As this issue of Real Change hits the streets, about one week remains to get the 16,000 valid signatures required to place the deep bore tunnel issue before Seattle voters. It's time to pull out the stops and get this thing done.
Last summer, Real Change joined with allies from the environmental movement and minority communities to raise concerns with this expensive and risky project. At a time when essential community services like Basic Health and Disability Lifeline struggle for bare survival, the wisdom of pouring public resources down a potentially bottomless multi-billion hole seems questionable at best.
And yet, questions, much less a popular vote, are distinctly unwelcome. The agreements have been signed. Power is aligned, and our efforts have been declared a pointless foot-dragging waste of energy and time. The message from the downtown interests, their allies in the building trades, the governor, Seattle City Council, and the King County Executive, is clear: Can't win, don't try, shut up.
We've been told again and again that we're "off mission" on this one, and that our involvement in such a bitterly divisive issue is "irresponsible." We have, critics say, strayed far from what properly concerns us, and in doing so betrayed our homeless vendors who they, in all good conscience, can no longer support.
Never have so many people who have no history of supporting our work stated so forcefully that they will never give again.
Wagging the dog
The quarrel over the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement is a fight over the future. We all want a beautiful waterfront for Seattle that offers common space and brings us together as a community. We can have this without the tunnel. The surface/transit option opens up the waterfront at less risk and expense while reducing Seattle's carbon footprint, a goal we are all said to share.
But this option, the clear winner of the 2007 ballot referendum, has been dismissed.
Why?
The underground tunnel will clear the way for a boost in downtown property values and the construction of a long stretch of waterfront condos. We don't hear about this much, but the allure of windfall profit for developers is the tail that wags this fiercely barking dog.
The deep bore tunnel, of all the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement options, is the most expensive, risky and likely to result in cost overruns. This was pointed out long ago in Olympia at a come-to-Jesus meeting between legislators and Seattle's downtown interests. The home team delegation was quite clear that if push came to shove, they'd pay.
That's not what they're saying now.
This is one of those situations where when some people says "we," what they really mean is "you." It should by now be apparent that government is the chief organizer of a giant fire sale for the rich. We privatize gain and we socialize risk. They cut and slash at the poor until we bleed, while the rich are held harmless. These are the rules by which power plays.
The other rule, apparently, is that if you're going to lie, lie often and lie big. Governor Gregoire has promised to veto any attempt by state legislators to make Seattle pay more than our committed share for the tunnel. This is a blank check that will go uncashed. By the time the bill comes due, she'll be gone.
State legislators, who mostly see Seattle's gold-plated preference as just the latest example of the 800-pound urban pig at the trough, have little to no ambivalence on this issue.
Tunnel supporters are nothing if not confident that, when things go wrong, someone else is going to pay, but none of the actors are exactly flush with cash.
The state budget deficit now sits at over $5 billion. City deficits are running at around $60 million annually. The contingency fund for the tunnel, which last summer sat at $430 million, is now down to about $70 million, and the environmental impact statement, which will clarify the full range of likely mitigations, has yet to be completed.
We've seen this movie before, and it did not end well.
The powerful and wealthy interests who want this most are gambling that things will go right, and guess who's covering their bets?
Things fall apart
Let's assume, for a moment, that the tunnel will be one of those rare transportation megaprojects that do not exceed projected costs. Let's say that the many problems identified in the largely ignored environmental impact study somehow happily resolve themselves, and the missing $700 million or so from the current funding materializes, and that none of this comes at the expense of the many programs being shredded in Olympia as you read this.
We'd still be left with a viaduct replacement that, according to its own EIS, actually increases carbon emissions. This, we've been told, is not an issue that concerns Real Change. Apparently, the poisoning of the planet is not our issue.
Here's the thing. Global warming is an equal opportunity nightmare, and the very poor will pay more dearly than the rest of us.
Environmental writer Bill McKibben, who recently endorsed Seattle's tunnel referendum effort, describes in his recent book, "Eaarth," a future of declining resources, decaying infrastructure and a downward spiral of disaster capitalism.
The apocalyptic events of the future are not that hard to foresee. As average temperatures rise, the air retains more water. This causes, on the one hand, increased drought, hunger and scarcity of water, and on the other, an increase in extreme weather events: hurricanes, floods, record snows.
As coastal areas begin to flood, and new and increasingly fierce Hurricane Katrinas destroy our already failing infrastructure again and again, our capacity to rebuild will become more and more compromised. The hard choices of today will look like child's play in comparison.
The resulting social decay will exacerbate other troubling trends, such as the rise of anti-democratic corporate power and growing inequality. This will, within a matter of decades, result in a neo-feudal economy where debt-serfdom is the norm and the rich, dependent upon armies of private and unaccountable security, will live apart.
Many of us understand that the change we need can no longer be delayed. While the tunnel is just one instance of power pursuing self-interest at public expense, it's the crossroad at which we now find ourselves.
The beneficiaries of inequality will always oppose change. We dissenters, they will say, are nothing but troublemakers. They will call us irresponsible and ignorant, and will turn us into criminals when they can.
They will call what we oppose inevitable and what we desire impossible. They will be wrong. And we will persevere and win because, when you really look at it, we have little choice.
This fight matters. Visit ProtectSeattleNow.org today. Seattle needs a say in our future, and you can make it happen.