Tenants rights counselor Julissa Sanchez read from her phone at the Cancel the Rent Rally at Othello Park on the afternoon of Saturday, June 5 . She said it would be easier to read without her sunglasses on, because if she took them off, the crowd of a few dozen would see her smeared makeup. Sanchez had been crying.
“The eviction moratorium is great — it has prevented unjust evictions …” Sanchez said. “… but it definitely did not prevent the thousands of thousands of dollars of rental debt that our people are in.”
On April 2, 2019, the International Socialist Organization (ISO) publicly announced that members had voted to disband because of their failure of confidence in an organization to which many had devoted decades. The problems centered on sexual abuse, racism, and lack of democracy. ISO’s dissolution is proof of the necessity for socialist feminist practice on the Left. The tragedy is that ISO is not the only group on the international Left that has been torn apart over sexual abuse in the last ten years. These failures discredit the entire movement and drive women out of radical politics.
Willard Jimerson described his cousin Emijah Smith as, “Selfless, caring, altruistic, a shining example of what it really means to support community…superwoman!” If you’ve been in organizing spaces in Seattle, you’ve likely witnessed Smith’s strength and wisdom in action, or at least heard her name.
Halisi “Tha Wizdom Wordsmith” Ali Eli is an artist, writer, advocate, community organizer, and life coach, but she doesn’t fit into any box. She’s a Seattle native and currently lives in South Seattle with her partner and five children.
The statistics surrounding missing and murdered Indigenous women in the United States are staggering. Despite more than 5,700 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women being reported nationally in 2016, just 116 of those cases were logged. Murder is the third leading cause of death among Indigenous and Alaskan Native women. Rates of violence are 10 times higher on reservations than the national average.
