Community members hold strong with defunding demands while City Council backslides

Jobs, Journalism, Justice

Seattle

Voter engagement: King County data for 2020 and before

By Kamna Shastri | November 4, 2020

During this contentious U.S. general election season, King County ballot boxes saw record numbers of returns piling in. Some boxes needed to be emptied multiple times a day in mid-October as voters mobilized to cast their ballots. In fact, data from King County Elections says that Oct. 19 saw 2020’s highest daily count, with 100,868 ballots dropped off at all ballot boxes across the county. In comparison, six-digit-number collections were seen only after the 2018 general Election Day. As of this writing on Election Day 2020, Nov. ...

Peacemaker and strategist Rev. Cecilia Kingman on ‘Hold the Line: A Guide to Defending Democracy’

By Martha Baskin | November 4, 2020

After President Donald Trump ordered members of the military to repress non-violent demonstrators in Washington, D.C., last June, an intergenerational, interracial group of organizers and activists came together to write “Hold the Line: A Guide to Defending Democracy." The group saw the action and Trump’s ongoing attempts to cast doubt on mail voting as an indication of the lengths he might go to stay in office. ...

Pets take flight

By Ashley Archibald | November 4, 2020

There is still good news in the world and it is fluffy.

Ruffly 600 dogs, cats and kittens landed at Boeing Field aboard the largest Wings of Rescue flight in the organization’s history. Wings of Rescue flies animals from high-intake and/or high-kill shelters to no-kill shelters in other parts of the country. So far, the nonprofit has flown almost 100 flights, carrying thousands of pets to safer shelters. The organization has also flown humanitarian aid to the Bahamas. ...

Super-chronic

By Ashley Archibald | November 4, 2020

Seattle may miss its erstwhile basketball team, the Supersonics, but one of its greats has a cure for what ails you.

Shawn “Reign Man” Kemp is opening a pot shop in downtown Seattle — the first of what he plans to be five outlets opening in the next two years. To do so, he’s partnering with the co-founders of Main Street Marijuana, who have been in the industry since 2014. ...

New homeless outreach team would be quite different, raising questions among city leaders

By Ashley Archibald | November 4, 2020

If it moves forward, the HOPE team would allow service providers to offer their clients shelter directly.

The Seattle City Council is mulling a replacement to the Navigation Team that would not only remove police from the unit but also empower outreach workers to make direct referrals to shelter.

The Homelessness Outreach & Provider Ecosystem (HOPE) team would coordinate with service providers to provide administrative support and data analysis with the goal of improving outreach to people experiencing homelessness and getting people inside. ...

Culture

Streaming to stay sane

By Michelle Galluzzo | November 4, 2020

Almost all King County events are canceled, so we’re listing streaming events for optimal physical distancing

November 11

Free Veterinary Care for our Unhoused Neighbors

Seattle Veterinary Outreach: 5130 Leary Ave NW, Seattle; 11 a.m.–2 p.m., free

tinyurl.com/y38ux4k7 ...

Book review

Help out of the black hole of ideology

By Joe Martin | November 4, 2020

Book review: ‘The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It’

It was inevitable that our errant commander in chief would contract the coronavirus. After months of flaunting common sense and belittling scientific and medical arguments for wearing a simple face mask, Donald Trump and others near him finally got sick. He was hospitalized and then returned to the White House with an uncertain prognosis. ...

Opinion

Future people think they’re so special because they know stuff I don’t

By Dr. Wes Browning | November 4, 2020

I’m again trapped in your past, unable to say anything useful about your present. The big news for you is the 2020 election, which has mostly happened. The big news for me at 6 a.m. Friday, Oct. 30, is the sun isn’t up yet. Daylight Savings Time is still in effect. Halloween is tomorrow and I’m going to wear my grumpy old man costume this year, as I do every year, because, bah, humbug. ...

The cashlessness of coronavirus

By Hanna Brooks Olsen | November 4, 2020

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic — days most of us can barely remember — the uncertainty of how the virus was spread led to any number of policy changes. As folks slowly peeled off their rubber gloves and realized that they didn’t need to engage in a bidding war over the last N95 mask on Amazon, many of these policies have relaxed as well. We know now that duration of exposure is key, that fresh air is critical and that drinking bleach is a bad idea (though, to be clear, most of us were well aware of that last fact). ...

Biased refusal of services: When sanctioned somewhere, the threat is everywhere

By Ainsley Meyer | November 4, 2020

The Texas State Board of Social Worker Examiners voted unanimously to allow social workers to refuse services to LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities on Oct. 12. Gov. Greg Abbott’s office recommended this change, their reasoning being that the original code set for social workers exceeded protections laid out by Texas state laws.

I feel it is important to note that Gov. Abbot himself has a physical disability, but I suppose with a net worth of about $20 million, he’s unbothered by a lack of protections. ...

Community members hold strong with defunding demands while City Council backslides

By Deepa Bhandaru | November 4, 2020

Morales and other councilmembers are backsliding, saying a 50% cut conflicts with the labor contract the city has with the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

For over 150 days, protesters have marched in Seattle, demanding an end to the state-sanctioned killings of Black people and exposing the systemic anti-Black racism that defines policing in this country. Last week, the energy of this historic uprising was channeled into a town hall in Seattle’s District 2, which includes Beacon Hill and Rainier Valley, where a large segment of our city’s Black families live. ...

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