As has become tradition, I'm going to try to live-tweet as much of the Bellevue Council meeting tonight as possible, but I'm hopping off around 6:30 to attend an Eastside Pride organizational meeting! Excited to get more involved in the Eastside queer community.
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Hoping that the first 30 minutes will be enough to cover the most interesting stuff this evening, including public testimony and discussion about the actions this past weekend.
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Huh I'm also going to have to watch this later this evening. Anybody want to give me a preview of what to expect?
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The weekend's protest will be discussed as part of the City Manager's report and the Weapons Ban will be discussed under the City's discussion of Ordinances this evening.
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First speaker is a Lake Hills resident giving us a definition of capitalism and complaining how people can "take over our streets in support of socialism/anarchy." Supports BPD's action, Nieuwenhuis's support of BPD, and the emergency action given "the group's actions in Seattle"
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"Why was there not concern for the protestors from Eastern Washington in support for Loren Culp? I'm more concerned about those who open carry....let's make Bellevue a truly open community."
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Third speaker is a person speaking in support of strong Vision Zero action. A mom who cares about her environmental impact and her kids, relating how she can't safely traverse her neighborhood with her kids. Appreciates the VZ budget items, wants to make sure they get approved.
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Another speaker/attendee of the march mentioning the inflammatory language that the city used on Nextdoor, wondering why such language wasn't used for other marches. Mentioning the protest buddy system (which was great).
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Mentions how the police presence was more intense than any other protest she's attended. Motorcycles driving on the Seattle. "Loud and colorful language is not violence.... The emergency supports a false narrative that the protest was violent"
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Another person speaking this evening expressing her "dismay" at the previous speakers. She's claiming that she has friends in Downtown that witnessed protestors "rolling up with weapons". "This group is known to use every tactic"
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A couple of people have mentioned that there was a CM that participated in the protest? Maybe it happened after I left, but as a person who was participating in the protest up until 8:30, I saw no CM.
This commenter disturbed with "doxxing" on Twitter. Not sure what she means.
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Was it Barksdale? Oh god if it's Barksdale, the lone black CM that she's complaining about supporting BLM, that's just *rich*.
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Barksdale was there "To have his own personal account of the protest" to which the commenter claims "bullshit". Not sure how she could even comment on that.
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Asking why it should be assumed, as he, as a black man, can be assumed to be deeply involved in the protest when he's just nearby on the sidewalk. Notes that that's an implicit bias of the person commenting. "If you want to talk about racial equity, let's talk about that."
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"I think it's misguided that you would show up during a Council Meeting to highlight something based on an implicit bias and not be engaged around racial equity and support the issues that we're talking about here... Feel free to reach out to me." I love this man.
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As *much* as I want to continue, if I don't leave now I'll get invested in the City Manager's report and I'll miss my Pride meeting, but I'mma do the @TheUrbanAce way and hop back on later to tweet the rest. Definitely already very spicy though.
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Aaaaaand we're back! With interstitals as I work on preparing my dinner. But excited to get beyond the public comment and into the meat of the discussion, cause this night is looking to be a spicy one.
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City Manager Miyake starting with details about the event. "Information we had received prior to the event led us to believe there was a high likehlihood this could end up as a nonpeaceful protest."
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BPD Chief Mylett joins the meeting to give information. "[The group] has been associated with violent, criminal behavior."
Later chooses his words carefully, "violence associated with *certain* members of this group." Curious how much community feedback has led to this caution.
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Mylett now citing an 8/30 article from the Seattle Times as justification for his department's assessment that the group was violent. We're in full on anti-CHOP, anti-Seattle sentiment here.
He was concerned the "city wouldn't have enough resources to address the violence."
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"Was every member of this group a violent individual? No. But the core of this group that we knew... were. And continue to be."
You hear that @ENDDSeattle? Y'all are just violent individuals. Nothing you can do about it, sorry. Context doesn't matter, nope. Just violent.
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Now he's citing that one tweet in response to the original event post with the labelled map telling people to watch out for cameras and Kemper Freeman properties loooool.
Business owners reported "suspicious activity" and "stashes of potential weapons on their property".
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He's now telling a story about how he saw a gorup of protestors approaching, asked them three times if they were going to be destructive, one of them calmly put his head down and said "No, sir", and he said "Then welcome to Bellevue." #ThatHappened
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"I did not want to wait until the windows stareted breaking, Molotov cocktails were being thrown, and dumpsters were being set on fire to ask the Mayor to sign the [emergency] declaration. We had enough info to generate that concern."
Okay. Then present it.
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"It wasn't until they were bringing out the gas masks, bringing out the shields, the goggles... I [spoke with the city attorney] and asked the Mayor to issue the order."
Dude. Dude. Were you there? It's not like we stopped and put shit on. People had that since the beginning.
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Chief also implying that he was involved in selection of specific items to be banned, based on what he was seeing on the ground. Important to note that items were only banned if people were intending to harm others. By that logic, none of the protestors were violating the ban.
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I need input from Seattle peeps, but this whole event is showing that Bellevue's Mayor just listens to BPD without question or criticism. And I mean, it's Bellevue, so I get it. But just, damn. I'm really curious how the discussions go after this presentation.
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City Attorney explaining how the weapons ban "gives the police a tool to act appropriately if they determine that a device is being used to cause harm to people or property."
That's... kinda the whole problem with this system, isn't it?
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About concerns of treating this group differently from other protest groups, Mylett says "That's not true. We treated this response based on the information that was given to us about this particular group's violent history."
Now transitioning to focusing on results.
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Just had the racist white woman who exclaimed "Bullshit" at CM Barksdale earlier just compare reducing parking minimums for affordable housing with a *quarter mile* of frequent transit stops to *redlining*.
Honey, I know you won't, but you seriously need to reexamine your life.
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City Manager report of Saturday's events is done, now fastforwarding to get to the Council's approval of the Mayor's emergency order, which although it's already been enacted and revoked, still needs to be approved by Council.
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I find it weird/logistically questionable that the Bellevue Mayor is required to get Council approval on an emergency order such as the weapons ban last night, but she effectively has the power to enact the ban and then revoke it before Council sees or takes action on it.
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CM Robertson expressing her support for the emergency action and her support for all public safety departments. "Without all that planning we might've had a very different outcome... It's hard to prove a negative, but..."
Yeah! Yeah it is! You're right! You got it!
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CM Lee also praising the work of the Mayor and BPD as "tremendous". "The Chief of Police just made a tremendous justification."
"The police are the most important and most neglected, least appreciated people in our employment." No question where he stands.
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