Seattle’s Ugly Side Threw a Tantrum This Week. We Can’t Let Them Win.
It’s been a demoralizing week for Seattle. Here’s how we can make sure the city doesn’t go down the wrong path.
Earlier this week, I addressed the substance of the anti-homeless-assistance argument in Seattle. Now, I want to talk about the tone of that argument.
If you have not yet read Erica C. Barnett’s excellent (and heartbreaking) coverage of a May 2nd meeting in Ballard to discuss Seattle’s increasing homeless population, I encourage you to do so. The meeting was hijacked by Safe Seattle, a conservative organization centered mostly around Ballard, and it turned into a full-on temper tantrum.
Here’s a taste:
“We’re entitled to have a house!” one man screamed from the audience. “Free from drugs!” he added. “FUCK YOU!” another shouted in the panel’s direction. Others chimed in, from around the room: “BULLSHIT!” “BULLSHIT!” And, memorably, “BULLSHIT!” “We didn’t come here to talk about taxes!” someone yelled. “RESIGN NOW!” several others screamed, as a homeless woman tried to speak. “Let’s have a highly publicized event where we round up some of them,” a speaker said, referring to homeless people struggling with mental illness and addiction…[attendees] were screaming the same short phrases over and over, like toddlers who didn’t want to take a nap. “NOOOOOOOOO!” they yelled. “RESIGN!” they bellowed .”SHUT UP!” they screamed, when the panel asked if they would like information about the tax proposal or the rationale behind it. They didn’t come to learn. They came to howl.
You should go read the whole post, and if you think Barnett is hyperbolizing, please watch KOMO’s video of the event.
Now, the Seattle media is spending a lot of time chewing over this meeting—as they should be. But I’ve seen lots of local pundits bloviating about “Seattle nice” being replaced with “Seattle angry.” And it’s important to remember that the Safe Seattle crowd is not indicative of Seattle’s mood. Sure, they have enough resources to make their voices extra-loud, and there are enough of them to fill a small church with their shrieking. But let’s be clear: they are an exceptionally loud and very small minority.
Sure, they can ambush a panel discussion by being loud and rude, but whenever one of their candidates lands on the ballot, they fail spectacularly. They haven’t been able to elect a dog catcher. Their repeated failures to win over the general Seattle voting public only makes them even angrier, and their anger makes them even uglier.
But I can’t say they don’t represent my city. They do speak for a very ugly and very real side of Seattle — one that has been in and out of power since the city was founded. Many loud white Seattleites supported Japanese internment during World War II. I would argue that these groups are the heirs to (and the beneficiaries of) Seattle’s shameful history of redlining. In my 18 years in Seattle, I’ve seen these groups rise and fall from elected office. At the turn of the millennium, politicians like Mark Sidran passed a host of laws essentially penalizing homeless individuals for being homeless.
If we want to stop exclusionary groups, we first have to acknowledge that they do have a constituency in this city, that they’ve had power before, and that they’ll have power again.
They are wrong. They are regressive. They’d rather destroy this city than share it. But if I’ve learned nothing else from the last three years of politics, it’s this: if we don’t take them seriously, they’ll win. I witnessed the rise of the Tea Party firsthand—I covered the very first Tea Party rally in Seattle—and I didn’t take them seriously at the time. Now the Tea Party is indistinguishable from the Republican Party, and the Republican Party controls the majority of America.
We cannot afford to make that mistake again in Seattle.
We can’t just mock these people, or consider them aberrations. We must believe that they mean what they say, and plan accordingly. The mainstream media wasted too much time pondering the intent of the alt-right, and by the time they realized that Richard Spencer and his ilk meant everything that they said—that they weren’t being “ironic” Nazis, they were just being Nazis—a young woman had already died in Charlottesville. Similar mistakes were made during the rise of the Tea Party’s Birther cohort a decade ago.
So even though it’s comforting to just dismiss a Ballard neighborhood group as a fluke, or a one-time deal, we have to remember that they’re a real organization. And even though their attempts to appeal to voters have been laughable up until now, we have to assume they’ll get better.
So how do we confront these regressive forces? First, we have to organize. If we know they’re going to be at meetings to scream about how homelessness is a choice, we have to have more people there to shout them down. If they run a candidate, we have to defeat them soundly. If an elected official takes a brave stand against them, we have to show them support and let everyone know.
Second, we have to educate others about what’s happening in our city. Thankfully some great Seattleites are already out in the streets doing this:
And thirdly, we have to keep our guard up against normalization. If you see a local news organization legitimizing Safe Seattle and other conservative neighborhood groups by publishing editorials idly wondering what would happen to the homeless population if Seattle did just “round up some of them,” call them out on their bullshit. Rhetorical questions are a classic hate-group recruitment technique; if they can frame a question vaguely enough that people will agree with it, they’ll be able to attract more followers. Shame any media outlet who gives them a serious platform. Boycott them, and make sure they know why you’re boycotting them.
It’s been a tough week for Seattle. A lot of Seattleites are feeling deflated after news of this neighborhood meeting got out. And on May Day, we also saw white supremacists gathering at Westlake to stand up against antifa, which means they were standing up for fascism. There’s a lot of depressing stuff going on out there.
But it’s important to remember that there are more of us than there are of them. And we also have to remember that while our city has not always traveled in a straight line toward progress and inclusion, we always eventually become more progressive and more inclusive than before. The road is bumpy right now, but we’re on the right path.
Plus, this happened on Monday, so the week wasn’t all bad:
