Erin Sellers

@rangemedia.co is deeply committed to labor reporting here in Spokane. If you saw yourself or your workplace in this story, my DMs are open. My Signal chat is open (509-850-0488), as is my email (erin@rangemedia.co).

To date, I have interviewed ten former employees and contractors from LeS. I’ve interviewed clients, corroborating sources and community members. I’ve reviewed hundreds of pages of documents. The work doesn’t end - there are more stories to come.

I was conflicted about writing this story, right now, as immigrant and refugee communities find themselves under fire from federal policy. But workers deserve protections, no matter how publicly progressive of an org they work for. It would have been unfair for me not to hear them out.

It’s been a delicate, heart-breaking, gut-wrenching process. Because I was talking to a particularly vulnerable group of workers with very real concerns around immigration and economic retaliation, I had to move slowly and carefully.

Last year, a former worker from LeS approached me; they’d seen my reporting Planned Parenthood labor conditions and they wanted to trust me with their story.

It’s a great exercise in rank choice voting…transparently I used my other votes on smaller cities to try and quell the population bias

I never imagined growing up in Idaho that one day I could bike to work! In Spokane, I can, and even in the last year I’ve watched new infrastructure on my route get put in to make it safer :)

Transgender Kansans belong here. Legislative fanatics have dishonored our state. • Kansas Reflector Senate Bill 244 is one of a string of laws meant to harass and intimidate Kansans not infected with parasitic brain worms endemic among legislators

Opinion editor @claywires.bsky.social writes: Transgender Kansans belong here. Legislative fanatics have dishonored our state. #ksleg

Journalists Jailed by ICE Are Revealing the Horrors of Incarceration The Trump administration’s attacks on journalists have a side effect: further exposing the violence of prisons.

ICE has jailed journalists as part of its mass deportation campaign. One unintended side effect: firsthand accounts of detention conditions from trained reporters. theappeal.org/ice-incarcer...

Do any of my Spokane moots have recommendations for a good person to do my taxes? Bought a house this year and I’m out of my depth

It’s ok, at least the legislature *checks notes* spent some time thinking about snowmobile registration fees

What a fucking joke

Woke up thinking about how yesterday during Agenda Review - the second meeting in the city council’s marathon meeting day - three council members were discussing/debating what constitutes the “body of an email” for the purposes of a rules amendment

Happy Birthday Dan!!

So excited to welcome @bydaisy.bsky.social to the RANGE team!

Is my Bad Attitude ™️ a feature or a bug plz help

Splat is an artistic hub for all things print media and DIY culture in downtown Spokane Back during our nation’s fight for independence, a man named Thomas Paine had some choice words for our friends across the pond.

We sat down with Madison Pearson at the @inlander.com to talk about who we are and what we're about. Have a look!

www.inlander.com/culture/spla...

Splat is an artistic hub for all things print media and DIY culture in downtown Spokane Back during our nation’s fight for independence, a man named Thomas Paine had some choice words for our friends across the pond.

Excited to see my friends in @splatspokane.org getting such love from the local media community. If you live in Spokane or are visiting definitely check out Splat at Blue Door Theater

www.inlander.com/culture/spla...

This is very monkeys paw of you, Guy 🤣🤣

'It’s Hard to Really Call it a Study' – RANGE Media Taking a hard look at SBA’s much-talked-about study of unhoused people that claimed 50.2% of unhoused people in Spokane moved here after becoming homeless.

I can’t keep writing 4,000 word screeds on how SBA’s data is bad…I just can’t. Meanwhile the poster is liking comments telling him to run for mayor.

rangemedia.co/sba-study-fi...

Last year on Presidents Day, February 17, a small group of us started meeting at 5 AM in front of City Hall and walking downtown together. What began as a simple idea to draw attention to Spokane’s addiction and safety crisis, quickly turned into 100 straight 5AM walks. Those walks rapidly changed how we saw our city. … Spokane is not alone, as cities like San Francisco, through efforts such as Break the Cycle, Portland, and others are also adopting this same approach with increasing success. Conditions are continuing to improve: for the first time in years, overdose deaths in Spokane have begun to decline. The chart I’m sharing here tells part of that story. It is not the whole picture, but it is an important one. Fewer deaths means more people are being reached, stabilized, and given another chance. That progress belongs to many people. The frontline professionals who show up every single day, police, firefighters, outreach workers, medical teams, and service providers doing the hard, often unseen work. It also reflects the leadership and support of our elected officials who have been willing to take steps, make changes, and stand behind a more engaged approach to helping people move off the streets and into the help they need. To mark one year since those walks began, we are gathering again – an anniversary walk of continued hope and progress: on February 17 at 5:00 AM, we will meet in front of City Hall for a reunion walk. If you walked with us last year, I hope you will come back. If you never joined, you are welcome. There is something powerful about seeing our city wake up together and being reminded why this work matters in a city we all love and call home. If interested, following is a link to a chart that compares overdose rates across counties...we've got a ways to go but it's finally headed the right direction: https://spokanebusinessassociation.com/spokane-health-safety-update/ Thank you - let’s keep the momentum going!

Lmao not Spokane Business Association posting an AI-generated chart (peep that the yellow trend line splinters into two lines at one point), just picking two random cities to put us against and the tiny note at the bottom stating their Spokane County data is estimated.

This is like an amalgamation of some of my favorite things and people: worker ownership, independent media, queer art and some cool people I consider friends. Tune in!!

Update: the $100k in direct support for immigrants came from SPD’s budget!

Just a quick update from the Twin Cities. (Please forgive the unsolicited message). THINGS ARE NOT BETTER IN MINNEAPOLIS. The media is mostly moving on, Trump is focused on other stuff, BUT NOTHING HAS CHANGED ON THE GROUND. More than 2,000 DHS thugs continue to roam the streets, abducting people 24/7, assaulting legal observers with impunity, and routinely denying 1st, 4th, and 5th amendment rights. Drones and helicopters are overhead every day. Hundreds and hundreds of terrified families have not left their homes since mid-December ... relying on the community to bring them food and help with rent and other necessities. (Those people are NOT violent drug cartel sex offending murderers, as DHS would tell you. Most are legal residents or citizens.) If anything, things have just become more stressful and intractable (think trench warfare as a suitable metaphor): The resistance is better organized and numerous, but DHS has become more clever and better at disguise... and the county sheriff's office is increasingly supporting them . Do not let anyone tell you that Homans (the new person in charge of the occupation) is making anything better. Do not let anyone tell you that 700 ICE agents leaving the city has made much of a difference; the remaining force (again, ~2,000) is still larger than the entire city's police force (which is legally unable to do anything). Please call your congressional reps ... especially if there is any chance the administration might listen to them.

A desperate plea sent to me by a Minneapolis resident who's been on the front lines since the beginning of the ICE occupation:

I think between you and Sophia splitting time with The Miner we’re at five total people!

Seems particularly relevant on a day with such grim news news…There is a better way - putting the power in the workers’ hands.

Billionaire ownership of media outlets could have been a great way to insulate them from business imperatives “Who cares if WaPo is losing money? It’s owned by a billionaire!”

Instead, like everything else they touch, it was instead the kiss of death, it promised endless enshittification.

The work these journalists do is incredible and fearless. Support their union as they fight for a fair contract with limits on AI!

🥺🥺

The way that landlords are trying to rebrand as “housing service providers” is such a joke

Some good news for your Monday!