Cascadia Daily, Feb. 27, 2018

Cascadia Magazine original: seeking equity in the legal weed biz

Matt Stangel, a Portland-based journalist covering the Northwest cannabis beat, reports on the fight for equity in Cascadia’s booming legal pot business. For years, when marijuana was illegal in Oregon and Washington, people of color were unfairly arrested at a rate much higher than the general population. Now that legal weed is big business in the region, minority cannabis business owners are fighting to extend their market share of ownership beyond the current rate of under five percent

In an original feature for Cascadia Magazine, you’ll meet Raft Hollingsworth, co-owner of Hollingsworth Cannabis, in the tiny lumber town of Shelton, Washington. Though many people of color face hurdles in the legal weed business, efforts such as business incubators and vacating of marijuana-related convictions can begin to address this inequality.

Read the entire article here.

Front page editorial at Seattle Times slams WA legislature

In coordination with other newspapers across Washington state, The Seattle Time published its first front-page editorial in more than a century, slamming the WA legislature for speedily passing a bill that would exempt legislator’s emails and other communications from public disclosure rules. The newspapers urged governor Jay Inslee to veto the bill.

Oregon House moves on net neutrality

The Oregon House voted today in bipartisan fashion to defend net neutrality in the state, in defiance of new rules set down by the Trump administration’s FCC. According to OPB, the House passed the measure, which would bar state agencies from using ISPs not committed to neutrality, by margin of 40-17.

BC professor: kill the single family home

CBC talks with Nathan Lauther, a BC urban planning professor, and author of The Death and Life of the Single Family Home, about how Vancouver, the most dense city in Canada, is moving away from the outdated model of the single-family home as the ideal living situation. “It is something that we need to get beyond, if we want to actually talk about providing greater options for people.”

Building canoes as a link to the past and across cultures

The Salish Sentinel reports on the unveiling of a traditional Hɛhɛwšɩn canoe at the Tla’amin Nation near Powell River, British Columbia. Among the creators was Phil Russel of Ireland, who worked with the Tla’amin to interest non-Indigenous people in the project. “I’m hoping that the non-Indigenous community understands just how powerful this can be.” Meanwhile CBC talks with a councilor from the Squamish Nation about the BC government’s boost in spending for preservation of Indigenous languages.

Portland folk-rocker Haley Heynderickx’s lush new album

OPB gives rave reviews to I Need to Start a Garden, the lush new album from Portland signer-songwriter Haley Heynderickx. “I’m just a sucker for little details — and a loner at times — so I have to become my own bass player,” Heynderickx says.

“No Holiday for Psychics,” fiction by Alix Hawley

British Columbia author Alix Hawley, who has a new novel out this summer, has a lovely and sinister story available online at Catapult entitled “No Holiday for Psychics” about family and disappearances. “Those blurry photographs of stolen children in the newspaper, or waxed onto milk cartons. Those, I could hear. Find me, find me. I would shake the milk at the kids at breakfast and say, Do not let this happen!”

That’s all for today from Cascadia Daily. Tomorrow and the rest of this week, I’ll be reporting from lovely Portland, Oregon! –Andrew Engelson

Photo credit: I Need to Start a Garden Courtesy of Mama Bird Recording.