Tragedy and response at Ingraham High
Students held a citywide walkout Nov. 14 to call for action on gun violence in the wake of a deadly shooting at Ingraham High School in North Seattle the previous week. They demanded that the city invest $9 million in schools to increase the number of counselors.
It’s the second time that students have rallied over gun violence in recent months. In June, young people from across King County gathered at City Hall to demand Gov. Jay Inslee ban semi-automatic rifles.
The shooting at Ingraham High School took place the morning of Nov. 8. The 17-year-old victim was shot multiple times, according to police, and transferred to a hospital. Mayor Bruce Harrell relayed during a press conference at approximately 3 p.m. that the victim had died.
Two juveniles were taken into custody in relation to the shooting. A judge decided to keep them in detention at a Nov. 9 hearing.
Local elected officials have been focused on gun violence in Seattle and King County, as the total number of shots fired have increased over the past year. An October report from the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office showed 438 total shots fired in the county, 28 homicide victims and 86 nonfatal shooting victims in the third quarter of 2022.
The city and county fund gun violence prevention efforts through the Regional Peacekeepers Collective, a group of organizations working on various initiatives to address the circumstances that lead to gun violence and support those impacted by it. More controversially, Harrell has also put forward a funding proposal for ShotSpotter, a technology that is meant to assist law enforcement by detecting and reporting gunfire.
Voting on the next vote
On the day procrastinators and in-person voters logged their preferences for local elected officials and initiatives in the November 2022 election, Seattle’s Redistricting Commission made sure the city was ready for the next one.
Commissioners approved new district boundaries for voting districts in the city of Seattle, demarcations that will dictate in 2023 which candidates voters have the chance to pull the lever for, when all seven district-based City Council positions will be up for election. The process to draw the new map followed the 2020 Census.
The one no-vote on the map came from former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, who objected to a compromise that split the Magnolia neighborhood while keeping other communities whole. According to Publicola, Nickels described the move as “retribution” against Magnolia because of its older, whiter and wealthier demographic.
The plan was very close to that put forward by Redistricting Justice Washington, a coalition of organizations that seek to prevent BIPOC and renter communities from losing influence through redistricting.
Ashley Archibald is the editor of Real Change News.
Read more of the Nov. 16-22, 2022 issue.