One of the most profound pieces of my platform (and unique amongst all politicians in our region) is my proposed housing Public Utility District. Wherever higher density buildings are constructed by the PUD, ground floor (etc.) space will become available for businesses and services. Some of that space can and should be zoned for full scale supermarkets (with emphasis on healthy, affordable options such as Black-owned upstarts, Trader Joe's, Town & Country). Some of this space should also be set aside for use byBlack-owned health service providers such as TCHF and SHB and upstart Black doctors and dentists. We must build the communities Black folks deserve to live in and we must do it in a systemized fashion. To do that, we need a structure charged with doing just that and to allocate funding to assist in setting these outcomes up for success. I promise to be vigilant and committed to realizing both real space and the funding necessary to attract and strengthen those who will fill such space with critical health and food services.

Also, we need to do better at city and county government at recruiting and training health care workers in our Black communities and also having these same folks interning in and working in these new facilities in their communities, in partnership with our higher-ed institutions and new Federal, State, County and City funding to offset user fees and create radical affordability for those who need it most.

Between my anti-eviction housing grant stopgap program, drastically more affordable and anti-displacement housing in the communities that need it most and new health services and expansion of existing ones into PUD-constructed buildings and in or near community centers, we can make housing security and health care markedly more accessible.

As I touched on in previous questions, a new housing public utility district will go far toward building urgently needed supportive housing for those who need wraparound services, with a goal of getting all of our homeless in Seattle off the streets and into quality supportive and/or affordable housing within a few years. With regard to Black-specific options, that's where public-private partnerships come in. Existing anti-affirmative action and EO laws would likely prevent the construction of housing by a quasi-public agency for one demographic, however deserving. An invaluable organization such as Africatown Land trust can partner with our new PUD to craft land acquisition and funding schemes to extensively build upon what Africatown started. I am 100% committed to seeing this type of public-private partnership materialize and grow. It truly is the most efficient option to regain the Central Area as a center and bastion for Black Seattle, where affordable apartments, supportive housing and services for vulnerable adults and youth and even some single family homes can be created and filled with POC who have/had called that part of the city home for many years and generations.

And, again, these same housing PUD-involved housing projects must include Black-owned and operated businesses, health and other services, and food-desert-ending grocers. We can help Africatown (etc.) to complete what they have in the boards and replicate and expand that many fold.

If we add the Orange Line subway and a new cultural arts performance/training facility (with state of the art Converge Media space & studios?), the Central Area can shine as brightly as any part of Seattle, attracting others to a proudly Black-centric and largely Black-owned Central Area. It's all do-able, but we have to move boldly at City Hall, not unlike the bold ways that Africatown and/or Converge Media march forward. No more Seattle timidity, pilot projects and overly process-burdened slowdowns!

I majored in North American History at University, at a school that was very progressive, that taught truth. I know all-too-well that this country was founded on the whims and folly of mostly-rich, opportunist, self-centered white guys who embedded the appalling bigotry of the colonies into the US Constitution. Our 'Founding Fathers'. Shameful. And, that false narrative of the 'Land of the Free" has been carried forward for 2.5 centuries now. Seattle must vet its entire history curriculum for all of Seattle's children. No Seattleite should make it even a year in our schools without being aware that First Nations people's settled this land millennia ago or that Black people largely built the USA, with assists from Chinese and other laborers. For nothing. And much worse. That truth must be universally taught here. I will use my voice toward that very goal, wherever I can.

Le me preface everything I write here with what should be obvious but might not be: I will ensure that my proposals specific to our Black community will be vetted by Seattle's Black residents to ensure a high level of consensus by those who'd be most affected by such plans. And, I promise to do this in an expeditious manner so as to prevent any delays from getting started on implementation.

In addition to a radical realigning of the approach to the curriculum at all schools regarding especially history, 'English'/lit and arts/culture programming, I believe in specialized schools within a larger, multicultural public school system such as Seattle's. Children are most alit by what they connect/relate to and what inspires them. I'd love to see Black-centric elementary and middle schools and to see Garfield to specialize in Black history, arts, literature and culture. Anyone Seattle student could attend but the specialized schools would be geared especially toward our Black and Brown kids with extra special focus on their history, and a celebration of Black contributions that instills self-esteem, pride and empowerment through knowledge. Walking into a school where walls are adorned with pictures of Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, Steven Biko, Mandela, MLK Jr., George Washington Carver, Kamala Harris, Ray Charles, Barrack Obama, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass and Nina Simone makes a big difference. Learning the classics such as Native Son and the works of August Wilson and James Baldwin spurs thirst for knowledge in all exposed to such brilliance but such exposure is critically important to sparing young Black minds to aspire toward greater learning, if not their own greatness.

As for talent, it is crucial that, just as with public safety, our education staff and teachers reflect the backgrounds of those they are teaching and relate to them on a very real and respectful, empathetic level. Black-centric schools should have lots of Black adult faces who can relate to those they are charged with caring for, managing/coordinating and educating. We must partner with Seattle's institutions of higher learning and our business community to provide scholarships, again, including cost of living allowances to facilitate the education and degree-attainment of hundreds of Black teachers, with commitments to hire them (assuming they meet fair minimum standards) to serve our growing city but particularly our Black kids and, especially at Black-centric schools.

As with all student behavior, schools continue to get plenty wrong. While some inroads have been made to address children's ADHD and learning differences, there is so much progress still needed. Sadly, horribly, cultural sensitivity that addresses often disparate backgrounds, including Black and Brown kids, seems to be one of the final frontiers in education. There is so much work to be done. Seattle Public Schools must enact standards that acknowledge and address the reality that different kids have different challenges, socio-economic and cultural/heritage backgrounds, learning styles, strengths and obstacles to engaging in learning. We can't address these differences and connect with students, meeting them where they are, if we don't systemize effective, equitable, compassionate, humane solutions and then hire or hire/train staff with the specific skills and tools to deal with different student populations with very different needs.

In my opinion, we need to set up a commission of experts who's job is to work with directly involved parents and members of each regulating body (state, school board, etc.) to ensure we create a system that has processes and procedures as well as the proper expert staff to address students who exhibit behaviors that create learning environment challenges or present with severe behavioral issues, with the goal of, by all means acceptable, constructive and effective keeping them in school and out of truancy or worse, the criminal system.

We simply must reallocate enough correctional system funding and find the necessary funds beyond that, if necessary, to create school-based approaches that capture children's attention early on, meeting them where they are and implementing constructive, trust-building restoration, until each student 'takes' to better approaches, healthier and safer-for-everyone behaviors. This will require higher staffing needs, specialized staffing and programs but long term, the investment in humans is a no-brainer better investment.

In terms of codifying Black representation/control over Black schools and the funding necessary for all of this, we must make that a matter of policy, a matter of law. We must legislate minimum thresholds of spending per student, depending on need. If we must borrow NYC's model of finding private funds to assist with this programming, then that's what needs to be done. To ensure that new policies and funding are correctly implemented, there must be a rigorous audit system because it will be critical to get funds distributed as needed and required by these new plans and statutes.

We should seek legal ways to create appointed representative positions on our school board that guarantee adequate representation for Black and Indigenous peoples and, especially their new Black/Brown-forcused community schools. Though I'll have little direct sway over the Seattle Public Schools Board, I will use the weight of my Council position to advocate for all of the aforementioned, work to pass statutes and ordinances to assist in facilitation and float plans to the media to build public pressure and support. If all else fails, I am on board to help create a separate and parallel system that caters to our Black and Brown communities specific needs.

I'd also like to explore the creation of an education advocacy and monitoring position in City Hall to liaise between Council and the Seattle School Board toward shaping resolutions, and ordinances, seeking funding and implementing policy toward desired goals as expressed by our especially marginalized residents and by experts at the forefront of the field of equitable, reformative and restorative education.

I will and do commit to stepping up funding to invest specifically in Black community-led and Black-centered organizations. That figure should -easily be to the tune of tens of millions of dollars every year ($50 Million? $60 million?). It's hard to pinpoint a number until we dig more deeply, especially because I see us altogether replacing the current policing structure with a much more comprehensive, culturally sensitive, constructive and assistive Public Safety Department that actually has the proper staffing levels to address the public safety needs of our city. After extensive consultations with experts in several countries (Canada, the UK, NYC, Albany, NY) including places that I've lived in and had first-hand public safety experiences with, my plan calls for a four-pronged approach.

1. Scale down or replace our current SPD so the policing division consists of only highly-trained, elite tactical units who's work is specific to extreme, violent crime, such as active gun violence, terrorism, etc. It's time to end SPOG's collective bargaining bribery, ransom-like tactics -either by force of will or by dissolving the department and rehiring the best of the bunch to be part of the new tactical/anti-violence division.

2. Create a Mental Health Officer Division -largely ungunned- so that trained mental health experts are equipped with enough skills that they do not need to ride with typical police, enabling crisis response by them alone. All public safety officers would be connected by radios so that if any one division needs assistance from another, they can simply call for backup.

3. Create a community officer division that's geared toward facilitating citizen-government relationships, being in the community and offering a helping hand, educating and informing, with an eye toward nurturing and facilitating the community fabric of safety and caring, without guns. There should be community officers at every community center, as well as strolling our streets from their neighborhood precincts.

4. A new By-Law Officer division, to enforce, respond to and educate residents about the overwhelming majority of 'crime' that falls under bad behavior, illegal stupidity, statutory violations, non-violent, noise/quality of life and non-extreme physical altercations. Officers without guns.

By-law officers are common in Canada, Australia, Germany, the UK, The Netherlands, New Zealand etc. In fact, you'll find a healthy by-law officer presence just across our state's border in Delta and White Rock, B.C.

This approach ends militarized policing and turns our police department into one focused on public safety, de-escalation, equity and inclusion. This approach also demands that department personnel live here, form relationships with Seattle's people and provide safety, first and foremost, through collaboration, patience and caring.

It also retains mechanisms to handle extreme violence and/or crises, with greater overall staffing levels that will reduce wait times and burnout.

We must get away from our current, inadequate and all-wrong North-South-West-Southwest precinct police bunker model and build dozens of community precincts that primarily emphasize foot patrols, with bike patrols as a secondary mode. Police and public safety vehicles should be for limited patrols, rapid response units, detectives and other safety-related work where vehicles are necessary.

This new Public Safety department must hire very differently. We must build a department where Black and Brown people want to work. Toward that end, I believe Black and Brown people should be seated in major positions of influence within the department to the extent that our historically marginalized, terrorized and abused People of Color populations will largely be steering or co-steering policy and building out the department. No more white folks policing non-whites.

No, this will be public safety by and for the community that has so often been oppressed by it.

All new hires must be required to live in Seattle. Even if that means creating a program to assist with facilitating this.

We must have the courage to enact a new, better model that will keep us all safer and treated better in both the short and long term.

All new hires must be required to live within Seattle, even if we must help them to make that a reality.

All public safety officers must undergo regular training and retraining.

All public safety officers must be required to attend monthly or quarterly counseling.

Streetside Public Safety kiosks should be positioned at known trouble spots as long as necessary, to deter crime and bad behavior where it so often lives (think Pike/Pine, 3rd & Pine, Cal Anderson Park. Precincts should be located throughout the city but especially in historic trouble spots such as 23rd and Union, Rainier Avenue South near Mt. Baker Station, Rainier Beach near Safeway, etc.

We must de-emphasize policing that looks for bad behavior (usually with great biases) and instead focus on building community 'bridges' and trust, invested communities, eradicating/ending the cycle of poverty in this rich city of ours, encouraging and modeling safe, thoughtful behaviors and ensuring safe spaces and a sense of security for all.

This plan is a realistic reflection of what is needed in a rapidly growing city. It will cost money but it will pay great dividends while investing so much in communities that have either been ignored or persecuted under the guise of policing for too long.

This plan sets a historically major role in public safety for our non-white communities, creating all manner of desirable, helping-hand training and employment opportunities. It invests public safety in communities but also ensures the safety of those employed to provide such a vital service. And, this plan will cost money, likely, when new Capital Costs (precincts, kiosks), training, counseling and personnel additions are factored in, close to what we already spend. However, short term, this plan is poised to deliver some of the very best outcomes in the Nation, if not the world.

And, this new Public Safety Department implementation should not occur without real, in-tandem-investments in Black & Brown community infrastructure, education, community organizations, housing, equity-building, transportation, arts/culture/recreation facilities, job training, scholarships. childcare and health care investments. We need and are working on new progressive taxation.

With those new revenue streams, Seattle needs to invest more in several key areas -housing, transportation, a public restroom system and, especially, an overdue redressing of gross and historic injustices, inequalities and underfunding of our Black and Brown communities. There will be great changes on any council I belong to.

I promise to be a creative force to move the needle substantially on these initiatives. With my fellow councillors, I am confident, we can and will do great things to markedly improve the lives of Seattle's Peoples of Color and to empower (through funding and legislation) the same communities to do the same for themselves.