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Hate crimes, superblocks, and yes, bike chariots: Sawant and Orion ‘face to face’ at Broadway Performance Hall

(Image: Alex Garland for CHS)

“What have you done to support or engage with the LGBTQ community?”

If there was anything the Greater Seattle Business Association — aka “Washington State’s LGBTQ and allied business chamber” — wanted to know from all City Council candidates during last night’s GSBA-hosted “Face To Face” candidate forum at the Broadway Performance Hall on Capitol Hill, this was it.

Every time a duo of competing candidates stepped onto the stage for their 25-minute “tête-à-tête,” they’d face that same question.

So by the time the District 3 candidates Kshama Sawant and Egan Orion settled into the padded blue chairs on stage, about an hour into the forum, both probably knew what they were going to say.

“What we’ve done with Pridefest is built it to a point where it’s this bright shining light that casts its light out into small communities around Western Washington and the state,” said Orion about his work as executive director of Pridefest, the yearly celebrations at Seattle Center and on Capitol Hill and its work with and fundraising for nonprofits.

“There are kids out there who don’t know what it’s like to truly be themselves. And so when they see that light, they know that there’s one place that they can go all year round in order to truly feel themselves. I believe that the work that we’ve done at PrideFest saves lives.”

Seattle City Council member Sawant focused on some of her budget wins, including securing funds for LGBTQ seniors and the LGBTQ health center at Nova High School in the Central District in the budget. She quickly connected the latter back to her core campaign issues.

 

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“It has also painfully highlighted the chronic underfunding for public school education overall, especially the needs of LGBTQ young people (…) because of the inability and unwillingness of elected officials at every level to tax big business and bring forward progressive taxation to fund these services fully,” she said.

The forum, which focused on City Council candidates from the four districts “below the ship canal,” was an opportunity for both Sawant and Orion to tout work on issues they’ve tried to highlight in their campaigns: support for small, minority- and LGBTQ+-owned businesses, as well as LGBTQ+ issues.

Among those issues: the rise in hate crime reports, particularly on Capitol Hill. Sawant and Orion had very different ideas on how to tackle the problem.

Sawant approached it from an intersectional lens, noting that while the spike in hate crimes was partly due to “the emboldening of right-wing forces to Trump’s election,” statistics show “that when inequality spikes, crimes of various kinds also spikes.” The only “serious” way to address LGBTQ rights and priorities, she argued, would be to tackle economic, racial and gender inequality with policies such as rent control and progressive taxation to fund publicly-owned social housing.

Meanwhile, Orion zoomed in on the nightlife scene of Capitol Hill. He proposed (following, he said, an idea from the Office Of Economic Development) to concentrate people getting out of the bars at 2 AM on a well-lit parking lot with restaurants and security staff. It would be a place to wait for rideshares. He wants to add bike chariots to that mix to move people from the front steps of queer spaces to either the lot or public transit access points.

Orion later proposed, to a question about what would look different in four years if he were elected, “gender-neutral bathrooms in all public spaces” (Seattle’s All-Gender Restroom Ordinance from 2016 bans gender-specific single-occupant restrooms in city facilities and public places), as well as creating more capacity for LGBTQ-owned, people of color-owned businesses.

“There’s lots of different ways we can do that. We can support nonprofits like Ventures, which support low-income entrepreneurs and puts them through training and then connects them with microloans,” he said, noting that Business Improvement Areas are another way to “serve the community.”

Orion also made a point of thanking Sawant for her LGBTQ advocacy, “particularly for the trans community.”

While tensions have, at times, run high during this campaign season, the atmosphere of the half-filled auditorium was somewhat subdued.

That briefly changed a little over an hour in, after Sawant mentioned she hoped the city would go in “a progressive direction and not in the direction the Chamber of Commerce and Amazon and the big corporations are going by trying to buy this election.” Her supporters applauded while one disagreeing audience member hissed loudly in the direction of the incumbent.

Sawant later circled back to the influence of corporate PACs in the election. “Many of these donors are not just big business billionaires. They are also people who have donated to the Republicans who were against marriage equality. So we have to be very careful.”

In the primary, Orion was boosted by more than $156,000 in independent expenditures from the pro-business Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce’s political action committee Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy, the biggest outside spending in the city. Amazon contributed $250,000 to CASE and Vulcan gave $155,000, according to filings with the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission (SEEC).

Sawant critics, meanwhile, point out her Socialist Alternative fundraising machine which boosted her campaign coffers with hundreds of thousands of dollars thanks to hundreds of supporters in Seattle and from across the country.

While questions for candidates from other districts at the forum focused on citywide issues such as the Seattle Police Department and the consent decree, safe injection sites, and the head tax, moderators Brady Piñero Walkinshaw (CEO of Grist Media and former 43rd District Representative) and Capitol Hill developer Liz Dunn of the Cloud Room and Chophouse Row kept the D3 discussion firmly planted in D3 and recent CHS coverage with a final question about … Barcelona superblocks and citywide council member Teresa Mosqueda’s intentions of bringing one to Capitol Hill.

“The proposal as applied to Seattle would close vital commercial streets,” Dunn, who was ostensibly not a fan, said in the prelude to her question. No proposal for closing streets has been made.

Here too, the candidates’ views diverged. Sawant was generally supportive of the idea but noted that she would want to see genuine input from small business owners and that she wanted to figure out whether there’s a way to accomplish it without “negatively impacting our local small businesses.”

Orion didn’t love it. “At the end of the day, there’s a lot of great ideas that we have as a city, but we just don’t have the infrastructure in order to implement those ideas, like around congestion pricing, like with the idea that you were discussing right now,” he said. “We are not to the point yet where we can institute an idea like this. I think we should dream big, but understand the limitations of what our system has.”

Whether a Capitol Hill superblock will become a campaign issue for D3 remains to be seen, but perhaps it’ll come up again during one of the other forums this month. A D3-centric debate organized by Seattle City Club is up next, at Town Hall on September 26th.

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Ralph
Ralph
4 years ago

I’m still not hearing anything concrete or remotely bold from Orion. Gender neutral bathrooms? Isn’t most of Seattle already in favor of that?

sasha
sasha
4 years ago
Reply to  Ralph

Running on a platform of being the gay candidate will check most of the boxes for his fake progressive followers. I could care less about his sexual identity, he is an empty vessel on policy and will be voting for Sawant.

Freja
Freja
4 years ago
Reply to  sasha

Even as a Sawant supporter I don’t think we need to start bringing homophobia into this debate.

louise
louise
4 years ago

Orion’s big idea is gender neutral bathrooms and bragging Pridefest is a bright shining light?

He is going to lose by a huge margin.

CDresident
4 years ago

I voted for Bowers in the primary, and will vote for Orion in the general, but I honestly don’t think he has a chance. I would like to think the well educated people of D3 would understand that businesses and corporations are not inherently evil (though they absolutely need to be held in check), and that while I think the proposed end results of a socialist society are mostly all things we would all want for our community, socialist societies have a horrible track record of actually bringing those promises to fruit.

Darnell N Hibbler
Darnell N Hibbler
4 years ago

Orion is so fake and loves Amazon and Vulcan supports developers and could care less about the black community and the Gentrification happening right here..He will never get my vote my friends & family’s vote.. He supports uncle ikes on 23rd and union that should tell you what type of council member he would be… I will canvas against him.

Sawant Supporter
Sawant Supporter
4 years ago

I block ads on this site because they run Uncle Ike’s ads.

Shame on JSeattle for taking money from a gentrifying crook like Eisenberg.

CD Rez
CD Rez
4 years ago

That’s exactly the kind of nonsense that that causes all sane individuals to just roll their eyes and got a giggle at your stupidity. Ian has made the corner a billion times better with the viable businesses supporting people that live in the community. You just whine and say dumb things on the internet.

Darnell N Hibbler
Darnell N Hibbler
4 years ago
Reply to  CD Rez

He’s not wanted here Gentrifier.How about he move that crap over to Bellevue..

t
t
4 years ago

Incorrect. He is wanted here by many of us who have lived here even longer than you have. You don’t speak for all of us so please stop pretending that you do.

Darnell N Hibbler
Darnell N Hibbler
4 years ago
Reply to  t

🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Sasha
Sasha
4 years ago

Looks like Sawant sent her minions to post here. LOL. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised. I’ll 100% be voting for Orion simply because Sawant is repugnant.

Adam and Steve
Adam and Steve
4 years ago

This is a problematic race.

You have an incumbent with ideals but a rather dour and charm free personality and a challenger with tons of charisma but really no policies in place other than vague pronouncements.

CDresident
4 years ago

I honestly don’t really “support” either candidate that much. I do find it unsettling though that there is so much vitriol these days around “capitalism”. I recommend would recommend watching “The Pursuit” on Netflix. I personally believe that the more freedom that each and every individual has to make their own choices as to what they believe is in their best interest society is better for it. Any time there is a constraint on personal freedom to choose (whether that big from large monopolistic private corporations or government) then the masses suffer. Smaller and limited government yield increased quality of life for the masses (provided the government keeps private interests from becoming their own monopolies). What we have in the US today is growing governmental organizations increasingly teaming up with large corporations to create even more monopolies. Democrats and Republicans alike are pretty much lock step on these issues.

This country does however have a history of providing more individual freedom and more rights to property ownership, which is why we continue to see individuals from around the world emigrate here to have a better quality of life (which is great).

Most of India’s industry was state run up until the 1950’s and they had crushing starvation level poverty in that country. Since then they have gradually relaxed this and allowed for individuals to start their own businesses and have increased property rights. The result has been a dramatic increase in wealth for the masses and dramatic decreases in poverty.

Free markets = free people

Consumerism is a problem. Capitalism is not.

Sawant Supporter on 18th Ave
Sawant Supporter on 18th Ave
4 years ago
Reply to  CDresident

There’s vitriol around capitalism because it doesn’t fucking work. It relies on cheap labor overseas so you can complain online about socialists being bad. You should really get up to speed on basic Marxism before even coming to the table.

Capitalism is unethical. It destroys the planet. It creates waste. It speeds up poverty. Look at Hong Kong, it’s the most hypercapitalist area in the world. It keeps poor people in cages at a record rate. That’s where this country is headed if we don’t start changing policy to help the poor and eat the rich.

Capitol Hill resident
Capitol Hill resident
4 years ago

I’m voting for the candidate that has the best manners and listens.

cd resident
cd resident
4 years ago

sawant trolls coming in hot on this one. They must be getting nervous

Jon
Jon
4 years ago

Socialism is a failed social-economic model on a planetary scale. China and India abandoned it 20+ years ago and have lifted hundreds of millions out of crushing poverty. Every socialism lingers is horror – North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.

Capitalism has it flaws and it needs to be controlled, but it has been enormously successful in raising living standards and maintaining freedom

Capitol Hill 1976
Capitol Hill 1976
4 years ago
Reply to  Jon

Yes.
A 19th century reaction to Capitalism has failed repeatedly.

Voting Sawant
Voting Sawant
4 years ago
Reply to  Jon

You realize that America has to run on the backs of China and cheap labor in a lot of Asia in order to sustain, right?

All those countries are totalitarian or dictatorships, not true socialism. Cuba is communism.

God why am I replying to people who don’t even know basic remedial politics.

Venezuela had a US-BACKED COUP for christ’s sakes. Learn your history.

CD Neighbor
CD Neighbor
4 years ago
Reply to  Voting Sawant

Alrighty then…. name a country where ‘true socialism’ or communism has worked and not turned into a totalitarian state or a dictatorship. Oh… yeah… can’t… (and no… the Norwegian countries don’t count – they are still capitalist – with free markets and private property)

Social safety nets are fine. We can certainly do more. Education and health care are important for everyone to have, but some utopia where everyone shares everything, they are all happy and no one is corrupt is a fairy tale that never comes true and not believing in it does not make you conservative.

Lets get a little real here. This is not a conservative city. There are few people here that wouldn’t be considered to be very progressive elsewhere. Marxism is the far extreme of left. Not being a Marxist does not make you right wing any more than just not being a white nationalist makes you left wing. So throwing around ‘conservative’ like some sort of insult to those of us who aren’t glued as far left as is possible to get simply makes you look silly and desperate.

And yes, I heartily agree with DS. It’s kind of sickening how poorly your brand of progressivism treats the mentally ill and addicted…. it’s more akin to libertarianism than anything else – that it’s their ‘decision’ to live that way and we shouldn’t interfere, but instead enable them to continue killing themselves… Hey at least thing are hopefully looking up. Maybe now that there’s been a settlement with Perdue Pharma we can at least start getting more treatment funded and in place. Next we just need the public will to get people into it, willingly or not.

Tom
Tom
4 years ago
Reply to  Jon

Jon, those places you pointed out have communism, not socialism. Almost the entire developed world has some form of socialism — universal health care.

Glenn
Glenn
4 years ago
Reply to  Tom

Where does the socialism you describe exist right now?

Tom
Tom
4 years ago
Reply to  Tom

Glenn, Europe, Canada, most of Asia provide the option of government health care for everyone.

Glenn
Glenn
4 years ago
Reply to  Tom

Thank you Tom. We also provide health care to some through Medicare and Medicaid, as well as perpetual income through social security. These are obviously socialist policies that benefit many residents of our country. But we are not a socialist country, and neither are the countries you referenced. Many people on this discussion group are advocating a much broader socialistic approach, including the elimination of all private property (which I would call communism). I think Sawant and her party are in favor of this more radical approach. Tweeking a capitalist system with a reasonable dose of socialism to adjust for it’s excesses? That I can support. Following Sawant to pure socialism, which I would call communism, no thank you.

Fairly Obvious
Fairly Obvious
4 years ago
Reply to  Tom

@Glen:

I believe the term you are looking for is social democracy. To quote Wikipedia:

Originating within the socialist movement, social democracy has embraced a mixed economy with a market that includes substantial state intervention in the form of income redistribution, regulation, and a welfare state.

The US has Social Democracy Light™. Enough to ensure the bare minimum needed to have a functioning population and work force. Our biggest problem is that our income distribution policies are horrifically flawed.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
4 years ago

I don’t even live in their district, but I gave to Egan’s campaign simply because UNLIKE Sawant, he knows how to work across the aisle and not be inflammatory to constituents, businesses, and locals alike. I also personally know Egan and know he would be a much better match for the district than her.

A few weeks ago on the hill, some Sawant follower stepped in front of me to try to force me to sign some stupid signature sheet of hers. I told him where he could shove her campaign clipboard.

Capitol Hill resident
Capitol Hill resident
4 years ago
Reply to  Tyler Durden

I tell them that I don’t drink that kool aid and they back off.

Jim98122x
Jim98122x
4 years ago
Reply to  Tyler Durden

Yesterday I got a phone call from someone doing political polling in Seattle. Before she got started I told her I don’t live in Seattle anymore, having just moved in July, so my opinion didn’t really matter anymore, and it was pointless for me to answer her questions. Then, without naming any names, I added “but if that woman wins again, I feel sorry for Seattle”.
Then the conversation went like this:
POLLSTER: Who are you talking about, this [Kshama Sawant] person? (mangled the pronunciation pretty badly)
ME: yes. Are you not in Seattle?
POLLSTER: no, I’m not in Seattle. What did she *do*? EVERYONE I’ve talked to today hates her…..

Now, I doubt *everyone* she’d talked to hates Sawant, but sounds like the majority she’d talked to DO. So Sawant supporters, you just go on gulping down all that kool aid and thinking everyone does the same. You may be in for a big surprise.

Sasha
Sasha
4 years ago
Reply to  Tyler Durden

Tyler: Nope, none of that happened. Try writing more convincing fiction. It might be a little more believable if you use less hyperbole in your creative writing.

Jim: Since you don’t live in Seattle anymore maybe focus your vitriol and rage toward your own local politics.

Jim98122x
Jim98122x
4 years ago
Reply to  Sasha

I don’t have vitriol and rage. That would be you Sawant supporters. Notice you don’t see Orion supporters flying off the handle and losing their nut the way Savant supporters do? “Glass houses” and all that.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
4 years ago
Reply to  Sasha

Yes, it did happen. I work in property management. I had just finished a showing on Summit Avenue and the Sawant devotee was on the corner near the Starbucks on Olive Way trying to stop and talk to random people, including myself.

They literally stepped in front of me and shoved the clipboard out at me asking me to ‘support Sawant’. I didn’t ask, nor did I want their attention or to have anything to do with them.

Once I realized their reason for accosting me, I told them what to do with the clipboard.

I was there, I know what happened and I don’t need you to validate for me Sasha as you were not there.

Matthew
Matthew
4 years ago

Wow! Haven’t seen the Sawant trolls out like this on CHS in a long time. I love that they are so nervous! Can’t wait for her to lose and then maybe we can get someone in office that actually cares about D3 residents.

CDdawg
CDdawg
4 years ago

Living in the Central District is not a right. It is a privilege.

I’ve been here 20 years. Was barely scraping by to pay rent/utilities in 1999, and now own a single family house. Rather than put my hand out for the City to give me something for nothing, I decided to put my head down and work because it was either than or move out of Seattle and to a more affordable area. Certainly not trying to brag or patting myself on the back, but it is so infuriating to hear Sawant talk (yell into a megaphone) about how evil business and real estate developers are, and how we need rent control? I have a friend in SF who pays about $1,200/month for an apartment that could rent for $4,000/month because he’s enjoyed rent control for 20 years. Oh by the way, he makes about $500K per year. Is that what we want here in Seattle?

The reason new construction apartment rents are high in the CD is not because developers are greedy. It is because:

a) The price they pay to acquire the land (often from longtime CD residents who rightfully so want to profit as much as possible) is very expensive.

b) The entitlement process is long and costly.

c) The cost of construction is exorbitantly expensive.

d) because someone is willing to pay the high rent. Many people, for that matter.

Seattle is a world class city, like it or not. Growth and Density is going to happen, like it or not. Sawant’s policies are unrealistic and she’s doing more harm than good.

Black in the CD
Black in the CD
4 years ago
Reply to  CDdawg

Say that to people who were redlined here.

Learn your history of the CD

Pretty Penny
Pretty Penny
4 years ago

Redlining was and is wrong but this does not negate or erase the fact that those houses are now going for very pretty pennies and the people that are living in them are getting good money for them when they sell, as they should. What sucks is when the property taxes price them out and that’s the government, not the developers.

Sawant Supporter in the CD
Sawant Supporter in the CD
4 years ago

No way you’ve been here for 20 years.

Living in the CD is and should be a RIGHT for black people who were RED LINED in.

Can’t just tell us where to live then kick us out 30 years later because now you transplants like the area. Nope. Doesn’t work that way.

Darnell N Hibbler
Darnell N Hibbler
4 years ago

Can’t just tell us where to live then kick us out 30 years later because now you transplants like the area. Nope. Doesn’t work that way. I agree 💯 Whole heartedly……The C.D will always and forever belong to the black folks who were reclined.. Go away Gentifier ..Y’all Are nothing but transplants here in the Central District…. By any means necessary we will be here.

CD Rez
CD Rez
4 years ago

That’s not reality in 2019, sorry. I can definitely understand the emotion I find some of the new residents annoying as fuck too but no one is redlined anymore and people can buy wherever they can afford/want to. Stamping your feet and yelling about how you personally think it SHOULD be is ridiculous.

Darnell N Hibbler
Darnell N Hibbler
4 years ago
Reply to  CD Rez

Stop drinking the Kool aid man… It’s basically redlining 2019 version . They just change the name of it .. Gentrification We have prime property and they wanna push all the people of color out of the central… I am very woke know exactly w what’s going on….New name the policymakers are calling it.. Ethnic Cleansing is what they the policyholders are doing….The Durkan administration is worthless.

CD Rez
CD Rez
4 years ago

There is no “they”. There’s no conspiracy to kick anyone out. No one can kick you out if you don’t sell it. There is an economic shift here due to younger, wealthier people that want live in city. In the end, it’s just math.

sasha
sasha
4 years ago

This is absurd. The only way anyone is being forced out is due to increasing taxes. So don’t vote progressive if you want lower taxes. Vote as conservatively as you can. See how cyclical this shit is? LOL

Janet
Janet
4 years ago

It would have been great if the candidates had had to ask answer about the open anti-Semitism in that district which Sawant refused to condemn and to note the difference between how quickly the same politicians are to directly condemned similar actions towards other minorities.

Huh
Huh
4 years ago
Reply to  Janet

The hell you talking about? What anti Semitism?

Miu
Miu
4 years ago
Reply to  Huh

So, she hosted an event, things happened, Israel wasn’t painted in the undying positive light appreciated by oc.

Spoiler: People who mainline conservative media outlets equate being anti-israel with being anti-semitic. The usual story from neo-conservative christians: Jews are mystical creatures that are necessary in conjunction with the establishment of a zionist state to bring about the end times and the triumphant return of our god-king Horus. Due primarily to this divine super-heroic origin story definition anything they do is ordained by god and both wholly necessary and good. There exists no possibility they are anything but innocent lambs protecting themselves from the crudely drawn hordes of mask and turban wearing scary bad dudes who sling biblical stones en riposte to rockets. Gnashing of teeth, meek inherit earth, kool kids klub ascends to the pearly gates where they bask like holy space lizards in the warm rays of god’s existence evermore. Ends, meet the means which justify thee.

You know, the same way they’re cool with electing Ramses II.

The hyper-manipulative source in question:
https://mynorthwest.com/999799/kshama-sawant-seattle-lgbtq-commission-host-anti-semitic-event/?

Disclaimer: voting Orion

SawantsGayBashing
SawantsGayBashing
4 years ago

I love it. Sawant’s answer to violent, physical, gay-bashing is: once everyone is financially equally it will all be okay. Does she really believe this nonsense? As if gay-bashers are all or mostly poor? Where’s she pulling the data on this? I doubt that’s true. This is Sawant’s policy on all crime in Seattle, basically, be a victim. Which is only one reason she’s out of touch with the gays, out of touch with the District and out of touch with Seattle and reality. She had a nice run. We gave her a chance and she will eventually be gone. I’d say don’t let the door hit, ya, but really, there’s no way it could miss. Also, who cares about her little LGBT center. Give me a break.

Miu
Miu
4 years ago

Sawant aims to tackle lgbtq issues by equalizing all the things? When everyone is equal, gay rights are equally addressed? I guess another way to put that is if you feed the horse enough equality, some of it will fall through to the gay birds. Or how about the rising equality tide will raise all boats.

There’s naive, and then there’s whatever that is.