Good morning, everyone.
Thank you for joining us.
Over the last several weeks, thousands of ordinary people led by black and brown communities and young workers have taken to the streets in Seattle and hundreds of thousands more nationwide demanding an end to systemic police violence and brutality that has ravaged city after city and our entire nation for decades.
They have declared that Black Lives Matter and have demanded nationwide that police departments be defunded by at least 50%.
Seattle's movement is demanding that Seattle Police Department be defunded by at least 50%.
My office and my organization, Socialist Alternative, have been proud to have marched with the community every step of the way.
And of course, as Socialist City Council member, I have joined the movement that I am a part of in the call to defund the SPD by at least 50 percent, starting immediately.
As a result of the pressure from the George Floyd uprising, six of the eight city council members have now publicly declared that they do to support defunding the SPD by 50 percent.
This is absolutely a welcome step and it's a victory for the movement.
But as the city council now debates changes to the 2020 budget in this summer budget vote, we have yet to see a concrete proposal from any of the other council members to actually achieve what now appears to be majority support.
So today, I am unveiling our budget proposal, the proposal from my office, from the People's Budget Movement, to defund Seattle Police Department by 50% right now for the rest of the year 2020, and to take that money and invest in black and brown working class communities, and following this, in the autumn of this year, to defund next year's budget for Seattle Police by 50%.
On Friday at the city council budget committee tomorrow, I will be introducing the budget amendments that we will go over today.
I urge all the other council members who say they support defunding the SPD to join me in voting for these budget amendments.
I have a brief slideshow to walk everybody through what the amendments will do and what we are proposing to fund after defunding the Seattle Police Department by 50%.
These electronic slides are available on my website and our communication staff will be happy to distribute them to you as well now or after the press conference.
So hopefully my staff are showing the slides that I want to go over.
So as the title slide shows, this is about our movement's demand that the remaining 2020 Seattle police budget be cut by 50% and invested in black and brown working class communities.
And the specific budget amendments will be on the agenda tomorrow and the city council will be taking a vote and I'm happy for my staff to go over the schedule as well.
But as we can see the background of the bloated Seattle Police Department budget, there is the budget for this year, if we can go to the next slide, the budget for this year as a whole was allocated to be $409 million for the whole of this year.
It's that those $409 million are fully 27% of the city of Seattle's entire discretionary budget, more than what the city spends on human services, including elder care and homeless services, affordable housing, neighborhoods, and arts and culture combined.
So all of these social needs combined get less money from the City of Seattle than does the Police Department.
And we should also note that the Police Department's budget is nearly double the Fire Department's budget.
So if you go to the bar graph on the next slide, it shows you in a really powerful visual just how much the Seattle Police Department is bloated and by how much it exceeds the amount that the city funds other social needs.
And so we are looking at a whole spectrum of needs for our community.
We are looking at the overall spectrum, the gamut of human services.
We are looking at the spending for parks and recreation, education and early learning, The funds for the Seattle library, which is always chronically underfunded, in fact, is something that marginalized communities disproportionately depend on, including for internet access, because we don't have municipal broadband.
So we can see, you know, everything from education and housing on the one hand to the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center is grossly underfunded, funded by crumbs compared to what the police department gets.
And as I noted earlier, even the police, the fire department is quite underfunded compared to the police department.
On the next slide, you can see how the Seattle Police Department employees themselves constitute 17% of the city of Seattle workforce, but they account for 60% of the top city of Seattle salaries, and the top city salaries we are counting as salaries greater than $234 billion.
$35,000 a year.
And as you can see, this data comes from open the books.com or my staff have compiled the data that is available from that website into this graph.
And we can see quite how much of the money that goes into the police department goes into bloated.
I mean, the budget as a, as a whole is bloated, but the salaries are bloated.
And you can see in the graph, we say 119 out of 200 top paid city of Seattle executives or employees are in the police department.
This is just mind boggling.
Almost exclusively, these are police officers, sergeants, and lieutenants who were paid an average of $268,000 last year.
And a lot of this comes from overtime payment.
And we know what they do with most of that overtime.
And we'll talk about that in a second.
In the next slide, we can see a 50% refund for this year, how we have arrived at the number $85 million.
A lot of people have asked us.
The total budget is $409 million for the year.
The budget for the five months left in 2020 is $170 million, and 50% of that is $85 million.
So it's very straightforward.
And so what we are demanding is that for the remainder of 2020, rather than spend the $170 million on the police, the city council should vote to take $85 million of those to fund affordable housing services and black and brown working class communities for renter organizing and eviction defense.
And for also the whole range of community service organizations, community-based organizations that have come forward with concrete proposals, with a proven track record, we strongly support all of those proposals.
And all of those proposals can be funded using the $85 million, including community programs that are specifically alternatives to repressive policing.
And in addition to that, the city council needs to stop the sweeps of homeless neighbors because we know that the existence of that navigation team that carries out the sweeps not only inflicts inhumanity on our homeless neighbors, it's also a wastage of millions of dollars every year that can instead be used for homeless services, for tiny house villages, and for affordable housing.
So after all this, the police department would still have $85 million left, which is still is nearly five times the city's entire year funds for immigrant and refugee communities, enforcing labor standards and civil rights combined.
And I should mention specifically the lack of funding for the Office of Civil Rights and the Office of Labor Standards, that particularly negatively impacts the same communities of color who are also impacted by police violence.
So we have to make sure that we understand that when we're talking about defunding the police, we're talking about funding the actual needs of the communities who are negatively impacted by the police.
In the next slide, we have more of an outline of what the defund will look like.
So 16 of this 85 million are accounted for, in our view, by the promise that Mayor Durkan has already made.
But we don't believe that that has been delivered on fully.
So the city council needs to make sure that that happens.
So that accounts for $16 million of the $85 million, and the remainder should come from additional defunding through across-the-board reductions in patrols and other operations, and as I mentioned before, entirely eliminating the navigation team, which is really just a euphemism for carrying out the sweeps.
On the following slide, we have the explanation for where the community wants the $85 million to go.
So this is a whole program that has been laid out by the community, $15.5 million for funding black and brown restorative justice and other community programs, $3 million for support community organizations that develop alternative public safety models, 700,000 for renter organizing and eviction defense, 80,000 to make sure that the oversight board for the Green New Deal is carried out, which is something that was the city council unanimous mandate, but has not been carried out by Mayor Durkin, which is yet another thing that has not been carried out by the mayor's office, despite city council mandate.
We also want to Make sure that affordable working class housing for communities that have faced displacement like the black community needs to be prioritized, at least at the tune of 34.7 million which is a number we currently have fund of, and also we want to make sure that the $16 million the mayor has promised.
can fund currently underfunded city services because that is not going to the police department supposedly.
And of course, as the community has demanded to move 911 call center out of Seattle police and into civilian control.
So all of this encompasses the proposals that have come forward from various community organizations.
And I just wanted to also send a message out there, a message of solidarity to all the community organizations that if you want to change these numbers around, we should have a democratic discussion about that and make sure that we do what is exactly what we want from these $85 million.
But what we should be steadfast and united on is demanding the $85 million that we are able to fund our community needs.
And of course, As this slide shows the next slide shows, we're going to need a movement to win this because, as always, we, we know that whatever we win will be a result of community organizing working class organizing multiracial.
working class movement, just like the George Floyd was, because that is the only way we will be able to overcome the opposition of the political establishment.
And we have to be careful.
Of course, as I said, we welcome the fact that seven of the nine council members, myself included, are promising that it will be 50% defund, but we need to make sure that promise translates into actions and remove the obstacles that are in the way.
And we showed Resoundingly to the Amazon tax victory that when we have powerful solidarity in the grassroots and we have progressive unions community organizations and working class people across racial differences uniting, we are able to win and in fact we would not have won the Amazon tax without the Black Lives Matter movement and so the.
same strategy of building solidarity and building power in the grassroots can and will work.
And we hope that we are able to continue that into the next two weeks to win as much as possible.
So, and of course, the final slide shows the URL where people can get more information.
And of course, as always, please feel free to just contact my staff directly.
But I wanted to, before we turn to our community speakers, address some arguments we are hearing from the political establishment, why this can't be done immediately, and why we can't cut SPD by 50%, and why we have to be thoughtful and take our time.
So something we hear often is, as I said, from council members, is that we have to be thoughtful, we have to take our time.
We cannot move so quickly to cut.
My response to that, honestly, is that that's a mind-boggling assertion.
After years of documented police brutality directed at black and brown communities, at poor people, and at our homeless neighbors, after eight years of failed police reform while under federal oversight, during which the Seattle police killed with impunity 28 people, After the outrageous demonstration of the past two months of indiscriminate police violence against peaceful protesters, including nurses, legal observers, media, people in wheelchairs, children, after having voted wrongly to approve a racist police contract two years ago, after having voted, again, wrongly for hiring bonuses to attract police officers to the force.
After all this, the city political establishment is way past the time to act.
So this is not the time to wait, it's the time to act.
When the political establishment wants to pass a massive corporate handout, they seem to have no trouble finding billions overnight, as we have seen at the state level with multiple massive Boeing handouts.
When the city council wanted to overturn the 2018 Amazon tax, they did it with lightning speed, announcing and calling a repeal vote within just 24 hours' notice.
So to say that we need more time is an insult to the community that is demanding the defunding of the police now after all these years and really decades of police violence.
We're also hearing that budget changes will take time because the city council has to negotiate, the city has to negotiate any changes with Seattle Police Officers Guild, which could take months, at least two or three months.
But this is simply not true.
The city of Seattle has the absolute right to change the police department's budget.
The city does have an obligation to bargain the impact of the budget cut with the Police Officers Guild, but the decision to defund belongs to the city alone, and there is no requirement that negotiations with the Guild be a long, dragged-out process.
It need not take months.
The city has many options.
The city can institute SPD layoffs or furloughs, or they could offer transfers to other city positions.
Goodness knows there are a lot of vacant city jobs because of Mayor Durkan's austerity budget cuts program, which has frozen jobs in departments throughout the city, including, as I mentioned, the Office of Labor Standards and the Office of Civil Rights.
The political establishment announces and implements budget cuts for essential services with stunning rapidity.
The King County Metro just announced 200 driver layoffs earlier this year, layoffs that will take effect immediately.
King County Council, as far as I know, has not said this will take time.
We need to negotiate with ATU 587. As a socialist and a teachers' union member, I am completely opposed to attacks on public sector unions and public jobs.
I am opposed to thrusting the burden of the recession on union workers and on communities that rely on the services.
I am opposed to layoffs in the city.
But that is exactly the point.
The democratic establishment has already carried out cuts without pausing to get union approval and they are getting ready to carry out bigger and more brutal cuts as the economic crisis intensifies.
What politicians will cut and won't cut is all about political will.
When they are cutting vital services by laying workers off, they don't say it will take time, they say it needs to be done right now.
Defunding the Seattle Police Department is not a budget cut to put the recession's burden on workers.
It is about addressing gross injustices.
Our movement says cut the police department by 50% right now.
But as always, whether we win or whether we and how much we win depends on how strong our movement is compared to the political establishment.
We also hear that the city doesn't know how much is left over in SPD budget, that the $85 million may be a cut more than 50%, and how can you just make this assumption?
Again, this is just really shocking to hear.
And the question itself is an indictment of the police department leadership and Mayor Durkin.
What sort of city department is unable to keep a basic accounting of its budget?
What type of unaccountable department leadership bungles their budget so badly that they overspend when they have five months left in the year?
They shouldn't, for instance, have spent $6.3 million in overtime in attacking justice for George Floyd protesters in just the first 12 days of the protest.
And how much did they spend attacking the protest on just this past Saturday?
We'd like to know.
But the fact that they overspent their budgets, paying police officers overtime to tear gas and blast wall hundreds of protesters and terrorize entire neighborhoods is no justification for escaping defund now.
It's sort of like the man who kills his parents and then begs the court for mercy because he's an orphan.
If SPD has less than $170 million over, then it means they have been spending beyond their authority, and they will need to make do with less than $85 million for the rest of the year after we defund the department by 50%.
And by the way, as I said, $85 million, or even $80 million, is a lot of money.
It is nearly five times the city's entire year funds for immigrants and refugees, enforcing labor standards and civil rights combined.
We also heard from Chief Bass that mass SPD layoffs will protect white officers and harm people of color, police officers.
This is simply not true.
And this argument is cynical hostage taking.
Because it's essentially saying, if you make me do this, it will only hurt you more.
Let's address the matter with facts and not with the fearmongering as Chief Best is doing.
The city's Public Safety Civil Service Commission has a rule that guides department layoffs.
It states that layoffs should be guided by seniority, but that the commission can make exceptions.
Let me quote from Commission's Rule 15 so it's crystal clear.
The Civil Service Commission, quote, may grant permission for layoff out of the regular order upon showing by the appointing authority of the department of a necessity therefore in the interest of efficient operation of his or her department after giving any employee or employees affected an opportunity to be heard." So clearly the commission has the right to carry out reasonable procedures that do not involve seniority. It is entirely within Chief Best's authority to come up with a different layoff order, one that does not discriminate against people of color officers. She could, for instance, immediately layoff officers who have the most number of public complaints for violence lodged against them. She would have to negotiate this with the guild, and I would sincerely hope that the guild would not hide behind white supremacist arguments to resist a more equitable layoff order and procedure. Finally, we hear that if there are fewer police, crime will go up. We are seeing people like Spock president Mike Solon and Mayor Durkin cynically try to fear monger, and play into this idea that if we defund SPD, crime would somehow increase. If SPD is defunded, Solon told the city council budget committee yesterday, quote unquote, crime would skyrocket. He provided no evidence because, in fact, there is no statistical evidence that this is true. The Washington Post did an analysis of what happened five years ago when New York City police engaged in a protest slowdown where they were less likely to respond to calls about minor issues. though they continue to investigate more serious crimes such as homicide, rape, and grand larceny. Quote, if more policing reduces crime, then we would expect less policing should lead to more crime. But in fact, we find the opposite. Civilian complaints of major crimes, murder, rape, felony assault, burglary, and grand larceny actually declined during the slowdown, unquote, as reported by the Post. On the other hand, there are plenty of studies that have shown that the relationship between crime rates and economic inequality is quite strong, meaning the more unequal the society, the more the society is prone towards a lack of public safety. Now let's turn to our community members who have stood with, marched with, and helped lead and organize this tremendous movement. First, we have Reverend Robert Jeffrey Sr. senior pastor, New Hope Missionary Baptist Church. My office and Socialist Alternative has been proud to work with Reverend Jeffrey in the Amazon tax fight, especially as we won the allocation or dedication of $18 million a year at least from the Amazon tax funds to build affordable homes in the Central District for black families displaced by racist gentrification. This was a tremendous breakthrough win and the movement owes deep appreciation to Reverend Jeffrey, Reverend Ying, and other faith leaders and activists who advance this demand and help to win it and see it through. Thank you and Reverend Jeffrey welcome. It seems Reverend Jeffrey may still be getting on the call so We will wait for him to join us. But in the meanwhile, I would like to welcome Sam Sumter, who is vice president and rank-and-file member of UAW 4121, the Union of Academic Student Employees and Postdocs at the University of Washington, and who is also a resident of Capitol Hill. They have experienced firsthand the shameful police brutality of recent weeks. Welcome, Sam.
I'd like to start by quoting from our union's open letter from June 1 of this year.
Quote, as a union of teachers and researchers, we fight injustice through our work, our collective bargaining, and our activism.
We have joined with many other unions in centering our most vulnerable communities in this fight to take on policies that foster race and income inequality in education, housing, and health care.
Law enforcement is tasked with securing an unjust economic and social order that disproportionately does violence against black, brown, and low-wage communities.
We call on lawmakers in Seattle to end all racist policies and practices that result in disproportionate incarceration, harassment, killings, and poverty," end quote. As a union, we know that being in solidarity with working people across the city means supporting the survival of working people. For Black, Indigenous, and other working people of color, the police have often been sources of violence and danger, not of safety. Cuts to the police budget will allow for reinvestments in Black and Brown communities that can help create true community safety and well-being. As Shama mentioned, Mayor Durkin keeps claiming that the collective bargaining process prevents the city from enacting critical transformations, whether it's through the budget or in reference to key measures to increase accountability when police are disciplined. As a union, we just don't buy that the mayor has no options. We know firsthand how management uses excuses like this when their real motive is to prop up an order that only benefits a few. It's not a matter of ability, it's a matter of will. And if the mayor were serious about getting something done, she would have brought in an independent accountability expert to help. We also see this problem in her commitment to austerity and cutting the jobs of essential workers in the middle of a pandemic, while refusing to reduce bloated police budgets that support violence against BIPOC communities, trans and queer communities, and homeless communities. We see it in her resistance to pass progressive revenue, which, as our letter stated, props up an unjust economic and social order that disproportionately does violence against black, brown, and low-wage communities. For some reason, she'd rather spread lies about what is and isn't possible through collective bargaining than do anything to address the crisis of over-policing and police brutality. We as a union are not okay with this. We're not okay with the mayor propping up collective bargaining as a politically convenient excuse to avoid accountability and to avoid reimagining policing while getting to act like she cares about workers' rights. And to speak personally for a moment, I do live on Capitol Hill, just a few blocks from the East Precinct. So I also know from firsthand experience what the last few weeks of police backlash against protesters has been like. I've seen my neighborhood be filled with clouds of tear gas and smoke from explosives. Countless times I've been woken up in the middle of the night by flashbangs and the sounds of protesters screaming as they ran from tear gas. And last weekend I watched from my apartment just right over there as a protester detained by police went in and out of consciousness while receiving no medical attention for at least 10 minutes. These experiences are also nothing compared to what black and brown communities have been experiencing for years and years. This isn't community safety. This isn't community health. But this is what our budgets are currently prioritizing. Our budgets are currently prioritizing a social order that values protection of property over protection of life over actual community well-being. That has to change. We must instead prioritize true community safety by investing in housing, community-run crisis intervention, violence prevention, and violence interruption. Those investments can and must begin immediately. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Sam.
Before I invite our next speaker, I just wanted to share that some community members are saying that 50% of the remaining budget available to SPD is 108, sorry, the remaining available budget to the SPD is 188 million.
And that 50% of that would be 96 million.
And what I want to say to the community members who have found that is I would urge them to contact my office so that we can see where they are getting this number from, 94 million.
Sorry, not 96 million.
And I want to make sure that my commitment and the commitment of Socialist Alternative and the People's Budget Movement is crystal clear.
Whatever the budget is, whatever the budget is supposed to be, that is 50% of this year, we are committed to that.
So if this is more than $85 million, absolutely we are committed to fighting for more than $85 million.
I want to be, I want to make that crystal clear.
I want to urge that we fight unitedly for the maximum that we could win.
So if the maximum that we could win is 94 and not 85, absolutely, we are going for it.
I just wanted to clarify that.
And now I would like to invite Bruce Jackson, who is a rank and file member of Seattle Education Association and is special education teacher at Akai Karuse Middle School in Southeast Seattle.
He's a leader in Washington Ethnic Studies now and is a member of Social Equity Educators.
Please welcome Bruce.
Like I said, my name's Bruce Jackson.
I'm a Seattle rep, and I'm also a Washington State rep and a NEA rep for our union.
So as of the last rep assembly we had in June, we managed to do quite a few things and then follow through with them.
We voted to remove police from Seattle public schools.
We voted to remove the police from King County Labor Council.
We voted to defund the police and move those resources to education and social services.
We voted to participate in a strike the last day of school in support of Black Lives Matter movement.
We voted to donate over $4,200 to Black Lives Matter Seattle, Black Lives School, Seattle Bail Fund, and Families for Color.
But due to the cancellation of WEA and NEA conventions, we had set up a contingency to go to those two organizations and just blast away as much Black Lives Matter stuff as we do.
But due to COVID restrictions, we were limited to memorandums of understanding.
And we do intend to continue to fight, but there's not a lot we can do right now.
But the Seattle educators that I know have been on the front lines, I know of six personally who've been injured by police violence in the last two months.
So we've been putting together a lot of separate actions, most prominent of which is the week of action that's happening right now.
We have seven separate actions that will be concluded with a march to City Hall on August 3rd, the day of the budgeting crisis.
I mean, day of the budgeting.
Today is the day we're supposed to be writing to our legislators.
I'm one of the organizers of tomorrow's rally at Seattle Rainier Beach Community Center.
It's a student-led organization called Black education now, and at the rally we'll speak on 10 demands that the students from the NAACP Youth Coalition have come up with to improve public schools.
We're going to follow that rally up with a car, caravan to City Hall where we will take those demands and then do some city council members who who are voting on the budget on August 3rd.
We're kind of determined at the SCA to make a move right now because if we don't make it now, it'll be too late.
That's it.
I fully agree with brother Bruce.
If we don't fight for what we need now, then it will be too late.
And we have had a tremendous uprising nationwide and we need to be able to translate that anger and the energy on the streets into concrete victories for our community.
I would like to invite now B.A.
Lacombe, who is a District 6 renter, a member of Socialist Alternative.
B.A.
has been active in the Justice for George Floyd protests and is one of the army of signature gatherers for our successful Tax Amazon campaign.
Welcome, B.A.
Hi, thanks Shama and Sam and Bruce.
This has been great.
So as a renter in Seattle and as a member of Socialist Alternative, I know that the people's budget movement is necessary to fight for the things we need as working people.
Even corporate media across the U.S. have been forced to recognize and give warning about an eviction apocalypse, a tsunami of evictions.
In a country where we're already facing an enormous housing crisis, people of color have faced disproportionate job loss during the pandemic and will likely face the brunt of the millions of predicted evictions in the coming months.
This is on top of the vicious racist gentrification that has been pushing black and brown communities out of the city.
We stand with the movement calling to defund SPD by 50% in 2020. A 50% cut of the remaining operating budget means the $85 million that Shama has mentioned redirected from brutalizing and repressing our communities and instead invested in the things that make our communities thrive.
$85 million to go to black and brown working class communities and services means $36 million for affordable housing.
We should also use $700,000 of that $85 million for renters rights, which includes $500,000 for renters organizing at the tenants union and $200,000 for eviction defense lawyers for the thousands of tenants who are facing down rents they cannot pay.
Earlier this year, we made a call for the establishment to cancel rent, and they didn't do that.
Because of the organizing statewide and across the nation over the past months, the establishment was forced to enact eviction moratoriums.
Socialist Alternative and Councilmember Sawant's office, alongside renters' rights organizations, collected over 9,000 signatures for the cancel rent petition.
But because rent hasn't been canceled, once the moratoriums are lifted, there will be a tsunami of evictions unless renters get organized seriously toward a rent strike.
We need money for renters to get organized, not money for police to enforce brutal evictions.
Black working class and poor people were disproportionately impacted by the eviction epidemic even before the recession.
The private housing market has simply failed.
It's the core of racist gentrification in the city.
It's built thousands of luxury apartments that are sitting empty while working families, especially black and brown people, are pushed out of the city and even onto the street.
We are calling to stop the sweeps of our homeless neighbors, to fund high quality public housing and services.
Sweeps are brutal and ineffective.
And even the Center for Disease Control has said that the sweeps are likely to hasten the spread of COVID-19.
As a socialist alternative member and renter, I am organizing with the People's Budget Movement because it is committed to fighting and winning to make a real material difference in the lives of working class people.
We launched this movement in the first year Council Member Sawant was elected, and every year since then, the People's Budget Campaign has won significant victories for homeless neighbors, for affordable housing, and renters' rights.
Let's do it again this year.
Austerity, business as usual budgets are being proposed all across the country.
When working people are facing the most desperate situation, the most severe economic depression in 150 years, the political establishment is cutting programs.
In Seattle, we can show that another world is possible.
And it is that belief that another world is possible that drives me to be a fighting socialist.
Capitalism is a police state.
Fight for a socialist world.
Thank you.
Thank you, Bia, for those inspiring words.
And now I would like to invite Reverend Jeffrey, who I think has been able to join the call.
So welcome, Reverend Jeffrey.
Thanks, Sharma.
It's good to be here.
I'm just, I am, I'm delighted to be here.
Can you hear me?
Not sure I'm being heard.
Yes, we can hear you.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
Uh, this pandemic, this pandemic has forced the need for long, long needed changes in the police, especially I've been in the city for over 30 years.
I can't tell you the despair I've had in preaching funerals of people who've been killed by the police unjustly.
The first funeral I preached when I came here was of a young man who was in a house, asleep on a couch with a television tuner in his hand.
The police came in.
He raised up, startled, and they killed him.
I mean, I've seen young men killed at Safeways, at least two.
I've seen people shot.
for no reason whatsoever, unarmed people.
I've never protested.
I've never protested the killing of anybody who was armed.
But my life has been filled with protests year after year after year after year.
Screaming in the streets, begging, pleading to whoever would listen.
decrying what is just an untenable situation.
This is a situation where people feel absolute terror.
I myself have been stopped at least 50 times in this city.
One night I was driving to my church.
My church had been burned down and I was driving here just to go to my office.
I was stopped on 21st and Jefferson.
I was held around 12 o'clock at night by about five cars of police who laughed and joked while I sit in my car.
I wanted to cry.
I was so embarrassed and so humiliated, but my dignity and my self-respect kept me from doing that.
I was stopped again.
These are notable stops.
I mean, I've been stopped so many times, but these were notable.
When I required the next morning about that stop, the police told me there was no record.
There was no record of me being held for two hours at night, afraid for my life.
I was stopped again in the jail.
I went up to the jail to perform a wedding.
A simple wedding.
One of the prisoners asked me to come and perform a wedding.
I went up to perform that wedding.
Two police armed with guns on their hips, guns on their legs, I mean, heavily armed, came up to me, told me to stand.
I was under arrest.
I asked them, why am I being arrested?
They could not give me a reason.
They escorted me out of the waiting room into the hallway.
I stood there for over an hour.
Eventually, they let me go.
I was in a protest march, a legitimate protest march, on Jefferson, up by East Precinct.
They had given us the permission to march, but as we marched, they kept throwing up barriers in front of us.
Eventually, I kept going through the barriers, and eventually, a tall, Policeman, about six foot five, stepped to the front of the line and hit me in the stomach with a billy club with all his force.
For no reason, no reason, I got up to give the remarks.
The only thing stopped him from hitting me again was women stood in front of him, in front of me, to protect me.
I got up to give the speech.
Another policeman grabbed my megaphone and told me to shut the hell up.
This is America.
This is not supposed to be a totalitarian country.
This is not supposed to be a country where people are afraid to get in their car and drive down the street.
This is America.
If this is what is going on, if we continue to do the same things that we've been doing in the past, we're going to have the same results.
I'm in the struggle not for myself, but for my children, for my daughters, for my son, and for black children all over the city who are not drug dealers, who are not gang bangers.
who are decent children who are trying to get an education, who are trying to live their lives out.
Yes, we have a crime problem, but we have a crime problem for the most part because of poverty, because of desperation.
But I'm not going to excuse that.
I'm just going to say that there are children out here who are decent, who are respectable, who live in terror and fear of the police.
I saw a young woman hit in the face with a fist, the fist of a police officer.
And that young woman was made to apologize to the police officer for hitting her in the face with a fist, with his fist.
She was unarmed, a high school girl.
I've seen it all.
If the police, the only defense they have is you need us to protect you, I say, That's not a good defense, especially when you fail to do that for so many people for so many years.
When you terrorize the community for so many years, that's not a defense.
What we need from you is what are you gonna do differently?
We need a plan.
We need from you, how are you gonna change your racist behavior?
This is not acceptable.
Living this way is not acceptable.
tolerating this abuse is not acceptable.
This is not right.
And we cannot condone this.
The people can despise and they can disperse the defund movement.
They can talk all kinds of negative.
What are we going to do without the police?
Well, what are we going to do with a racist police force that fails to do its job?
This pandemic has exposed so much.
And it's sped up the clock on change, change that many in this country wanted to do incrementally over the next hundred years, I guess, I don't know.
250 years, I guess.
They just wanted to pass it down as long as they could pass it down, as long as it's not in my time, as long as I don't have to give up anything myself.
Give it to my great-grandchildren.
Give it to my great-grand...
That's what your fathers did, and that's what your grandfathers did, and that's what your forefathers did.
But it's time now for you to stand up, for the country to stand up right now.
There is no more passing the buck.
There is no more kicking the can down the road.
This is the time for us to solve these problems.
And to say there is no problem, To dare say, to dare say in the face of the dead bodies and the abuse, it's not just the killings, it's the abuse of power.
To dare say in this moment that there is no problem is an insult.
It's an insult to all of the people who've been humiliated.
I've been humiliated.
Because I had a strong father, a strong grandfather, a grandfather who endured the humiliation of the Tulsa riots in 21. I had a strong father.
I was able to maintain my dignity and self-respect in spite of this indignity.
It's time for a change.
And if the police department doesn't like the proposals coming from Councilwoman Sawant, give us alternatives proposals, but things have to change.
This cannot continue.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for those words.
Now we are going to turn to the media who is in attendance.
And if you would like to ask a question, please either raise your hand in the app And you'll be called on in the order in which you raise your hand, or you can send a question to joseph.pija at seattle.gov.
That's J-O-S-E-P-H dot P-E-H-A.
All right.
So first, we have a question from Lindsey Sheldon from Cairo 7. Lindsey, please go ahead.
Hello.
Are you able to hear me?
We can.
Thank you.
Councilmember Sawant, I wanted to ask you about the commercial that has been aired by the Seattle Police Officers Guild.
They use your words at the beginning and end of it.
I'm sure that you have heard of this.
You did address the concern of higher crime rates that was mentioned in that commercial, but there are other things that are touched on.
The narrator talks about longer 911 response times.
What is your reaction to seeing that commercial and the use of your words in it?
Thank you for the question.
I am not surprised in any way, because the Seattle Police Officers Guild, and indeed many of the police guilds throughout the nation, unfortunately, and the Fraternal Order of Police, which many of the police guilds are affiliated with, are at this point reactionary and right-wing.
Many of them are aligned with the Trump administration.
So I am not surprised to see them taking such a demonizing approach.
But I would say what they're demanding is not me personally, but the movement that is demanding police accountability and an end to police violence and racism in our society.
And I would also say that their video takes out of context the comments that we made.
As all the media know, my comments that they have misquoted in the commercial were directed towards Amazon billionaires, Jeff Bezos and the billionaire class as a whole, it was not in relation to the police department, but it's telling that they have used it because it also is a reminder for us that the primary function of the police forces and the military under capitalism in the context of capitalism is to carry out repression of any kind of social movements that demand a different kind of society.
So I think it is important that we, those of us who are fighting for a better society, regardless of what other specific things we might disagree on, if we all are united, on wanting a society, a city that is free of police violence, free of racism, then we must unite proudly to fight to defund the police and to make sure that those funds are invested in black and brown working class communities, because we know that that is what's going to fix the problems that are being faced by the communities.
Thank you, Council Member.
I just had one other question, if there's time to ask it.
I wanted to get your reaction to some of the criticism that we have heard about these investments in, I've heard them termed upstream investments, investments in community and, you know, basically addressing many of those poverty-rooted crimes and investing in those community organizations.
Some of the criticism that we have heard is that investing in those organizations, there will be that time gap in between defunding from police and investing in those organizations.
And there's that gap left between those efforts taking effect.
How would you respond to that type of concern or criticism?
I think the main concern anybody should have is the seemingly endless time gap that the community has faced after decades of studies showing that the best way to carry out public safety is to build a more equitable society.
to make sure that the policies at the city, county, state, and federal level are directed towards alleviating poverty, homelessness, racism inside schools and on the streets and in our neighborhoods, as opposed to exacerbating the problems that are at the root cause of what we see in our society.
I would also urge people to look at statistics, especially if you look at the entire trajectory of Seattle since the George Floyd protest movement broke out on with the first protest on May 30. Where has the violence come from?
The violence has come from the Democratic establishment-led police department.
The violence has not come from the protest movement.
It has come from the tear gas, the blast walls, the flashbang grenades, the rubber bullets.
And so many people not just have verbal accounts to testify to this, people have actual physical injuries and any, you know, I'm sure media have seen a number of social media reports on how these violent attacks have happened at the hands of the police.
So I would say that if we are actually taking a scientific approach, an approach that is informed by data and analysis, then the most urgent thing that we need to do is to move these funds from the police department and towards addressing the problems in our society.
So for example, The reason that wealthy communities are safe is not because they have more policing.
Actually, it's the exact opposite.
They have very little policing.
If you look at the police presence and you distribute it across income-based neighborhoods, you will see that the maximum police presence is in the poorest neighborhoods.
So the reason the wealthier neighborhoods are safer is not because of more police.
It's because they have decent housing.
They have really good quality public schools because the school funding is also very income segregated.
It's because the parents have decent jobs where they're able to spend time with their children.
It's because the children themselves have access to not only good schools, but quality after school programs, summer programs, access to job opportunities when they graduate high school.
These are the things that we need to immediately fund.
That is why it's important that on this press conference, we have the voice of educators as well through Brother Bruce Jackson from the Seattle Education Association, who's making precisely that point.
And that's why tomorrow, Black Education Now has organized this rally and action precisely because they are pointing, you know, because data shows that we need these funds to be benefiting our students, our young, young people and our communities.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Dan Beekman of the Seattle Times.
Please go ahead, Dan.
Thanks, Joseph.
Question for Council Member Sawant.
I'm just wondering whether in terms of the cuts you're proposing across patrol operations, other than, you know, the navigation team specific cut that you mentioned, are you asking the police department to choose how and where to carry out those patrol cuts, or are you going to be proposing more, you know, detailed cuts within that?
Thank you for that question, Dan.
I can respond to that, but I wonder if Jonathan Rosenblum from my staff wants to have a response to that.
Yes, Dan, that's a good question.
And, you know, the the amendments we're making are not seeking to micromanage the SPD.
In fact, the SPD has latitude within our proposal to figure out what cuts make the most sense.
And so the amendments that Council Member Sawant is putting forward would cut 85 million and the department would have to figure out how to make those cuts and how to prioritize the services moving forward.
So that's how, and I'd say with one exception, of course, we are saying we need a 100% cut in the sweeps program that the police engage in because the inhumane and cruel sweeps are harming people, our neighbors who are homeless, and they're in fact in this COVID era endangering the entire community and they need to be done away with completely.
All right.
Looks like we have queued through all of the media questions.
So unless there's anything else, I think that is it.
Council Member Swann, do you have any remarks?
Yes, absolutely.
Thank you, Joseph, for giving me the opportunity before the media leave, and I hope the media are still present.
Just wanted to clarify, as I said before, we are hearing from some community members that what's left over for the rest of the year's budget is $188 million in the police department.
So 50% of that should be 94 million, and we should be fighting for 94 million.
So as I said, my commitment 100 percent is to fight for defunding by at least 50 percent.
So in that sense, I'm not – I mean, for me, it's a political question.
Is there – is the movement strong enough to win more than 85 million?
And if we want to fight for 94 million, I'm absolutely there with you.
We just checked with our central staff to clarify where the $188 million amount is coming from, as opposed to the 170 million, which is the figure we used.
For the five month period of that accounts for the five month portion of the $409 million yearly budget and central staff have clarified that $188 million is a mid month figure like mid July figure and.
you know, just accounting wise, we would assume that the balance would be lower by the end of this month.
And since we are proposing the cuts for August, starting in August, we expect that number to come down by August.
And so at this moment, it seems to us from what central staff are advising us that is that it is $85 million is would be the 50% cut.
But as I said, I welcome the community.
If we want to fight for more, I'm there with you.
But we need to make sure that we hold the city council accountable.