Over the last few months I have been working with Black-led vaccination clinics, partnering  specifically with the African American Health Board and African American Reach and Teach  Health, to ensure that Black community members have access to supportive, culturally rooted, and  welcoming spaces to access the COVID-19 vaccine. This has expanded our community base to  provide culturally rooted healing and health support for Black community members throughout the  City, especially those most marginalized by the anti-black medical industrial complex. We have  funded this work by pulling together our own resources. In the future, through the Human Services  Department, I think it is important that we earmark resources specifically for communities to  provide culturally rooted heal and health supports to our communities. 

Through the Department of Education and Early Learning we should provide funding to establish  community schools models in those parts of the City where we know there is the greatest need and  where Black children are most disproportionately impacted by the housing affordability crisis, lack of access to healthy foods, and the school-to-prison-to-deportation pipeline. Community schools  incorporate healing and healthcare into their model by ensuring that schools have a full-time health  provider, family support worker, restorative justice coordinator, and other relevant services on-site  that meet the unique needs of the community in the building. Our children spend 7+ hours a day at  school. Children and families should be able to access the supports and services needed for thriving  in one place. This is not something the City of Seattle can do on our own. While we can provide  funding to undergird the effort, Seattle Public Schools will have to want to partner to make  community schools a reality. 

For over a year I have also been working with medical and administrative staff at Harborview and  Community Passageways to address medical racism in the treatment of Black youth who are the  victims of gun violence. Namely, when a youth who has been shot is brought into the hospital they  are often first exposed to police and questioning, rather than their family, community support  workers (like Community Passageways Deep Dive Team), quality comforting medical care, or an  attorney to advise them of their rights. We have been supporting the hospital in re-working their  policies to allow families and Community Passageways teams to be with youth every step of the way  and to prevent immediate questioning from police which may both further traumatize them and  violate their Constitutional Rights. 

Part of improving health outcomes for Black communities in our region is also finally responding to  the climate catastrophe. Communities of color are disproportionately impacted by urban heat and  environmental pollution in Seattle--Beacon Hill, Rainier Beach, and South Park. According to a  Seattle Times article by Naomi Ishisaka, “Local research… [shows] the city of Seattle and King  County found that the differences between the hottest and coolest parts of comparable Seattle areas  measured at the same time can differ by up to a shocking 23 degrees, due to disparities such as tree  canopy and location of industrial areas.” Heat islands, like the Rainier Beach neighborhood, are  often where there are the highest health disparities in communities of color. Much of these  inequities and disparities are rooted in the legacy of housing segregation, redlining, exclusionary  zoning, and environmental racism. This is why a Green New Deal, affordable housing, and equitable transportation are racial justice issues that deeply impact the health and thriving of Black communities. 

I propose the City of Seattle convene a compensated local team of Black health practitioners and  healers to develop a city-wide plan focused on Black health outcomes and improvements. Partnering  with community clinics and organizations like the Tubman Center for Health & Freedom, the  African American Health Board, African American Reach & Teach Health, The Well, Gathering  Roots Retreat & Wellness Center, Niles Edge, and SURJ we can assess the City budget, determine  priority areas of investment, and establish a plan for improving health outcomes for Black residents  as led and determined by the Black communities. 

Furthermore, we know that our Black trans residents experience gross marginalization,  disenfranchisement, and discrimination in healthcare, housing, and employment. Employment is  often a determinant of a person's ability to obtain and sustain stable housing and housing is a major  and primary determinant of health. For this reason we have partnered with the Black Trans Task  Force to develop a platform for Black Trans Thriving in the City of Seattle. We firmly believe that  when we uplift our most marginalized Black residents, all Black residents will have better access to  healthcare, housing, and employment. Below is our platform for Black Trans Thriving. (The model  used to develop this platform could be expanded to build out a full platform for improving Black  health outcomes and growing our base of Black-led clinics and healers in the City of Seattle.) We want to build a city where Black Trans Women & Black Trans Femmes thrive. Given the  specific vulnerabilities of Black trans people - to lack of health care and housing, to being out of  home as youth, and to being criminalized - we propose the following five point platform for creating  the necessary conditions for Black Trans liberation. These five points reflect places where City  Council could initiate immediate and impactful changes to guarantee Black trans thriving. For those  solutions that require a new funding source, money diverted from the bloated, racist, ineffective, and  frequently transphobic criminal legal system (including Seattle Police Department, Municipal Court,  Criminal Division of the City Attorney’s Office budget) should serve as a primary source. 

DECRIMINALIZE, DECRIMINALIZE, DECRIMINALIZE 

The City of Seattle should fully decriminalize sex work, as well as crimes of poverty and drug crimes.  Thirty eight percent of Black trans people have been harassed by police and 15% have been  assaulted by police. Forty seven percent of Black trans people have been incarcerated. 

City Council has the ability to transform what Seattle’s Municipal Court does - and to ensure that the  misdemeanor punishment power of that court and SPD’s arresting power don’t render Black trans  people even more unsafe and vulnerable. Trans people have disproportionate contact with police,  jails, and courts because they are more likely to be on the street due to homelessness and/or being  unwelcome at home, because their circumstances often force them to work in the underground  economy, and because many face harassment and arrest simply because they are out in public while  being transgender. Council’s 2020 repeal of drug traffic loitering and prostitution loitering laws was a  step in the right direction, given the way these laws give cover to racist, anti-trans policing practices,  but full decriminalization of sex work would contribute to ending the harassment and violence  against Black trans sex workers by police. Aside from putting the lives of trans sex workers at risk,  these laws and practices put many trans women who are participating in routine, legal activities at  risk for arrest and incraceration. But decriminalizing sex work is not enough. Black Trans people - along with all our marginalized neighbors currently cycled through the municipal court - will be  better off when our City fully decriminalizes crimes of poverty and drug crimes. 

SUPPORT TRANS YOUTH 

The City of Seattle should fund supportive, independent-living style housing for trans youth. Young  people should have separate apartments and autonomy, but be provided consent-based (not  mandatory) services and support (for example, cooking support, help with benefits applications and  scholarship applications, etc.). The City should also ensure that all existing youth services provided  by the City or funded by the city are trans-welcoming (including Seattle community centers, shelters  and libraries); this can be actualized by contracting a trans-led group to evaluate current youth  services and develop a plan for creating welcoming and responsive services. Forty-one percent of  trans people have attempted suicide (compared to 1.6% of the general population), and estimates  show that up to 40% of homeless youth are transgender or otherwise LGBTQ-identified.  Supporting Black trans youth across all city services, and guaranteeing them trans-welcoming  housing options will ensure that our trans youth survive to become our future trans elders. 

HOUSING GUARANTEE FOR TRANS PEOPLE 

The City of Seattle should guarantee no-barrier, non-congregate shelter by the end of 2022 and  guaranteed no-barrier permanent housing by the end of 2027 for un-housed and/or housing insecure, low-income trans people in Seattle, with priority going to people with disabilities, BIPOC,  and trans people who have been previously incarcerated. Thirty-seven percent of Black trans people  have been evicted at some point in their lives because of their gender, and 38% have been denied a  home or apartment. The same number have had to have sex with someone to have a place to stay or  pay rent. Forty percent of Black trans people who have attempted to access a homeless shelter have  been denied because of being trans, and the majority of those who have tried to access shelter have  been harassed by shelter staff or residents, up to and including being sexually assaulted. It is obvious,  but it bears repeating - having a safe place to live makes Black trans thriving possible. Without a  trans housing guarantee - for safe dignified shelter and no-barrier permanent housing - Seattle  cannot claim to care about Black trans lives. 

BUILDING TRANS HEALTHCARE 

The City of Seattle should create a fund for covering healthcare needs for trans people that are not  met by Medicaid or private insurance. The City should also fund the development of a health clinic  that serves trans and non-binary people, and prioritizes the needs of Black trans people. Thirty-one  percent (31%) of Black trans people have no health insurance, and 19% of trans people have been refused medical care due to being transgender or gender-expansive, with even higher numbers  among people of color. The discrimination, disrespect, harassment, and outright denial of service  contributes to many Black trans people postponing or foregoing seeking health care, and provider  ignorance about the health needs of trans people further contributes to catastrophic health  outcomes for Black trans people. Black trans thriving requires real access to healthcare, and an  investment in trans-specific care should be a public-health priority for the City of Seattle. 

COMPREHENSIVE TRAINING FOR CITY AGENCIES AND EMPLOYEES

City Council should fund the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to create a program that ensures  comprehensive training and evaluation of all city agencies regarding access to services for trans  Seattleites. OCR should create a training core of trans people trained to work from a shared  curriculum, to both train city employees and work with agencies to evaluate obstacles to trans access and solutions to resolve them. Black trans people, trans people with disabilities, and formerly  incarcerated trans people should be prioritized in the creation of this trainers group. Trans people  are nearly four times more likely to have a household income of less than $10,000/year compared to  the general population, and 47% percent of trans people have experienced an adverse job outcome,  such as being fired, not hired, or denied a promotion because of being transgender or gender expansive. Over one-quarter have lost a job due to being transgender or gender non-conforming  and 50% have been harassed. By funding the OCR project of training trainers from the trans  community, Seattle will guarantee a “by us for us” approach that builds trans access to jobs. This  will prevent the oft-seen dynamic of people from outside a community getting all paid opportunities  that come from that community’s work to resist conditions of marginalization and oppression. 

Seattle’s history of residential segregation, and restrictive deeds, housing covenants and redlining are  some of the most critical and insidious drivers of racialized wealth inequality in Seattle. These racist  and anti-black barriers have prevented Black communities from building, growing and transferring  wealth. This has led to huge disparities in homeownership where 50% of white residents are  homeowners but a little over 25% of Black residents own homes. Seattle is the third most  gentrifying city in the country. 

1. Keiro Project - I will provide public support for transferring Keiro building into community care.  Similar to how the Youth Achievement Center is a consortium of organizations who have a shared  interest in establishing sustainable spaces for Black youth to thrive, Keiro should also be transferred to a consortium of Black-led organizations to provide culturally-rooted services and supports for  those Black communities most impacted by homelessness and housing instability in our region.  According to the “United Way of King County Understanding Racial Inequities Report '' from 2015,  “People of color collectively comprise approximately 27% of the general population in King County,  yet, they represent 57% of people who are homeless. Black/African Americans are over five times  and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander and American Indian/Alaska Native are about four  times as represented among people experiencing homelessness as they are in the general  population.” We know that COVID-19 has exacerbated the racial wealth gap, the housing  affordability crisis, and homelessness state of emergency and it is an inevitability that Black people  were disproportionately impacted by the effects of the COVID-19 crisis. It makes sense to provide  this resource to address the disproportionate impact of these intersecting crises on Black community  members. 

2. Red (Black, and Green) Barn Ranch - The Ranch is owned by Seattle Parks and is severely  underutilized. I support transferring the land to a consortium of Black farmers such as Nurturing  Roots, Black Star Farmers, and farmers from the Rainier Beach Food Innovation District led by the  Rainier Beach Action Coalition. As stated earlier, I am cognizant that Black community is not a  monolith. There are a number Black-led farm communities in the Seattle/King County area.  Through the collaboration of these Black-led farm communities many more Black peoples can  connect with the earth, learn to grow our own food, and have access to healthy, local, sustainable  food sources. 

3. Youth Achievement Center - I have been working on the Youth Achievement Center since its inception. I was in the room when the youth said they wanted to build “housing co-located with services in the souf end specifically for Black youth.” From there I supported the planning and implementation of a candidate forum where youth could get commitments from candidates in the 2019 elections to commit to assisting in identifying surplus land and supporting the Youth  Consortium in acquiring that land. Community Passageways and Creative Justice (the organization I  lead) came together to steer this project along with King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay’s  office. We wanted to partner with a Black developer and so we asked Africatown Community Land  Trust to join the team. We have thus been able to get a commitment from Sound Transit that they  will make a land transfer of two (2) plots of land near the Columbia City Light Rail Station to the  County and then to ACLT for development. We have hosted multiple design ciphers with youth  which have rendered beautiful designs for a building reflective of the depth and diversity of Black  Seattle and the needs and desires as determined by Black youth. This week, July 12th, we are  launching the capital campaign and having a block party near the site on July 18th. I commit fighting  for dollars during the budget process through departments such as the Human Service Department,  the new Community Safety and Communications Center, the Department of Education and Early  Learning, the Office of Civil Rights, or etc. I will be supportive of requests for dollars through the  Equitable Development Initiative and the Office of Housing. I will also be supportive when  advocating at the State and Federal level for dollars. 

Each of the above projects will require dollars for services. I commit to making budget proposals  during the City budget process to allocate dollars towards food sustainability and culturally rooted  Black farming, culturally rooted services and cash assistance programs for those experiencing  homelessness or housing instability, culturally rooted services for youth, and technical assistance. Grants, managing dollars, and reporting are not intuitive. I have had to learn these processes on my  own over the years of working in the nonprofit industrial complex. Ensuring organizations have  access to technical support, programs and equipment needed to build their own best practices is  going to be important for sustainability. 

For each of these projects, I will be supportive of requests for dollars through the Equitable  Development Initiative and the Office of Housing (where appropriate). I will also be supportive  when advocating at the State and Federal level for additional dollars. 

I commit to continue to pursue divestment from overtly anti-black and oppressive structures like the  criminal punishment system (police, Seattle Municipal Courts, jails) and to push for direct  investments in the above described projects, services, and programs. 

End Exclusionary Zoning (short term): 

We need to address the nearly 100 years of exclusionary zoning that was put in place in 1923; the  upcoming 2024 comprehensive plan is a great place for us to chart this course towards repair and  reparations through housing justice. 

Our current zoning pattern has created a bifurcated city. ⅔ of residential land is not accessible to all  but those with the highest incomes. We need a mix of housing and residential patterns that create  more opportunity for urban villages, social affordable housing, coops, community land trust, and  housing for workers and the missing middle. 

Key priorities for the 2024 comprehensive plan include zoning, housing affordability, climate  change, liveability, equity/ending economic apartheid, and transportation (long-term solutions):

1. Seattle’s land use regime has led to displacement and inequity. The City’s development has also  followed historical redlining and perpetuated racist zoning policies and restricted the growth of  affordable housing supply. We must end single family zoning as we know it, and allow our zoning  code to foster a diversity of housing options including “infill strategies” for the “missing middle”  and multifamily buildings. 

2. We must expand urban villages and share growth with areas that historically have not absorbed  growth. Seattle has built density in those neighborhoods with the highest concentration of poverty  and where residents are most likely to be displaced. This is unjust and perpetuates anti-black housing  policies. All of Seattle must be willing to take on density if we are to solve the housing affordability  crisis and stop/prevent displacement and gentrification. Constructing high-density social, green,  deeply affordable housing throughout the city must be paired with high-quality transportation,  walkability, and more multimodal transit options. 

3. Support land acquisition into cooperatives, community land trusts, and consortiums will help  families build equity through homeownership. Homeownership is presently not a possibility for all  but those with the highest income (income inequity which is also highly racialized). In our region,  Black, Native, and Latinx families have the least opportunity for home ownership and have the least  access to high-earning jobs. As a result, Seattle is perpetuating racialized economic apartheid. The  2024 Comprehensive Plan presents an opportunity to address some of these inequities. 

Support the Dismantling of I-200 (mid-term/long-term): 

We need to overturn I-200 so that we can make direct investments into Black communities. 

Land reparations legislation (short term/mid-term/long-term): 

I have previously described commitments to land reparations in other portions of this questionnaire. 

Stop gentrification and displacement in the CD: 

Stopping gentrification and displacement means keeping people in their homes. Rainier Beach  Action Coalition and Puget Sound Sage wrote an important report on Disaster Gentrification that  everyone should read. To tackle this crisis the following recommendations were made:

1. Reduce evictions and foreclosures by forgiving rent debt, extending the eviction and foreclosure  moratoria, and making rent relief contingent on increased tenant protections;

2. Create opportunity for BIPOC communities to secure land and buildings to preserve affordability  by robustly funding acquisition and preservation funds; 

3. Increase BIPOC power in planning and development by establishing local planning and  accountability through equitable development zones; 

4. Preserve affordability and create a path for tenant ownership by passing a Tenant/Community  Opportunity to Purchase Act; 

5. Stop harassment of vulnerable homeowners by creating non-Solicitation/cease and desist zones;

6. Discourage property flipping for profit through a tax on certain real estate transactions.

7. Seattle City Council, due partly to the work of Councilmember Sawant, already started growing  the suite of tenants protections at the municipal level including ending school year evictions,  preventing folks from being evicted due to unpaid rent during COVID-19, and right of first refusal. 

Additionally, we will need to: 

1. The gentrification conversation has to be framed around the underlying issues of power and race  that created inequitable development here and make gentrification possible.

2. Protect our long-time residents who wish to remain in place. One way to do this is by ensuring  that all homeowners, especially Black seniors, know about HB1410; which prevents foreclosure of  homes due to unpaid property taxes. This new state legislation is key for keeping our seniors in their  homes. 

3. Prohibit large-scale luxury development in neighborhoods with a high-risk of displacement. We  must ensure that development is actually to the benefit of the current community so that we can  remain and age in place. 

4. Preserve our existing affordable rental units and ensure they are quality, healthy, and habitable.

5. Utilize City-owned land and surplus land for partnerships with community to build deeply  affordable housing. 

6. Expand our current commercial rent control legislation to ensure that small businesses do not  lose their storefronts. 

7. Fight for residential rent control alongside a myriad of cash assistance programs, investments, and  tenants rights laws. 

First Time Home Buyer Programs: 

We need to increase and improve access to first-time home buyer programs for the most  economically and systematically marginalized Black residents. While we have a number of first-time  homebuyer programs and a down payment assistance program, the most marginalized Black  residents still do not qualify. We need to assess the effectiveness of our current model and determine  if it reaches the communities most in need of support buying a home. Those communities most in  need of buying homes in our region are those who have been systematically excluded from the  home buying market, like Black communities in our region. 

Reinvigorate the CD: 

1. Support “The William Grose Center for Cultural Innovation & Enterprise,” Black Dot, and other  spaces for small businesses incubation. Partner this with our development plans to create  opportunities for expansion to store fronts as Black-owned small businesses become financially  viable and sustainable. 

2. Utilize City-owned public spaces for small business incubation hubs and shared commercial  kitchens. 

3. Continue to support the growth and development of Africatown. 

4. We need community benefits agreements with new developments to ensure the Black  communities of the Central District benefit from new development rather than being pushed out or  displaced. 

5. Improving high capacity, rapid, efficient, and affordable public transit and multi-modal  transportation options 

Progressive Taxation: 

Our regressive tax system places the burden of solving the housing affordability crisis, equitable  transportation, and ending the racial wealth gap on those communities, especially Black  communities, already most cost burdened with rent and transportation. Many of our Black elders,  who bought homes in previous decades, are losing their homes because they are on fixed incomes  and our continued extreme reliance on property taxes and levies economically displaces them from  their homes. This serves to further erode Black home ownership in the region. 

Progressive Funding Options:

1. The funding from Jumpstart Seattle is one place to start. We are currently generating only half of  the revenue that we could from the big business tax (a bit over $200 million per a year).

2. We must bring our housing supply to scale to actually meet the crisis facing our City. We need  approximately $400 million per year (1 billion per year in King County) of affordable housing to  meet the need. The City can no longer wait on the private market to address a crisis from which they  benefit (and therefore have no economic incentive to help end). As a result, Seattle needs to get  deeper into social affordable housing. 

3. Other funding options I support using are capital gains taxes, a Seattle local estate tax, raise the  REET, speculative real estate tax, vacant and unoccupied properties tax, second homes tax, and  taxes on exceptionally high compensation. These funding possibilities were identified by the Seattle  City Council in its 2018 “Taskforce on Progressive Revenue for Housing and Homelessness,” but  are as yet unimplemented.

I want to begin by affirming the statement that KCEN made: “our school system has been built on  anti-Blackness.” To fix this, we need Black students, families, and educators to be empowered to  make the necessary changes to uproot institutional racism. That is why I helped organize and  participated in the “Black Education Now!” rally that was co-sponsored by KCEN during the  summer of 2020. And that is why I supported all ten demands of Black Education Now: 1)  Community Schools, 2) Restorative Justice, 3) Black Studies and Ethnic Studies, 4) Hire Black  teachers, 5) Anti-Racists Professional Development, 6) Accountability, 7) Student Representation,  Youth Achievement Center, 9) Community Control of Schools, and 10) Community Control of  Education Resources and Levy Funds. 

As a Black Educator mysef, I know first-hand the inequities and structural racism built into the  school system. In this era of mass incarceration, there is a school-to-prison-pipeline system that is  more invested in locking up Black youth than creating space for them to unlock their minds. This  system was able to find hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new youth jail, but not address the  social and emotional well-being of our Black youth. This system uses harsh discipline policies that  push Black students out of classrooms and schools at disproportionate rates. When the Department  of Education studied suspension rates in the Seattle Public Schools, they found that the school  system suspended Black youth at 4 times the rate of white youth for the same infractions. And you  only have to look at the enraging and heartbreaking example of what happened last school year to  Jalil, a Black second-grade student at View Ridge Elementary School, to know that our school  system needs a dramatic transformation. The school principal repeatedly locked Jalil in an  enclosure, known as “the cage”—and was initially not even reprimanded by school officials. 

But it isn’t just Black bodies that are under attack, it’s also Black minds. For too long, Black  students’ histories have been erased or reduced to the period of enslavement in corporate textbooks  and curriculum. Black students deserve to know that truth about the thriving African civilizations  before Europeans perpetrated colonialism and genocide. They deserve to know about the long  Black Freedom Struggle. And they deserve to know about the many contributions and innovations  provided to this country and the world by Black people. That is why the Nikkita for Nine campaign  celebrates the victories of the Black Education Now! mobilization which helped to win the new  Black Studies department in Seattle Public Schools. We also know that this department will need  robust financial support, and will need to be directed and supported by Black families, if it is going  to truly be effective.

There are many ways that the City of Seattle and the Seattle Public Schools are separate entities— but we also know there are more opportunities for collaboration than are currently being utilized  and we also know that there are key areas of overlap where policy must change. 

One of the main ways the City of Seattle is officially connected to the Seattle Public Schools is  through the Education Levy funds. The Nikkita for Nine campaign agrees with the statement put  out by Black Education Now! that reads, “Too often data about the state of emergency for the Black  community is used to receive financial resources, yet the Black community is denied the funding to  address the issues within the community. Too often, the resources are given to white-led  organizations to lead the work with no improvements for decades. The Black community has the  expertise, know-how, and the plan to serve its education and community needs.” We want to  explore mechanisms for a participatory budgeting process with the education levy funds that put  Black-led organizations at the table for directing levy dollars. We also want to decouple levy funding  from any high-stakes standardized testing requirements as we know that standardized testing was a  product of the white supremacist eugenics movement and still works to maintain racial inequities  today. 

In addition, the Nikkita for Nine campaign supports the call for more community control of  education including the demand of the Africatown Center for Education and Innovation to be  gifted the current property they are on and/or returned to the Horace Mann building as they were  promised by a past SPS superintendent. Another important step towards empowering Black  students in Seattle would be to re-open and restore the African American Academy. 

**I was a part of the community-led actions at Horace Mann building. It was while I was in law  school. I supported with on-site programming, legal support, and legal observering when Seattle  Public Schools proceeded to use Seattle Police Department and courts to try to push us out.** 

Finally, to uproot institutional racism in the education system we will need to hire many more Black  educators. Too many Black educators are getting pushed out of Seattle because of the housing  affordability crisis. The Nikkita for Nine campaign would like to work towards reallocating funds  from the legal punishment system and put them towards providing affordable housing for Black  educators and staff. 

We believe that by disinvesting from punishment systems, such as the Seattle Police Department  and Seattle Municipal Court, the City of Seattle could provide robust financial support to Black  youth and families in holistic ways. By partnering with Black-led community organizations we can  achieve the schools Black children deserve.

Right now, we’re in a situation where policing and criminalization drain resources and put Black  lives at risk. Seattle severely under-funds human needs like housing, childcare, food programs and  other essential services. Meanwhile, spending on our anti-Black, bloated policing and criminalization  systems is off the charts. While residents face housing costs that have skyrocketed in recent years  and mounting unemployment, last year the City spent over $400 million on policing. The City’s past  budgets have not represented a commitment to public safety and well-being, they have represented a  commitment to racist policing.

The problem isn’t just policing. Seattle spends enormously on our municipal court, a place primarily  dedicated to processing homeless people into jail. King County recently spent over $230 million on a  new youth jail where kids are traumatized, separated from families and schools, and subject to abuse, with Black children disproportionately bearing the brunt. All across the system, from who gets  arrested, to who experiences pretrial detention, to what sentences are determined by courts, to who  gets deported, the system is targeted at Black people, people of color, indigenous people, women,  people with disabilities, and queer and trans people. 

If more cops, jails and prisons don’t keep us safe, what does? Common sense tells us people are  safer when they have housing and income, when they have reliable childcare, and when they can  access health care including mental health support and drug treatment that is culturally competent.  None of these things are guaranteed in our region right now–in fact people are facing less and less  access to these necessities as housing costs have soared and unemployment has increased. If we  really care about well-being, and about defending Black lives, we would start by fully funding human  needs, and use every penny divested from the criminal punishment system towards these goals. 

Additionally, we can work on building strategies for responding to emergencies that actually work.  When people are having mental health crises, mental health workers, not armed police, are what they  need. When people are facing domestic violence, they need support to plan for safety including  housing and transportation resources, not a policing and court system that often criminalizes the  person being abused, and does nothing to address the root causes of endemic gender violence.  There are tons of amazing resources about how we can actually respond to violence in ways that  stop it and prevent it, which policing and criminalization fail at. And there are tons of ideas for how  to reinvest in real safety and well-being. 

Given all of this, in coming budget cycles, SPD’s budget must continue to shrink. We must never  return to the era of Council unquestioningly voting to give SPD and police pension a full quarter of  the general fund. I fully support the pledge to defund SPD by half. I was part of the coalition that  crafted the demand during the summer 2020 uprising, and I helped plan and lead the march on City  Hall on June 3 of 2020 to present the demand to our current Mayor. I will keep working to shrink  SPD by 50% - and beyond. Accelerating that reality means not only pushing for each year’s SPD  budget to be smaller than the previous year’s, but also maintaining vigilance throughout the rest of  the year - making sure that overtime is kept in check on its way to being eliminated, and making sure  that any cost savings from police attrition are immediately captured and redistributed away from  SPD. This also includes doing everything possible to stop funding new cadet classes, so the police  force continues to shrink in size and budget. 

As part of the team that crafted the original demand to defund SPD by 50%, I was already  supportive of reinvesting these funds into Black-community led solutions. While in office I will  build with those Black-led organizations that are intersectional and demonstrate a real commitment  to ensuring City resources actually reach the most marginalized, disenfranchised, and impacted Black residents. I will strive to ensure that money divested from the criminal punishment system reaches  Black communities through a variety of mechanisms - participatory budgeting, RFP processes  designed to benefit Black communities, and funding city services designed to offer Black residents  true public safety for the first time. Some of these divested dollars should go towards supporting  programs that address harm without requiring police presence. While 2020’s uprising secured some  initial funds in this direction, we need more (and more permanent) funding, particularly into culturally responsive, community-led care solutions. Some of these dollars should go towards  meeting basic needs, because we know that meeting people’s basic needs renders policing obsolete.  Divesting from policing also means divesting from the punishment practices that disproportionately  impact Black communities. This means, for example, ending the practice of collecting city revenue  through fines and civil asset forfeiture. This also means ending the City’s contract with the King  County Jail. 

Unlike my opponents in this race, I have dedicated many years of my life to working in collaboration  with many people and organizations, including Black organizers and Black-led organizations, to dismantle the systems of racist policing and the criminal punishment system. I am an abolitionist  and organizer who gives a portion of my time dismantling racist, classist, sexist systems and a  portion of my time building the systems of care, support and accountability that we need. Since 2015  I have helped build Creative Justice into a Black-led, arts-based, healing engaged and liberatory space  for youth. 

These are not just words I write in a questionnaire, this is work that I have done. I have  unflinchingly protested and marched in the streets, supported young people in liberating themselves  from racist systems like the juvenile detention center and the school-to-prison-to-deportation  pipeline, called for the closure of the youth jail, organized with No New Youth Jail, Block the  Bunker and in defense of Black lives, advocated for the Zero Youth Detention Resolution at the  City Council and the resulting investments, advocated for numerous budgetary investments for  many Black-led organizations to build key infrastructure for community-based and community-led  supports and infrastructure for health and public safety, supported the development of Restorative  Community Pathways, and advocated for the end of the Snohomish County Jail contract. These are  not commitments I make because I am running for office. These are things I have fought for already  and will continue to fight for once in office.