The show from April 14, 2021, featured David Obelcz and our co-host Jennifer Smith.
[SEATTLE] – (MTN) For the second night in a row, activists protesting the death of Daunte Wright gathered in downtown Seattle. Seattle police arrested three people last night, two for graffiti and one for obstruction. Activists and independent journalists report that the “graffiti” was chalk art and spray chalk.
On the Seattle Police Twitter, an image showed a couple of dozen people gathered outside of the West Precinct. The picture appears to have been taken from the rooftop using a cellphone while others in the group appear to be filming. A candlelight memorial with sidewalk chart art near the curb can be seen.
Wright was shot on Saturday in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota by police officer Kim Potter. The shooting opened raw wounds in Minnesota, which is gripped by the Derek Chauvin trial and the death of George Floyd. The Chauvin trial entered its fourteenth day with defense testimony starting earlier in the week.
Former Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon, who resigned on Tuesday, stated that he believed the shooting of Wright was an accident, and that officer Potter had thought she was using her taser. Potter resigned from the Brooklyn Center police department on Tuesday in a two-sentence letter.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension announced that Potter had been arrested for the death of Wright. The Washington County Attorney’s Office will announce charges of second-degree manslaughter on Wednesday, and Potter is currently being held at the Hennepin County Jail. If found guilty she faces up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine.
Wright’s shooting comes just days after the video emerged of a police stop of Caron Nazario in Windsor, Virginia. Nazario, a US Army second lieutenant who was in uniform, was held at gunpoint, threatened, pepper-sprayed, and beaten to the ground before being released with no charges. The traffic stop was for no visible license plate. Nazario was driving a newly purchased vehicle with a dealer-issued temporary tag visible in the back window.
A $1 million civil rights lawsuit has been filed against the city of Windsor, and Lieutenant Joe Gutierrez was fired for his conduct. The traffic stops of Wright and Nazario illustrate the use of pretext arrest by officers, which statistically target minority drivers.
The Washington Post reports that Nazario is related to Eric Garner, who died in New York in 2014 by a police chokehold for selling individual cigarettes.
Seattle police have been particularly aggressive with chalk art graffiti arrest at both the East and West Precinct. Other municipalities in the state, including some police unions, have made decisions not to take enforcement action because of First Amendment right questions. In Washington state, it is protected speech to chalk art on public rights of way such as sidewalks. It is not considered legal to chalk art buildings, while the legality of chalk art on temporary structures such as the wall around the East Precinct is questionable.
All three arrested last night were arrested under Seattle Municipal Code. Due to COVID, jail capacity, and budget issues, the city prosecutor office has indicated they are not actively pursuing charges for these types of arrests.
[PORTLAND] – (MTN) Officials are warning of another historic fire season with large swaths of southern and central Washington already under a Special Weather Statement for unseasonably high fire danger through the rest of this week. A spell of warm weather with low humidity and forecasted offshore flow will create favorable condtions for wildfires in the South Washington Cascade Foothills, the Cascades, the Western and Central Columbia River Gorge, Willapa Hills, Cowlitz County, and the greater Vancouver, Washington area.
Despite near historical levels of snowpack in the Cascades, eastern Washington has experienced drier conditions resulting in the advisory. Large swaths of the country are also grappling with concern climate and conditons data from eastern Washington to Minnesota and from California to Texas. In the heartland, wildfires are burning from Oklahoma to North Dakota, mostly in rural and federal lands.
This is the time of the year to get ready for summer wildfire season and possible smoke.
As we start to approach summer, with another long-range forecast model of, “hotter and dryer than the norm,” now is the time to get prepared.
[SEATTLE] – (MTN) Malcontent News is conducting a series of interviews with 2021 Seattle mayoral candidates. We have contacted, or are in the process of contacting the most viable candidates, inviting them to answer seven prepared questions. Today we feature Colleen Echohawk.
For all candidates, the first interview will be about their platform and vision. Prior to the primary election, we will conduct a second round that will focus on differentiation, and challenging positions and visions. Once the final candidates are selected in the primary, we will invite them for one last round of interviews.
All candidates for the first round will be asked the same seven questions, and have received a copy in advance. These questions were created by our editorial board, and are aligned to topics of key interest to the residents of Seattle.
Malcontent News is committed to providing equal time for all candidates, and operating under a “fairness doctrine” of equal time and treatment for all candidates.
We will be publishing a transcript of each interview. Transcripts may be lightly edited to remove, umms, ahhs, pauses, and aid in readability.
Jennifer Smith:
Hello, Malcontents! This is Jennifer and I’m here today with Seattle mayoral candidate, Colleen Echohawk. How are you doing today, Colleen?
Colleen Echohawk:
I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be with you.
Jennifer Smith:
We’re really excited to have you here. So just to kind of start off, what inspired you to run for mayor?
Colleen Echohawk:
Well, thank you so much for asking. This is a beautiful, wonderful city. I have lived here now for over 20 years and I care deeply about our community. And I have seen, along with all of us who live here, the tremendous frustration around some policies that are just not working for our city, specifically, homelessness. I have been working in homelessness now for over seven years. I believe deeply in our homeless community. I believe that they can get to wellness and stability and housing, but we have not set up the structures that will help them get to that place of wellness. As the pandemic came crashing down on us, I saw our homeless community really suffering. And then I also saw that our city was not responding in a way that serves them well and serves the rest of our community.
I think those of us who live in the city, it’s so frustrating for us because we, we cared deeply about, our community, including our homeless community. But when we see that we’re not getting anywhere, it is incredibly frustrating. So, that was one of the big reasons. The other thing is COVID-19. I [have] served our homeless community and our native community for a very long time now. I know very, very well that we have some incredible disparity, some health outcomes around COVID-19 that were really hard to hear and see, in the native community, we were, 1.8 times more likely to die of COVID, more likely to be hospitalized because of COVID. And those kinds of numbers were already there before the pandemic. And then as I thought about what would happen after I realized we need leadership that understands equity, that understands racial justice so that we can come out of this pandemic stronger, that we can address these inequities and be the kind of city that we say we are. We are a progressive, compassionate, generous city. And I look forward to the opportunity to lead with a lens of equity and justice.
Jennifer Smith:
Well, thank you very much for that. And I think this is an excellent segue into our first question. So Seattle is facing an ongoing crisis related to unhomed peoples. Washington state experience to 6.2% increase in homelessness during 2019/2020. King County spends over $1 billion per year in public and private investment in support of approximately 12,500 houseless people with disappointing results. If you are elected mayor of Seattle, how would you address this crisis? And also as co-founder of the Coalition to End Urban Indigenous Homelessness, which aids unhomed urban indigenous people, can you speak to the unique challenges indigenous people living in urban spaces like Seattle face.
Colleen Echohawk:
Thank you so much for the question. And one thing we know about our homeless community here in Seattle and around the country actually is that people of color are way overrepresented in the community and the homeless community. So for instance, native people make up less than 1% of the population, but in our homeless population, we make up 15%. So an incredible disparity, that’s about a thousand to 1100 people, who are of native people who are experiencing homelessness on the streets of Seattle. And then you think about, the city we are named after a chief, we are a Coast Salish city at the heart of who we are, who we are as a community. And so, it truly is unbelievable that we have such high rates of native people experiencing homelessness and even more unbelievable than that in a city like Seattle, that’s very prosperous, innovative, and entrepreneurial.
We have so many of our community experiencing homelessness around 12,000 folks are experiencing homelessness. And about [3,000] to 4,000 of those are people who been asleep outside at night, every, every single night, it’s, it’s truly horrific. In my opinion, it is a humanitarian crisis and we have to do more. And as mayor of the city, I have a unique lens of actually being a homelessness provider and also a builder of affordable housing. So I know, that we’re going to have to take many approaches. There’s no one solution to solving homelessness in our city. It’ll take many approaches, excuse me, the moment I am elected, I will be jumping into finding solutions that are going to be kind of the all of the above approach. We need more tiny houses. We’re going to need more hoteling. We’re going to need safe, lots for RVs and other vehicles.
There will be a variety of different things for people to choose. We also need culturally appropriate case management and services. When we think about the native community, many of our native folks, because of the fear of government institutions, which we get, we come to legally, we have not found many solutions in the mainstream organizations. So I would be thinking about and supporting and innovating around Black-led services and native-led services so that we find cultural approaches that would serve our homeless community. And I believe that’s one of the reasons we have such high rates of native homelessness is that we haven’t had those culturally specific programs, the same for the black community and the refugee community who are experiencing homelessness. I think that this is an exciting opportunity for our city.
We have the American relief program coming in. We have FEMA dollars that we can use. We have other federal, we have a friend in the White House who believes so much in taking care of this issue, that’s not just here in Seattle, but around the country. I have worked on the national level. I founded the National Coalition on Urban Indigenous Homelessness. I am a new board member at the National Low Income Housing Coalition. So I understand what it will take because that’s the final part is we have to build enough. I would say to anyone who lives in Seattle, like let’s put our frustrations behind this and let’s join a campaign together to serve our homeless community and get them out of our parks and out of our, right-of-ways. Our homeless community is not a place that they can thrive there. They need to thrive in housing. And then we all can use our parks and use our greenways. And, it’s gotten really out of control and we have to have leadership that will, understands the issue and knows how to solve it. And I’m that leader.
Jennifer Smith:
As a result of the ongoing COVID pandemic, economic recovery development, as well as addressing Seattle’s crumbling transit infrastructures, such as the West Seattle bridge is of great importance to me, moreover, some are expressing concern about large corporations and many in the workforce meeting in Seattle. The question is threefold, how do you plan on tackling the infrastructure issue, aiding and economic recovery and development as we move beyond COVID. And what concerns do you have about the loss of corporations and workers?
Colleen Echohawk:
We know that in our city, we have some pretty severe issues around infrastructure. We have the West Seattle bridge, the Magnolia bridge that needs to be replaced. We have streets that need to be supported. We have garbage on our streets that, I think it’s unacceptable. I think we should not have that in our city. And as, an executive director of a pretty large nonprofit, I understand the role of the mayor as being the executive to care for our city to care for our whole city. I have a lot of experience in homelessness, but I also have experience in management and taking care of our community. And I look forward to putting those skills into place because we need to have shovel-ready projects.
Like I mentioned earlier, we now have a friend in the White House. We have President [Joe] Biden. When he comes out with infrastructure packages, which is, happening right now, we need to be ready. We need to go. I would work really closely with Patty Murray. She’s the number two Democrat on the Senate Appropriation Committee. I would work very closely with her and let her know what our needs are in Seattle. Also, Senator Cantwell, she chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. We are so lucky to have their leadership, and I would just be excited to talk with them and, and share with them about what the opportunities are here in Seattle and what we absolutely need. I have a lot of experience in going after the dollars that we need to be able to take care of our community. We also know that Governor Inslee has an infrastructure plan and I would be active in reaching out to him and ensuring that we get our needs met here.
Jennifer Smith:
The second part of the question deals with aiding and economic recovery and development as we move forward.
Colleen Echohawk:
We have a real reality ahead of us that it’s going to take some time to recover from COVID. And we nailed that. Our economy needs to recover and our community needs to recover in many ways. We need an opportunity to heal, and we also need people who are going to jump in and get to work immediately. About nine months ago, I started to really understand that, we can’t just be focused on economic recovery. We have to be thinking about an equitable recovery because when our economy is equitable, then we are truly going to be able to support the whole community. So I co-founded the Equitable Recovery and Reconciliation Alliance. The idea behind ERA is that the BIPOC community, the Black indigenous, and people of color community, we have a policy-driven solution that needs to be implemented.
But we often don’t have the voice that we need to have. And then, my co-founder, his name is Ben Franz-Knight, and he is the previous executive director at Pike Place Market. His role is to help our community who is really working to understand what it means to be equitable in our recovery. His role is to help them come together. So we’re looking and working with things like the downtown Seattle Association, Greater Seattle Business Partners, and the Chamber of Commerce to think about what it means to support BIPOC led solutions. And so this is, again an opportunity. This is a once-in-a-generation chance to do the right thing. so I look forward to doing this in partnership with [the] community. And I do also hope that our corporations come back into downtown Seattle and see this place as an opportunity to continue our legacy of innovation, to continue our legacy of entrepreneurship in this region. And I will be there to support them and to ensure that when we see corporations and businesses coming back into our city, that we see it with a lens of equity and racial justice. It’s really an excellent and exciting opportunity.
Jennifer Smith:
Moving on to the topic of equity and racial justice. Protests related to the murder and George Floyd, police violence, and ongoing racial inequality. Seattle has earned a national reputation as crime-ridden, dirty and unsafe. At one point the previous Presidential administration labeled Seattle an anarchist jurisdiction. Are you concerned about this narrow view of Seattle? If so, what will you do to shift this perception and how will you address the ongoing racial inequality that exists?
Colleen Echohawk:
I don’t know about [you], but I had people calling me from around the country, friends, and relatives saying, “What’s going on in Seattle? It’s like an anarchist takeover is happening. and everything is burning,” and as you know, that is not true.
I think that we really do need to be thinking about changing the narrative around Seattle. If I was elected mayor, I would see myself as an ambassador to the rest of the state and the country and the world to say, this is what Seattle is about. This is a community of amazing, progressive, generous, compassionate, entrepreneurial community. And we warmly welcome you to our city. I think that there is [an] amazing opportunity around tourism. I hope that our Black and indigenous and people of color-led organizations see this opportunity to think about ways that we can support the tourism industry and incubate business that maybe hasn’t happened before.
I think that we absolutely want to change this weird narrative that’s happened around Seattle and show who we really are. I’ve also talked to people in the suburbs of Seattle and they say things like, “Oh, Seattle, traffic’s too bad.” This kind of complaining about Seattle. I want to change that narrative too.
I want people to remember that we have the Kracken and we have the Mariners and the Seahawks. We have a thriving nightlife and restaurants that people want to come to. And let’s make this a great place for people to celebrate big celebrations. They come to sporting events and to be coming to our wonderful arenas. I just think it’s a really cool opportunity that I look forward to jumping into. No one loves the city more than I do. My sister, when I was thinking about running for mayor, and I also had an opportunity out in Washington, DC, she [said], “Colleen, you love Seattle. Why would you go to Washington DC?”
You’re totally right. I love this place. I’m just going to do the best I can to lift it up and celebrate the city and let the world know what a great community we truly are.
Jennifer Smith:
In addressing the racial inequality piece. How would you work to kind of move beyond that and think more critically about, solutions for the ongoing racial inequality that exists within Seattle?
Colleen Echohawk:
We have some significant issues in our city around this. We are a progressive city, but we don’t always live out our progressive values. And I hope to really inspire, encourage, and envision with everyone about what that could really look like. I can give you an example. We struggle right now with housing for our Black community. Our Black community has been pushed out of the Central District and we also know that essential workers can’t afford to live here. And a lot of them are people of color. If we believe that Black lives matter, we believe in our progressive values that means we believe in housing for them. That means we believe in the incubation of small businesses that are owned by Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities. And so I hope to truly help our communities, our neighbors understand that value and understand that when, when we do practice equity and racial justice, that it’s good for our whole community. It’s not just good for the Black and indigenous people of color communities. It’s good for everyone. And that’s going to be exciting for us as a community.
Jennifer Smith:
So when we look to the West coast cities of Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, and San Diego. Seattle has the second-highest cost per police officer tied with Oakland and the second-highest officer per capita behind San Francisco. Additionally, the average officer makes $153,000 a year before benefits, according to the Seattle Times. Despite this large force and supporting budget, Seattle police report slow response times and claim the issue is a lack of staffing. The budget was cut by approximately 18% and staffing levels were adjusted to support roughly 1,325 officers. How would you define defund, the police? What is your position and how would you go about restoring community, particularly BIPOC community trust in the Seattle police department?
Colleen Echohawk:
This is something that is of grave concern for me. I got my start in working in the police reform arena. After the murder of John T. Williams, it’s still jarring. It’s still kind of just unbelievable native people have the highest rates of being shot by police around the country. And we’re a very small part of the population we have to do better. And, as I look at our whole city, we need to make sure that our police department is accountable and transparent. We need a reset of the police department from top to bottom, and I’m always open to looking at our pay structure – absolutely, I also believe that part of the mayor’s job is to find an excellent chief of police and hold that chief of police accountable for our police officers that are out there.
I’ve also been on the Community Police Commission and I know the issues really well. I mean our reform, since again, the murder of John T. Williams and the consent decree, it’s, it’s been, a decent start, but it’s also failed us as we saw over the summer. We have a real problem when we see officers hiding their badges during protests, we still see incredible racial disparity in arrest. And this is one of my top priorities if I’m elected. We will find a chief of police to hold our Seattle police department accountable. The issues of racial disparity in our police department. We do absolutely have to think of a cultural shift in that department and that starts straight from the chief all the way down to every single police, to someone out there on the beat. There is an accountability that absolutely has to happen from the community. And I look forward to continuing to evaluate our reform system as is.
I think that there is a lot of room for us to strengthen it. And I would look forward to hearing from the community about community-led solutions that will ensure that we have a police department that is not just, they’re not warriors, but they are guardians. So they are there to support the community in times of incredible significant need. Until we get there, we have to have a mayor that will hold them accountable. I can tell you that that is a passion of mine, something I look forward to doing, and if elected, that would be one of my top priorities
Jennifer Smith:
On the topic of police, accountability, and reform. One of the many things COVID has shed light on is the ongoing mental health crisis in the country. Seattle is not exempt from this. Recently a man in the throes of a mental health crisis was fatally wounded by [Seattle police] near the Seattle waterfront. Would you consider implementing something similar to the STAR program in Colorado, which replaces traditional law enforcement responders with a medic and mental health professional for some emergency calls as a way to deescalate situations where there’s a clear mental health component?
Colleen Echohawk:
Absolutely. I support finding new ways to support folks who are experiencing mental health crises. I can tell you from personal experience, working with someone in our homelessness community that pulled a knife, in the day center of the Seattle Club, and I saw a social worker deescalate the situation in less than a minute. So it was heartbreaking, cause I’ve seen this with my own eyes, it was incredibly heartbreaking for me. When I saw [a] son, uncle nephew down there on Alaska Way with a knife who was many feet away from these officers, and then he was shot and killed. That was heartbreaking for me. And those are the kinds of things that should be taken out of the hands of our Seattle police department. I absolutely support community innovation around new ways to support mental health in our system. And I’ll also say that we have to get to the Washington state legislature as well.
We know that Washington state is vastly behind in supporting mental health in our system. I think that as we work so hard to support our homeless community, it hit me [as] absolutely heartbreaking when you see someone who needs that support and we have nowhere to send him, we have to fix that and that. It’s going to take courageous leadership, it’s going to take decisive leadership and it’s going to take innovation. And I believe I’m the right leader for those kinds of issues going on in our communities.
Jennifer Smith:
You talked a little bit earlier about the necessity of affordable housing. Eighty-eight percent of Seattle’s land that is zoned for housing is zoned for single-family housing. Over the five years, most of the new construction centered on the 12% that supports highly dense housing, Developers focused on small footprint properties with minimal parking and luxury appointments. Housing affordability is a major problem for Seattle as you’ve noted already. Do you support changing zoning rules for ADUs and more dense construction to alleviate the housing crisis, and what changes would you support?
Colleen Echohawk:
Absolutely. We have a lot of competing challenges before us like we haven’t really talked yet about the climate crisis, but there are intersections there. A housing affordability emergency is upon us right now. And we need to be thoughtful and creative about creating more density in our city, creating opportunities, for more housing that really truly works for our community. I absolutely believe in transit-oriented development. I think that our backyard cottages are amazing. And then I think we need to think about how we build affordable housing, that that truly does not encourage gentrification, but encourages, our Black, indigenous, and people of color communities to come back into Seattle. I have worked on the community preference policy. I think that that is a really excellent way to get started. And I think that there is just tremendous opportunity around affirmative marketing for some of our affordable housing that’s being built. We have to change our zoning laws if we’re going to truly address our climate crisis and our housing affordability.
Jennifer Smith:
Seattle has a reputation for having high taxes compared to other Washington cities. A number of initiatives have added incremental taxes to fund transit, homeless programs, education, and the general fund. These taxes are small on paper, one 10th of a percent, for example, but most of these taxes are regressive due to Washington state’s tax structure. Will you pledge no new taxes for Seattle?
Colleen Echohawk:
I take a people-first approach on this, and I think that we absolutely need to understand the impact of a sales tax on our community. And it is not fair. It is not just, and we need to do better. Now, we have certain legal issues around an income tax, and we need to find new ways to generate revenue. So I would not say no, I will not incur any new taxes, but I think I want to incur the right kind of taxes, the taxes that are fair. I think a capital gains tax is really interesting and something that I would absolutely explore, but I believe that we in this city understand our responsibility to our homeless community, to [a] community that is hurting and suffering. In a city like Seattle, we should not have the amounts of poverty that we have in some of our communities. We should not have health inequities that we have, and that’s going to take some money and we need to that. And I look forward to working with [the] community about the kind of investments that we want to make.
Jennifer Smith:
Indigenous peoples are leading the efforts to bring about many meaningful changes globally, nationally, and locally. If elected, you would be the first indigenous mayor of Seattle since the office’s inception in 1869, something that is long overdue. Can you speak to the significance of what being elected mayor of Seattle will mean both to you personally and what it potentially signifies for native nations and communities more broadly?
Colleen Echohawk:
I started thinking about running for mayor because I care about the city and I care about our homeless community, and I know I have the right kind of solutions. Being an indigenous mayor kind of just was part of like, who I am. And as I started thinking about it and understanding it more, it’s become more important. I have two amazing, beautiful children, and I want them to understand and know that it’s normal for a native woman to be the mayor of a city, because I didn’t have that growing up. when Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland were elected into Congress, I have goosebumps thinking about it now. Like it just was so unbelievable to me, people who I know understand where I come from, to have that kind of representation? It matters.
Before I announced, I talked to, leaders of the Coast Salish communities because I’m in their land right now. I am not Coast Salish, I’m Pawnee. Then I also talked to some of my elders, and one elder said to me, “Colleen, you need to remember that in our language leader means servant. And you need to remember that as you are trying out this new thing, that you are a servant to this community.” I take [it] seriously, I take that soberly, that if elected mayor that I would be a servant to this community. I would lead from a place of humility and, a place of understanding the issues that are in this community. That I have the right kind of solutions and [these] are different solutions. I think it’s time for new ideas and new people. To be in elected office, it’s exciting, and I take it seriously. I hope I win! I [hope] I’m that first person.
David Obelcz contributed to this story.
The show from April 12, 2021, featured David Obelcz and our co-host Jennifer Smith.
[OLYMPIA] – (MTN) The Center for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration recommended pausing the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine after reports of rare, but serious complications after vaccination. In response to this recommended pause, the Washington state Department of Health is temporarily suspending the distribution of the J&J vaccine.
The Department of Health released a prepared statement. “Use of that vaccine will be put on hold until we receive further recommendations from our federal partners about how best to move forward. Safety is the highest priority when it comes to all COVID-19 vaccines.”
In the United States, approximately seven million adults have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. There were six reports of serious blood clots among women from 18 to 48 years of age, six to 13 days after receiving their injection. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a single dose. One patient died, and one other was hospitalized in critical condition.
“The probable cause that we believe may be involved here, that we can speculate, is a similar mechanism that may be going on with other adno viral vector vaccines. This is an immune response that occurs very, very rarely after some people receive the vaccine. That immune response leads to activation of the platelets and these extremely rare blood clots,” said Peter Marks, Director of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
One of the primary reasons for the pause is to advise the medical community on how to treat this rare side effect. Heparin is frequently used as a treatment for blood clots, but “In this setting, administration of heparin may be dangerous, and alternative treatments need to be given,” both the CDC and FDA advised.
In Washington, almost 150,000 people have received the J&J vaccine, of the four million doses administered to date.
Health officials are recommending that you keep your appointment if you’re scheduled to receive the J&J vaccine unless the provider reschedules. A number of locations are switching to the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna vaccines to keep appointments. Officials in Snohomish County indicated the vaccine appointments at the Angels of the Wind Casino were being canceled.
Anyone who received the J&J vaccine more than a month ago should have little concern for clotting. The CDC advised that if you experience severe headaches, chest pain, leg pain, or difficulty breathing within 30 days of receiving the J&J vaccine, you should see a medical professional promptly, particularly if you were born a biological female and are under 50 years old.
Full disclosure: the author received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on Saturday, April 10, 2021, and experienced typical side effects of fatigue, sore injection site, chills, and fever.
[OLYMPIA] – (MTN) As expected, Governor Jay Inslee announced the rollback of three counties that were not meeting adjusted Phase 3 Healthy Washington COVID reopening requirements.
“These metric trends are driven by the virus and we must continue to do everything we can to sharpen our focus and keep COVID-19 activity down. We are so close to the end of the tunnel here — we have made tremendous progress and we must keep our focus,” Inslee said.
The biggest change to commerce when rolling back to Phase 2 is public businesses such as gyms and restaurants have to operate at 25% capacity. Gathers should be limited to 5 people indoors, and 15 people outdoors.
All counties will be re-evaluated in two weeks. King and Skagit counties were close to crossing the line for rolling back but didn’t cross the thresholds. To date, 40% of Washington residents have at least their first COVID vaccination shot.
Update: Monday, April 12, 2021, 2:00 PM – a previous version of this story had misspelled Annaliza’s name. We apologize for the error.
[SEATTLE] – (MTN) Right-wing groups backed by extremists and neo-fascist organizations attempted to organize nationwide ‘White Lives Matter,’ rallies, including in Seattle, but were mostly no shows. In Seattle, a diverse group organized by Stand Against White Supremacy Coalition rallied in resistance to the ideas of white supremacy. In addition, the Youth Liberation Front in black bloc and Falun Gong protesters flanked the protest holding their own rallies.
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”37″ gal_title=”White Lives Matter Counter-Rally”]“When we heard that there were folks planning white lives matter, you know we’re here to say that Black Lives Matter,” said Annaliza of the Comrades of Color Caucus. “We’re in a time where so many Asian-American people are being attacked, that is not acceptable to say, other lives don’t matter.”
Seattle police had no presence at the counter-protest. A single person from white lives matter drove by, with their vehicle followed by approximately 25 people dressed in black. That person drove their Chevrolet Suburban up onto the sidewalk at Westlake and 4th and turned northbound squealing their tires.
By 1:45 PM it became apparent to the group that no one else was coming in support for White Lives Matter, and the group started to thin. Members of the Youth Liberation Front discussed marching in the street but moved back into Westlake before dispersing.
In many cities, white lives matter rallies didn’t materialize or were vastly outnumbered by counter-protesters. The one exception was in Huntington Beach, California, where a large group of counter-protesters met a smaller, but more aggressive group of white live matters protesters. The police declared an unlawful assembly and made several arrests.
Social media showed members of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group with over a dozen members arrested for the January 6 insurrection, with police officers. The rally in Southern California was organized by California KKK Grand Dragon William Quigg. Quigg was imprisoned in 2016 for stabbing multiple individuals at a different Klan rally and was spotted in the crowd.
[OLYMPIA] – (MTN) The Washington state legislature overwhelmingly passed HB 1016, which would make June 19, Juneteenth, a legal state holiday. The bill had 39 sponsors and passed in the Democratic-led Senate 47-1. The measure passed in the House with similar bipartisan support in February, 89-9.
According to Juneteenth.com, Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. This was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – which had become official January 1, 1863.
The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.
General Granger read several general order’s upon his arrival, the most significant being general order three. “The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.”
Texas was the first state to recognize Juneteenth as an official state holiday in 1980. The traditional celebrations included barbecue meat, dressing in fine clothes, and exchanging books. During slavery, food was not plentiful and meat was a luxury. In some slave states, enslaved peoples were not permitted to wear nice clothes. Learning to read and write was illegal, and slaves who learned to read or write outside of their duties could be blinded, have fingers or hand cut off, or even executed.
The movement to make Juneteenth a state holiday in Washington gained momentum during social justice protests in the summer of 2020 over the death of George Floyd.
[KIRKLAND] – (MTN) If you’re feeling like March and the start of April have been cooler than normal, especially in the evenings, you would be correct. In an average year, Seattle would see its last day with an evening low below 40 degrees on March 20. Sixteen of the last 20 days were at or below normal for low temperatures, and the trend is going to continue into early next week.
Friday will be 6 to 8 degrees below normal, with highs struggling to get to 50 degrees. Tonight will see lows of 35 to 37 with rain coming in overnight. The snow level in the mountains passes will drop to 2,500 feet. With moisture on the way, the west slope of the Cascades is under a Winter Weather Advisory for 4 to 7 inches of snow expected to fall overnight.
Saturday will start damp and clear out for the afternoon, but again, high temperatures will struggle to get to 50 degrees. Saturday night will be cool, with low temperatures in the Kirkland-Bellevue-Woodinville area of 29 to 32 degrees – 10 to 13 degrees below normal, and representing one of our latest area frosts on record.
Back on March 27, we predicted the last frost of the year could be as late as April 11.
Looking further ahead, nighttime lows will remain below average until Wednesday, while the days will be sunny and mild. Our first 70 degree days of the year are in sight on the long-range forecast, with the end of next week looking promising.
