When A Changemaker Runs For Mayor: An Interview With Nikkita Oliver

Seattle’s progressive mayoral candidate is ready to shake up an increasingly white, rich, gentrified city.

This time last year, my friends and I were convinced that we were going to have to spend another two years with Ed Murray as mayor of Seattle. For those of us who were dismayed by the seeming reluctance of the mayor’s office to push forward on court-mandated police reforms, for those of us appalled by the city’s hostile and counterproductive approach to our homeless population, for those of us who were hoping to see real efforts made to protect racial and economic diversity in a city becoming richer and whiter — it was a tough pill to swallow. We all made dismayed Facebook posts or lamented together at social gatherings: Who would step up against a mayor so popular with the city’s business interests? Who would take on the mayor with enough “liberal” cred to satisfy comfortable Seattleites and not enough actual “liberal” practice to make them nervous?

After the November election results, things looked even more bleak. We were going to have perhaps the worst president that this nation had ever seen, and a city with the ideals to fight back was going to be left with a leader who only seemed to pay lip service to what we stood for and…