Cascadia today: KATIE WILSON LEADS + is ICE coming to Newport? + a new novel from Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Katie Wilson takes lead Seattle mayor's race by 91 votes
After a new count of late-arriving ballots in the race for Seattle mayor yesterday, transit activist and labor organizer Katie Wilson took the lead over incumbent Bruce Harrell by just 91 votes – 133,469 to 133,378. Younger, more progressive voters tend to vote closer to the deadline, and according to PubliCola, the latest drop of 38,000 ballots confirmed that trend, with 55.6 percent favoring Wilson. According to KUOW, about 6,400 ballots remain to be counted, and a recount will be triggered if the final difference between the candidates is less than one half of 1 percent and fewer than 2,000 votes.
If you live in Seattle, make sure your signature was validated and your ballot counted online.
Is ICE looking to base in Newport, Oregon?
OPB reports that local officials in the coastal city of Newport, Oregon are trying to confirm rumors that federal ICE agents are looking to base out of the town's airport. A third-party contractor representing an unidentified government agency reached out to the municipal airport, sparking the rumors. Meanwhile, a campaign to revoke permits for the ICE facility continues, with a petition now at over 18,000 signatures.
Feds end programs for immigrant students in Cascadia
Again demonstrating that the Trump administration's policies are simply racist and anti-immigrant at the core, a successful program at the University of Washington that has helped recruit and assist students from migrant worker communities in central and eastern Washington since 2010 has been eliminated thanks to Trump's cuts to federal migrant education programs, KUOW reports. The feds called such program "“extremely costly.” Meanwhile, critical Head Start preschool programs across Oregon are under threat from federal cuts, Oregon Capital Chronicle writes. Want to eliminate "extremely costly" programs? How about starting with the feds' bloated, nearly $1 trillion military budget, loaded with wasteful projects, which the libertarian publication Reason critiqued earlier this year.
The path forward for adequately funding education for all Cascadia's residents is a peaceful movement toward independence.
Cascadia high speed rail faces hurdles
The Urbanist reports on how leaders in British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon all agree on the need for a regional high-speed rail network connecting Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, BC – issuing supportive statements at the annual Cascadia Innovation Corridor conference. But the project, estimated to cost between $24 and $42 billion, is only in the early planning stages, and federal funding is extremely uncertain at this point. I wrote more about Cascadia high speed rail and the signing of a Cascadia compact at the conference last week.
I will continue to hammer on the point: if Cascadia wants to finally do what is required to build the infrastructure our region needs in terms of health care, housing, education, and transportation then it needs to leave the crumbling, authoritarian United States behind. If you're interested in helping build that movement, please sign up for alerts from Cascadia Democratic Action:
A new novel from Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Seattle queer icon and writer Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore has a new novel out – Terry Dactyl – the story of a trans girl's coming of age, from the AIDS crisis to pandemic-era Seattle. The Stranger has fabulous interview and review of the book, from the author of Touching the Art and Sketchtasy:
“She was this trans girl coming of age, there was a sense of communal possibility in everyday experience. But that’s gone. So when she feels it, it’s in those moments of screaming out as loud as she can, and blowing her whistle to the tune of black lives matter, abolish the police, and then when people join in, that’s the key. And when someone yells, I love you, and it’s just a random person, it’s only a moment, they don’t get to know one another: That’s where the communal possibility exists. That’s love as a public force." --Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Thanks for reading! – Andrew
