Cascadia Daily Dec. 14, 2017

WA governor vows efforts to protect net neutrality

After the FCC announced it was suspending Obama administration rules requiring net neutrality from internet providers, Washington Governor Jay Inslee committed to statewide efforts to protect an open internet, including requiring neutrality from ISPs that do business with the state, and forbidding ISPs that meter from using public utility poles.

On the edge of homelessness in Eastern Oregon

A feature in the East Oregonian profiles the lives of people at risk of homelessness in Hermiston, where a house fire, job setback, or change in relationship can suddenly put people on the streets or living in their cars. Meanwhile, Seattle Weekly reports on the success of Best Start for Kids, a county program funded by a levy that is helping 3,000 children and their parents avoid becoming houseless.

Seattle writer Ijeoma Oluo on patriarchy and harassment

The fallout from the #MeToo movement and sexual harassment revelations continues throughout the region, with a prominent Washington state legislator put on leave from his teaching position at Central Washington University. KUOW speaks with Seattle writer Ijeoma Oluo about calling men to task for abusing power. At the Establishment, Oluo wrote about the necessity of Senator Al Franken’s resignation.

Squamish youth fighting for change on band council

Angela Sterritt at CBC reports on the young men and women running for the Squamish band council, hoping to bring younger, more activist voices to First Nations leadership, and more vocal opposition to projects like a proposed liquid natural gas terminal on Howe Sound.
In other First Nations news, Vancouver is seeking a new poet laureate, and intends that poet to be from one of Greater Vancouver’s First Nations: Musqueam, Squamish, or Tsleil-Waututh.

Seattle writer Anca Szilagyi on writing a “not”-Holocaust novel

Seattle’s Anca Szilagyi, writing for Salon, reflects on the creation of her debut novel, Daughters of the Air, and how Jewish writers indirectly address the Holocaust. Her book, which chronicles a Jewish family that escapes Argentina’s dirty war in the early 1980s, became, she says, ” a hypersensitive instrument, an alarm bell to remain vigilant, a tool for active memory.”

A love letter to BC’s Shuswap region

Writer Jim Cooperman adores the Shuswap region of central British Columbia, a land of fjord-like lakes, vast forests, and tight-knit communities. In an interview and book excerpt at the Tyee, talks about the importance of a bio-regionalism, and offers an ecological history of the Secwepemc people who first populated the region, and who place importance on the notion of Kweseltnews: “we are all family.”


That’s all the news and culture for today, written in a city built on Coast Salish land. –Andrew Engelson Photo credits: Shuswap Lake by Sdleckie, CC BY-SA 4.0,  cover of Daughters of the Air courtesy of Lanternfish Press.