curated by Vee Hua 華婷婷
by Agueda Pacheco Flores
Dozens of people from around unincorporated King County communities showed up to the Skyway’s fire station last week to celebrate a first for Washington: the conclusion and results of a participatory budget. Millions of dollars went to 45 community projects, organizations, and groups.
Continue reading King County Communities Make History With Participatory Budget Processcurated by Vee Hua 華婷婷
Voters in unincorporated areas of King County have two more days to join the participatory budgeting process and help determine how money is invested in their neighborhoods! More monkeypox vaccines are also now available, with the Sexual Health Clinic reopening for vaccination today, with drop-in and appointment-based visits.
On a national level, Kansas voters gave an unexpected victory for abortion rights last week, which serves as evidence that perhaps U.S. voters are not as in line with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as anti-abortion advocates may have thought.
—Vee Hua 華婷婷, interim managing editor for the South Seattle Emerald
Continue reading NEWS GLEAMS | Participatory Budgeting Vote Up in Unincorporated King County, More Monkeypox Vaccinescurated by Emerald Staff
Application Deadline: June 28 at 5 p.m.
From the source: “The City of Seattle is now accepting applications for the Seattle Youth Commission (SYC), a 15-member commission of ages 13–19 that addresses issues of importance to youth. Appointed by the mayor and Seattle City Council, youth serving on this commission work with elected officials, City staff, community leaders, and young people citywide to make positive changes through policy, organizing, and events.
Continue reading NEWS GLEAMS: APA Artist Relief Fund, Participatory Budgeting, Youth Commissioners, & More!The Morning Update Show — hosted by Trae Holiday and The Big O (Omari Salisbury) — is the only weekday news and information livestream that delivers culturally relevant content to the Pacific Northwest’s urban audience. Omari and Trae analyze the day’s local and national headlines as well as melanin magic in our community. Watch live every weekday at 11 a.m. on any of the following channels, hosted by Converge Media: YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Periscope, and whereweconverge.com.
We also post the Morning Update Show here on the Emerald each day after it airs, so you can catch up any time of day while you peruse our latest posts.
More Shootings Across Emerald City | Update on Sawant Recall | Participatory Budgeting Delayed Until Next Year | LIVE — Lakeema Bell | Africatown Call for Artists | Trae Holiday Recognized by B.U.I.L.D
Continue reading The Morning Update Show — 5/17/21by Paul Faruq Kiefer
(This article previously appeared on PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
Seattle’s participatory budgeting process, which received $30 million in the 2021 city budget adopted last year, “is now clearly delayed until next year,” Seattle City Councilmember Tammy Morales confirmed by email Wednesday.
The City Council identified participatory budgeting as a way to allocate spending on alternatives to policing last year. But the timeline to get the process underway has been unclear for months because of uncertainty about who will manage the process. The council is considering two options, but Morales has been reluctant to move forward with either alternative.
Continue reading Participatory Budgeting ‘Clearly Delayed Until Next Year’The Morning Update Show — hosted by Trae Holiday and The Big O (Omari Salisbury) — is the only weekday news and information livestream that delivers culturally relevant content to the Pacific Northwest’s urban audience. Omari and Trae analyze the day’s local and national headlines as well as melanin magic in our community. Watch live every weekday at 11 a.m. on any of the following channels, hosted by Converge Media: YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Periscope, and whereweconverge.com.
We also post the Morning Update Show here on the Emerald each day after it airs, so you can catch up any time of day while you peruse our latest posts.
Compassion Seattle – a closer look | Erin Goodman | What’s up with Participatory Budgeting and the $30M?
Continue reading The Morning Update Show — 4/22/21by Erica C. Barnett
(This article was originally published by PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement.)
On Monday, the director of the city’s Department of Finance and Administrative Services (FAS), Calvin Goings, and the city’s finance director, Glen Lee, signed a letter to the State Auditor’s Office (SAO) asking the auditor to expand the scope of its ongoing audit of the contract between the city’s Legislative Department and the Freedom Project, which served as the “fiscal agent” for a $3 million project to study participatory budgeting and alternatives to policing.
However, PubliCola’s reporting indicates that the letter was written not by Goings and Lee but by Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office — and that Goings and Lee were less than thrilled to sign their names to such a blatantly political series of requests and leading questions.
Continue reading Durkan Administration Asks State to Expand Scope of Audit Into City Council Contractby Shaun Glaze and Jasmine M. Pulido
Our community has fought hard for this moment.
Tens of thousands of people protested for the vision of a world without police murders, one where Black death would no longer be funded by public dollars. The rallying cries to divest money from policing were clear. Community members and hundreds of community organizations pushed city leaders to reinvest those funds back into our communities most harmed by police brutality. Those closest to the issues are closest to the solutions. With that in mind, Black and Brown community members presented a vision where we the people decide how that money is spent — not elected officials. This isn’t a new process. Seattle has been doing Participatory Budgeting (PB) — a process that allows people in a city, rather than elected officials, to decide how money is spent — for nearly four years now. But now is the time for Black and Brown community members to design the process and lead the investment priorities for the budget. Over 100 community members became researchers to help design that roadmap based on feedback from thousands of community members.
Now is when we decide.
by Alycia Ramirez
Since the death of George Floyd last spring, the term “Defund the Police” has jumped into the public conscientious, but not by some twist in fate or happenstance. The fight for police accountability and reform has been a generations-long battle, which has coalesced into what we see today with the Defund the Police movement.
In over 100 years of policing there has been repeated violence directed at Black and Brown communities at the hands of police, and little meaningful reform to stop or reduce it. White America may be just fine with doing the absolute bare minimum and maintaining the status quo, but marginalized communities may not be so willing to endure another century of violence directed at them.
The uncomfortable truth is that police forces were originally created in our nation for the purpose of upholding white supremacy. They were slave catchers, created for the explicit purpose of capturing runaway slaves.
Continue reading OPINION: Defund the Police Isn’t a Slogan, It’s a Call to Action in Response to Generations of Racial Violence and BIPOC Communities Should Be Leading
