Nikkita Oliver is making a 2021 run for Seattle’s City Hall but this time the target isn’t the mayor’s office.

I am humbled to announce our campaign for SEA City Council Pos. 9. We know the end of oppressive systems is not a simple inevitability. Rather, it is intentional—birthed of our labor & organizing, our continuous & principled struggle together. When we fight, we win. #Nikkita4Nine pic.twitter.com/uVqNrV2IrO

— Nikkita Oliver (they/them) (@NikkitaOliver) March 10, 2021

Pay homage to the Duwamish, Suquamish, and the tribes upon whose lands and waterways we traverse. I cannot claim this land, but here I find home. So I pay real rent. The rising tide may lift all boats, but we ain’t all got boats to catch the ride. So we fight not to get swept away by the riptides. We’ve been repairing reparations, native sovereignty and black liberation together, all the oppressed peoples, we change the situation. Letting go of all that weighs us down that we might fly beyond prisons and police. No more loved ones living on the streets, stopping all the sweeps. People over profit becomes our beliefs. Everyone’s essential, good food, clean water is always in reach. Health is wealth and everyone deserves it. When we sow better then better is what we reap. And we will write the story, how the I became we, we became free, and how it came to be this Emerald City by the sea.

In a spoken word announcement, the poet, teacher, lawyer, and community activist added their voice Wednesday morning to the race for the Seattle City Council opting to do battle for the Position 9 citywide seat.

The “Nikkita4Nine” campaign is launching “with a mutual aid event in the Beacon Hill neighborhood, involving the coordinated delivery of sleeping bags, food, and other essential supplies to residents most impacted by the overlapping crises facing Seattle,” the Seattle Medium reports.

The Oliver campaign will focus on police divestment, investments in youth and families, and expanding racial and economic justice and is planning community listening posts “to come together to develop an evolving community platform that identifies the priorities and solutions of communities living and/or working in Seattle.”

The candidate declined to comment on the 2021 race in January when CHS spoke with Oliver about joining Seattle University as adjunct law faculty to teach the school’s young would-be lawyers a course on “police and prison abolition.”

“When the time is right, I will answer questions related to a mayoral campaign,” Oliver told CHS at the time.

In opting to make their push to join the council, Oliver leaves the path clear for current City Council president Lorena González to retain her front-runner position in the mayor’s race. González was one of the seven council members who voiced support for the #defundSPD movement last summer, resulting in a 20% reduction to police spending for 2021.

Meanwhile, another veteran of the City Council’s 2020 push for social justice and reduced spending on police is enjoying a clear shot in the Position 8 citywide race also up for contest. Teresa Mosqueda decided to forgo a run for the mayor’s office and is now looking to retain her seat and build on her work leading the council’s budget efforts to set a new course on police spending. It might end up much of a race. Mosqueda’s most significant early competition pooped out after only a week or two of campaigning after it was revealed he a agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement after being charged with assault and harassment in a 2015 confrontation involving a gas-powered chop saw at a construction project outside his Westlake condo.

The run for Position 9 will be a trickier affair.

UPDATE: Brianna Thomas, a staffer in the office of Councilmember González, is vying for the seat.

And while major business and public safety focused candidates have yet to emerge in the Position 8 and mayoral races, Fremont Brewing owner Sara Nelson is making another run for the council in the race for Position 9.

Those business and pro-policing interests will surely line up against Oliver.

Currently the executive director for the Creative Justice “arts-based healing-engaged space for youth,” Oliver helped form the Seattle Peoples Party and represented the group running for mayor in 2017.

Oliver missed out in the top two primary and watched as Jenny Durkan defeated Cary Moon to win the seat. Oliver has continued to lead opposition to efforts like the new youth jail and became a leading voice this summer as Black Lives Matter protests called for defunding the city’s police department.

Still, Mayor Durkan left Oliver and other defund leaders like representatives of King County Equity Now off the roster of those invited to be part of her Equitable Communities Initiative Task Force, a group Durkan’s office said would “spearhead a community-led process” to allocate “a historic $100 million new investment in Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities” and “address the deep disparities caused by systemic racism and institutionalized oppression.”

The Oliver campaign is launching with a nine-point policy plan:

1. Housing For All
2. Divest from Policing to Invest in Community
3. Environmental Justice
4. Children, Youth, and Families Deserve to Thrive
5. Racial & Economic Justice
6. Disaster Relief & Preparing for Disasters
7. Thriving Sustained Local Arts and Culture Community
8. Universal Healthcare
9. Democracy and Participation

On the next council, Oliver could be a key leader as Seattle attempts to grow the $30 million participatory budget seeds sown with the work of the Black Brilliance Research Project as the city hopes to scale up its early steps from decisions around streets and parks to find ways to apply a similar approach to the bigger challenges — and opportunities — of social justice.

During her 2017 run for mayor, CHS asked Oliver about their leadership style and approach to community government.

“Part of the reason why we’re running and part of the reason I think folks asked me to run is I’m very committed to a community organizing model, and very committed to the power of coalitions and driving transformative change,” Oliver said. “We’ve seen a lot of reform, and reform’s not the worst thing, it is a step forward. But I think Seattle really sits in a unique position with the amount of access, wealth and opportunity we have to do something transformational.”

Oliver begins the race with endorsements including several electeds like Councilmember Tammy Morales, former Councilmember Mike O’Brien, state Rep. Kirsten Harris-Taley, business owners from Beacon Hill’s The Station, education activist Jesse Hagopian, and Rev. Ellie VerGowe of Capitol Hill’s First Covenant Church.

Oliver will participate in the city’s Democracy Vouchers program.

UPDATE: Not yet listed among the campaign’s endorsees is Capitol Hill and Central District council representative Kshama Sawant. The Socialist Alternative politician was there inside the Central District’s Washington Hall in April of 2017 for Oliver’s campaign kickoff in her unsuccessful run for mayor. “We need a mayor who has the courage to point out the obscenity of having two of the world’s richest people in our area when we have so many homeless,” Sawant said, warming the crowd up for the candidate’s speech that night. In following years, the two have collaborated and sometimes appeared as proxies for each other at rallies and events and in January 2020 Oliver made an appearance during Sawant’s inauguration celebration. While the thought of both Sawant and Oliver being part of the nine-member council may be enough to make Seattle conservative talk show host Jason Rantz move back to Southern California, there were no early signs of the duo building on their connections to stoke Oliver’s announcement. Sawant’s social media accounts didn’t mention the campaign launch instead focusing on messages from the Socialist Alternative organization critical of the Biden administration and the new COVID-19 relief package.

You can learn more at nikkitafornine.com.

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