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Cascadia Magazine original:
will Seattle join Vancouver in creating a safe consumption site?
As fatality rates for drug overdoses surge across Cascadia, cities in the region are grappling with how to stop so many people from dying. Cascadia Magazine looks at the crisis in three ways:
Seattle is considering creating one of the first safe consumption sites in the United States. It’s a controversial effort, and Kelsey Hamlin’s extensive feature details the issues involved: success rates for safe injection sites across the world, opposition from local communities, and the activists pushing hard for harm reduction.
“It’s really mind-boggling that we’ve been doing this for two and a half years and a site is still not open,” says Yes to SCS activist Patricia Sully. “Something this vital and life-saving should move so much faster than it is.”
Accompanying that story are Jackie Dives’ amazing, empathetic photos of the people behind the Overdose Prevention Society safe consumption site in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighborhood.
Click this link to read about the Seattle effort to create a safe injection site.
The third piece is an excerpt from Vancouver journalist Travis Lupick’s book Fighting for Space, a history of activists’ uphill battle to create North America’s first safe injection site in 2003.
Cascadia Magazine isn’t shy about covering controversial issues that are important to the region. If you appreciate high-quality journalism and photography, please visit our donate page. We’re a reader-supported publication and we depend on the support of readers like you to keep doing the work we do.
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Will Vancouver follow Seattle in electing progressive council?
Geoff Dembicki, writing for The Tyee, has a piece on a slate of progressive candidates running for Vancouver city council, inspired in part by Kshama Sawant and other left-leaning candidates in Seattle. “We can have a combative, socialist politics here in Vancouver and elsewhere in Canada too,” says Derrick O’Keefe, Ricochet Media co-founder and candidate. Fueling the change? Housing costs. The Georgia Straight reports on Patrick Condon, COPE candidate for mayor, who supports massive increases in affordable housing. And OPB reports that the average one-bedroom apartment in Portland isn’t affordable to average full-time workers in the city–not to mention Bellingham, where you’d have to work 69 hours a week at minimum wage to afford a 2-bedroom apartment.
Considering alternatives to youth jails
As Seattle is immersed in a contentious fight over a new youth detention facility in Seattle, Amina Ibrahim, writing for the South Seattle Emerald, profiles organizations offering alternatives to jail time for young offenders, including alternative eduction, restorative justice circles, and apprenticeship programs.
Severe drought hitting Oregon ranchers hard
Anna King, reporting for OPB, writes about the severe drought hitting eastern Oregon, and how ranchers there are facing economic hard times thanks to smaller snow pack, fewer thunderstorms, and competition with farmers for increasingly rare irrigation water.
Eastern OR school district looks to arm staff
Responding to school shootings across the US, a school district in Eastern Oregon is making plans to provide teaching staff with locked safes full of guns and ammo. Meanwhile, a gun safety initiative in Oregon might not make it on the ballot due to a fight in courts over the wording of the measure.
An interview with Cascadia novelist Kim Fu
Seattle-based novelist Kim Fu, who grew up near Vancouver, BC is the author of The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, about an incident in a Pacific Northwest summer camp and how it affects women years afterward. Seattle Globalist has an interview with the writer with deep roots in Cascadia: “the area where I grew up was up in the North Shore mountains, with giant Douglas firs and the occasional bear right in our suburban backyards…”
A poem about school shootings by Anastacia-Reneé
KUOW has a cool “news poet” feature where poets from the region are invited to respond to current events. This week, Seattle civic poet Anastacia-Reneé offers “Wrecked” a poem about helping children respond to school shootings:
“…there are pieces of you (child) lodged
behind another piece of you (child)
wedged between another
dangling part of the you…”
Read the full poem here.
That’s today’s hand-curated collection of links to news and culture from across the Pacific Northwest. Enjoy the well-deserved sunshine! ? –Andrew Engelson
Photo credits: Kshama Sawant courtesy Seattle City Council