#seattle mayor

[mayasdeluca]

IG Story: emersonbrooks

[tattooed-alchemist]

Under Mayor Harrell, the City’s Department of Construction and Inspections threatened our church with escalating daily fines if we did not forcibly displace these neighbors from our property. The mayor seems to be using the loophole of code and zoning violations to prevent people from helping people.

The mayor and his Parks Department argue that camps of unhoused people are “obstructions.” In a recent case of “obstruction,” City employees climbed down into a ravine next to Lake City Way and swept a camp that was not visible from the street. When those who were swept relocated to a nearby park, they were immediately swept again. Same reason.

Humans don’t disappear. After we were forced to evict our neighbors from our private property, many of them were swept and swept again from public properties. The same humans endured a total of five sweeps in three weeks. There are almost never any beds available in all of north Seattle. The few beds offered, if any, are almost always downtown in single-gender congregate shelters. For a whole host of reasons, these simply don’t work for the vast majority of our neighbors. And regardless, there’s never enough of them. Simply stated: There are not enough shelter spaces or available housing in all of Seattle for all the unhoused humans who are being swept every day, sometimes in several locations at once. Those in the middle of a housing referral have nowhere to be while they wait. If these humans aren’t allowed on public property, and private property owners are fined for not sweeping them, where are they supposed to go?

[cinemaocd]

The end of Fallout kind of killed me because YEAH genuinely its more traumatic to come to grips with your parents flaws, weaknesses and lies than the end of the world somehow...

[wreckingball4good]

“Sweeps to continue despite court ruling: The Mayor's Office told the Seattle Times yesterday the City planned to make no changes to its unconstitutional policies for clearing homeless encampments. A King County Superior Court Judge acknowledged the City's right to clear encampments that obstruct City property or public areas, however the overly broad definition of obstruction allows the City to violate the constitutional rights of people living on the street. The City Attorney's Office plans to appeal the judge's ruling.

The complaint in the lawsuit recounted the callous and cruel nature of sweeps. The City threw away these people's belongings, and the people suing the City provided examples, some sentimental—such as a wedding ring, the artwork of a person's late spouse, and a dog's ashes—and others more essential, such as insulin and other medications.”

[menandwomanofhistory]

Allen Pomeroy

[subsidystadium]

Vancouver's mayor has decided to stay quiet when taxpayers ask him about World Cup expenses

Last year, 16 cities, including Seattle and Vancouver, were selected to be hosts for the 2026 World Cup matches. Then FIFA told every city to just shut up if anyone asked about expenses. FIFA was exhausted from dodging and deflecting questions from other cities. It is well-known that the hosting cities are expected “to pay most of the costs”. But when cities like Chicago, Vancouver and…

[reasonsforhope]

On her fingers, Chicago’s Chief Sustainability Officer Angela Tovar counted the city buildings that will soon source all of their power from renewable energy: O’Hare International Airport, Midway International Airport, City Hall.

[Note: This is an even huger deal than it sounds like. Chicago O'Hare International Airport is, as of 2023, the 9th busiest airport in the world.]

Chicago’s real estate portfolio is massive. It includes 98 fire stations, 81 library locations, 25 police stations and two of the largest water treatment plants on the planet — in all, more than 400 municipal buildings.

It takes approximately 700,000 megawatt hours per year to keep the wheels turning in the third largest city in the country. Beginning Jan. 1, every single one of them will come solely from clean, renewable energy, mostly sourced from Illinois’ newest and largest solar farm. The move is projected to cut the Windy City’s carbon footprint by approximately 290,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, the equivalent of taking 62,000 cars off the road, the city said.

Chicago is one of several cities across the country that are not only shaking up their energy mix but also taking advantage of their bulk-buying power to spur new clean energy development.

The city — and much of Illinois — already has one of the cleanest energy mixes in the country, with over 50% of the state’s electricity coming from nuclear power. But while nuclear energy is considered “clean,” carbon-free energy, it is not considered renewable.

Chicago’s move toward renewable energy has been years in the making. The goal of sourcing the city’s energy purely from renewable sources was first established by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2017. In 2022, Mayor Lori Lightfoot struck a deal with electricity supplier Constellation to purchase renewable energy from developer Swift Current Energy for the city, beginning in 2025.

Swift Current began construction on the 3,800-acre, 593-megawatt solar farm in central Illinois as part of the same five-year, $422 million agreement. Straddling two counties in central Illinois, the Double Black Diamond Solar project is now the largest solar installation east of the Mississippi River. It can produce enough electricity to power more than 100,000 homes, according to Swift Current’s vice president of origination, Caroline Mann.

Chicago alone has agreed to purchase approximately half the installation’s total output, which will cover about 70 percent of its municipal electricity needs. City officials plan to cover the remaining 30 percent through the purchase of renewable energy credits.

“That’s really a feature and not a bug of our plan,” said deputy chief sustainability officer Jared Policicchio. He added that he hopes the built-in market will help encourage additional clean energy development locally, albeit on a much smaller scale: “Our goal over the next several years is that we reach a point where we’re not buying renewable energy credits.”

Los Angeles, Houston, Seattle, Orlando, Florida, and more than 700 other U.S. cities and towns have signed similar purchasing agreements since 2015, according to a 2022 study from World Resources Institute, but none of their plans mandate nearly as much new renewable energy production as Chicago’s.

“Part of Chicago’s goal was what’s called additionality, bringing new resources into the market and onto the grid here,” said Popkin. “They were the largest municipal deal to do this.”

Chicago also secured a $400,000 annual commitment from Constellation and Swift Current for clean energy workforce training, including training via Chicago Women in Trades, a nonprofit aiming to increase the number of women in union construction and manufacturing jobs.

The economic benefits extend past the city’s limits: According to Swift Current, approximately $100 million in new tax revenue is projected to flow into Sangamon County and Morgan County, which are home to the Double Black Diamond Solar site, over the project’s operational life.

“Cities and other local governments just don’t appreciate their ability to not just support their residents but also shape markets,” said Popkin. “Chicago is demonstrating directly how cities can lead by example, implement ambitious goals amidst evolving state and federal policy changes, and leverage their purchasing power to support a more equitable renewable energy future.” ...

Chicago will meet its goal of transitioning all its municipal buildings to renewable energy by 2025, the first step in a broader goal to source energy for all buildings in the city from renewables by 2035 — making it the largest city in the country to do so, according to the Sierra Club.

With the incoming Trump administration promising to decrease federal support for decarbonizing the economy, Dane says it will be increasingly important for cities, towns and states to drive their own efforts to reduce emissions, build greener economies and meet local climate goals. He says moves like Chicago’s prove that they are capable.

“That is an imperative thing to know, that state, city, county action is a durable pathway, even under the next administration, and [it] needs to happen,” said Dane. “The juice is definitely still worth the squeeze.”

-via WBEZ, December 24, 2024

[fatehbaz]

Y’know about notorious housing costs and homelessness situation in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Pacific coast of the US? In 2023, Portland and San Francisco are both moving forward with major multi-million-dollar projects to outlaw “street camping” while opening “city-run mass encampments.”

The mayor, 14 April 2023:

San Francisco is site of arguably one of worst situations in the US, where thousands units are completely inaccessible, and people pay over $2000 a month to live in closets or dorm-style high-density shared rooms, and upscale coffee shops and restaurants require phone apps or payment receipts for people to access restrooms. The W!!pedia page “Homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area” is over 120,000 bytes in size and 12,000 words in length.

In April 2023, the city announces its grand plan: A “five-year plan” costing $600 million to “cut the number of unsheltered homeless in halve” in five years. So not a plan to put people in homes, but just to get them off the street, qualifying them as part of the strange designation of “the sheltered homeless” (they will still be homeless, but they won’t be “on the streets,” and will be “sheltered” by a city shelter or camp).

Get them out of sight, put them out of the way on an island or something:

In 2022, the city estimated that over 20,000 people are homeless in a calendar year.

And that’s only within the formal city limits of San Francisco and doesn’t include the rest of the Bay Area (which contains millions more people in Oakland, San Jose, Richmond, etc.) 

The rest of the Pacific coast?

In late 2022, Portland, its mayor, and its city council announced a major initiative to ban and outlaw “street camping”. Portland will simultaneously by opening “city-run encampments” or  “sanctioned mass homeless camps.” In early 2023, Portland begins this project:

March 2023:

Hmm.

One of the most popular homeless related questions on Q/uora, as if were a “valid question” about how “you must earn your existence through work”, and not a sickening disregard for life:

Hmm.

Like:

[scarlettohairdye]

Hey, Seattle! I have a reminder for you! Go find your ballot and VOTE YES ON PROP 1A!!!

Prop 1A funds social housing - a thing we approved last year with I-137 - by taxing big businesses like Amazon. You know, the company absolutely destroying Seattle's livability, whose CEO is stealing land from native Hawaiians and happily complying with fascism in order to make more money?

Piss off our useless city council and mayor. Piss off Amazon. Make the city a better place. Vote Yes on Prop 1A, and get those ballots in by Tuesday the 11th!

Also VOTE YES ON SCHOOL PROPS 1 & 2! Fund our schools! It's important!

You can trust me. The people love me for my fat ass and sense of civic responsibility!

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

15th January 1975: Mayor Wes Uhlman signing a Ukrainian Independence Day proclamation. Seattle, Washington, USA.

[grenade-maid]

By far the weirdest, dumbest part of the whole "well intentioned progressives tried leading West Coast cities but failed, causing the homelessness crisis" thing is that for all of the press places like Seattle get for having wild radical progressive lefty politicians like... It's a rich city that is highly segregated and home to powerful moneyed interests ranging from business associations, massive corporations, to "regular everyday homeowners" whose homes are worth upwards of 1.7 mil who all lobby very very hard to buy political power. Hundreds become homeless every year thus removing them from the voting pool, misinformation in favor of moneyed interests is rampant in local coverage, and rents force residents to move frequently thus making it hard to become connected enough to a council district that they'd know the candidates or the primary neighborhood concerns (which inherently grants even more power to homeowners). The politics of Seattle are primarily directed towards STOPPING progressives, and you can see this happen very openly in mayors and city councils over the decades. Even when voters, for example, vote to form social housing, the powers that be simply refuse to allocate funds towards it. Very little progressive policy actually gets tried, and even when it is pushed through by great pains on part of local activists and their (usually few) allies in city council it gets undermined into oblivion by the mayor, more conservative council members, and local lobbying. You can see this happening in real time right now, even, with the council president on the warpath to repeal a recent bill requiring a livable wage for delivery drivers and outright rejecting research backed community led proposals for affordable housing that was years in the making. Similar stories can be found all the way up to the state legislature. Quite frankly we are more of a libertarian state than a leftist stronghold. The whole "road to hell paved with good intentions" narrative is ridiculous. Not least of all because even Seattle political leaders are so vehemently anti-tax that we don't even build roads in the first place, least of all enough of them to reach hell.

[tattooed-alchemist]

The office of Mayor Bruce Harrell, who has proposed giving thousands of city employees a “cost of living adjustment” significantly below the rate of inflation, sent out an email to city workers this week containing tips and tricks for spending less money.

The email, titled “Financial Self-Care,” informs employees that “Making small changes to your money mindset and habits can have an immediate impact on your financial picture.” For example, it says, city workers could get rid of subscriptions that can add $12 to $30 to their monthly costs; consolidate their debts; and “pay yourself first – set aside money for emergency funds or long-term savings every paycheck before paying bills and spending.

The council did approve a $20 million increase in the tax to pay for mental health care services at public schools, with Council President Debora Juarez joining Tammy Morales, Teresa Mosqueda, Lisa Herbold, and amendment sponsor Kshama Sawant to vote for the increase

“Pay yourself first” is a concept popularized by the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series of self-help books, which argues that people should put money toward investments before paying for rent, food, electric bills, and other immediate needs.

The email also advise workers��who are seeking an annual wage increase that at least keeps up with inflation, instead of a sub-inflationary increase that will amount to a significant annual pay cut—to start thinking about whether they really need the things they’re buying. “Start defining wants and needs – Ask yourself: ‘Is this a need or want?’ with each purchase, to avoid impulse buys,” the email says.

[wreckingball4good]

Stop the Damned Sweeps

“Meanwhile, the City of Seattle is obsessed with “removals” of tent and vehicle encampments, better known as “sweeps”–-more than 900 happened in 2022—even when shelter units are unavailable.”

[blorbo-gerrymandering]

Round 2

Baseball has sponsorships, right? If not maybe Blaseball does.

Propaganda Under The Cut

Jaylen Hotdogfingers:

The greatest came-back-wrong character ever. She's the mayor of Seattle. She's was the best pitcher in the league. She was murdered by an umpire in an act of divine retribution for the fanbase's transgression. The fanbase exploited game mechanics to bring her back to life. Immediately she murdered 12 people. She died again and got revived a second time as part of a team of undead players that killed god. She's a really awful batter. She has, like, 16 songs written about her and they're all really good. I thought about her every single day for a period of six consecutive months. I love her.

I'll be real. I'm an outsider to the Blaseball fandom. I don't understand it. I think they've crowdfunded characters from fictionalized fucked-up Baseball stats and a dream. I love seeing what the fuck they're doing in their eldritch sandbox just so much.

Simon Laurent:

I love him so much! Yay! Yippie! he got what he deserved tho

have i submitted him yet? if yes here he is again. what did you do to my French man, now he has anxiety, and maybe 50 other things. i can fix him, but it would require a lot of time travel and a complete lack of trains. as i can't do that, he instead gets his very own tumblr poll submission. one vote for train man is one dollar towards the invention of the simon-specific time machine. (your other guys cant come unless they have the same name sorry) its for a good cause

imagine: youre in the trolley situation. well an oh-so-kind tumblr user decided to give everyone who submits this character a get-out-of-a-train-free ticket! use that ticket, and you're no longer responsible for the death of someone (or you are no longer fated to die)!

[soultea]

The progresion of power in iZombie is insane.

Like by the end of the show you basically have 6 people running the whole city and they're all besties who probably have a group chat where they discuss how to respond to major world events the way my friends and I talk about planning to go out for drinks.

Think about it you have the woman who runs the largest human smuggling operation in Seattle (who also happens to be one of the only survivors of the original boat party incident that started all of this), her best friend the acting mayor of Seattle, her ex fiance the commander of the private military group that controls the city, her other best friend the creator of the only zombie cure and leader in the field of zombie biology, Clive, and Clive's wife who is the chief of police in charge of all non-zombie crimes in the city.

They're even on a first name basis with the biggest crime lord in Seattle that currently runs three of the most popular zombie hot spots and is in charge of the entire brain trade in and out of the city. Like even if they hate him, they could show up at his place and not get kicked out.

And they use that. The characters actually like each other and talk to each other and fix problems by supporting each other. What other show out there was ever doing it like iZombie?? Rest In Peace bro, you were real for that and you deserved so much more love.

[dailyanarchistposts]

A friend of mine, a Trump supporter, recently sent me a social media post from an anonymous Seattle police officer about the “organized protest” zone, or autonomous zone, established by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. The officer argues, in part, that “there is a part of our country that is no longer under our control,” and that “we [the police] have been castrated.” The post is mostly filed with misinformation, that the protest space has its own currency, ID system, and that the former police precinct, abandoned by the mayor and the city at the height of the protests, is being used as a BLM headquarters – no doubt a kind of black witches coven in their imagination. Indeed, in the language used in the post, “terrorists” and “anarchists” are stock piling “ammo and chemical weapons,” and are headed by a “warlord” who “drives a tesla and has been arrested for drugs, guns, pimping and crimes against children.” The officer concludes that “this is real,” and that “you can’t make this up.” These developments they call “unthinkable.”

The police are not the only ones hysterical at the loss of their station. Right wing media have also chimed in, exacerbating and stoking the fears of the Right. Fox media personality, Tucker Carlson, for example, bloviates on his nightly show that the founders of the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) are “just like the conquistadors” because they’ve seized and occupied already established land and are extorting local businesses. Not to be outdone, President Trump, searching for an election year issue, called on the city of Seattle to attack and retake the space. He tweeted angerly, “Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game. These ugly Anarchists must be stopped IMMEDIATELY.”

What is unthinkable, or was at the beginning of the month, is the power of the Black Lives Matter movement in the streets. The emergence of the autonomous zone is a pinnacle of that power, a significant victory. It demonstrates the ability of popular power to win the impossible from structures of white supremacy – the state and the propertied interests they represent. That victory, and the subsequent diminution of state violence, is a major step forward for community self-control and autonomy. It shows that ending anti-Black violence is the first and most basic step to honoring Black life.

But it is just the beginning. Honoring Black life means constructing a society where Black autonomy and Black power are the cornerstones of community, and one where Black freedom is the foundation for broader, collective liberation. The advent of the movement’s autonomous zone was a step in that direction. Taking the city’s east police precinct demonstrates not only that our movements can win, but we can win previously unimaginable victories for Black lives.

There is another legacy now that must be dealt with from the CHOP. Much uglier, it is about the violence that took one life and left several in critical condition in a series of recent shootings. The shootings and the lack of direction for the space sadly demonstrate that our movements are not yet mature enough to know what to do with victory. As I write, the Seattle police are threatening to retake the building in the wake of the violence.

The shootings happened as the movement languished. With no clear direction, political, strategic, and tactical infighting broke out, reminiscent of Occupy Wall Street’s failures. Questions emerged over whether the encampment was for abolition or reform, taking the police station or not, “autonomy” or remaking existing institutions, marching or occupying, and others. This infighting was rooted in a lack of decision-making process that made even the most basic agreements impossible to gain collective consent.

In the autonomous zone, a diverse flowering of self-activity emerged, a variegated patchwork of mutual aid projects, support, care, and action that reflected the full diversity of the movement’s politics and people. That beautiful moment must not be lost in its downfall, but now with violence in the space, it must also be held within a more complex picture of the movement’s failures as well.