#Crosshair and tech are in college how are they affording that?

[here-comes-the-moose]

When I’m writing my Modern AU but then try to figure out and calculate how the life I gave the Batch is financially possible:

[wanderinginksplot]

Wrecker x Homesick Reader (Part Two!)

A continuation of this ex-one-shot, but you can probably pick up everything you need to know from context.

Wrecker x f!reader: hint of romance toward the end

Word Count: 2,300 ish

Warnings: none

---

You stood outside of the infamous Havoc Marauder, staring up at the ship with nerves tingling in your stomach.

Okay, coming here had seemed like a fine idea when Wrecker suggested it. Last night, it had even seemed like it might be fun. Added to Wrecker's promise that Tech would amp up the power and reach of your comlink? You had agreed to be here without a second thought.

Now, this finally seemed like a bad idea. The Marauder was looking rough after Clone Force 99's latest crash-landing, you had no idea if Wrecker had spoken to Tech on your behalf, and you hadn't even seen Wrecker that day. Plus, stupid as it sounded even in your own thoughts, you had never actually walked up to a ship without being expected. Were you supposed to knock? Shout? Should you just wait and hope they saw you?

As you stood, undecided, you thought seriously about going back to your quarters. If you were having second thoughts about this, Wrecker probably was, too. It would probably be best for everyone if you just left…

But then hydraulics hissed and the doors opened and the stairs attached to the ship dropped down. Tech appeared in the doorway, peering at you.

"You are the one Wrecker invited here, correct?"

"Uh. Correct?" you answered doubtfully. "He told me you might be able to help me with my comlink."

"Of course I can help you," Tech replied, his casual confidence making you quirk an eyebrow. He lifted his head to glance at the sky for a moment. "You'll have to come onboard the ship, however. The light conditions out here are too intense for such detailed work."

"Yeah, sure," you agreed, following him inside.

The Havoc Marauder was a smaller ship than the ones you had gotten used to at your time at Spearpoint Outpost. Of course, that may have been because a sheet hanging from the ceiling separated the entrance and cockpit from the rest of the living area, but you understood and respected the need for privacy. Four men living in such close quarters probably tried to keep things as separated as possible.

With that in mind, you resisted the urge to peek behind the truly giant sheet to see the Bad Batch's bunk space. Instead, you followed Tech up to the front of the Marauder. To your surprise, Sergeant Hunter was also in the small area. Remembering his keen senses and reluctance to be too close to other people, you stopped immediately.

"Do you want me to wait outside?" you offered. "I don't mind."

"Nah, come on in," Hunter invited. "I'm just doing some maintenance checks. Go ahead and sit down, though. I don't want to risk us clashing heads if either of us moves the wrong way."

You watched the sergeant for a moment to see if he was joking. The two of you weren’t even close to the same height, so several things would need to go wrong before you worried about bumping heads. You thought you saw an amused glitter in his dark eyes, but you had already begun turning toward the co-pilot's seat.

Tech sat down in the other seat. "Don't panic," he said bracingly, and he had ripped the cover off of your comlink before you had time to ask what he meant. Despite the warning, you still flinched at the noise of your comlink being broken.

You watched him in silence for a few long minutes, engrossed in the minute details of his work.

"Wrecker mentioned that you need this range increase to speak with your friends," Tech said, his quiet voice making you jump in the silence of the ship.

"My family, actually," you corrected.

You realized that the quiet sounds of Hunter working in the cabin behind you had stopped. You glanced back in his direction and he began fiddling with some exposed wires again.

"Where are you from?" Tech asked. "I'm certain Wrecker mentioned it before, but I cannot remember a place."

Wrecker talked about you? Feeling unreasonably warmed by that, you answered, "Bespin. Cloud City."

"Supposed to be beautiful there," Hunter said behind you.

"It is," you agreed readily. "Especially the sunrises. Or the sunsets, really. There are always clouds, so on a good day, the sun reflects off the water until the air is filled with more rainbows than there are stars in the sky."

"Impossible," Tech started, but Hunter cut him off.

"You must miss it. Sounds like you left a lot behind to be here."

You shrugged. "Not as much as some. Still, this was the right thing to do. I don't regret my choices."

Tech worked in silence for a while after that, doing something complex to the electrical components of the comlink.

Eventually, he said, "I've heard Bespin has odd customs. Parents often let their children form romantic relationships at early ages and people are encouraged to remain with those partners."

You didn't answer that and Tech glanced up at you questioningly. His fingers didn't stop manipulating the micro-spanner. The comlink sparked loudly and you grimaced. You hadn't even known a comlink could do that.

"Don't you need to… you know, concentrate?" you asked, fighting to keep your voice polite. You couldn't really afford a new comlink right now, and even when you could, a new communicator would take forever to arrive somewhere as remote as Spearpoint.

Rather than look back at the comlink, Tech's eyes slid over to where Hunter stood behind you, silent once more. Before you could turn as well, Tech’s gaze was back on the small device.

Sudden realization flashed through your mind. Tech's questions, Hunter's halting work on the Marauder… They were testing you. This was an interview to see if you were good enough for Wrecker.

You had always been excellent at interviews.

You sat straighter in the chair, dropping the tension from your shoulders as you fixed Tech with a sincere smile.

"You're thinking of Bespin as it was a thousand years ago," you told Tech, satisfied when he looked up at you with surprise half-hidden behind his goggles. "Those traditions were from before we had stable hover-lifts to keep cities at even elevation levels. It would be too difficult to re-identify a city that had dropped, risen, or otherwise changed locations. Young adults were encouraged to find someone they considered a potential romantic partner and share a dwelling before they lost each other forever."

"I…" Tech blinked. "I was unaware."

"We have a lot of legends about it," you said kindly. "Some of them are very widespread, so it isn't surprising you would have found one. I can recommend a good holotext about how we got to a more uniform elevation level and the shift to a more standard form of courtship. If you're interested, of course."

"I am extremely interested," Tech assured. "Have courtship rituals on Bespin changed, then?"

You shrugged. "Probably as much as those of any society that has been inhabited as long as Bespin. I wouldn't know a lot, personally. My first relationship wasn't until I had gone to college on Alderaan, and it certainly wasn’t with anyone from Bespin.”

Tech hummed quietly at that, refocusing his attention on your comlink. You waited to see what his next question would be, but the only noise in the cockpit was the sound of approaching footsteps.

You turned to find Crosshair stepping through the doorway. You managed a smile - not that it was appreciated or returned by the scowling trooper - but started to get anxious again. Where is Wrecker? Surely he hadn’t decided that you were more trouble than you were worth. If he had, why would his brothers be interrogating you?

Tech cleared his throat. “Did you stay on Alderaan long-?”

“You’re the one who spends so much time with Wrecker,” Crosshair said, staring at you. You nodded rather than risk displaying your nervousness in your voice. Crosshair grimaced. “Why?”

“Why… what?” you asked, utterly confused by his question.

“Well, most people find him irritating,” Crosshair pointed out, folding his arms across his lean chest. “Don’t you?”

“Never,” you replied instantly, your voice a bit too passionate for such a small space. “Wrecker is sweet and funny and cares more about others than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s amazing. If some people think he’s irritating, that’s their loss.”

Crosshair inclined his head at you before turning back toward the large sheet separating the living quarters from the cockpit. “There you go; an honest opinion.”

You blushed scarlet as the sheet dropped to reveal Wrecker. Apparently, the biggest Bad Batcher had been holding it in place pressed against the ceiling. You were marveling at that for a few precious seconds, but Wrecker had already moved on.

Beaming at you, Crosshair, and anyone else who bothered to look in your direction, Wrecker cheered, “Great!”

“Subtle, Crosshair,” Hunter said lowly.

Crosshair shrugged. “He wanted to know, and you and Tech were taking too long.”

“So,” Wrecker started, rubbing at the back of his neck as he moved to stand in front of you. Well, he was standing behind the copilot seat, really. The cockpit was crowded with you and every member of Clone Force 99 sharing the space. “I was thinking, maybe-”

“I am finished,” Tech announced, pushing past Wrecker to claim your full attention. He presented you with your comlink and, ignoring Wrecker’s huff of annoyance, proceeded to explain exactly what he had done to the device and how it should work.

You did your best to pay attention, but it was tricky with the other members of the Bad Batch standing in the background. Wrecker, understandably, looked frustrated. Crosshair was far too amused as someone watching one of his brothers accidentally torment another one. Hunter was the one really keeping an eye on the situation. When Tech had finally started to repeat an earlier point, Hunter interrupted.

“Tech, I need your help with one of the sensors in the rear deflector shield,” Hunter said, drawing Tech away slightly. “I’ve fixed the problem and reset the sensor, but it’s still registering as a bug in the system-”

As Hunter and Tech moved further away, Crosshair gave a sardonic salute and slouched off as well. You and Wrecker were alone for the first time, and he moved to sit down in the other pilot’s chair.

Sitting down, Wrecker seemed much less physically imposing. He was an undeniably large man, but at least you were almost the same height sitting down. Well, sort of the same height. Okay, not really the same height at all, but closer than when you were both standing.

Wrecker sat extremely upright in his chair as he started to speak. “Okay, now that they’re finally gone, I wanted to ask: would you maybe think about having dinner with me tonight? Here? I’ll get rid of the guys and we can have anything you want and I already cleaned just in case you said yes, but if you say yes, I’ll clean again just to make sure it’s really clean-”

“Wrecker!” you said laughingly, holding up your hands as if to stifle the stream of words. “I would be glad to have dinner with you. Thank you for asking me. It already looks clean in here, so please don’t feel like you need to go to any trouble.”

“That’s great!” Wrecker enthused after he had sat staring at you for a solid 20 seconds. He opened his arms. “Hug?”

“I’d love one, thanks,” you accepted gratefully, sliding forward until you left your chair.

Wrecker didn’t even give you a chance to stand all the way before he had wrapped you in another warm, squeezing embrace. You returned it as well as you could, but he pulled back sooner than he had the night before. You raised a curious eyebrow at him, but Wrecker gently disentangled himself from you and settled you back on your own seat.

“Actually, I have something else I need to say, and you need to be over there so you can be comfortable.” You raised both eyebrows at that, as well as at the sincere expression on Wrecker’s scarred face.

He avoided your eyes, but said it anyway: “I want to be more than friends. I… like you, but more than that. You know? Maybe you don’t. But I just wanted to make sure you knew that I would be happy to be your friend. If all you want is to be my friend, I think that’s great and I’m excited to be part of your new family here. Ugh, I’m messing this all up…”

You moved closer again, grabbing Wrecker’s hand as you did. “Wrecker, I’m glad you like me as more than a friend. It’s- That’s how I feel about you, too.”

“Really?” Wrecker breathed, definitely the quietest tone you had ever heard him use.

His eyes were lit up with hope and you smiled as you confirmed, “Really. But I haven’t dated a lot of people and I get the feeling it might be the same for you? So maybe we should take things slow.”

“That sounds amazing,” Wrecker agreed. “So should we reschedule dinner for another time?”

You smiled softly, hoping it didn’t come off condescending. “We don’t need to move that slowly, not if you’re comfortable with us having dinner together. I would like for us to be friends, too.”

“So it’s okay if I do this?” Wrecker asked, pulling your linked hands up to brush a kiss on the back of your hand.

It was such a simple, innocent gesture, but you had to fight a blush as you nodded. “It’s definitely okay if you do that.”

The pair of you grinned at each other like fools for an embarrassingly long time before you remembered a line you should draw. “Just please don’t leave me alone with your brothers again. They’re terrifying when they’re trying to look out for you.”

“I promise,” Wrecker said sincerely. “Though they like you, if that helps.”

“Thank goodness for that,” you murmured, glancing through the Marauder’s viewport to find Hunter, Tech, and Crosshair watching the two of you with knowing smirks.

---

A/N - All of the stuff about Bespin was invented by me. I know it's not correct, but it was fun to write and I have no regrets! Thanks for reading! Feel free to check out other works on my masterlist or make a request!

[blockheadbrands]

How Cynthia Nixon Changed the New York Cannabis Game

Tricia Romano of Leafly Reports:

On a balmy summer night in late June, the lobby of Galvanize, a chic urban workspace in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood, was filled with young, fashionable women, many donning high heels, sharp dresses, and clutching stylish purses. They were there for a fundraising event for Cynthia Nixon, hosted by a group of cannabis industry leaders in New York City.

'I am Cynthia Nixon,” said the actress-turned-politician, 'and I am the cannabis candidate for New York governor.'

If you squinted, it looked like the kind of crowd that Miranda, her character in Sex and the City, would have hung out with. In reality, though, it was the kind of a celebratory meeting of two rising forces in New York: the city’s hip, young cannabis entrepreneurs; and the television star who suddenly became a serious candidate for governor of New York.

Stars of the industry circulated around the buzzing loft-like space: Lynsey Ayala, creator of the Brooklyn craft botanical line BreadxButta; Marta Freedman and Charlotte Palermino, founders of the cannabis media startup Nice Paper; Mae Karwowski, founder of the marketing tech firm Obviously; and Women Grow pioneer and former CEO Jazmin Hupp.

Unlike some of the other “Cynthia for New York” events I’d attended over the past few months, the crowd had a real energy and excitement to it. Many of the organizers and attendees were women, and there was an upbeat buzz about a female candidate on the side of the cannabis industry. If there was any doubt about that, Nixon erased it with her opening line.

“I am Cynthia Nixon,” she said, taking the microphone to raucous cheers, “and I am the cannabis candidate for New York governor.”

That’s something her opponent, two-term Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has never said. It is a phrase that has likely never crossed the lips of any serious candidate for governor in the 230-year history of the Empire State.

She may not beat Cuomo in the Democratic primary on Sept. 12, but Cynthia Nixon has changed New York.

Four years ago an obscure law professor and political activist named Zephyr Teachout challenged Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York’s Democratic primary. She had a surprising modicum of success, garnering 34 percent of the vote.

Teachout’s performance opened a wormhole in progressive circles in New York. If a no-name (if oddly named) challenger could cut into the base of a powerhouse like Cuomo, who many regarded as being too satisfied with the status quo, maybe a well-liked celebrity with rich friends could do her one better.

Using celebrity to get past the gates is a move straight from Donald Trump’s playbook, of course. But instead of using her star power to inflate her ego, Nixon has used it to illuminate causes that many traditional politicos would not touch.

High on that list is the legalization of cannabis. Though New York state passed a highly restrictive medical marijuana law in 2014, it has yet to go the Full Monte and legalize it for adult use. When asked why the famously liberal state lagged on the issue, most observers pointed to one person: Andrew Cuomo.

The Gov’s Old-School Thinking

An old-school Democratic tough-on-crimer out of the Clinton mold, Cuomo has long been an icon of past-generation liberal thinking on cannabis. New York’s voters and state legislators had to drag him kicking and screaming to allow an ultra-strict medical marijuana system. He didn’t like it, he doesn’t want it, he barely tolerates it. Adult-use legalization? Fuhgettaboutit.

Then, in March of this year, Nixon announced her candidacy. Almost from the beginning, she hammered away at the injustice and nonsense of New York State’s cannabis laws. “I’m absolutely for the legalization of marijuana,” Nixon told Wendy Williamson April 11. “Let’s capture some of that revenue.” When she got knocked for advocating on fiscal grounds alone, she posted a YouTube video to clarify her position:

‘Stop Putting People of Color in Jail’

“There are a lot of good reasons for legalizing marijuana, but for me, it comes down to this: we have to stop putting people of color in jail for something that white people do with impunity,” Nixon said.

“Eighty percent of the New Yorkers who are arrested for marijuana are black or Latino despite the fact that whites and people of color use marijuana and roughly the same rates. The consequences follow people for the rest of their lives making it harder for them to get jobs or housing and for non-citizens putting them directly in the crosshairs for deportation,” she said, pivoting and putting Cuomo in the crosshairs.

“If there was more political courage coming out of Albany we would have done this a long time ago. The simple truth is for white people the use of marijuana has effectively been legal for a long time isn’t it time we legalized it for everybody else.”

In response, Cuomo said—and did—nothing.

Who’s the Progressive Champion?

In April, New York Magazine put Nixon on its cover, declaring that “Cynthia Nixon Has Already Won.”

She repeated the line that would become etched as a campaign mantra: Cuomo “presents himself as a progressive champion, but really nothing could be farther from the truth.”

Nixon continued to hit Cuomo on the issue, on Twitter and in the media. As late as 2017, Cuomo proclaimed cannabis a “gateway drug,” even as more states proved out the success of legalization—and more than 20,000 New York State residents suffered arrest and incarceration due to prohibition. In early 2018, Cuomo signed off on a Department of Health study of legalization, due at the end of the year. “It is a hotly debated topic, pardon the pun,” he said, despite the absence of a pun, “and it would be nice to have some facts in the middle of the debate.”

Nixon preferred straight talk.

“Most Americans now agree: the war on drugs is racist and expensive. If we can admit that, then we can admit that it’s on our government to repair the damage done to communities of color across our country,” she wrote on May 7.

Cynthia Nixon✔@CynthiaNixon

 · May 7, 2018

Hey, @thereval. I hear you. Let me share my thoughts on the issue. https://twitter.com/TheRevAl/status/993481594198519808 …

Cynthia Nixon✔@CynthiaNixon

There's no way legalizing marijuana would be a remedy for the legacy of slavery & Jim Crow. But when it comes to repairing the wrongs of a racist drug war, we've got to make sure black and Latino communities are prioritized in the new legalized industry. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/15/legal-marijuana-industry-racism-portland-jesce-horton …

3:29 PM - May 7, 2018

 A billion-dollar industry, a racist legacy: being black and growing pot in America

What does it take to succeed as a young black entrepreneur in a sector largely dominated by white men seen as daring trailblazers?

theguardian.com

Twitter Ads info and privacy

As governor, she vowed, it wouldn’t be just “rich white men who make billions off a product that sends thousands of black people to jail. We’re going to create jobs and opportunity in the communities most devastated by the racist War on Drugs.”

The Nixon Tour: Hit-n-Miss

Over the summer, I went to a number of “Cynthia for New York” events in New York: one in Bronx which was supposed to be a launch for her thousands of volunteers setting out to collect signatures; an unveiling of her education policy (24 pages long) at the Borough of Manhattan Community College; and a multi-group rally outside the New York Public Library advocating for affordable housing. Some of the events lacked the energy and buzz that would be expected from Nixon’s glowing press. At the event in the Bronx, which was, politely speaking, underattended, I asked a reporter if Nixon had grassroots support, and he replied… “—ish.”

Nixon’s public events were tightly orchestrated by her handlers. Groups of people showed up more to see the TV star and hear what she had to say, and less to show their unabashed support. I didn’t get the feeling that New York loved the prospect of Cynthia Nixon as governor, so much as the state’s denizens were meh on Cuomo.

At the cannabis industry fundraiser in SoHo, many of the curious and the skeptical came away impressed.

When Tanya Osbourne, founder of CannaDiva and the New York market leader for Women Grow, said that when she heard Nixon was seriously running, “I had a little puzzle face on.” She had initially written off the former Sex and the City star as just another trying on a role in politics. But Osbourne got on board after hearing Nixon talk about cannabis.

Cannabis isn’t her only issue.

“What really struck me for her was her language,” Osbourne told me. “She was using language that other people weren’t using. It was just really forthright about the disparity between black people in the industry and non-black people in the industry,” which resonated with Osborne as a woman of color.

Nixon was “talking about how this market is going to be eaten up by the people who can afford it the most without saying the obvious.” The obvious being the fact that rich white men in legal states are now getting richer doing what poor black men have been arrested for doing since the late 1930s.

“She was just speaking the truth,” Osbourne added, “and I could get behind somebody who was actually using the language that is just the truth. Black people are underrepresented in the market and if you are rich white male you will probably be able to own a dispensary, have a billion companies—and then the people that are in jail look like me.”

Cannabis: Political, Not Personal

For Nixon, cannabis legalization isn’t a personal crusade.

She talks easily and openly about how she’s sampled it in the past. “I tried it twice when I was in college,” she told The Cut. “It wasn’t for me, but I promised a number of people that when we legalize it in New York, I will give it another shot.”

Instead, she works in the tradition of legalization advocates like Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Rep. Tom Garrett (R-VA), politicians who work to end prohibition based on a variety of principles including social justice concerns, libertarian values, fiscal responsibility, and just plain common sense.

Like Blumenauer, Nixon unabashedly embraces the cannabis connection. Earlier this year she showed up at a 4/20 parade on April 20, added a 4/20 button to her site, and even gave away a Broad City bong with the help of Ilana Wexler and Abbi Jacobson, the two stars of the show.

Cynthia Nixon✔@CynthiaNixon

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d be typing: You could win a bong signed by @BroadCity's @abbijacobson and @ilazer! This may not be a serious contest, but legalizing weed is no joke. So enter now: http://bit.ly/BroadCity4Cynthia …

1:20 PM - Jul 8, 2018

Going Where Cuomo Wouldn’t

For those staking their money and their careers on the cannabis industry in a state where it’s still not fully legal, Nixon’s outspokenness is personal. It’s a vote of confidence from a public figure who created the role of a strong, bold character on TV—Miranda was in many ways the least retrograde and most relatable of the Sex and the City characters—and then embodied that courage and strength in real life.

In June, Nixon spent much of her time on the campaign trail listening to people of color speak.

And she’s campaigning in ways that always seem to highlight the divide between herself and Cuomo. She uses her white privilege to speak out on behalf of people whose voices are rarely heard.

In June, she spent much of her time on the campaign trail listening to people of color speak. At one event in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Nixon sat in on a roundtable featuring about a dozen high school age kids at The Center for Popular Democracy. Though there were more members of the press than participants (one reporter from The Root remarked that the scene reminded him of covering Trump), it was one of the more compelling campaign events that she held in those early summer weeks.

The kids were all mostly high school aged, a diverse bunch in terms of race and gender. A few identified as trans and went by “they,” their pronouns carefully marked on name tags. (“Cynthia, Her/She.”)

Kesi Foster, a coordinator at Urban Youth Collaborative opened the floor. “Our school systems have put in place policies and practices that criminalize the normal behavior of young people. And that results in young people losing hundreds of thousands of days of instructional time because they’re being suspended. In the most kind of visceral stark outcome, it literally results in young people being pulled out of a classroom and pulled into a courtroom or pulled into our jails and prisons across the state.”

He rattled off statistics—black students represent only about 17 percent of the students across New York state, but they represent 44 percent of students that are referred to law enforcement, and concludes, “We know that having police officers in schools, it makes it more likely that students are going to be referred to law enforcement for normal youthful behavior as disorderly conduct and other minor infractions.”

Real Life in School

One by one, the students told Nixon about how they have to go through metal detectors to get to class, how they have to wait 20 or 30 minutes to get inside, how once inside it feels like they are in a jail, because the police are inside, eyeballing their every move, how their belongings are searched, how they need permission for the smallest things, to get something from the car, for instance. They tell stories about how roughhousing can viewed as a criminal activity by the police and how demoralizing it school as a whole is.

The students' stories illustrate Nixon’s point: Being caught with cannabis as a person of color leads to a domino effect that can hurt for the rest of their lives.

One student explained the psychological effects of so much police presence.

“If your first interaction is a police officer yelling at you to remove things or yelling at you saying,’ you should know better,’ all the rest of your day and sometimes the rest of your week—there’s just a lot of trauma that you’re holding in your body all day long.”

Nixon, wearing a dress with a suit jacket over it, listened intently, and nodded her head earnestly.

Anooj Bhandari, who works with Make the Road New York as a Restorative Justice Coordinator, told a story about two students who were given summonses at school for marijuana possession. To fight the charges, they needed to be in court the same day as an exam required for graduation.

“When we think about the options that are given to young people in those moments, it’s choose: do you want to either have a warrant out for your arrest or do you want to try to move closer to graduation?” he said.  “If those are the options that we’re providing for young people, like we’re failing that as, as a system of education.”

It’s a concrete example of Nixon’s point about marijuana and legalization—how being caught with cannabis as a person of color leads to a domino effect that can hurt a person for the rest of their lives.

Optimism in the Air

At the SoHo party, which is more glitz and glamour than Social Justice Warrior, there’s a hum of optimism in the air. Yes, some of that optimism is due to dollar signs—if cannabis is fully legalized, there are a million potential avenues for revenue, new businesses and new technologies to be developed. But, the difference is that in a state like New York, that money, and all that possibility can actually go to the communities of color that Nixon has vowed won’t be left behind under her watch, should she be elected.

'Her vision for New York is beautiful.'

Lulu Tsui, Co-founder of cannatech company Revel

In many of the legal adult-use states, the majority of the population is heavily white. Washington and Oregon, for instance, have populations are more than 80 percent non-Latino white. In Colorado, white people comprise 69 percent of the population. But New York state and New York City, where many of the business owners in a legal market will be located, is much more diverse, with more than 64 percent of the population comprising of people of color —black, Asian, Latinx, and Hispanic.

It’s unlikely that Nixon will overcome her tremendous disadvantage in the polls, despite a scrappy debate against the governor last week. But in early summer, there was still a glimmer of hope in the crowd at Galvanize.

One of the hosts, Lulu Tsui, a cofounder of the cannatech company Revel, was impressed with Nixon’s solutions. Those included pushing for automatic expungement of cannabis arrests, for instance. “I think it was a really great first introduction to having a conversation about cannabis, “ Tsui said. “Just having that time and have her speak and tell us what she believes in, what she envisions.”

“And,” she says, “her vision for New York is beautiful.”

Tricia Romano is the former editor in chief of The Stranger. She previously worked as a staff writer at the Seattle Times, and has been published in the New York Times, Elle.com, Rolling Stone, the New York Post, New York magazine, Slate, Grantland, Spin, and Salon. She covered underground culture in New York City for the Village Voice for eight years in her column “Fly Life.”

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