BREAKING: The Seattle Education Association has voted to authorize a strike by a margin of 95% to 5%, with 75% turnout. About 6,000 educators across the district will start striking tomorrow, delaying the start of the school year.
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Guy Oron
@GuyOron
Staff Reporter , formerly freelance. Opinions my own. Gender pronouns: he/they. Send tips to: guyo@realchangenews.org.
Seattle, WA | DxʷdəwʔabšJoined May 2016
Guy Oron’s Tweets
There are now FOUR active teacher strikes in Washington State — Kent, Seattle, Eatonville and Ridgefield. What do these actions have in common?
The state's regressive tax structure fails to adequately fund public schools, compounding burnout and disruption from the pandemic.
This is so huge. It is amazing to see that the city, after years of organizing by unhoused folks, BIPOC communities and allies, will #StopTheSweeps. This is such an important victory! #DefundSPD
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BREAKING: Seattle Police Department will no longer be a part of the removal of Homeless Encampments in our city. They will no longer be in charge of destroying shelter and belongings of our unhoused communities. This is a huge victory and one we’ve fought for decades. #DefundSPD
The reason we are seeing such extreme backlash against #CHAZ is becuase it so clearly undermines the lie that public spaces need to be militarized, policed, surveilled and controlled. Solidarity with #CapitalHillAutonomousZone #AbolishThePolice #DefundThePolice #DefundSPD
Shoutout to Scabby, the 15 foot inflatable rat
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Scabby the rat has joined the Seattle Roastery on #DoubleDownStrike!
What's disgusting? Union busting!
What's outrageous? Poverty wages! What's appalling? Bosses stalling!
Support roastery workers fighting for credit card tips. tinyurl.com/PNWReliefFund
BREAKING: The has rejected, in a 5-4 vote, Republican City Attorney Ann Davison's ordinance to criminalize drug possession and public use. The dramatic decision is a victory for organizers who warned that the bill would revive failed War on Drugs policies.
The committed in June 2020 to demilitarize the police. Today they just greenlit the SPD to buy a bunch of surveillance and tactical equipment and participate in counter-extremism and surveillance trainings. How exactly is this demilitarizing the police?
Overnight, a BNSF oil train derailed on Swinomish Nation land, spilling around 5,000 gallons of diesel onto nearby endangered wetlands. In 2015 the tribe sued the company demanding restrictions on oil trains going through their sovereign territory.
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Ecology & the Marine Spill Response Corporation are responding to a BNSF train derailment on the Swinomish Reservation in Anacortes. ~5000 gallons of diesel leaked at this time. Spill happened on a berm & most of diesel leaked on land side. No injuries.
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Some serious by special education teacher and member Daniko Clark on the picket line this morning. Photo by
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ICYMI:
On Sundays, Lisa Ratty has been giving out free breakfast to people on 3rd and Pike. Having experienced homelessness herself, she wants help folks going through tough times. Recently, she said a police officer intimidated her because of her mutual aid work
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Another example is that the whole idea of calculating your individual climate footprint was also started by BP
People are calling the recall election, saying it failed given the statistical improbability of the "yes" side catching up.
This is a remarkable victory for Kshama Sawant, who has now won 4 hotly contested elections in 8 years in a city which hasn't reelected a mayor since 2005.
This could have been Washington State but the legislative Dems are incredibly timid and most are very neoliberal on economics. Such an easy and common sense win.
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New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has signed a new bill into law to ensure all students have access to free and healthy school meals. The bill provides free breakfast and lunch in every New Mexico school, with fresh ingredients from local farmers and growers.
Seattle is hiring a manager for the $10 million dollar sweeps program which sweeps hundreds of encampments and over a thousand tents per year. The starting wage is over $52 an hour– over $100k per year.
Why are we spending so much on policing unhoused people?
#StopTheSweeps
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In other Seattle labor news: workers at Starbucks and the local sandwich shop chain Homegrown have also been going on strike, as well as teachers at the Kent School District, who are now on their third week of striking.
INBOX: A King County Superior Court judge ruled yesterday that Seattle's sweeps policies violated homeless people's right to privacy, including through the use of "obstruction" sweeps, which were defined too broadly and used in cases were no obstructions
aclu-wa.org/file/106464/do
Starbucks is closing 5 stores in Seattle, two of whom are unionized. If staff is relocated to non-union stores, they will lose union representation.
NEW: A UW report published today shows that Seattle human services workers are underpaid by a whopping 37% percent compared to their peers. The poor conditions have led to high turnover, burnout, and a lack of capacity for providing essential provisions.
Thank you Shaun for bringing up this crucial issue. According to the SPD's records, Seattle has spent $60,371.67 on sending cops to Israel since 2013.
These trainings endanger Black, Indigenous and Palestinian people's lives, exchanging harmful, brutal and repressive tactics.
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Where can we get detailed budgetary line items showing how much each canister of tear gas, each rubber bullet, each flash bang, each trip to Palestine to participate in the "deadly exchange" cost the City of Seattle? twitter.com/gramsofgnats/s…
BREAKING: The Seattle City Council has voted 7-2 to cap late rental fees to $10 a month and prohibit arbitrary "junk" fees related to delivering notices to tenants
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The @SeattleCouncil will vote tomorrow on whether to enact a rental late fee cap. Earlier this month a council committee voted to increase the maximum up to $50. @cmkshama, @CMTammyMorales and @TeresaCMosqueda are proposing to lower the cap back to $10.
realchangenews.org/news/2023/04/1
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I just talked to a barista last week who used to work at a downtown Starbucks before it was closed over the summer and now works at the Broadway and Denny location. This is the fourth unionized location in Seattle to be closed by the company this year.
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STARBUCKS JUST ANNOUNCED THEY ARE CLOSING BROADWAY AND DENNY
Partners at B&D were the first to unionize in sbux home city.
The company is closing the store on Dec 9th, THE ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST UNION WIN IN BUFFALO.Hundreds of union members and allies are protesting with outside of Starbucks HQ in Seattle. Across the country, more than 100 stores have gone on strike days after CEO Howard Schultz stepped down. Schultz is seen as facilitating the company's union busting.
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This is a big deal. More than 132,000 people in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area work in the food service industry, with a median wage of $17.63. Historically, the industry has been largely non-unionized. Efforts like these could change that.
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Breaking: Workers at Glo’s, a celebrated Seattle diner, have won voluntary recognition of their union with Restaurant Workers United. They are the first full-service restaurant in Seattle to successfully unionize in decades.
Storyville Coffee baristas and bakers have won their union vote 11-4, according to . The company has been accused of union busting, which has led to workers filing a complaint with the NLRB earlier this month
NEW: The Seattle Education Association , which represents around 5500 teachers and other staff who work at , has just voted to endorse #BDS and the End the Deadly Exchange Campaign with over 90% support.
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There will be a monkeypox vaccination clinic tomorrow at 12PM hosted by at Seattle Central College (1701 Broadway)
Community members who are at high risk are invited to get the vaccine at a first come, first serve basis. The vaccine supply is extremely limited.
Due to Washington's regressive tax structure, public services often struggle to get adequate funding. This year, state Democrats are proposing a new solution: a modest tax on the 700 richest residents in the state, which could raise about $3 billion a year
Notice how Black and Indigenous communities are denied decades of life. This is what racism looks like
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The King County Medical Examiner's Office will be holding a burial ceremony next month for 240 people who have died over the past two years and whose remains were not claimed by a loved one or family member. For a region with a GDP similar to Egypt's, it is a truly sad reality.
NEW: Records obtained by show that Seattle officials carried out more than 900 sweeps in 2022, a dramatic rise over the previous two years. The vast majority of these removals were done without any prior notice.
The King County Auditor's Office released multiple reports last month which confirm what community has been saying for years: that the King County Sheriff's Office has a big racism problem.
With Kshama Sawant leaving city politics, there is a big vacuum in the Seattle left, and at least four open council seats to fill. Could people come together to form a united progressive, socialist, anti-racist, feminist and urbanist platform vis-à-vis Ada Colau in Barcelona?
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Councilmember Kshama Sawant criticizes local Democrats' Kerry Park press conference, saying they have no plan other than to "vote blue in 2022" and that AG Ferguson's statement that abortion rights are safe in WA "shows a lack of solidarity"
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Today three Tacoma substations were attacked, causing 7,000 homes to lose power. It seems like coordinated infrastructure attacks like these are becoming more and more common.
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Sawant has now outlasted 4 mayors, despite becoming a magnet for rightwing hate and abuse. While she is a polarizing figure, her success is not only testament to her skill as a politician, but also to the appeal of the politics she and Socialist Alternative espouse.
In other train news: WSDOT and state leaders are refusing to apply for a federal grant due next Monday to study passenger rail service to Eastern Washington.
A 2020 study showed that ridership on this line could reach over 200,000 a year.
INBOX: Rail advocates from Washington, Oregon and BC are calling on the three jurisdictions to implement ambitious proposals to expand passenger rail service and freight rail regulation. This includes calls for hourly Amtrak Cascades service from 6am to 8pm, new east-west rail
NEW: The Seattle Police Department uses technology with far-reaching capabilities and the ability to bypass your phone's security to extract a huge amount of data.
“Mobile device forensic tools are far too powerful to be in the hands of law enforcement.”
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You're absolutely spot on. I like this article about the necropolitics of covid
A bit of history here: the Broadmoor gated community, which voted 97% in favor of recalling Kshama Sawant, established a racial covenant in 1927 barring "any Hebrew or ... any person of the Ethiopian, Malay or any Asiatic Race" from owning or renting property in the neighborhood.
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This is a massive breach of journalistic ethics by & . He states *as fact* that Washington "will need another large airport" to handle more passenger and freight traffic, while calling other viable alternatives such as high-speed rail "radical."
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State officials studying where to locate a major new airport in Washington stir local opposition to the project
1/4 seattletimes.com/business/boein
The liberal backlash against Chief Best's resignation shows how deeply neoliberal thought has poisoned Democratic and "progressive" pundits' analysis.
When symbolic representation (as opposed to real material change) becomes your metric for measuring progress, you miss the point
The SPD officer who killed Jaahnavi Kandula was driving at three times over the speed limit when he hit her. via
Shout out to and for adding extra service for new years eve and running the light rail until 2am. It really made Seattle feel like a big city. Hope this can be a more common occurrence.
This is wild. Seattle Bruce Mayor wants to spend *$38 million* on sweeps of unhoused people next year.
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Harrell Budget Would Permanently Expand Encampment Cleanup and Removal Team publicola.com/2022/10/14/har
Apparently UW PD (via UW Alerts) has widely exaggerated the protests at U Village, which were non-violent
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The scene between Uvillage alley and Safeway. via @seattletimes #seattleprotests
Last night, the Burien City Council voted to remove Planning Commission chair Charles Schaefer for aiding unhoused community members who faced displacement.
This morning, 5 other planning commission members and and airport committee member have resigned in protest of the decision
Fantastic scoop by Glen Stellmacher in today: Documents show that senior SPD leadership and former Mayor Jenny Durkan were heavily involved in shaping the local media narrative to disrupt the #DefundSPD movement
The City of Seattle is conducting 12 sweeps of unhoused people this week. As the weather gets warmer, the city is might continue to escalate this aggression.
All of these sweeps are meant to make the city look better. We cannot let the city get away with this. #StopTheSweeps
Damning memo from staff about Davison's rushed drug legislation, including: 1) No info about # of cases to be prosecuted or their costs 2) Prospects for diversion cut short after axing community court 3) Her office didn't bother to do racial and equity analysis.
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This week the city disclosed to me HSD's actual numbers, which show that it conducted 62—not 15—obstruction sweeps and 3 hazard and 72-hour sweeps during the pandemic. The mayor's office lied to the public about the scale of harm they were inflicted by 50 sweeps.
I really don't understand the logic behind the repealing the hazard pay mandate just as we're going into a big Omicron wave, which could be bigger than all previous COVID waves. Seems just unnecessarily cruel.
UPDATE: King County Elections Reports that there are at least 45,000 more ballots left to count from ballot drop boxes. These are disproportionately younger voters, which have historically leaned to the left, meaning that we could see this margin increase significantly.
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell promised a bold plan to build 2,000 units of affordable housing and shelter in his first year. "could only identify 288 that were announced in 2022, after Harrell took office," a far cry from the promised amount.
