by Vee Hua 華婷婷
by Gennette Cordova
Black History Month, especially, is a time for reflecting on the teachings and work of Black leaders who came before us. Malcolm X’s 1964 speech “The Ballot or the Bullet,” delivered less than a year before his assassination, offers valuable perspective to understand the ways in which history has continued to repeat itself, with a call to action to disrupt the cycle.
This speech, which he opens by beseeching his Black audience to unite despite their differences, is rich with relevant insights. The most pertinent of these is an urgent idea with two parts. The first is that, while supporting Republicans is clearly not a realistic solution to the problems Black people face — it wasn’t in 1964 and it isn’t today — we must urgently address the Democratic Party’s consistent failure of the Black community.
Continue reading OPINION | Malcolm X’s Timeless Call to Action: Echoes of ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’ in Today’s Struggle for Black Liberationby Jas Keimig
Since 2020, comedian and political cartoonist Brett Hamil has been faithfully skewering Seattle politicians and cranks every week for the South Seattle Emerald in his “Sunday Comix” column. From City Hall gadflies who are obsessed with abiding by the infuriatingly slow Seattle process to Seattle police officers who want no consequences and all the funding, Hamil’s work has documented a turbulent and weird past couple of years for our so-called progressive city. Now, he’s compiled all 152 comic strips into a new book Airhorn of Truth: The COMPLETE Sunday Comix which serves as a hilarious and potent reminder of how far Seattle has to go. I called up Hamil this week to chat about the recent City Council election results, his cartooning process, and what hope he has for our mossy city.
Continue reading Beware the ‘Airhorn of Truth’by Vee Hua 華婷婷
by Phil Manzano
South Seattle residents will decide several key election races on the ballot that will determine who will represent them in King County and on the Seattle City Council, as well as vote on a property tax measure that will affect their pocketbooks.
Continue reading Today Is Election Day; Here Are Key Races and Ballot Measures for South End Residentsby Dae Shik Kim
When I used to live on Capitol Hill, I would run into Kshama Sawant a couple times a month at the Central Co-op. I would always take a quick peek into her shopping cart and knew right away she was about to throw down. Seattle is a small enough city where it isn’t out of the ordinary to see one of your local electeds in public. I’ve seen Andrew Lewis in his Indochino suit panic-jogging through Pioneer Square so many times and never really thought much of it. But seeing Kshama Sawant do “human” things always felt a little different. Maybe because most of us have never seen her break “character,” especially within the walls of City Hall. Or maybe because corporate media loves to portray “radical leftists” as joyless figures, quick to cancel others, perpetuating stereotypes that overlook multifaceted lives and passions.
Continue reading Love, Labor, and Legacy: An Exit Interview With Councilmember Kshama Sawantby Vee Hua 華婷婷
by Megan Burbank
As conservative legislators continue attacks on gender-affirming care nationwide, the same small group of political actors is showing up again and again to sow fear about this life-saving medical care. While the spate of attacks on gender-affirming care might seem recent, the rhetorical strategies propelling it are straight out of the Moral Majority’s anti-abortion playbook from the 1980s. The reemergence of these strategies exemplifies the obvious nexus between anti-abortion and anti-trans policy, and should prompt a look back at the true origins of the anti-abortion movement, which also relied on selective storytelling.
Continue reading Bad Faith: Anti-LGBTQIA+ Activists Are Repurposing a Decades-Old Anti-Abortion Strategyby Andrew Hong
South Seattle is a unique and important part of the state to understand. We are the most diverse part of the state, with many neighborhoods being over three-quarters People of Color. However, our community’s needs and an understanding of our communities are often discarded. That includes our politics. Most political analyses of Washington State gloss over Communities of Color, and the analyses that do dive into BIPOC communities often lump all Communities of Color together into one bucket. However, Bellevue Communities of Color are much different from Central Washington Communities of Color which are much different from South End Communities of Color.
Continue reading How Gentrification Shapes South End Politics: Race and Politics in South Seattleby Sharon Maeda
There are so many stories about Norm Mineta, 90, who passed away Tuesday, May 3. He was a soft-spoken gentleman who was a part of making U.S. history at multiple junctures. Mineta was “the first” many times over: the first Asian American mayor of a major city, San Jose, California, where he was born and raised. Twenty years ago, the San Jose Airport was named for him. He was the first Asian American cabinet secretary and first and only Democrat in the George W. Bush administration.
Continue reading Remembering Norm Mineta, Asian American Pioneer
