Sabotage, Seattle Style
NOTE: I am not a spokesperson for We♥Seattle or any other organization, nor did I write this piece at the request of any person or group. It is based on interviews, experience at events, and statements made on social media.
I’ve continued to update the piece as I’ve gotten reviews. A correction made on August 24, 2021, is the source of an image on social media. On September 21, a revised section, The Seed of Harassment, has been broken out.
Andrea and Erica
I met Andrea Suarez December 7, 2020, when she and a friend came to Lewis Park on the tip of Beacon Hill. I connected with We♥Downtown on Facebook and saw a post about the event at Lewis Park. Along with Andrea and Bryan, two dozen members of the Seattle Latino Hiking Club arrived independently, besides hiking, they clean parks in King County. That weekend it was Lewis.
Since then, I’ve volunteered with what’s now called We♥Seattle, doing work the city dropped due to COVID and politics. There had been a lot of illegal dumping, casual litter, and debris around camps in public places, ignoring it only made it worse for everyone, including homeless people. The City Council killed the Navigation Team in August, 2020, as it was involved in sweeps, relocations, cleanups, whatever you want to call them, and did not implement an equivalent outreach program until the following year. Organizations dedicated to environmental restoration in city parks and forests, like the Green Seattle Partnership, stalled, while layoffs at Parks hindered basic maintenance. I saw in We♥Seattle a program to create trust, maybe help campers find a safer way to live, while restoring heavily abused natural areas. It didn’t have a political agenda, nor manipulate homeless men and women over ideology.
Nobody in the local universe of homeless advocacy had seen the likes of We♥Seattle before. The paradigm is outside the sweep/no sweep dilemma. They came out of nowhere with an idea. The old guard of homelessness was suspicious, the radical chic just hated them.
To help people outside, you need to connect with them, neighbors, local business, service providers, and programs. The spectrum of We♥Seattle volunteers is as broad as the city. It has a professional board and keeps accountable paperwork.
On September 15, 2020, Andrea and a few neighbors cleaned up Denny Park. Nine months later, volunteers had removed over 130,000 pounds of debris and found better places to live for dozens of people. Those are facts. Along the way, volunteers made mistakes, admitted to them, and moved on. Some critics won’t let them move on and are bent on sabotaging the project. Erica Barnett of Publicola aligned herself with these critics. Who are they?
Mutual Aid vs. Mutual Aid
The most toxic We♥Seattle detractors are a pod of activists who were involved at CHAZ/CHOP in 2020, who left identity trails online in recordings and personal statements. They pose as saviors and insist neighborhood litter picks harass homeless people. They maintain the police should be abolished, government is f()cked, the news is f()cked, and they have the answer. They insist mutual support networks are what’s needed for solving social conditions.
Mutual aid dovetails with anti-authoritarian idealism and mainstream community activism. It has three underlying principles: mutual responsibility, mutual accountability, and mutual respect. Those involved in a mutual aid effort are mutually responsible for the actions of the group. They are mutually accountable for the outcomes of their actions. The basis of relationships formed by mutual aid is mutual respect. The actions and words of some who use “mutual aid” as a personal and group identity in Seattle on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are not founded in these principles, but use the phrase to connect with like-minded activists and politicians. They believe their vision will sustain homeless people.
They oppose City of Seattle shutdowns of camps where violent crimes occur. They oppose and confront neighbors. They own an agitprop audience, people who may not get away from keyboards but are opposed to sweeps. They link We♥Seattle to sweeps. There weren’t any sweeps after the dozen events I’ve attended. There was one after a cleanup at Denny Park, but it would have happened even if neighbors hadn’t picked up litter, as it was organized and conducted by city departments.
Loose mutual aid networks crisscross the city in a web of social, environmental, school, and community work. Most people involved in mutual aid don’t harass other people. What is the motive in wanting another mutual aid group to fail? Where We♥Seattle begins, the pod ends. There’s a lot of personal attachment to mutual aid.
In Erica, they have a willing host. They fabricated a bogus Wikipedia page based on her comments. Erica tweets, they tweet, she tweets again.
It isn’t the first time she’s been involved in this type of behavior, as she engaged in a conflict with another Seattle activist, David Preston. He ran for City Council and is one of the organizers behind a group called Safe Seattle that studies and comments on Seattle’s public safety policies. We♥Seattle is not associated with Safe Seattle, SPEAK OUT Seattle, or any popular protest group. On Facebook, Erica called out those she wanted others to perceive were harassing her. I later learned her public squabble with David was marked by words on both sides that escalated. A judge would later rule in favor of David.
When she mentioned a restraining order, I offered to support her and share my experience, support she accepted. I had called the bluff of a public bully opposed to trails in the Cheasty Greenspace. He harassed people online and in person for years because he didn’t want kids riding bikes and their grandparents walking in the woods. Because I took him to court, I understood the process Erica faced. We had met at a Community Court event at Dr. José Rizal Park and press conferences for Mayor Mike McGinn. After reviewing the online evidence she presented, I believed Erica didn’t deserve being publicly abused. I would never have thought someone who claimed to have been so treated would act similarly in turn.
Seeds of Harassment
Publicola had 39,000 subscribers as of 2021, and Erica enjoys being a guest news analyst on KUOW. Her conflict with We♥Seattle began with a January 5, 2021 piece in Publicola regarding petitions, “Green Lake Grinches Call for Sweeps.”
It targets We♥Seattle and others for supporting an online petition that urges King County, City of Seattle, and Washington State governments to “protect people, parks, and our shared environment.” It urges local governments to respond to the homelessness crisis as a human emergency that must be dealt with by leveraging existing sources and more solutions.
It’s portrayed by Publicola as a disingenuous attempt at forcing campers from public places, and as a prelude to sweeps: “Happy new year — now get the hell out of ‘our’ park.” No sweeps happened as a result of this petition. Despite the assertion, We♥Seattle does not advocate sweeps. Nor does it present a “faux-environmentalist concern about feces contaminating the lake”: Erica does not show any evidence that she interviewed those behind the petition on their environmental concerns. Instead, she opines at the cost of accurate reporting. Describing it as “random,” she attempts to dismiss it. Petitions are never random, they are purposefully intentional. She doesn’t get at the intention here as she cops an attitude, inserting herself into a story rather than doing the job of a journalist to report accurately and impartially. She isn’t interested in the whole story.
Publicola doesn’t mention that another petition was started by Green Lake residents. John Wisdom, a Green Lake neighbor critical of Seattle’s response to homelessness, clarified that difference in a message to me.
There are two petitions. The one that was co-sponsored by We Heart Seattle has a link on the website. There is a different one that was started by a Green Lake specific group.
This presentation in Publicola would be the first of many inaccurate, incomplete, and false public statements about We♥Seattle. Because I respected Erica, I wanted to know from her directly what was going on. In February, 2021, I contacted her three times. The first time Erica and I scheduled a call, she didn’t show. Then the second time she didn’t show. I tried a third, no reply. It’s a conversation she doesn’t want to have. So, here I’ll reference some of her statements, there are more, as presented on Facebook by a young man who protests We♥Seattle named Aidan Carroll.
Character Assassination in Real-Time
There are two well accepted standards for journalists: tell the truth and do not insert yourself into the story. Erica Barnett fails to meet those standards in her statements about We♥Seattle.
Words have consequence. When a professional writer makes personal attacks, it’s just a matter of time before they come round. Tweeting from a June 2 meeting of the Queen Anne Community Council, Erica writes of Andrea,
“Her descriptions of the flabbergasted, grateful, almost bowing-and-scraping homeless people who thank her profusely for cleaning up the ‘garbage, rotting garbage, maggots, bottles with feces’ they live among … are something.”
I’ve attended events where campers work with and thank us. It’s a path taken by Facing Homelessness when it did the same sort of work. It recalls how the Seattle Camp Stewards met with people in the Dearborn Cut. Erica resorts to snark. She subscribes to a belief that reporting on camp conditions promotes stereotypes, that it mistakes homelessness for the homeless.
I’ve been around a lot of camps during the 18 years I’ve done environmental restoration in what’s called The Jungle. I’ve known people who take really good care of their camps, and I know what happens when people can’t or don’t. If you live outside in a remote spot, as you accumulate things that help you survive, you may not be able to haul stuff out when it gets broken. As you go through more stuff, you can’t get rid of it. Trash piles up, just as it does in a basement. When it’s overwhelming, you find a different campsite. If you’re living at an accessible camp near public transportation or the social services you need, if your tent becomes uninhabitable or structurally fails, you’ll find another tent. If you are living in an encampment that has a camp manager, you have a better chance of keeping your possessions safe and your shelter intact.
In the camps that used to be downhill from me, some people were good at camping and managed their lives as best they could. There were also severe addicts and crazy people whose sites tended to be what Erica objects to describing. To understand homelessness in Seattle, you need to look past the polemics of political bias and radical chic, to face the people and the conditions of their lives holistically. If you look to homeless people to confirm your assumptions, you will never see them as the people they really are.
Of a May 25 medical emergency at Broadview Thomson K-8 school at Bitter Lake in north Seattle, Erica writes of Andrea,
“She also was ‘first on the scene’ when a man at Bitter Lake encampment had a seizure; she posted photos and video of him while paramedics tried to help him. The same day, she was on KOMO calling it an overdose. Everyone I spoke to on site who was there said it was a seizure.”
Andrea actually was the first service provider at the scene. She’d been doing outreach when a man had a medical emergency. When Erica refers to “everyone I spoke to on site,” she doesn’t identify anyone, so she didn’t vet that she may have been interviewing activists. Her words reflect what a woman who lives at the Broadview Thomson camp posted on the We♥Seattle page:
“I cannot allow this lie the guy in this picture did NOT overdose on opiates. One he doesn’t use opiates he actually had a seizure, they narcaned him because that is what people assumed and was just precaution.”
He later confirmed with Andrea he had had an overdose. On May 28, another man at Broadview Thomson, 35-year-old Nicholas Bjarnson, died of a heroin overdose, reported by the King County medical examiner and Women In Black. Andrea reached out to Nick to encourage him to seek treatment, two activists interfered. Nick died where he attended elementary school.
Allegedly Yours
Erica portrays what Andrea says as alleged statements. This is an easy way of not doing the work of journalism, challenging another’s honesty without proof. At the June 2 Queen Anne Community Council meeting, Erica tweeted,
“I’ve tried to ignore these stories and photos because I don’t want to amplify falsehoods or inadvertently promote ghoulish images of crime scenes and tragedies, but I am just gobsmacked that anyone could look at this and consider it ‘helping.’”
It’s not just “images of crime scenes and tragedies” she dismisses, she implies witnesses are liars. Here, she replies to an image of Richey’s body taken from across the street by a neighbor. Andrea sent it in response to another of Erica’s slams. Evidence of Richey’s murder is not considered “helping.” Why is that?
Erica casts doubt on what she hasn’t researched and people she won’t talk to. On May 31, the day Kadeem died, she wrote:
“It’s important to know that ‘neighbors’ has a definition; it means owners of single-family detached houses. Everyone else is an interloper at best (renters), inherently criminal at worse (people without the means even to rent a home).”
Anyone who lives in a diverse neighborhood will see right through that. It’s related to a framework that accuses media of equating homeless people with garbage.
The framework was developed by a study group at the University of Washington in 2007/2008 on the suggestion of then director of Real Change, Tim Harris. I’ve written at length about this paper, here I’ll summarize. The authors construct an argument that reporting on conditions of camps is the same as denigrating people who live outside. It’s a poorly articulated, unvetted academic paper created and released without peer review. The authors overlooked hundreds of pages of City of Seattle documents, dozens of published articles, and the city’s encampment protocols, then a central document to Seattle’s response to homelessness. None of the authors read the protocols. I’m mentioned, so is Erica.
Much of what Erica says about homelessness perpetuates this framework, calling into question the ethics of those who describe what they see: to do so means homeless people are being dehumanized. Disengaging homelessness in Seattle from a broader context can’t reconcile unhoused people and most city residents. It’s incomplete reporting.
Erica continues, “I should add that she also claimed to have personally sheltered or house 45 people, and to have picked up 115,000 pounds of trash this year.” We♥Seattle documents the number of people transitioned from camps. On May 3, Andrea posted a list of 40. Volunteers fetched that 115,000 pounds of trash and more. Basic research would have discovered this information. It wasn’t done.
Shadows of Doubt
In one tweet, Erica touches a lot of bases:
“The people at encampments who I’ve spoken to have told me that she hangs around and films them, tries to convince them to go to a sober-living facility run by a WHS board member 170 miles away, and seems to have @komonews on speed dial.”
This sentence is interesting. First, the people Erica interacts with may not be the people who came to live in camps but circulate among them as activists. She doesn’t offer proof she actually spoke with a resident. The “hangs around and films them” hit is struck without proof. She says people have told her that Andrea seems to have KOMO on speed dial, no random person would know the settings of someone else’s cellphone. Erica’s statement is just another example of sarcasm passing as proof.
The difference between what Andrea does in camps and what Erica does is that Andrea builds relationships with campers. Most campers I’ve known don’t want to talk to strangers about other people.
It’s important to Erica to establish guilt by association between Andrea and KOMO, which is owned by Sinclair Media, a right wing corporation. KOMO achieved local notoriety for its “Seattle Is Dying” program and condemnation from the progressive community. I’ve handled press relations. I’ve had interviews with KOMO, KIRO, KING, KUOW, KBCS, Radio New Zealand, the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and journalists with links to CNN and NPR. The only outlet I won’t talk to is The Stranger because they owe me money. If Erica tried to target me for talking to KOMO, she’d fall flat: every press contact we share wouldn’t take her seriously. If you’re new to community organizing, you’re going to make mistakes. Some media reps — conservative talk jocks — I wouldn’t trust with a stick.
Another critic of We♥Seattle is Alycia Ramirez who writes occasionally for the South Seattle Emerald and regularly posts Erica’s attacks and other defamatory content. She wrote on May 28, “If your group (as in the case of We Heart Seattle) is being praised by #SafeSeattleIsAHateGroup then perhaps it’s time for some soul searching.”
Safe Seattle promotes online criticism of the city’s public safety and homeless responses, and some activists portray it as a hate group in public denunciations; it is not tracked as a hate group by reputable organizations who keep watch on hate groups. I personally choose not to be actively associated with Safe Seattle, as its tone does not reflect my beliefs. It is not associated with We♥Seattle, but as a link to a We♥Seattle video was posted to their page and commentators mentioned We♥Seattle, Alycia attempts to establish guilt by association. This would be like saying Alycia, as a participant at CHAZ/CHOP, was responsible for the shooting death of 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr., killed by shots fired from within the zone. His murder is still unsolved. Obviously, involvement in CHAZ/CHOP does not equate to accessory to murder. Alycia’s statement is equally absurd. Perhaps it’s time for some soul searching.
Erica doesn’t connect with her own story. She recently published a well-received book on her experience as an alcoholic, Quitter. She details how she went into rehab and relapsed. A strategy for getting through rehab successfully is to remove yourself from your physical setting and social circle by voluntarily entering a rehab facility. A We♥Seattle board member works at an Oregon-based sober-living facility but does not run it. The location of these facilities isn’t important, the work they do is. The shadow Erica casts falls on herself.
“I apologize for the way you were raised.”
To get at the heart of Erica’s message, there’s backstory. Erica puts people down while portraying herself as an example of intellectual and ethical superiority.
“After a representative from mutual aid calmly and respectfully explained their approach to helping unsheltered people, perennial failed candidate Kate Martin said they had an ‘anarcho-approach’ and were personally attacking her and Suarez, which they didn’t.”
There are two halves to this sentence, one involves Kate Martin — a candidate — the other Erica.
Kate Martin is a regular at We♥Seattle events because she believes in the work. I first met Kate when she ran for mayor in 2011, in the Crosscut candidate interviews. That she runs for office in Seattle has nothing to do with We♥Seattle. What does matter is she volunteers with libertarians to the left and right, unaligned anarchists, mainstream Democrats and Republicans, socialists, progressives, independents, and people who just don’t give a damn about politics. When was the last time you saw that group dynamic in Seattle? It’s the type of coalition activists dream about.
How calm and respectful are Erica’s representatives? Putting on a face for a meeting is one thing, acting out is another. I don’t know if Kate has been personally attacked by representatives of mutual aid, we haven’t talked about it. Andrea has been physically intimidated, I’ve seen it. When they learned where Andrea works, they targeted her employer and left a trail. It’s a pattern of harassment, just as there is a pattern in Erica’s claims of harassment.
On Sunday, March 7, We♥Seattle met volunteers from Beacon Hill at Daejon Park to clean a stretch of state property alongside the retaining wall at I-90. Neighbors confirmed a yellow tent had been abandoned for weeks. I picked up litter and buried human waste from around it, a hole was burnt through one side, the size of your hand. The tent was pitched atop an active rat nest. Just after we took it down, a dozen representatives showed up. Seven, six unmasked, walked by me. They surrounded Andrea and my neighbor, a Filipino-American Marine Corps vet. They pulled up their masks and harangued them.
When I saw what they were up to, I took two pictures with my iPhone. A man in a turquoise sweater turned around and began yelling at me.
“What are you taking pictures of? F()ck you!”
He walked over and got in my face, screaming a declarative f()ck. I tried communicating, but he was too busy cussing. “F()ck your neighborhood, f()ck the City Council, f()ck the mayor,” etc. I pulled a theatrical stunt. Anticipating his words, I yelled them at the same time. We sounded like a couple of filthy lovebirds calling to each other. When he caught on, he stopped for a breather. I laughed at him.
“You can laugh all you want,” he said.
“I will.” I walked off, he pursued, “F()ck you!”
I looked at him. “You seem to have a command of only single syllable words. You need to work on your vocabulary.”
That pissed him off. “Oh, yeah? Eat sh()t! That’s two syllables!”
“That’s two single syllable words. Get a degree,” I said.
He turned around to harass Andrea and my neighbor, they’d already left by a gate.
There are two things they can’t stand: to be laughed at and to be photographed. That morning, they photographed the volunteers and their vehicles. While they chased Andrea, another example of mutual aid played out. My neighbor told me,
“One of the guys in that protest group tried to trip me. I saw him smirk as he did it so I knew something was funny, and I didn’t trip far, but he did contact me and then joked about it, laughed, and finally admitted it to his fellow people when I called them out on it, ‘If you’re gonna do it you might as well be a man and own up to it.’ And then he admitted it and I said, ‘What do you think your parents would think about you tripping a 50-year-old woman intentionally?’ And they laughed, all of them. I told him, ‘I apologize for the way you were raised,’ and walked away.
“I was afraid to go to my car as they lurked and only left when I went around the back of my home to sneak in the garage, so they did not see me enter. One big crazy lady stayed to see where I lived. I went left to an apartment with stairs, then right, then into my garage so she would not see. Also did not want her to see which car was mine. She was yelling obscenities at me.”
Most volunteers went to the parking lot at Jefferson Park, beside the VA Hospital, where a camp manager identified where to work. A volunteer stepped into an unzipped blue tent. The video shows he was being chased by protestors. It was sent to District 2 City Council Member Tammy Morales’ office. Morales then denounced We♥Seattle for burglary. Only the tent was unoccupied and was being used for storage by the camp manager, who wrote to me:
“No, it was one of 3 I use for storing the wheel barrow and brooms, etc. That one was abandoned and I absorbed it as a d-mark zone. It was supposed to go that day but I arrived about 5 min to late or it would never been a headline. I kept it until just recently the city came and took it. It was uninhabitable and full of everyone’s junk so good. Finally!”
Encore Performances
Friday, June 4, city crews swept the camp at Olga Park in the north University District. Monday, May 31, Kadeem Richey had been shot and killed by someone else living in the park, as reported by KING. A neighbor across the street took a pix of his body. The usual suspects appeared at Olga Park to protest. They did so April 16 at Miller Park on the east side of Capitol Hill, too.
The night of June 3/June 4, five vehicles owned by neighbors across from Olga Park had windows smashed in. The night of June 4/June 5, flyers appeared. One said, “See a tent? Cool. Leave them the f()ck alone!” Another said you shouldn’t feel threatened unless you’re a multinational corporation or employed by one, or live near a camp and call in a complaint.
A bogus letter from parks superintendent Jesús Aguirre declared:
“This emergency rule is to address the concerns of nearby residents who cannot stand the sight of people living outside their apartment. It is of the utmost importance that the needs of these residents is considered, and they should be spared the sight of less fortunate people living outdoors.
“The City of Seattle takes no responsibility for the situation of the homeless people we are displacing. In fact, Seattle is the city with only the third-highest homeless population. Both New York City and Los Angeles have much more homeless people, so our city is doing quite well. Housing is not a human right, and the lack of affordable housing is simply a consequence of supply and demand. If homeless people want to get housed, they should simply stop doing drugs and find a job in this burgeoning post-COVID economy.”
City staff picked up litter from the sweep at Olga Park on June 4. By the next morning, the opponents had thrown garbage around the park. Neighbors picked up the mess by 7AM.
Three of the protestors in this photograph from Olga Park were involved in harassing neighbors at Daejon Park and Jefferson Park.
At Woodland Park, the opponents cut open bags of trash people collected and left for Parks to pick up.
A more severe case of vandalism was a few weeks away.
Sunday July 11, We♥Seattle, the Seattle Latino Hiking Club, and neighbors on Queen Anne Hill gathered several tons of debris from abandoned camps and illegal dumping in Maclean Park, once a popular Seattle hiking trail. Friday July 16, volunteers discovered bags and large debris left along the trail for parks crews had been set on fire.
One area had a burn 30 feet in diameter, with melted plastic and metal fused on top of the soil, and the trunks of two large broad leaf maples were scorched.
There were four fires. An arson investigation was opened by the Seattle Police Department. Who was involved may be discovered through that investigation.
The protestor attitude is summed up in a message by Edward Mast, a North Seattle resident, who texted Andrea before a cleanup:
“You are not welcome at Woodland Park or surrounding areas on Thursday. I’m part of a strong community of neighbors and friends of people living at Woodland Park and we are prepared to come in sufficient numbers to cover the area and stand between you and any targets of your harm. If you try to bring your harm into Woodland Park, you will only spend all day being blocked by our teams. If you choose to assault any of us, we will document and you will face the consequences. We are not interested in debating or negotiating: you have repeatedly demonstrated your refusal to listen or reconsider. You have lied repeatedly and even impersonated a case worker, so we have no reason to trust your word or your judgement. Your pattern of dishonesty and harmful actions forces us to protect ourselves and others from your damage.”
Ed is a playwright and performance artist involved in progressive activist causes. His broad concerns range from defunding the police to supporting the Palestinian people, and he has a long history of engaging in socially conscious work. His plays have been performed in Seattle, Boston, New York, and Palestine. He has walked his talk in many ways.
The one point Ed makes is that Andrea identified herself as a caseworker the day after she helped a teenager get into Orion Services, an agency that works with at-risk youth living on the street.
It may have been a poor choice of words, as a caseworker is typically someone employed by a government or other organization who has a degree in social work. She came by the facility to see how the teen was doing, as she manages her relationships as do caseworkers for Plymouth Housing, DESC, and other service providers. Someone at Orion Services said she was posing as a caseworker and posted a pix of her at the facility with a warning she was not to be allowed in.
The incident blew out of proportion. The fault lay in definition, not intent. If you come from outside of a discipline and are unfamiliar with how it works, it’s easy to borrow a word like “caseworker” to describe what you’re doing. In the charged debate around homelessness, the only words that describe non-professional people are loaded with connotation, like “activist” and “advocate.” The only one that seems to be accurate is “volunteer.”
For two years now, in 2022, We♥Seattle has been engaged in case management based on building relationships with unhoused individuals and helping them find transitional and permanent housing.
The rest of what Ed says is emotionally charged with a veiled threat. He was one of a dozen protestors who stood on the east side of the Woodland Park bridges over Highway 99 on Earth Day, Thursday, April 22. We♥Seattle avoided confrontation by working on the west side. Over 45 volunteers, including high school students, participated in a five-hour event that removed a dozen abandoned camps from the Woodland Park Zoo hiking trail and trash dumped from a construction project years ago. A couple of tons of debris was staged on the sidewalk beside the southbound lanes, by next morning SDOT picked it up. While the cohort glared at us across the highway, Parks and Recreation picked up trash in the park behind them.
Epilogue
Erica Barnett has earned respect in Seattle’s world of journalism, scooped larger publications on stories, and shone light on city government. As that work has consequence, so does what she levels at a woman who has done what no one in activist circles had accomplished. Andrea Suarez created a citizen-based response to Seattle’s homelessness crisis by offering supportive mutual aid to people living outside, while fixing environmental damage that in some places, like Maclean Park and Woodland Park, is decades old. Erica Barnett’s coverage bypasses the facts on the ground, repeats unsubstantiated rumors, and disparages those who don’t align with her bias. It doesn’t pass the tests of journalistic integrity, that reporting be factual and impartial.
Andrea Suarez and We♥Seattle deserve honest reporting. The lifestyle activists and cause-of-the-day critics who harass her, who spread stuff about volunteers and board members, will likely continue doing so until they self destruct or something else comes along. Meanwhile, the work embraces mutual responsibility, accountability, and respect. It merits success, not sabotage.
