Seattle City Council representative for Capitol Hill and the Central District Joy Hollingsworth marked Black History Month by joining in a ceremony with Mayor Bruce Harrell to raise the red, black, and green Black Liberation Flag above Seattle City Hall Tuesday afternoon.
Hollingsworth was joined in the ceremony by West Seattle rep Rob Saka. The two first-year city legislators are the first Black councilmembers in Seattle since Harrell left office in 2019. Continue reading →
The Black Lives Memorial Garden has been cleared from Cal Anderson Park but efforts to mark the events of the 2020 protests and create a lasting connection to the movements and communities that centered around this Capitol Hill public space that summer are continuing.
A University of Washington professor who successfully helped lead the transformation of the International District’s Hing Hay Park with community elements and expanded features is continuing a process to harness student ideas and design concepts that could someday do the same in Cal Anderson.
Jeff Hou, Landscape Architecture Professor at University of Washington and the director of the Urban Commons Lab, is moving forward on a studio project this winter to take action on creating inclusive solutions for Cal Anderson.
“We need to be respectful of multiple interests and identity and we want to bring as many people to the table and making sure that the design can serve a wider audience,” says Hou.
Others aren’t waiting for a design studio.
Late last Thursday night, Seattle Police stood by as Seattle Parks rangers cleared the park in a rare enforcement of Cal Anderson’s posted 11:30 PM closure time. A “mutual aid” group that had put up canopies and a fire pit near the area of the cleared garden refused to budge.
The Black Lives Memorial Garden has been cleared from Capitol Hill’s Cal Anderson Park.
Seattle Police blocked off streets as city crews cleared the garden’s structures and plots from the fenced-off area on the south end of the park on Wednesday morning of the quiet holiday week.
There were no reports of garden supporters or protesters during the work and no reported arrests. The garden was established by volunteers and demonstrators during the Black Lives Matter and CHOP protest in the summer of 2020. Continue reading →
Six projects including a new Duwamish-centered community center and a push for new public restrooms in the city have been chosen by community members in Seattle’s $27 million “participatory budgeting” process born out of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Implementing the projects will be the next project. Continuing the process? That appears to be off the table.
The results were announced last week following a month-long online ranking process in which the Office of Civil Rights says 4,000 votes were cast.
The city says the ranked choice process gave people “who live, work, or play in Seattle” the opportunity to vote on 18 ballot items by selecting their top four proposals. Five winning projects will be fully funded and the remainder of the $27.25 million will be allocated to the 6th place project.
Top Participatory Budgeting Projects
Native Youth: Past, Present, Future ($7,200,000)
Focus Area: Youth & Children
A Duwamish centered community center would offer recreational, educational, and cultural programs that foster community engagement, promote well-being, and support cultural preservation. It will serve as a vibrant hub of activity, facilitating connections within the urban native community, while also extending a warm welcome to individuals from diverse backgrounds.
People Not Police Crisis Response Team ($2,000,000)
Focus Area: Crisis and Wellness
Funding for trained mental health professionals to be first responders to mental health crises. Marginalized community members are more likely to be harmed when police respond to mental health crises, public outbursts (usually need- or trauma-driven), or behaviors not always explained or understood. A culturally competent, trauma-informed, compassion-based, peer-supported response promises better outcomes, long and short term. Continue reading →
Seattle Police and members of the city encampment clearance workers were at Cal Anderson Park’s south end Wednesday morning to move tents and tell campers around the Black LIves Memorial Garden to move along. A notice provided a phone number for campers to call to find out more about shelter options.
Wednesday’s efforts appeared focused on the tents and campers and did not involve the arrival of any heavy equipment like the type that was delivered by Seattle Parks to the area in late October. Continue reading →
Seattle Parks crews backed off and Seattle Police stood by after a small but spirited crowd of supporters gathered Tuesday morning to stop the removal of the Black Lives Memorial Garden from Capitol Hill’s Cal Anderson Park.
The early morning standoff played out around the so-called “sun bowl” area of the park where heavy equipment had been rolled in for the removal of the garden that was established during the Black Lives Matter and CHOP protest in the summer of 2020. Continue reading →
UPDATE: With volunteers remaining at the site through the weekend, the “turf restoration” work, so far, has been on hold
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As they did in August for a stewarding event where they gathered medicinal herbs from Cal Anderson Park, the Black Star Farmers group is inviting a gathering at the park’s Black Lives Memorial Garden hoped to span all of Friday. It’s the same day the Seattle Parks Department said it was planning to begin its “turf restoration” process that will remove the garden first created during the 2020 Capitol Hill Occupied Protest that filled the area with camps and demonstrators.
“Gather in the garden tomorrow – FRIDAY OCTOBER 13 👻 Community members are planning a full day of activities in support of the garden,” the group’s invitation reads. “We will start the morning with Communi-Tea & Yoga from 7-10AM and have an all-ages Garden Party from 12PM-10PM where we will have potluck food, garden stewarding, music, speakers, art making and an art gallery! Please bring plates, utensils, & grillables to share if you can!!” Continue reading →
The garden in October 2023 — from the CHS Facebook Group
The garden in June, 2020
A Seattle Parks project to restore grass to the amphitheater bowl on the south end of Cal Anderson Park will bring an end to a community garden shaped during Seattle’s Black Lives Matter protests. The Black Lives Memorial Garden has been one of the few enduring monuments to the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest of the summer of 2020.
A Seattle Parks official confirmed the department will begin the turf restoration project planned for this week but declined to provide more information citing the Indigenous Peoples’ Day holiday at Seattle City Hall.
A letter reportedly posted by the Black Star Farmers group that has grown around the garden is calling for the city to back off its plans, saying city officials reached out to “request that we relocate the garden to Rainier Community Center in South Seattle.” The letter calls on supporters to gather at the garden for organizing meetings and “occupy the space.”
“Of course, showing up to the garden in the upcoming week and continuing to care for and occupy the space is always an option to show directly that we reject their plans to remove the garden,” it reads. “Now is the time to show up and get organized.” Continue reading →
No charges will be filed against former Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and Police Chief Carmen Best over deleted text messages from the time of the 2020 protests, saying a King County Sheriff investigation did not find evidence of criminal intent to destroy public records.
King County ProsecutorLisa Manion’s announcement ends the investigation launched in 2022 after a whistle-blower revealed thousands of texts exchanged between Durkan, Best, current Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins and more officials during the 2020 Black Lives Matter and anti-police protests had been deleted from city-owned devices.
The deleted texts became the centerpiece of a lawsuit brought against the city by Capitol Hill property owners and developers with claims of “Spoliation of Evidence” and intentional subterfuge.
The city has claimed the deletions were caused by factory resets, 30-day auto deletions, and manual deletions.
But some of the explanations bordered on the comical including a Durkan oceanic mishap: Continue reading →
Artist Perri Rhoden touches up her letter on the Black Lives Matter street mural
The massive Black Lives Matter mural that fills E Pine is now a permanent part of the city’s streetscape. Every summer, it will get a touch-up and fresh coats of paint. This summer, the work to take care of the monument carried with it a new mission: honoring a fallen community leader.
Takiyah Ward, an organizer and co-founder of the Vivid Matter Collective, said this past weekend’s event was organized as a heartfelt tribute to Elijah Lewis, the community organizer gunned down in an April road rage shooting just a couple blocks from the mural.
“We have other folks working on some mural pieces for Elijah Lewis… So we decided to put together an activation just in his honor, in his legacy and all the things he did in the community,” Ward said.
Saturday’s activation provided an array of art supplies, including easels and paints, inviting people to engage in creative expression. “So we’ve got some easels and paintings and materials, folks, kids, young and old, and hang out and do their own art. So yeah, it’s just everything art today,” Ward said. Continue reading →
