As a child growing up in Seattle in the ʼ90s, I had the great fortune of receiving a wide range of non-familial nurturing, from the Miller Jet coaches to the Leschi Elementary School teachers. At Garfield Community Center, where I spent years enrolled in the after-school program and the summer camp, I always knew I had eyes on me. Eyes of adults who both cared about my well-being and would be quick to let my mom know if I was out of line.
When I became an adult who was responsible for children, I learned that after-school programs in our city aren’t readily available to many families. This is something that’s hard for me to understand, particularly in one of the wealthiest cities in the nation.
When young activist Fred Hampton began to gain popularity in his role as the deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter, his charisma quickly made him a major target of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover expressed serious concerns about the dangers of Hampton’s rise, labeling him “the new Black Messiah.”
At the height of the 2020 racial justice demonstrations following the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other victims of police violence, Seattle and its short-lived Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) was put under a microscope. A self-proclaimed leader of CHOP, local rapper Raz Simone quickly gained visibility as national media outletsmade him a figurehead of the movement despite vocal opposition mainly from women. As more specifics emerge about both his sex trafficking and his involvement with Seattle police, the argument becomes stronger to support what many of us already knew: Raz’s rise to prominence was part of a larger strategic effort to discredit racial justice protests in 2020.
Earlier this month, eight mayors in South King County issued an open letter to their King County and Washington State criminal justice partners expressing frustration with crime in their cities. Rather than emphasizing the importance of nurturing and stabilizing their communities through non-carceral alternatives, they leaned into the same punitive solutions that have proven to be ineffective in increasing public safety.
Some people believe that housing should be a basic human right. Others prefer that poverty in their city be out of their line of vision. Counter to narratives centered around addiction and mental illness often spun by The Seattle Times’ editorial board, the newspaper recently acknowledged that the cause of our city’s rampant homelessness is a lack of affordable housing. Rather than debating the morality of reasons rooted in compassion, the shamefulness of reasons based on aesthetics, or the virtue of rationale landing somewhere in between, we can build solutions based on the understanding that tackling homelessness will require us to do something about Seattle’s skyrocketing housing costs.
Last week, for the first time in history, conservatives on the Supreme Court decided to strip away a constitutional protection it had granted the nation half a century ago. The despair, outrage, and panic in the air is thick, and if you’re thinking this is the worst it’s going to get, you’re wrong.
