Whatcom task force on incarceration explores needs for expanding diversion and recovery services / Noisy Waters Northwest

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January 19, 2024 Dena Jensen

I’m through the first hour of listening to the 1/16/24 Behavioral Health Subcommittee meeting of the Whatcom County Incarceration and Prevention Taskforce. In the earlier part of the meeting, the committee was discussing various programs and practices to impact the unusually high number of folks in our jails right now who are not being assessed and treated in a timely manner that allows them to be mentally competent to stand trial. In other words these are folks who likely need to be taking medications in order to accurately understand and withstand a court proceeding in which they are charged with offenses.

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Farmworkers return to the Capitol for the 11th Annual Farmworker Tribunal: La Lucha Sigue! The Struggle Continues! / Press Release

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Photo by Edgar Franks – Image download available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TI5VI1Z0vlMXxBhZMG0pvqL8NbxfrEtI/view?usp=drivesdk

January 17, 2024 Press Release, Community to Community Development and Families Unidas por la Justia

OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON- 

Media Contacts: Edgar Franks – edgar.franx@gmail.com   (360) 972-5412 

Rosalinda Guillen   rosalindag@foodjustice.org  (360) 381-0293

Liz Darrow – Jan 23rd on site in Olympia (360) 220-9065

Farmworkers are essential to our food system. Yet they are still the poorest in the state. Just four years ago during the pandemic they were declared essential; while farmworkers kept food on the table for you during that crisis their wages did not go up.  

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Tuesday meeting focus will be suspension of Bellingham’s first advisory board on immigration / Noisy Waters Northwest

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Video Capture of the opening slide in the City of Bellingham’s Immigration Advisory Board November 7, 2022 presentation to the City Council’s Committee of the Whole on a proposed Immigrant Resource Center

January 13, 2024 Dena Jensen

Just after the New Year, on January 2, 2024, during the Bellingham City Council’s reorganization meeting, where Council Members take on their committee, board, and commission assignments, the Council took the unusual step of holding their first public discussion of a completed draft ordinance to suspend the City of Bellingham’s Immigration Advisory Board (IAB). There was no option provided for open public comment at this meeting, and a translator, having only been sought out related to a request for one, was not available. The discussion that day was for information only, with potential to revisit the ordinance on January 29.

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Bellingham City Council offers no dignity to current Immigration Advisory Board: rough notes from 1/2/24 meeting / Noisy Waters Northwest

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January 2, 2024 Dena Jensen

During about 30-35 minutes of January 2, 2024 discussion by Bellingham City Council Members of an ordinance to suspend the City’s Immigration Advisory Board, virtually not one positive thing was said about the current IAB – many of whose members are immigrants – or its volume of work over the last four years. New Council Member Jace Cotton did say he’d like to see the current board continue to meet. 

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