths, & celebrating Celilo Falls
Kshama Sawant to run for 9th District seat
The social media rumor mill was busy speculating this weekend, but documentation with the Federal Election Commission confirms it: Democratic socialist firebrand and former Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant is running for the 9th Congressional District representing south King County, facing off longtime incumbent and dreary centrist Democrat Adam Smith, who's been in office since – checks notes – 1997 – the same year Sleater Kinney released Dig Me Out.
FBI and Seattle cops infiltrated 2020 protests
An investigation at Real Change found that the FBI and the Seattle Police Department cooperated to infiltrate the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests on Capitol Hill in Seattle – using social media and paid informants to get limited, questionable results. Meanwhile, former SPD police chief Adrian Diaz, who was fired after it was revealed he hired a staff member he was having an affair with, is suing the city for wrongful termination. And in another shining example of the integrity of our local elected officials, many folks are calling on King County assessor John Arthur Wilson to resign after PubliCola revealed he continued to stalk a former partner who once had a restraining order against him.
WA woman sues oil companies for heat dome death
A woman whose mother, from Ferndale, WA, died during the extreme heat of the 2021 heat dome that took temperatures well over 100 degrees across Cascadia, is suing seven fossil fuel companies for wrongful death, the New York Times reports. Meanwhile, the Seattle Times reports on how the Seattle neighborhood of South Park, on the shores of the Duwamish River, is anticipating being flooded out of their homes by climate change. As if climate change wasn't enough to worry about, a major Cascadia earthquake would combine with sea level rise to inundate many coastal towns in Oregon and Washington, OPB reports.
First Nations pull out of BC trade mission
CBC reports that a First Nation leader has refused to join a British Columbia trade mission to Asia to protest a vote by the BC legislature fast-track infrastructure projects such as mines and LNG projects, limiting input from Indigenous groups. Meanwhile, the Tyee reports on the NDP’s defense of Bill 15, saying it would expedite renewable energy projects in addition to all those ecologically destructive projects so it must be good, right?
Superintendent of Crater Lake Park resigns
The superintendent of Crater Lake National Park in Oregon has resigned, citing steep declines in staffing for his decision, according to the Washington Post. And as the New York Times looks at steep budget cuts that may mean the end of the park system, it becomes increasingly clear that an indepdendent Cascadia would be much better suited to protect places like Gii-was, Tahoma, and Loowit (aka Crater Lake, Mt. Rainier, and Mt. St. Helens).
A multimedia celebration of Celilo Falls
Oregon Arts Watch has a very cool celebration (including interviews and a detailed review) of a fantastic collaboration between Oregon-based composer Nancy Ives and photographer Joe Cantrell, who lives in Oregon and is of Cherokee descent. The project is Celilo Falls – a symphonic tribute to the former waterfall and longtime fishing site on the Columbia lost when the dams went up and to the contemporary Indigenous people who still live and fish the river. Ives previously worked with Cantrell on Spirit of Columbia....
--Andrew Engelson
