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What would racial equity in the pot business look like?
This week at Cascadia Magazine, we’re proud to publish a detailed feature by Portland journalist Matt Stangel about the issue of racial equity in Cascadia’s legal weed industry.
Big pot superstores are popping up all over Portland and Seattle (and Vancouver, BC is next) — sometimes in neighborhoods where ten or twenty years ago, young black men were regularly arrested for selling the same product.
In this feature you’ll meet entrepreneurs like Raft Hollingsworth, who are bucking the odds and establishing businesses in the boom legal cannabis trade, even though most studies estimate only 1 to 5 percent of legal pot businesses are minority-owned. Measures such as vacating prior pot convictions and providing business development grants can help level the playing field.
Make time to read the whole article here.
WA carbon tax doesn’t have the votes
The Seattle Times reports that Washington governor Jay Inslee has conceded his ambitious carbon tax plan, which would be first in the US, doesn’t have the votes to pass the Democratic-held state senate before the session ends March 8. The bill would have imposed a $12-30 ton fee. The legislature also failed to pass a ban on non-native salmon farming despite a catastrophic pen failure this past summer.
Portland industrial redevelopment would boost space for arts
OPB reports on a plan to redevelop Zidell Yards, a former industrial site on the west bank of the Willamette River. The plan will likely include new housing, park space, subsidized artist housing and co-operative office facilities for arts organizations. The Yards were once a toxic site where World War 2-era ships were scrapped.
Welcoming the homeless to Seattle’s college campuses
The New York Times reports on Seattle’s Tent City 3, a self-governing, traveling homeless camp that has taken up residence at several university campuses in the city, most recently Seattle Pacific University. Eleven sanctioned camps in the city provide shelter to about 600, a small fraction of the estimated 11,000 homeless people in the region. In related news, the Georgia Straight reports on homeless people rejected from the controversial Marpole temporary housing project in Vancouver, and wonders if standards for admission are unrealistic.
Can a new generation lead Vancouver?
Ever since Vancouver BC mayor Gregor Roberston and several other members of his centrist Vision Vancouver party have announced they won’t seek re-election, many wonder what’s next for the city. Scott de Lang Boom, writing for the Tyee, claims it’s time for a new generation to take charge — with radical steps to address housing affordability as its rallying issue.
Jazz-era murals unearthed in Seattle hotel
At Crosscut, Karen Ducey has the story of how the renovation of the Louisa Hotel, built in 1909 and located in Seattle’s International District, uncovered some incredible jazz-era murals of dancers and party-goes. The owners hope to acquire funds to restore the murals.
Matt Young on writing to grapple with Iraq war experience
Matt Young, a Marine Corps veteran of Iraq and a creative writing teacher in Olympia, WA, is the author of the fractured memoir Eat the Apple. At Powell’s website, he shares an illustrated comic about the how writing can (and can’t be) therapeutic for vets. “The trauma I wrote about will never go away. It will always be a giant monster-thing following me around.”
That’s all the arsty- and newsy-thingies from the Great Northwest, temporarily reporting from the Rose City. –Andrew Engelson
Photo credit: Washington state legislative building by Wikimedia Commons user “Cacophany” CC BY-SA 2.5