To: Jenny Durkan, Mayor of Seattle, Barry Diller, Chairman and Senior Executive, Mark Okerstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alan Pickerill, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Robert Dzielak, Chief Legal Officer...

Expedia STOP discriminating against Seattle Hempfest!

Stop impeding access to the North end of Centennial Park by denying the use of public access roads and parking lots needed for vendors and bands to load-in to the 28th Annual Seattle Hempfest.

Why is this important?

Expedia bought the building at the north end of Centennial Park in Seattle a couple of years ago. Seattle Hempfest has been a beloved event in Seattle for 28 years now. Expedia is denying Hempfest access to the parking lot and roads at the North end of the park this year. Expedia makes thousands of dollars each year from our event. Our speakers, volunteers, and attendees come from all over the world to visit Seattle Hempfest and many of them book their flights, hotels, and rental cars through Expedia.

Hempfest has used the public access roads 16th Avenue West and Amgen Parkway for over two decades. We load vendors and bands into the park in order to create a north-to-south flow of traffic so that cars and trucks do not have to turn around on the grass and cause destruction of the park. There are only a couple of places in the park where turning around a vehicle is even possible. We have great respect for being able to use Centennial and Myrtle Edwards parks for this event and we work very hard to minimize potential damage to our venue. Expedia has also asked the city to only allow load-in hours between 7:00 pm- 4:00 am. This makes our jobs impossibly difficult and causes undue stress for our vendors who must load their wares in and out of the park each day.

As a volunteer, I am angered by the actions of Expedia to limit our access to the parks. Having to restructure our entire load-in and out processes through the South entrance has been difficult. We are a seasoned crew that has worked together for many years, and we have the routine down pat. Now we must change it because of Expedia. These changes mean that several key people in a couple of different departments will have to be at the South end when we need them in our respective departments.

There is absolutely no reason that a company who makes so much money from our event should be causing harm to it. Please sign this petition and let the executives at Expedia know that this action is not acceptable, and they need to return access to the North end of the parks during the entire event process.

I am a volunteer that is directly negatively impacted by Expedia denying Seattle Hempfest the use of public access roads.