David Brewster, a founding member of Post Alley, has a long career in publishing, having founded Seattle Weekly, Sasquatch Books, and Crosscut.com. His civic ventures have been Town Hall Seattle and FolioSeattle.
"Theatres need to stop worrying about how they can reopen in a reduced form, and look out for other models of production in different spaces and to different audiences."
We should focus on being a good place to live, tapping our great ability to create urban neighborhoods. We have terribly underinvested in this as we have rapidly built apartment towers without the needed urban amenities such as schools, playgrounds, and safe open spaces.
The main killing field will be Seattle's downtown, where restaurants were once buoyed by tourists, office workers, business visitors, arts-audiences, and shoppers -- all in steep decline.
Seattle media exhibits a growing monoculture of reporting that is too-predictably sympathetic to victims and underdogs. "Follow the victim" has supplanted the old mantra of "follow the money."
Durkan has governed as if there really is a Center in Seattle politics. Certainly there used to be: a progressive business/legal community; pragmatic organizations such as the Municipal League; and good negotiating partners in minority communities and labor. Now--not so much.
One positive step was the emergence of Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who happens to be the current budget chair and who knows how to consult with business for their views and to get other councilmembers on board.
It is extremely unlikely that the council would heed her advice and investigate and punish Sawant, even though few on the council harbor any affection for the boundary-pushing socialist.
Two groups likely hold the key. One is Black Lives Matter, which has an issue-focus on police reform but needs to get some distance from its CHOP partners on the far/libertarian/utopian Left. The other group is labor, which is now the key driver of Seattle politics (by default).
We lumbered toward shore on a rising tide, taking forever to make any progress. Gradually we emerged, presenting the primitive spectacle of fish-things on stumpy fins dragging themselves gasping onto dry land. But not quite yet. There was still the menacing sea lettuce.
“That wasn’t cool, Eric, you being at Barclay’s this morning when our people arrived.” Bobby Harms’ bright white smile was hidden behind tight lips. They were on the Starlight deck, the space between Falconer’s penthouse and his office, open beers on the food-stained wooden table between them, the evening sun still warm, but the mood was not genial.
“Lotsa people know this guy. Sorta,” said Danny. “They’ve heard of him because he’s some kind of dealer, or they remember talking to him in a bar. They remember the snake tattoo. No one I talked to remembers a name. Some of them called him The Snake or Snake like that was his name. Seems to be what he goes by.”
Omari Salisbury, Marcus Green and Kevin Schofield discuss the origins of the 50% target, the politics that led to this point, and the deep, often acrimonious divisions in City Hall over the wisdom of moving quickly to cut SPD’s budget.
