Rob Saka may be a first-time Seattle City Council candidate, but the West Seattle resident is no stranger to Seattle politics. Over the past five years, Saka has served as a King County Charter Review Commissioner, a member of the Seattle Police Chief Search Committee, and a member of the King County Districting Committee. Prior to that, Saka served as a board member of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, and as the former vice president of the Loren Miller Bar Association, a civil rights organization composed of Black attorneys in the state.
Several years ago, I sat in my South Seattle office frustrated at what I believed, at the time, was a misguided mission to stop the building of the new youth jail. It wasn’t that I thought our kids needed to be incarcerated. Rather, because the new facility was already being built, I believed that energy spent to protest the build should be used to combat the many other inequities perpetrated upon the Black community in Martin Luther King Jr. County.
My name is Bishop Ray A. Rogers, Sr. I was born and raised just blocks from Franklin High School. I grew up playing kickball on the John Muir playground, riding my bike up and down Mount Baker Boulevard, and pop-locking at Mount Baker Community Club dances. As a fresh-faced high school student, I remember the pride I felt watching the Empire Way street signs come down and the MLK Way signs go up. I also remember the pain just a few years later, as I watched the same neighborhood ravaged by the crack epidemic of the nineties. Today, I serve my community through Circle of Love Outreach.
Sara Nelson officially added her name to the race for Seattle City Council Position 9 in February. She is a co-founder of the popular local small business, Fremont Brewing. Her campaign focuses primarily on small business recovery, aiming to revitalize Seattle’s economy after the downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic
Approaching her candidacy with inspiration drawn from her time on staff for City Councilmember Richard Conlin, Nelson believes in leading with core values. Those beliefs, combined with community input, will be the driving force behind her decision-making.
Last summer, Claire Grant (she/they, interchangeably) was protesting for Black lives when she was tear-gassed by Seattle police. That terrible experience was one thing that set the gears in motion for their decision to run for Seattle City Council.
“That made me really angry, as I’m sure it did everybody else who was there,” Grant remembered. “It was a really awful, traumatic experience … this was just incredibly disheartening — to have people who are supposed to be leaders in the community outright attack you.”
