Last Friday, Seattle police shamefully arrested a 13-year-old middle school student and climate justice activist during a peaceful demonstration outside Seattle City Hall. Today, I wrote to Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best and King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, urging them to explain the police action, apologize, and commit to not press charges. My letter is […]

Since they first started organizing the Art Workers Union earlier this year, the security guards at the Frye Art Museum have endured sharp resistance from management. On Aug. 5, I told museum CEO Joseph Frye it’s time for him to negotiate a just union contract without further delay. My letter is here and below: Mr. […]

On behalf of working people in Seattle and the United States, we salute the workers courageously occupying the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and send you our full solidarity and support.  We support the members of Unite and GMB trade unions that started the occupation last week, to defend their jobs and […]

On August 1, I joined hundreds of protesters outside the ICE headquarters in Seattle, demanding an end to the detention and inhumane treatment of immigrant families and children along the US-Mexico border and calling on the Washington State Legislature to ban private immigration detention centers, including the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, which is the […]

Dear housing justice activists, Congratulations to King County renters Mergitu Argo, Mouhamed Tall, Modou Ndiaye, and Lenh Vong, who successfully fought off No-Cause Evictions from their landlord last month! We organized together – tenants, the Tenants Union of Washington State, the Seattle/King County NAACP, King County Councilmember Larry Gossett, my City Council Office, Be:Seattle, Washington […]

Today (July 29), as the newly-formed Art Workers Union begins bargaining with Frye management for a first union contract, I issued this public statement: “As a member of the local teachers union, City Councilmember and elected representative of Seattle’s working people, and member of Socialist Alternative, I congratulate the Frye Art Museum security guards on […]

I sent the following letter on Tuesday July 9th, 2019 urging the CEO of Cascade Public media urging him to recognize the decision to form a union by the workers at Crosscut and KTCS. Dear Robert Dunlop, CEO Cascade Public Media: As a Seattle City Councilmember and an elected representative of the city’s working people, […]

To Cadence Real Estate, Chris Garvin, Barret Johnston, John Garvin:  I am writing to again urge you to transfer the building-based section 8 subsidies to  another building in the Central District, to allow your tenants to remain in their  communities when you demolish their homes.   My office has done outreach and found a not-for-profit affordable […]

Thursday, June 27, 2019  Dear Steve and Beau Harer, Glenn and Debra Koehler, and Detente Management;  We are writing to urge you to immediately renew the leases of Mergitu Argo, Mouhamed Tall, Modou Ndiaye, and Lenh Vong. You recently served the four of them with 20-day notice to terminate their tenancy, with no cause or […]

Dear Superintendent Juneau, Director Halfaker, Chief Academic Officer DeBacker, Executive Director Starosky, Director Bush, Senior Assistant General Counsel Boy, and School Board Members, I am writing to urge you to reestablish the partnership agreement and the MOA with the Urban Native Education Alliance (UNEA) to secure Robert Eagle Staff Middle School (RES) building facility for […]