Black wealth remains near zero due to centuries of systemic anti-Black racism and is on a trajectory to only worsen. In Seattle, white wealth is nearly 20x more than Black wealth. What specific actions will you take to close the Black-white wealth gap?
How much of the Black-white wealth gap will you close while in office?
Who are you working with in the Black community to close it?
How will you support investing federal funding directly and specifically into the Black community in the next two years?
Answer
MLK County must be uncompromising in calling out anti-Black racism everywhere we see it. This includes continued efforts to suppress the accumulation of Black wealth in our communities, most recently by King County’s inequitable dispersal of PPP loans to local businesses to help mitigate the financial hardships of the COVID-19 recession. These investments hardly reached any Black businesses, businesses that have faced the lion’s share of permanent closures since the start of the pandemic. These types of disinvestments from our Black communities have to be called out and rectified. We can’t close the wealth gap by simply enacting policies in an equitable way moving forward, we need to also invest heavily and retroactively in our communities of color to begin recovering from the damage caused by generations of financial neglect and outright theft.
I don’t want to mislead or over-promise here. Closing the Black-white wealth gap is a generation-long task that will take massive financial investments and coordination between our federal, state, and local governments to reconcile centuries of exploitation and willful neglect. That said, while I don’t know how much of the Black-white wealth gap I can close while in office, I promise to fight every day to make sure that budgetary decisions made on the King County Council center those most impacted by our decisions and invest where needs are greatest. If we are to truly close the wealth gap we must institutionalize a seat at the table for our historically underserved communities to ensure the decisions we make do not perpetuate inequitable outcomes while meeting the needs of our community. That will include tackling the massive gaps in Black homeownership, funding for education, as well as access to healthcare, transit, green spaces, and jobs with living wages and benefits.
In order to do this, we must work with our state and local governments to ensure that federal loans are distributed equitably over the next two years as we build back from this pandemic. It is imperative that we as elected officials center those most impacted by our policy decisions to ensure that funding and aid are being allocated to where the needs are greatest. And right now our communities of color--and specifically our Black communities-- are in dire straights. That was true before the pandemic and it’s especially true now.
Question
There is a crisis in Black health in this region. In King County: Black babies are more 2x more likely to die before their first birthday than white babies; Black birthing people die 3x more than white birthing people; Black residents die of diabetes at 3x the rate of white residents; Nearly half of all Black adults in King County are food insecure; Black adults are 3x more likely to be living in poverty; Black adults are evicted at 6x the rate of white adults; Black people in King County contracted COVID-19 at 3x the rates of whites; and yet Black community received less than 2% of federal relief funding.
This region boasts some of the most sophisticated, renowned hospitals and medical facilities in the world. The disparities in medical treatment received by Black communities are appalling, with COVID-19 serving as just the most recent flashlight into this dark and disturbing reality. What are your specific plans to invest in Black community health?
In the entire Pacific Northwest (OR, WA, ID, MT, WY) there are zero Black community-owned, federally qualified health clinics. What are your specific plans to support base-building Black community-owned clinics? Specifically, the Tubman Center for Health and Freedom (TCHF), Somali Health Board (SHB), Surge Reproductive Justice (SRJ), African American Health Board and more?
Answer
As MLK County, we must take a hard stand against the ongoing and deep health disparities our Black community faces everyday. We must prioritize funding for Black community-owned health clinics in King County so that our Black communities don’t have to continue suffering from the inequitable care and neglect of our healthcare system. It’s time for us to lead with our professed values and ensure that any public funds used to support our healthcare facilities and organizations are invested only in those that are committed to rectifying these deeply inhumane inequities. As a King County Councilmember, I will partner with members of our Black health advocacy organizations to co-create legislation and programs that truly address and reconcile the health disparities our Black community faces. The King County budget needs to be a reflection of our values, and our failure to fund Black Community health centers is a moral indictment of our entire government and our failure to put our money where our mouth is in addressing systemic racism and anti-blackness.
With respect to supporting Black community-owned clinics, I would work with our Black health advocacy groups to ensure we are funding the clinics and organizations best suited to meet the needs of our communities throughout the county. Depending on the resources available I would prioritize those communities most in need and where disparate and inequitable health incomes are greatest.
Question
Equity means ownership. Thriving Black communities require control and agency over land. We prioritize Black land acquisition as a foundational pillar to our work. As demand for land grows at an unprecedented pace, the rapid gentrification, active divestment from, and exclusion of Blacks from Seattle and King County is important not merely due to the dismantling of historical Black cultural and societal spaces, but also the socio-economic, health, wealth, and education fallout resulting from Blacks being pushed out of the State’s largest economic and cultural engine. What is your specific short and long-term plan to rectify this region’s abysmal Black land ownership rates?
What is your plan to rapidly advance Black home ownership rates?
What is your plan to rapidly advance Black community land acquisition and restore historically Black cultural and societal spaces?
How much will you invest in the: (A) Keiro project - the first entirely Black community led and centered homelessness consortium with wraparound direct services; (B) Red (Black and Green) Barn Ranch - Black liberated farming and youth healing center; (C) Youth Achievement Center - a holistic co-housing complex that is designed to support homeless students, historically underserved students, system-involved youth?
What mechanisms will you put in place to halt gentrification across the state, specifically to stop corporate and private developers from buying up once affordable property and pricing out Black communities and families?
Answer
King County is home to more wealth than any other part of Washington State. It’s past time that the government allowed all of our residents to share in this prosperity, especially those willfully left out and exploited by our government. King County’s historic and racist red-lining policies have barred Black families from homeownership and gentrification is quickly pricing them out of the places they’ve managed to build a life. We must institute a “flipping tax” to stop the quick selling and reselling of homes and businesses to slow down the rapid pace of gentrification in our community. We also need to put caps on property taxes for fixed income households, particularly in communities of color. In addition, King County needs to pursue purchasing parcels of land to be used exclusively for our Black communities and Black community projects. This land should be redistributed to King County’s displaced Black population and gifted to community advocacy groups to be used for the construction of community centers, health clinics, and businesses. It’s time for King County to stop paying lip service to our Black neighbors and actually secure the funding it will take to build lasting Black wealth and prosperity here in MLK County.
As a veteran, I am deeply ashamed that our country willfully withheld VA loans from our Black GI’s that went to hell and back for our nation during World War II. Generations of Black Americans were denied the opportunity to build generational wealth through homeownership as a result. I am committed to working with our state legislators and Congressional delegation to pursue state and federal funding to provide descendants of our 1.2 million Black GIs the housing assistance they were denied despite their faithful service to our nation. It’s well past time we made significant efforts to rectify this monumental injustice and moral failure of our nation and do so here in MLK County.
As far as supporting the specific organizations and projects outlined, I would first want to ensure that the King County government institutionalizes a seat at the table for our Black community and our other historically underserved communities. Doing so as quickly as possible will help ensure that the decisions we make as a county meet the needs of our community, invest where needs are greatest, and reflect our values.
Question
The public education system is anti-Black. It uses harsh discipline policies that push Black students out of schools at disproportionate rates; denies Black students the right to learn about their culture and whitewashes the curriculum to exclude Black peoples' history, contributions, and accomplishments. It pushes Black teachers out of schools in Seattle-King County, and across the country, and spends entirely more money on imprisoning Black youth than on educating and healing them. How will you support pro-Black education?
How will you create and maintain Black community schools?
How will you establish and maintain restorative justice practices in schools to end the school-to-prison pipeline?
What will you do to ensure Black teachers are hired, that current educators receive anti-racist professional development, that schools implement Black studies curricula?
What will you do to ensure the Black community has control of schools that serve Black kids as well as education resources and levy funds that are meant for but rarely make it to Black youth?
Answer
Supporting pro-Black education starts with supporting and hiring Black teachers. My wife is a teacher and I understand the enormous pressure we put on them to perform vital and difficult work. Compounding this difficult work with the systemic discrimination built into our public and private education systems turns their job into a near-impossible task. We need to provide greater support to our teachers of color and empower them to teach through the lens of their own lived experiences and the true history of our nation and county. If we are to ever learn from the moral failings of our past and present, we must teach our students the true history of Black peoples’ history, contributions, and accomplishments.
If we are to make any meaningful and lasting progress to reconcile the generations of divestment from education in our Black community, we need to work with our state and local legislators to move away from funding our schools through property taxes, which is a relic of redlining. Schools in our Black community are staring down the daunting task of needing to provide incredible amounts of resources to underserved youth while receiving less funding than schools in white neighborhoods. Additionally, these schools are forced to service an even greater number of students than less densely populated, wealthier, whiter areas. As a King County Councilmember, I will fight to make sure that providing these schools with the resources they need is at the forefront of any discussion regarding County-wide education funding.
Our teachers should reflect the communities they serve and understand the inequities of our education system. I will work with our education unions to ensure we prioritize hiring teachers that reflect our community and ensure that all educators receive and apply anti-racist professional development training. We must also have restorative justice counselors to facilitate restorative processes between students, teachers, and parents. There are two notable barriers to anti-racist professional development, pro-Black curriculum, and the hiring of Black educators and administrators: funding and accountability. As a Councilmember, I will make sure that all of our schools receive the funding they need and earmark parts of that funding specifically for the hiring of Black teachers, anti-racist training, and expanded pro-Black curricula. Every year schools will report to the county how they’ve progressed in these goals, but without tying funding to these metrics. Our Black schools are already hurting and they can’t afford any financial reductions.
Question
Already experiencing COVID-19’s economic fallout, conditions for Seattle’s Black community have worsened. Against that backdrop, KCEN and many others in the Black community mobilized to divest from policing and demanded correlating investment in pro-Black public safety solutions that work for us, for the first time in Seattle's history. This movement was driven by Black community and specifically called and continues to call for a reckoning with anti-Black racism (i.e., not a general “racial” reckoning, or a “BIPOC” movement).
Emboldened by the overwhelming support of thousands and thousands of community members, the Seattle City Council briefly upheld their pledge to divest from a percentage of the Seattle Police Department (SPD)'s bloated annual budget and invest modestly in Black communities. It should not have taken such prolonged, sustained community efforts for this change but we acknowledge the small percentage of divestment as a break from decades of votes to expand violent, anti-Black policing.
The work of reshaping this region into one that values all Black lives—and moves away from funding racist policing and towards resourcing true public safety—is overdue and not for non-Black folks, unaccountable gatekeepers or non-rooted folks to dictate. We advocated strongly for monies from the police budget to be invested directly into the Black community and are unmoved on that stance.
Last year’s accountability charter amendments demonstrate clearly the public’s demands that policing change at the County Level. What are your specific plans to divest from policing to invest in true public safety for Black communities for the first time in history? What are the tangible steps you will take?
What date will you close the Youth Jail in the first year of your term?
What specific steps will you take to shift investments from the criminal punishment system towards human services that are controlled, led and center Black community?
Answer
Right now, King County spends 73% of its general fund on the criminal legal system. We are spending billions of dollars keeping people incarcerated, instead of using that money to uplift our most vulnerable and underserved communities. We need to stop the criminalization of poverty and start making smart investments in our communities upstream. As we look to re-imagine public safety, we must ensure that our Black community has a seat at the table as we divest these funds from the legal system and re-invest them into the human services that our community desperately needs. These investments must be prioritized by those most impacted by the injustices of our legal system and our budget must reflect the values and needs of our community and investment in preventative and proactive services that will help keep our community members from entering the legal system in the first place.
There is no reason officers should be using their time and our taxes to respond to every situation. We need to work with community to determine which situations are appropriate for the King County Sheriff’s Office to respond to and which should be managed by those trained and equipped to handle situations that don’t require an officer with a gun. Determining this will help us identify the resources we can allocate to human services and the social workers needed to respond to non-violent crimes. We must also demilitarize the King County Sheriff’s Office. I am currently working with Councilmember Zahilay and Human Rights First as a member of the Truman National Security Project to develop legislation that would limit/prohibit the acquisition of military equipment by our Sheriff’s Office. There’s no reason local law enforcement should look like I did in Afghanistan, it erodes trust and paints the community as combatants instead of community members. We need to conclude this work and provide this framework to other jurisdictions.
King County promised to reduce youth incarceration only to turn around and spend $250 million on a new youth jail. These are funds that should have been used to invest in our Black community, rather than propagate and stand up the prison-industrial complex. As a King County Councilmember, I will fight to close the new youth jail immediately and work with community leaders to ensure that the money that would have been used on its continued operation is re-allocated equitably and effectively.
