Seattle

Seattle On The Verge Of Voting For Clean, Publicly Funded Elections

October 27, 2015 Nathan Wallman, www.usuncut.com Create! Elections, Seattle

By Nathan Wallman for US Uncut - The city of Seattle is trying to pass an initiative that gives average voters the power to compete with big money in finance. I-122, nicknamed “Honest Elections Seattle” will provide voters with four $25 “Democracy Vouchers” which they can use to support the candidates of their choice. (Paid for by a small property tax increase of about $0.019 per $1,000 of assessed property value.) I-122 would further limit big money interests by imposing spending caps and cash contribution limits on the city’s campaigns. “Seattle is taking a stance, and we’re saying enough is enough,” Sonny Nguyen told King5.com. “We’re taking the city back, we’re taking the game back and it’s ours.”

Seattle Teachers Went On Strike For Social Justice: A Historic Victory!

September 23, 2015 Jesse Hagopian, www.dianeravitch.net Resist! Education, Seattle, Teacher's Union

By Jesse Hagopian in Diane Ravitch - On Sunday evening, thousands of Seattle Education Association members gathered in a general membership meeting and voted to approve a new contract with the Seattle Public Schools. This vote officially ended the strike by Seattle educators, which began on September 10, 2015, and interrupted the first five days of school. This new contract contains many hard fought wins for social justice that the school district said it would never grant. These groundbreaking victories are against the abuses of high-stakes standardized testing, for more recess, and for race and equity teams in the schools are a dramatic departure from our pervious broken model of collective bargaining and hold the potential to transform educator unionism in the nation.

Union Suspends Strike; Seattle Schools Start Thursday

September 17, 2015 Paige Cornwell and Walker Orenstein, www.seattletimes.com Resist! Education, Seattle, Worker Rights and Jobs

After four months of negotiations, a five-day strike and one final all-night talk, the Seattle teachers union and Seattle Public Schools reached a tentative contract agreement early Tuesday, and school is scheduled to start Thursday for the city’s 53,000 students. By Paige Cornwell and Walker Orenstein In Seattle Times - The Seattle Education Association’s board of directors and its elected building representatives both voted Tuesday afternoon to suspend the strike, recommending the union’s membership approve the deal. The agreement will go to a full vote of the union’s 5,000 members at a Sunday meeting. The building-representative vote came after hours of deliberation, where cheers and fervent discussion could be heard outside a packed room at the Machinists Hall in South Seattle.

Not Just For Better Pay: Seattle Teachers Strike For Social Justice

September 5, 2015 Interview of Jesse Hagopian with Jaisal Noor, www.therealnews.com Resist! Education, Labor Unions, Seattle, Social Justice, Teachers, Worker Rights and Jobs

Interview of Jesse Hagopian with Jaisal Noor - This means students will not be attending class on Wednesday, the first scheduled day of school, if a deal is not reached before then. Negotiations with the school district are ongoing. The key issues of contention between Seattle Public Schools and the union include teacher pay, recess time for students, extending the school day, and what the union is calling too much standardized testing. The district services over 45,000 students in 97 schools. Well, now joining us to discuss this from Seattle is Jesse Hagopian. Jesse is a Seattle public school teacher. He's an editor of Rethinking Schools magazine, a founding member of Social Equality Educators. He's the editor of the book More Than a Score, and he blogs at IAmanEducator.com. Thanks so much for joining us, Jesse.

Is Seattle Min. Wage Law Really “Off To A Bad Start” For Restaurants?

August 19, 2015 Sara Jones, www.seattle.eater.com Educate! Minimum Wage, Restaurants, Seattle, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Sara Jones in Seattle Eater - This past Sunday, conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute reported that 1,300 Seattle restaurant jobs were lost between January to June of this year, the largest number lost in that span since the Great Recession of 2009. It uses this "negative effect" to make the bold suggestion that Seattle's new minimum wage law is "getting off to a pretty bad start." Eater dug deeper into the data that AEI used and pulled out some other statistics you may want to consider before coming to a conclusion about the new law. For starters, while reporting the loss of 1,300 jobs from January to June, AEI fails to note that employment actually increased by 800 people from May to June, leaving the overall industry employment just 200 people short of levels when the first wage hike went into effect on April 1.

Seattle Protest: Stop Denying White Privilege

August 17, 2015 Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! killed by police, Police violence, Racism, Seattle, White Privilege

By Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance - Bring this to your community! On August 17th during lunch hour in Westlake Park, Seattle people coming out to the downtown park for lunch saw an unusual site - an elephant in a living room. The elephant in the living room was so large it could not be ignored. The elephant had a banner across it calling out "RACISM." People were encouraged to sit in the "living room" to have a conversation about the reality of racial injustice. Many of the people wore a "White Privilege" blinder over their eyes. People spread through the area with fliers and began conversations about racism and white privilege. A mic check told the story of racial injustice in US history as well as currently. People were encouraged to commit to take action to fight racism. The point of the protest, put on by primarily white organizers, activists and advocates in support of #BlackLivesMatter, was to show people that racism is the elephant in the living room and white privilege could no longer be denied.

Interrupting Sanders Exposed White Supremacy Of US Left

August 10, 2015 Jamie Utt, www.changefromwithin.org Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Police violence, Racism, Seattle

By Jamie Utt for Change from Within - Hhere’s the thing – what’s powerful about these interruptions from Black women is less how it has changed the tone of the Democratic campaigns and more about what they have exposed in the White left. I see these protests as less about the individual candidates themselves and more about how their White base refuses to center Black lives and Black issues. It’s notable that White Bernie supporters, who consider themselves the most progressive of us all, shouted down and booed Black women who dared to force Blackness into the center of White space. Because let’s be honest, every Bernie rally is White space. When I watch and hear the reaction of a mostly White Seattle crowd to a Black woman naming that the event is taking place in the context of Indigenous genocide, the new Jim Crow, and the everyday violence that Black, Brown, and Indigenous people face in Seattle, I’m ashamed.

Trans & Cis Woman Stop Seattle Traffic Over Deportation Center

August 4, 2015 Not1More, www.notonemoredeportation.com Educate! Deportation, ICE, Immigration, Seattle

By Not1More - “Trans and/or Women’s Action Camp (TWAC)” in solidarity with NWDC Resistance and the Not1More movement to end detentions and deportations, at this moment is doing a civil disobedience action to bring attention to ICE presence in downtown Seattle.TWAC will be calling attention to ICE, located on 1000 Second Ave where they have a large presence and headquarters, and their local quota that guarantees a minimum of 800 beds to be filled at the immigration jail in Tacoma (aka Northwest Detention Center) operated by Geo group corporation. This quota is built into the contract between ICE Seattle and Geo and motivates the agency to round up immigrants in the area. The contract fuels the recent anti-immigrant politics in Congress that exposes the real intentions of Republicans and Democrats who both introduce and pass bills to scapegoat immigrants and exploit family tragedies.

Shell’s Arctic Drilling Faces Setback As Ship Forced Back To Port

July 9, 2015 Mike Gaworecki, www.desmogblog.com Educate! Arctic, Environment, Seattle, shell

By Mike Gaworecki in DeSmogBlog - Is Shell finally “Arctic Ready” after its doomed 2012 campaign? The company is set to begin drilling in the Arctic within the week, and it’s already not looking good. The MSV Fennica, an icebreaker vessel bound for the Chukchi Sea, had barely left its berth in Dutch Harbor, Alaska last Friday when it had to immediately turn around. The crew discovered a 39-inch long, half-inch-wide breach in the Fennica’s hull, FuelFix reports. There is no word yet from Shell on how long the repairs are expected to take, or how the company intends to proceed in the event that the Fennica is taken out of service for a long period of time. Any significant change to Shell’s Arctic drilling plans could force a new review by the USDepartment of the Interior.

The Promise Of Public Banking In Seattle

July 5, 2015 Anna Bergren Miller, www.shareable.net Create! Finance and the Economy, Public Banking, Seattle

By Anna Bergren Miller for Shareable. Seattle, like other cities, is strapped for money. We're the fastest-growing city in the country, and we need to build infrastructure to support that growth. We would also like to build more affordable housing, and create good family-wage jobs. We are close to our debt limit. Because Seattle and Washington state have the most regressive tax systems, we're constantly having to go to the levy system to get more money, or borrow it. We've borrowed [billions of] dollars. Big banks, mostly, have bought those bonds—they loaned the money to us. So even though Seattle is prosperous compared to Detroit, or Baltimore, it still has a lot of needs. To start a public bank in Seattle, we would need a capital investment. We see that coming from the investments that Seattle already makes, mostly in savings treasury bonds and CDs. I think [they are valued at] about $800 million. We're only getting 0.67 percent [interest] on those investments right now—that's not much of a return. We're thinking some of that investment money [could be used to start the bank]. It takes at least $100 million—but the more robust, the better. We could get a much higher rate of return through our own bank.

Act Out! [16] – Seattle’s Best: Kshama Sawant, Jill Stein, Chris Hedges

June 20, 2015 Eleanor Goldfield, www.occupy.com Educate! Media, Politics, Seattle, Socialist

By Eleanor Goldfield in Occupy - Check out our EXCLUSIVE interviews with Seattle's socialist City Council member Kshama Sawant, U.S. presidential candidate Jill Stein and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Chris Hedges at Kshama Sawant’s re-election kick off rally in Seattle. And if you thought TPP was bad, check out TiSA. Get your updates on Fast Track and know where to look and who to follow in this corporate coup saga. Finally, from S.F. to D.C., Code Pink has some fun summer activism, from hug-ins to yoga by the White House hedges. And of course some amazing poetry recited by Eleanor Goldfield. Stay tuned for an inside perspective on these amazing activists, thinkers, and politicians. Kshama Sawant was "elected by working people in Seattle to be a voice for raising the minimum wage, for affordable housing, and for taxing the rich to fund public transportation and public education."

24 Activists Detained As Arctic Oil Rig Heads Out Of Seattle

June 16, 2015 Phuong Le, www.komonews.com Resist! Environment, Oil & Gas, Seattle

By Phuong Le in KomoNews - The U.S. Coast Guard detained two dozen protesters who formed a blockade with kayaks and other vessels Monday to try to stop Royal Dutch Shell's drill rig as it left Seattle on its way to explore for oil in the Arctic Ocean. The protesters were scooped up from the water because they were violating the safety zone around the Polar Pioneer, which departed around 6 a.m., Coast Guard Lt. Dana Warr said. They would be released after receiving violation notices that carry a $500 penalty, he said. About a dozen "kayaktivists" paddled out around 4 a.m. to try to prevent the 400-foot-long rig from leaving, said Cassady Sharp, a Greenpeace spokeswoman. Several dozen supporters in kayaks and canoes lined up behind them, she said.

Newsletter: Billionaires Fear Revolt As People Power Grows

June 14, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Arctic drilling, Austerity, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Commons, fast track, HIV/AIDS, indigenous, Inequality, Movement of Movements, Seattle, Solidarity, TISA, TPP

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers. Last week there was a populist revolt from across the political spectrum. Congress received tens of thousands of phone calls every day from people who are clear which side they are on: they want people and planet before profits; they want an open, transparent democracy not a secretive oligarchy. The campaign to stop Fast Track for corporate trade agreements like the TPP is a clarifying moment. It is democracy vs. oligarchs making decisions for us. It is transparency vs. secret law. It is the people vs. big business. It is a mobilized people vs. big money. These are the issues that unite people into a movement of movements. These are conflicts that let us know who is on the side of the people.

Seattle’s Best From Lawrence Lessig To sHellno

June 11, 2015 Eleanor Goldfield, www.occupy.com Educate! Internet, Oil & Gas, Seattle, sHellNo!, TPP

By Eleanor Goldfield in Occupy - This week we’re bringing you Seattle’s Best, on land and on sea, starting with the Seattle premiere of the documentary "Killswitch: The Battle to Control the Internet," where Lawrence Lessig and Marianne Williamson talked money in politics to a packed Town Hall. Next up, #ShellNo continued their fight against the Arctic Destroyer, this time with the help of a seahorse, an Arctic Angel and a solar-powered barge. Finally, this could be the week that the House votes on Fast Track, the fast forward button for corporate trade deals. We’ll give you tools to help stop this train wreck as artist Stephanie McMillan gives you inspiration to keep fighting. @ActOutOnOccupy facebook.com/ActOutOnOccupy occupy.com/actout

Port Commission Meeting Ends W/ Police Pushing People Out

June 10, 2015 Sydney Brownstone, www.thestranger.com Resist! Environmental Justice, police brutality, Seattle

By Sydney Brownstone in The Stranger - This afternoon's public port commission meeting started with a peaceful die-in staged by Filipino climate activists on the steps of Port in Seattle headquarters. It ended with police officers aggressively pushing people—including one person with a cane who was looking for a disability ramp—out of the building. After the die-in, a group of environmental activists filled most of the chairs in the port commission meeting room, holding signs and waiting for their turn to speak. A couple of people in the room commented loudly and cursed during staff briefings. In response, port commissioners adjourned the meeting before the public comment period. Things quickly escalated from there.

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