This past week, my daughter has puzzled over how to act in a world where the political dialogue is so bitterly polarized. She wants to be a writer and, at 15, she already is.
Over the first week of summer break, she’s worked on a 1,000 word essay on the political divide. For fun. This apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
When President Barack Obama was elected, my kids were just 5. For eight years, we lived in a time where the moral arc of the universe, while not always easy to see, moved mostly toward justice.
We were on track for a first woman president. State after state had made gay marriage legal. Racist drug laws were repealed.
While Black Lives Matter and the sight of tanks in Ferguson revealed the depths of structural racism and violence in America, we also saw the rise of a powerful grassroots movement that offered hope and momentum toward change.
Then, in 2016, at an election-night party at our editor’s house, our nations moral universe changed polarities. We watched Michigan and Florida go for Trump and our assumptions about progress crumbled.
That night, we ate Halloween candy by the handful and contemplated the unimaginable.
I told the kids what I knew to be a half-truth. I said that Seattle was, for them, an affluent, liberal bubble, and that we would be insulated from the evils of Trump. I said that for them, little was likely to change.
That the world as they knew it would mostly stay the same.
Our local races and ballot issues that year swung progressive. We went on to elect a gay woman mayor who mostly said all the right things.
We were a sanctuary city, standing with immigrants, Blacks, LGBTQ people, women and the poor.
Seattle, as a city, still stood on the right side of history.
Up until last month, it felt like progress on homelessness might also be linear. A straight line was drawn between the problem of growing inequality and the solution of new revenue for housing. The Employee Hours Tax — passed unanimously and signed by the mayor — felt like the Seattle I wanted to believe in.
Last month’s precipitous EHT reversal, fueled by gobs of corporate cash and an angry, fear-based narrative of a city overrun by homeless people, brought Trump’s America home. Whatever illusions of Seattle exceptionalism I still held died on June 12.
Whatever illusions of Seattle exceptionalism I still held died on June 12.
The Chamber of Commerce campaign to reverse the EHT centered on protection of “job creators,” tax revolt and distrust in government. The neighborhood bulletin boards traded openly in fear and victim blaming.
Seattle, we found, is not immune to the angry passions that mirror our national politics.
More is on the way. The Chamber and their allies, flush with victory, will take their momentum to the 2019 Council elections.
We can anticipate that the same formula of nearly unlimited corporate cash, an angry, internet-fueled base, and shameless political bullying will be in play.
We can also assume that the perennial political football of law and order approaches to homelessness will loom large in those elections.
Meanness is in the air. San Francisco’s progressive mayor is talking about arresting people who live in cars. Last year, homeless people in liberal Portland made up 52 percent of all arrests.
As mass homelessness as a product of a broken system continues to grow, the allure of a criminalizing response is back.
As mass homelessness as a product of a broken system continues to grow, the allure of a criminalizing response is back.
Buckle up buttercup. We’re in for a ride, and the work starts now. We need to stay focused on solutions and make the case for compassion.
In the weeks and months and years to come, our conversation about homelessness needs to stay grounded in hope, love, community and the power of story.
My daughter’s wisdom of the week — that hate and division is no solution to hate and division — is as good as anything I have to offer.
Except maybe for this: In the 2021 national election, her generation will have its say.
The fight is long and hard, but demographics are on our side.
Tim Harris is the Founding Director Real Change and has been active as a poor people’s organizer for more than two decades. Prior to moving to Seattle in 1994, Harris founded street newspaper Spare Change in Boston while working as Executive Director of Boston Jobs with Peace.
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