SPEAKER_00
Councilmember Morales?
Councilmember Morales?
Council Member Peterson.
Council Member Weiss.
One present.
Thank you, Ted.
This meeting does not have the quorum of three council members specified by the council rules.
I want to clarify to members of the public that the council rules are not the law.
Following or not following these council rules or protocols is not a legal question.
For the most part, in my view, these protocols are set up to help the political establishment.
As a council member, as many of you may have observed, I generally follow these protocols and conventions, but not when they are used by the political establishment as a lever to try and hinder ordinary people and grassroots movements, as they are in this case with all council members boycotting this committee.
We do have more than a quorum of workers prepared to speak in our agenda items.
And to me as a representative of working people and not the political establishment, that is far more important.
It is unfortunate, but not surprising that the political establishment is choosing to boycott any and all discussion about taxing big business to address our triple emergency of COVID housing and climate change.
However, as I said, there is no law against continuing this committee meeting without other council members present So we will not allow the big business loyalty boycott to prevent this discussion of workers.
And I'm very excited about tonight's committee as the next step in our movement, not only for the Amazon tax, but also to build renter power to fight against what could be a massive wave of evictions in the face of the historic joblessness in our society.
Since 2017, our movement, led by Seattle's working people and community members, has been fighting for the Amazon tax to fund a massive expansion of affordable social housing and to advance Green New Deal programs.
We are here tonight thanks only to that kind of movement and thanks to ordinary people, working people, the vulnerable in our society, and also progressive small business owners and landlords who are part of our movement.
We're here specifically to extend our discussion about the tax Amazon legislation, co-sponsored by me and by Councilmember Tammy Morales, and also to discuss, as I said, strengthening renters' rights and how we can support grassroots tenants organizing to win a full suspension without consequences of rent, mortgage, and utility payments.
There have been two hearings on our tax Amazon legislation in the Select Budget Committee on April 22nd and April 29th, But before the first meeting, before the third meeting scheduled for May 13th, the establishment led by Council Members Gonzalez and Herbold claimed that our tax Amazon legislation to fund COVID relief, jobs, housing, and Green New Deal somehow mysteriously was not emergency legislation responding to the COVID crisis.
imagine this, you know, an emergency legislation to deal with the emergency not being emergency related.
You cannot make this stuff up.
In response to this, Council Member Mosqueda canceled the committee.
I really appreciate Council Member Mosqueda repeatedly asserting her desire for strong public revenues by taxing big business, and I look forward to her continued support, though I really disagree with her decision to cancel the meetings.
My office and our movement totally reject the alleged legal reasons from council members Gonzalez and Herbold and others in the establishment in demanding that committee discussions on Amazon tax legislation be shut down because it doesn't meet the criteria in the governor's proclamation of necessary legislation to respond to the COVID emergency.
Last Friday, I held a press conference with labor attorney Dimitri Glitsin, one of the attorneys who fought alongside the movement for the CTAC $15 minimum wage, who explained why there's no defensible legal rationale for shutting down the hearings on tax Amazon.
Let's be very clear here.
The Democratic Party political establishment is trying to use the cover of legal arguments and not very competent ones at that to try and quash our movement and growing movement and protect big business from taxation.
These public hearings are not just for council members to learn about the legislation, these are opportunities for working people to continue building our movement.
But our movement is not going to let the establishment stop us with these maneuvers.
And at the press conference on Friday, I announced that if the Budget Committee was unwilling to meet to continue deliberations on this legislation, then I would do so as chair of the Sustainability and Rental Rights Committee.
And so here we are tonight, and I want to welcome There's 70 of you who are attending this meeting on various live stream channels that we have set up, and I'm sure many more will be joining in the minutes presently.
And that's in addition to those of you watching on Seattle channel and listening on the council listen line.
Thank you so much to the city's Information and Technology Department, the Clerk's Office, and the Council Communications Department, and the Seattle Channel staff for helping to facilitate tonight's online meeting and to ensure that the public can fully attend this meeting.
We really appreciate all your work.
We will hear an important report tonight from the city council central staff on the jobs benefits of tax Amazon and we have two excellent community panels, the first of workers to discuss tax Amazon, and the second of renters were also working people to share with all of us what they're doing to fight back against greedy landlords.
If there's no objection to the agenda, then it will be adopted.
But there's no other council member, so the agenda is going to be adopted.
Before we go into the public testimonies, I want to share with you all some news about Emojean Williams.
who many of you may know as a longtime fighter for working people, for social justice, and who is older than most of us in age and yet has put many of us younger people to shame with her boundless energy and courage.
I am deeply saddened to hear from her family that Imogene has suffered a debilitating fracture, but we are thankful that she will be surrounded by her loving family and her loved ones.
Imogene has been a fierce proponent for the Amazon tax.
When she spoke in city hall chambers against the shameful repeal of the 2018 Amazon tax, she sent fire coursing through my veins.
When so many might have given up, got demoralized, or even sold out in the face of the obstacles from the political establishment and this hostile system, Imogene has been one of the rare leaders who has never lost her courage or her integrity.
Her love for her fellow beings has never dulled and she has never stopped fighting.
And in true Imogene spirit, despite all the adversity facing her, she is with her family at home right now watching this committee.
Imogene, our love and solidarity to you and your family.
It has been an honor to fight alongside you.
At this time, we will open the remote public comment period for items on today's agenda or within the committee's purview.
The public comment for this meeting, I'm going to have it for about 10 minutes because we have a long agenda.
Each speaker will be given one minute to speak.
I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website.
If you have not registered to speak but would like to, please sign up.
If we have time, we will include you.
and the public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.
Once I call a speaker's name, staff from my office will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of you have been unmuted will be the speaker's cue that it's their turn to speak.
Please begin speaking by stating your name.
And every speaker will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.
I'm really sorry.
I've observed that it seems to disorient the speakers and makes you feel like you have to stop speaking at that moment.
Please know that when you hear a chime, you have 10 seconds left still.
So you don't have to stop speaking at that second, but that's when you need to wrap up your public comments and make sure you finish before your 10 seconds are up.
Because if you don't end at that time, the microphone will be automatically muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.
The public comment period is now open and I will be reading the names of the people who are going to be speaking.
The first speaker is Eva Metz.
Hi, my name is Eva Metz and I'm a renter in District 2 and a member of Socialist Alternatives.
I want to say shame on the City Council's Democratic Party establishment for using bureaucratic and frankly hypocritical arguments to cancel uh...
committee meetings on tax amazon also think it's unfortunate that council members mesquita and uh...
i can't remember morale if refused to show up tonight uh...
but thank you to help the members who want for putting tax amazon on tonight's agenda and providing an example for the kind of politics we need uh...
in this time uh...
i think capitalism is demonstrating itself to be a completely failed system crises and recessions.
And we should be clear that the politicians who refuse to tax the wealthy aren't taking a neutral position.
They're making sure that the cost of this crisis will be paid for by working people with more unemployment, poverty, austerity budgets.
And they're helping to make sure that the super rich continue to profit off this crisis.
I think we need a new party.
We need to tax Amazon.
And ultimately, we need a different kind of society than capitalism.
Thank you.
Next speaker is Carl Haglund.
Good evening, Council Member Sawant.
It's nice to chat with you tonight.
While I'm sitting here on the phone with you, I'm looking at $0.38.
I put $0.38 on the calendar to remind myself that our current budget deficit is $0.38 per person per day.
That's it.
Seattle has a budget of this year of $6.5 billion.
We're only short about $110 million.
And that's only a shortfall of 1.5%.
This is not an emergency, and according to the governor, we should not be meeting.
Tomorrow, what I'd like you to do and other council members to do is to figure out how to save 38 cents for every single person living in Seattle.
Here are a few ideas.
Maybe the city doesn't need to purchase hundreds of new cars and trucks this year for your 12,000 employees.
I've noticed your cars and trucks are all newer than mine, and I drive a fairly nice car.
Our budget shortfall is not a crisis.
The city doesn't need another head tax.
Creating jobs for the unemployed is crisis.
Building affordable housing right now is the emergency.
The city of Seattle needs to help businesses create employment opportunities and help my construction industry produce tens of thousands of affordable places to live and help us create tens of thousands of new construction jobs.
Please don't waste taxpayer money.
Next we have Rosie Daniels.
Hi, my name is Rosie Daniels.
I'm a mentor in District 3, Council Members' Balance District.
I work as a graphic designer, and I'm a member of Socialist Alternatives.
And my thoughts go out to Emma Jean and her family right now.
Solidarity to you all.
For those who aren't familiar with the process so far, we protect the Amazon movement.
We organized three Democratic action conferences so far to decide on what to fight for and how to win it.
We knew this had to be independent because we've seen over and over again that you can't depend on a Democratic Party establishment to act in our interest.
which is exhibited over this Zoom meeting where all other council members refused to do their jobs and show face.
We're going to have to do it ourselves.
We filed a ballot initiative to tax Seattle's biggest corporations to what we desperately need.
But that establishment is refusing to do the only thing that would make democracy possible during this pandemic by allowing online signatures.
We're left with no other option.
So as a movement, we're going all out to collect signatures in a socially distanced and safe way from now to the July deadline.
And we're ramping up to involve hundreds of volunteers Our movement has a really awesome action conference.
We just decided to do this, so this Saturday we're starting off.
Go to the TaxAmazon Facebook or TaxAmazon.net slash events to get involved.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Pamela Woodruff.
Can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Hi, I'm Pamela Woodruff, and thank you for the opportunity to speak, Council Members Sawant, I'm commenting on item number two on tonight's agenda.
I'm a housing provider of one backyard cottage in North Seattle.
I was the first to apply for a permit when daddoos were legalized in 2009. As a social worker who's worked in medical settings for nearly 20 years I understand the serious ramifications of increased homelessness during a pandemic.
None of us want to evict tenants especially now.
However, I'm dismayed that small housing providers are now required to defer rental income for six or more months of installment payments while still being expected to provide housing along with the expenses of repairs, renovation loans, mortgages, utilities, and taxes.
As a person in my 60s, COVID, my ability to supplement my income is severely curtailed for months to come.
I urge the committee to provide additional immediate financial relief to us small housing providers to offset the loss of rental income.
Thank you so much for listening.
Our next speaker is Barbara Finney.
Hi.
Thank you very much Council Member Swann for holding this hearing.
I hope all the other council members are watching.
My name is Barbara Finney.
I live in District 5. And I'm a member of the Tax Amazon Movement.
There's a number of groups that I belong to that support the Swamp Morales legislation to tax Amazon and big business, to fund COVID emergency relief for workers, massive expansion of green jobs, and social housing.
So these groups are the 32nd Legislative District Democrats.
Seattle Democratic Socialists of America, Seattle 350, PSARO, which is Puget Sound Alliance for Retirement Action.
Why is there so much momentum for tax Amazon?
Because we know there's either a choice between we're going to get austerity or public investment.
So we need to tax make this corporate tax, which is very fair on the biggest businesses in Seattle, to fund public investment desperately needed now.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Louise Kulzer.
Oh, hello.
My name is Louise Kulzer.
Can you hear me now?
Yes.
I live in District 6 Dan Strauss' District.
I support the premise that businesses that fuel Seattle's viability and economy should also find a way to help solve the three pressing problems in this proposal.
The COVID-19 impact on our citizens affordable housing crisis and carbon reduction.
I support efforts for the city council, the business community to cooperate and respond to these pressing social issues and urge the city and the business community to enlist the help perhaps even further into King County and the region to create funds to address these issues.
I ask that my civic and business leaders engage for the good of the community and that They help make the community successful.
Thank you.
And last, we have Karen Taylor.
My name's Karen Taylor.
Hello, my name's Karen Taylor.
I'm going to talk a little bit about something I did with the Transit Riders Union, but I'm just speaking frankly on my own behalf.
I organized the Transit Riders Union socially distanced in-person protest asking for a big business tax and I and others dear to me put our lives at risk and our families lives at risk to yet again say that we need this tax and as Ty our speaker mentioned I at the Transit Riders Union request went and campaigned for her bold, even though that's not my district.
I fought for her, and I really wish she would fight for me.
We take risks all the time.
I'd really love her to take a risk and do this tax.
I don't know how many times I'm going to have to come and talk about this.
I'm spending all my money on Amazon now for my food stamps because they're the only place that delivers and takes them that I know of.
I really wish they'd helped us out.
Thank you very much, Kusama.
Thank you so much, Karen and everybody who spoke in public comment.
I will go ahead and close public comment period now and we will go on to the remaining portion of our committee.
I wanted to read a statement that Councilmember Mosqueda has sent to me to read out publicly.
I will read it now.
Thank you for reaching out to my office.
The need for revenue and resources to address the COVID-19 is great.
This virus has exacerbated already existing inequities for many Seattle residents, including women, people of color, immigrants, low-income workers, working families, small business owners, many in the LGBTQIA community, and for our unhoused neighbors.
I support any conversation that begins to address our community's needs during the coronavirus emergency and beyond.
The ability to respond to the public health crisis and economic hardship created and worsened by COVID requires sufficient revenue, philanthropic efforts, and strong maintenance of our public safety net.
The philanthropic efforts are greatly appreciated, but philanthropic support coupled with existing government resources alone are not enough to meet the mounting community needs caused by and made worse by COVID.
The reality is that now is a crucial time to provide immediate relief to our community, including working families, small businesses, food security, housing assistance, child care support, and direct cash assistance.
And it's clear that the funding emergency caused by COVID demands a response and relief.
The evolving legal analysis says otherwise, which frustrates me, but I support the council president's recommendation to both ensure we are in compliance with the proclamation issued by Governor Inslee to public agencies that direct any action during the COVID-19 emergency and to protect the health and safety of city employees and attendees.
I remain committed to passing sustainable progressive revenue at the city level to respond to the crisis and its lingering effects, and look forward to engaging in that process as soon as we get further notice from our law department to move forward.
In the meantime, I have held other public engagement opportunities, such as the Economic Realities of COVID Forum that I hosted Tuesday, May 19, which included national and local leaders who described the stark economic reality imposed upon us and how to build an economy that centers equity, not austerity.
We will continue to highlight the importance of new revenue sources to overcome this budget crisis in the weeks ahead and look forward to future committee discussions as soon as we are allowed.
Thank you for your engagement and stay safe.
Teresa Mosqueda.
I really appreciate Councilmember Mosqueda sending this statement so I could read it.
I strongly agree with her that this is a crucial time to provide immediate relief to our community and to create jobs and that we cannot do that with the existing public revenues, especially in the face of immediate austerity that we're facing.
And I will talk about that a little more.
Of course, as I've said to her and as I've said publicly, I don't agree with the decision to cancel the meetings and I don't accept as credible this fear that we're, as elected leaders, we're going to be sued for holding a meeting on an emergency during an emergency.
But it's extremely important that we have Council Member Morales co-sponsoring this legislation and Council Member Mosqueda having said repeatedly that she really it's her desire to have progressive revenues.
I also agree with Karen who spoke in public comment just now and said that you know ordinary people They fight on the front lines to get their representatives elected.
And as Karen said, she has fought.
She wants her elected representative, Council Member Herbold, to fight for her.
And that's the kind of responsibility that we need elected representatives to take seriously.
That once we get elected, this is not our position personally.
It is the position that belongs to the people.
And I take that responsibility seriously.
And that's why we are holding this committee tonight.
I'm really happy for all the people who have joined us.
What was not talked about extensively in the previous two meetings was a central aspect of the crisis we are facing, this recession that is now already in many respects worse than the Great Depression.
Imagine that we're going to be living through a crisis that in many respects is going to be worse than the Great Depression.
But, you know, the central component of this crisis is the massive joblessness.
And the central component of our legislation is jobs creation.
And that has not been talked about hardly at all in the committee meetings that we have had so far.
And so this committee is going to take advantage of some numbers that we've received.
And we have staff here to help us with it.
But just a little bit of background.
The unemployment numbers right now are absolutely staggering.
Nearly 40 million workers throughout America have lost their jobs in nine weeks.
Over 150,000 of Seattle's workers are part of those terrifying statistics.
It's terrifying because when people are living paycheck to paycheck, when you literally don't have a paycheck, what are you supposed to do?
We know these numbers are underestimates because they exclude people who work in the gig economy, like Uber and Lyft drivers, workers in the informal economy, and people who've had their work hours reduced but not completely eliminated.
The new jobs data for the Amazon tax, which our city council and central staff will present in detail shortly, reveal what this fight is really about.
We have two choices.
Seattle's political establishment can choose to side with working people and save lives and rebuild our community in the wake of COVID by investing in jobs, housing, and the Green New Deal, funded by taxing big business and the wealthy.
or they can double down on the misery with savage austerity policies that are openly being advocated by the corporate elite, the mayor, and the Seattle Times editorial board.
In the nine weeks since the COVID shutdown began, Nearly 1.2 million Washington State workers have filed for unemployment, including over 350,000 in King County.
That's more than one out of every four workers in The in Washington state one out of every four workers.
It is just absolutely frightening these numbers economists have stated that we are entering a period of long and profound economic disruption.
with long-term impacts on access to jobs, housing, and other basic necessities of life.
Harvard economist Kenneth S. Rogoff, who studies recessions, estimates that we might see the mother of all financial crises.
By comparison to the present moment, the Great Depression lasted a decade with unemployment peaking at about 25%, and And the Federal Reserve now estimates that unemployment in the COVID crisis could peak at 30%, well above the Great Depression peak.
The political establishment has already announced the first round of austerity for our city's budget, 10% budget cuts.
To quote the urbanist who recently noted, a 10% cut to the general fund would be devastating.
The austerity meat cleaver will hit social services that people count on, especially during a pandemic recession double whammy.
That's a quote from The Urbanist, which clearly explains that a 10% cut at the city level is going to be devastating.
And that's just the opening salvo from big business and the political establishment.
So this is our choice.
tax Amazon for jobs, housing and emergency relief to relieve suffering and rebuild our community, or to insist on austerity that will only double down on the misery for all of us while protecting the rich and powerful.
And that's really the central question that's facing our city.
Who will pay for the COVID crisis?
Big business, corporate landlords, the wealthy, or working people, small businesses, small landlords.
Our city council central staff has consulted with industry experts and determined that in aggregate, the tax Amazon legislation would create or support 34,000 jobs over the course of the first 10 years of this legislation.
These jobs will be newly created like the social work positions and other jobs in permanent supportive housing, are supported through increased demand for construction work, to build new social housing, and to upgrade existing homes with energy efficiency investments.
So let's turn now to our central staff, Ali Panucci and Tracy Ratliff, who have been kind enough to put together information on the jobs that would be created with our tax Amazon legislation investments.
Please introduce yourself for the record, and please take over with your slideshow.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Swann.
I'm Alec Nucci with Council Central Staff.
I'm going to attempt to share my screen here.
Tracy, if you want to.
Tracy Ratzliff, Council Central Staff.
Is that working?
Yep.
Great.
Okay.
Thank you, Councilmember Swann.
At your request, we put together information to demonstrate the number of jobs that could be supported by the proposed investments in social housing and Green New Deal strategies described in Council Bill 119774, the proposed spending plan that accompanies the proposed payroll tax.
Before we present that information, we wanted to highlight a few of the caveats to be aware of when using this information.
Following that, we will define key terms and then walk through the assumptions and estimates for the two categories of spending.
The estimates we will present tonight were developed using a number of sources that employ different methodologies to estimate jobs supported by the proposed investments.
This is just one approach to roughly estimate jobs that could be supported and is based on a number of assumptions.
The actual number of jobs, as you noted, created or supported may be higher or lower than what is described here.
As an example, the estimates assume that the amount of revenue that will be generated by the proposed payroll tax will bring in approximately $500 million annually, with about $370 million invested in social housing and about 120 million invested in Green New Deal investments annually.
If those estimates of the revenue generated from the tax are higher or lower than what actually comes in, the job estimates would also change.
Further, the estimates do not account for jobs that may be lost because of changes in an industry resulting from these investments or other policy changes or other reductions in jobs due to market conditions that may occur.
Oops, sorry.
So before moving into the estimates, we wanted to highlight these key terms that we might reference throughout the presentation.
Job estimates can be measured as direct, those jobs supported by the project itself, indirect, those jobs supported in supplying the inputs to the project, or induced those jobs supported to provide goods and services to those people in jobs supported directly and indirectly by the investments.
Some of the estimates provided tonight include just direct jobs, while others include a combination of direct, indirect, and induced jobs.
I also want to emphasize why we're using the term job supported versus jobs created.
We use this for these construction related investments because the investments may provide ongoing work for an existing worker rather than providing a new job for a person not currently working or not currently working in that industry.
This is particularly applicable in economic downturn where the only work in construction or the majority of work in construction for existing workers may be those projects supported by these public sector investments.
With that, I'll turn it over to Tracy who will describe the assumptions and estimates from the social housing investments.
Thanks, Allie.
So moving to slide three and the assumptions and information that underpin the job estimates for the social housing investment.
First, as Allie mentioned, the job estimates are based on a specific spending proposal regarding the number, types, costs of housing developed.
The specific job estimates for new construction housing unit development are based on the April 2015 National Association of Home Builders report that showed each newly constructed 100-unit multifamily building supports 90 direct and indirect jobs and 70 induced jobs.
The specific job estimates for ongoing staffing for new permanent supportive housing projects are based on the city's experience with such projects, which showed on average it takes 20 staff to support the ongoing operations and services of such projects.
Staffing can be less or more depending on the level of services that are provided at such projects.
Looking at the table on slide four, we see the spending plan assumes that about 3,500 units of affordable housing will be funded in the first five years of the tax and an additional 3,100 units funded by year 10 for a total of 6,600 units by the end of 10 years.
We estimate these units will support 3,150 direct and indirect jobs by the end of five years and 2,790 additional jobs by year 10 for a total of 5,940 jobs by the end of 10 years.
In addition, 2,485 induced jobs will be supported by the end of five years, and an additional 2,200 jobs will be created by the end of 10 years for a total of 4,686 induced jobs by the end of 10 years.
Totaling these all together, direct, indirect, and induced jobs, we reached a total of 5,635 jobs supported and 10,626 in the first 10 years.
It should be noted that these units will be funded and constructed over a period of 10 plus years.
As it relates to the job estimates for new permanent supportive housing projects, the spending plan assumes that 1,400 units of PSH will be funded in the first five years and an additional 1,300 units by year 10 for a total of 2,700 PSH units.
Assuming the average size of such projects is 100 units, This equates to 14 new PSH buildings being funded during the first five years that will result in 280 direct jobs.
By year 10, an additional 13 PSH projects will be funded requiring an additional 260 direct jobs for a total of 540 jobs in the first 10 years.
Again, these PSH projects will be constructed and completed over the period of 10 plus years, and the jobs supporting these projects will happen over the same time period.
Thanks, Tracy.
So now we'll move to discuss the Green New Deal-related investments and the job estimates supported by those investments.
First, I'll walk through some of the assumptions that underpin those estimates, and then I'll present the numbers.
There is no common methodology to estimate jobs that may be supported by these investments, which is why we provided estimates using two different methodologies.
We first estimated the number of jobs that could be supported using a rule-of-thumb approach, used in the industry that assumes for every $1 million in energy efficiency investments, 17 jobs are supported.
The city also has a jobs tool that was created to simply project the number of local contractor jobs.
Thus, this estimate is substantially lower because it's really looking at a specific sector of direct employment that could be supported by these investments.
It's also important to note that for this analysis, the Green New Deal investments were assumed to be entirely dedicated to converting homes from fossil fuel-based heat sources to electric heat pumps.
However, the spending plan, as currently drafted, contemplates a broader range of investments that would be determined with input from the to-be-established Green New Deal Oversight Board.
Investments directed towards a different strategy may impact these estimates.
So this supply, excuse me, this slide presents an estimate of jobs calculated by both of the methods just described.
Using the rule of thumb method, the number of jobs supported is estimated to be about $11,000 in the first five years of the investments and about 22,000 over a 10-year horizon.
That includes direct, indirect, and induced jobs.
Using the jobs tool, the number of jobs supported is estimated to be about 2,500 jobs in the first five years of the investments and about 4,400 jobs supported over a 10-year horizon.
This final slide simply summarizes the estimates in the two spending categories that use similar approaches in terms of accounting for direct indirect and induced jobs.
It does not include any estimates that only look at direct jobs because it's not similar data, so harder to summarize in one table.
So that concludes the presentation we prepared.
I'm happy to answer any questions, Council Member.
Thank you so much, Ali and Tracy.
I don't have questions at this moment because your slides were so self-explanatory and your explanation was so clear.
I really appreciate you also explaining why we're talking about the jobs being supported and being so accurate in your presentation and also explaining the caveats with the estimates.
And I think if I was just a regular working person watching these, slides, I would be greatly empowered and have much more confidence in why the city council should be passing a progressive revenue source like the Amazon tax in order to fund jobs when really joblessness is a key feature of this crisis.
And I think the numbers that Ali and Tracy have presented really go to the heart of the matter that is being highlighted, not just by socialists like me.
I mean, one of the most important things I read this week was the writings from the economists of the International Monetary Fund.
I mean, they are a bastion of the capitalist class.
And even those economists are being confronted with a bitter reality that the global economy, global capitalist economy is faced with.
And they are also being forced to acknowledge that unless something dramatic is done, like a public works program that will create jobs and build infrastructure like housing, unless something like that is done and we need it done in a on a big scale.
There will be a, they say, not a socialist, these economists are saying that there will be a permanent scarring on the most vulnerable working people in our society, meaning, you know, there will be permanent job loss and there will be just lasting effect of, you know, just the lasting impoverishment of a whole section of our society.
So, you know, on that note, I wanted to really thank not only Ali and Tracy for the strong, you know, estimates that they have prepared through their painstaking research, but also all of the other members of the central staff and the central staff director, Kirsten Aristid, who have provided really excellent technical support for us and research support for us to bring this legislation to this kind of point where we are able to fight around it.
But of course, our next panel is going to illustrate what our next step is.
It's not going to be enough for us to have good numbers, even very promising numbers.
It's not going to be enough to have great ideas.
Just because this is a good idea, which is absolutely it is, it doesn't mean we're going to win it.
Look at the kind of obstacles the political establishment is putting in our path.
It's because big business, the billionaires, the wealthy are absolutely opposed to paying even a dime to address the costs of this crisis.
And that's why we are going to need working people to fight back.
And in fact, it is because of working people fighting back that we are even at this point.
That's why we are fortunate this evening to have with us a number of experts on the crisis facing working people and what we will need to do to continue building our movement.
They are experts because as rank and file workers in various fields, they know and see every day how the COVID crisis is affecting workers in our community and why the Amazon tax policy is the correct prescription for the crisis we face.
We have a fairly large panel.
We have, I think, eight people, and we're really fortunate to have them.
But so that we have time to hear from all of them and have a little bit of discussion, and because we have to go to our second agenda point as well, I've asked them to speak in turn for two or three minutes.
First, I want to introduce Molly Whittaker, a rank and file member of Laborers 242. Thank you so much, Molly, for joining us tonight, and happy birthday.
We recognize you have to leave early for a birthday celebration, but we appreciate you making part of your birthday to testify in this important discussion.
Welcome, Molly.
Thank you, Shama, and thanks for everybody for having me on.
My name is Molly.
I'm a laborer in Local 242. I live in Berrien, but I work in Seattle on a large job site.
I'm speaking in favor of the tax today, and I want to emphasize the importance of creating union jobs.
For over four decades now, there has been a gradual deepening of class stratification.
The rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer.
A union career in the building trades is one of the remaining paths that working class people have to attaining a decent standard of living.
Union jobs provide much opportunity to people, including those who maybe never had access to high quality education, or those who want to turn their lives around despite having a past criminal record.
Providing these opportunities is essential to the overall health of society.
It is very important that this gets on the ballot this season, especially in light of the economic uncertainty we are facing today.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you very much, Molly.
Next, I'd like to introduce Colin Moon, who's a rank and file member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 46. Welcome, Colin.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Can you all hear me?
Yes.
Yes, so my name is Colin Moen.
I'm an apprentice with the IBEW Local 46. I just want to speak personally about why this tax is so important.
Basically, you know, in my union, we're obviously always keeping an eye on the economy as it relates to new construction projects.
It's pretty common knowledge that no building boom lasts forever, and anyone of my co-workers who was around during the 2008 financial crisis has a million stories about how bad things can get during a recession, where there's just no jobs available, people's unemployment starts to run out, people lose their homes.
And so right now, as we're dealing with both a massive public health crisis, but also entering into what could be one of the worst economic downturns since the 1930s, this question of providing safe and good paying union jobs is going to be a really crucial one.
And that's why I think it's so important that this legislation, in addition to providing the immediate relief for people during COVID-19, is also going to create and preserve tens of thousands of jobs, including many union construction jobs, through building high-quality public housing and retrofitting, as was mentioned.
And having consistent jobs like this that are recession-proof, where union members can count on them being there every year, would be an absolute lifeline during tough economic times.
And we know we can't rely on Amazon or Boeing or any other large corporation to bend over backwards to make sure that we have work as construction workers, particularly during a recession.
Their number one motive is going to be preserving their profits above everything else.
And if that means laying off workers or canceling or delaying construction projects, they're going to do that.
And that's also why working people and union members are going to have to fight like hell to get this tax passed, because big business is going to be fighting this every step of the way.
You've already seen their representatives in the corporate media, like the Seattle Times, trying to tack this left and right.
So we're going to have to fight just as hard to get it passed.
Unfortunately, it appears many on the city council also would rather see austerity budgets pass and cuts to social services rather than actually standing up to big business and forcing them to pay what's really a modest tax.
And it's also, in my opinion, you know, really shameful that we're seeing other council members in these legalistic not coming to this meeting.
But I'd just like to thank Council Member Sawant for continuing to make this space for working people's voices to be heard.
Thank you.
Thank you, Colin.
Next, I'd like to introduce Logan Swan, rank-and-file member of Ironworkers86.
Logan and his co-workers do the structural steel installation in the high-rises we see all over downtown.
Their work requires great skill, training, and care, building the buildings that we live in and work in every day.
Welcome, Logan.
Hi, yeah, my name's Logan.
I'm a rank-and-file union iron worker, and I fully support the legislation to tax Amazon for COVID relief, union wage-paying jobs, and publicly owned affordable housing.
Because yeah, like Washington State and Seattle within it have the most regressive taxation anywhere in the country.
This isn't by accident.
This completely unfair and unsustainable scam has been consciously constructed by big business and they've fought working people like us tooth and nail to keep us picking up their tab.
The business developer and corporate landlord lobby tax 15 now, they bitterly fought tax Amazon in 2018, they spent millions last year trying to buy City Hall, and they're doing everything they can now to undermine our movement today with assistance provided from council members who are refusing to even show up today and discuss our needs.
The political establishment with the backing of the employers promised action and alternatives in a cynical attempt to mollify us, They had a 10-year plan to end homelessness, but every year we saw it get worse.
They talk a lot about a regional approach, but what we've seen is that these promises only surface in response to our mobilization and are dropped just as quickly if they succeed in undercutting that.
What came of the regional approach that Durkin mentioned in 2018 when the mayor and the majority of city council repealed our tax on big business?
cast aside once their objective of protecting the wealthy was achieved.
We saw in response to our movement earlier this year that they were willing to revisit that, but conceiving only a fraction of what we need while banning any future progressive taxation.
These elected officials are quick to wax progressive in words, but are refusing to sit down with us and are refusing to hold or attend meetings on our needs.
Our action conferences are open to everyone who supports what we need, affordable social housing, union jobs, and relief for working class families during a global pandemic.
At the action conferences, we have open discussions around our demands and how to win.
We elect leadership and have held votes on the direction that we take the campaign.
Unfortunately, the same council members absent today have declined to attend any of those and interact with working people in a meaningful way on our terms, right?
They told us that a $15 minimum wage was too much.
Can't we compromise?
15 will destroy the economy.
We were told just earlier this year that a winter moratorium on evictions could put the city at risk of litigation, which sounds really familiar right now, right?
Now council members are questionably citing the Open Public Meetings Act to say discussing this emergency measure would present a legal risk.
But that didn't stop them from flagrantly violating the OPMA in 2018 to repeal our victory in taxing big business.
This working people's campaign is a continuation of that fight.
The scale of need has only continued to rise as the political establishment has failed to address that all the wealth we create goes to the top.
This brazen boycott of council members abdicating their responsibility to attend this meeting, opting instead to cancel meetings to discuss the tax evidence on legislation is in response to our movement.
They're taking this approach because they don't feel that they can tell us no and vote against what we need.
We're facing multiple crises that are only increasing in their severity and devastation of working class families.
We desperately need COVID relief.
We've needed affordable housing for years.
And looking forward, we're gonna be in dire straits if we don't fight now for union wage paying jobs.
This tax will provide working families with four or $500 payments during this crisis.
It will build 10,000 affordable homes in the first decade and create 10,000 jobs for my brothers and sisters in the building trades to get that done.
It's not only workers in Seattle, across the country and worldwide, people like us have the same grievances.
Our struggle today will inspire and provide them with an example of how to organize to fight and win.
And this is what big business and their politicians are really afraid of.
Thanks, Logan, Molly, and Colin.
Before I introduce the other speakers on this panel, I had two questions at least to ask the trade speakers, the trade workers who are with us here, Colin, Molly, and Logan.
One question I had was, what are the experiences that you hear from, you know, not only from your own lives, but from your coworkers in terms of the commutes they face?
And, you know, you and your coworkers are workers who build our buildings and build our infrastructure.
But what is your assessment of what proportion of the workers who actually build all this infrastructure are actually able to afford to live in this city?
And do you hear from your coworkers that it should be different and that all workers who work in the city to make the city run should also get to live here?
Logan, if you wanna start and then Colin and Molly, if she's still available.
Yeah, can you hear me?
Okay, um, yeah, I mean, I, my commute when I'm working in Seattle, which has been the past several years.
Usually, that's the closest community I can get is driving to Seattle and that's a, it's anywhere from an hour to 2 hours a day in traffic.
And then I'm considered really fortunate.
Most of the guys on the job sites that I'm on are commuting from Tacoma, as far down south as Lacey, from Everett.
It's not, you know, Bonnie Lake.
It's three to four hours a day in the car is not like a outside of the normal.
And that's, you know, some people, that's the areas that they grew up in and they want to stay there.
But, you know, I mean, we don't really have a choice.
We can't afford to have a home in Seattle.
I used to live in Seattle, and now I live down in Des Moines.
Colin?
Uh, yeah, it's a very similar story with my coworkers.
Um, yeah, I have about a 45 minute commute and I'm considered very fortunate.
Um, and as Logan said, like, yeah, most of my coworkers have several hour long commutes.
Um, I also know very, very few people, um, in my job site who actually live in Seattle.
Um, and just kind of like general knowledge is like, Oh, Seattle's too expensive.
There's no reason to live there.
Particularly like in, you know, journeymen who are making better wages than apprentices, you know, they have families, an actual home where you can get a family is really expensive in Seattle.
And then you have to have a car.
We don't have good enough public transit to be able to get various job sites on short notice.
So commutes are kind of part of the thing.
And Molly, I see you're still here.
So we're going to take advantage of that and have you also respond.
Yeah.
So I'm currently working on apartment buildings, and it is pretty ironic that we can't afford to live in the places we're building.
Like the previous two guys said, pretty much everybody commutes from pretty far.
The farthest I've ever heard was our, I have one coworker who commutes from Clay Allum.
I've worked with a guy who lived in Yelm.
So yeah, people travel really far.
Traffic is a big topic of conversation on the job site all the time.
Right.
And before you leave, I have another question for all three of you, but we'll start with you, Molly, this time.
Two years ago, some of the leaders of some of the building trade unions opposed the Amazon tax at that time because they said that According to them, workers needed to align with big business to protect jobs, because otherwise we would lose jobs, according to them.
And this is a quote from one of those leaders.
It was, quote, we feel like a local politician should be facilitating business in the city, unquote.
I believe all three of you were part of the Amazon tax movement last time, two years ago.
How do you respond to this?
And what are you hearing from your coworkers now?
versus two years ago, are you observing a change?
And how do you think as yourself, as a union member, a rank and file construction trades workers, how do you go about building unity among rank and file workers to fight for a society that is actually affordable for those of us who are building it?
It is very disappointing.
I definitely feel like my union local was not really fighting for the working class at all by being so opposed to the head tax.
Um, you know, back in the day, I remember, you know, two years ago, I remember some people being pretty against it, but then most of them I could kind of sit down and talk to and just share my opinion and they would say, oh, yeah, I suppose that makes sense.
So it's just a matter of, you know, with with the media that people are presented with, they don't hear.
our side of it, really.
I haven't heard a lot of discussion about it lately on the job site.
I will say we sometimes get posters from Socialist Alternative posted around on the polls outside the job site.
And that's pretty cool to see.
Sometimes I notice they get torn down, but I don't know if it's the actual guys on my job site doing that or not.
Yeah, I think that's all I have to say.
Thank you.
And Colin and Logan, you want to add your thoughts?
And I think this is a very important discussion.
And I appreciate Molly weighing in on this also, because we are not always going to automatically start with everybody in the labor movement agreeing on everything.
And so part of our task in building unified movements where we can come together around common ideas, common values, common demands, and helping to build a different kind of society obviously means having frank discussions and convincing our co-workers, as Molly just described, you know, when you actually talk to workers, it changes the way they think because, you know, they haven't had that conversation before.
So, Colin, could you add your own experience on this from two years ago and also now?
Yeah, so I started working at my current job after the first tax Amazon fight ended.
So I wasn't in thick of it when I was having those conversations.
But I definitely have noticed that there's more openness to not being super friendly or thankful of Amazon as a corporation more recently.
I think part of that is just seeing how ridiculously wealthy Jeff Bezos has gotten.
And then also I think, yeah, like there's obviously a lot of like Trump supporters on my job site, you know, I see pretty conservative things written in the porta potties and whatnot.
But, you know, I've had discussions with co-workers around like Bernie Sanders and, you know, a lot of concerns about who's going to pay for this or that policy.
When I put forward quite boldly, we should tax the wealthy and big corporations, that actually has gotten a pretty receptive response, which is interesting.
Yeah, that's about all I've got.
Right.
And Logan, if you could add your thoughts as well, you were definitely in the thick of it two years ago also.
And I think, you know, Colin made a good point that, you know, we might have our fellow workers with very different political ideologies, you know, even sometimes quite different.
And yet we can actually win our fellow workers over when we talk about our shared interest as a working class.
And specifically, can you address how, you know, obviously, you know, and again, I speak as a rank and file labor union member myself that, you know, we don't we don't take it lightly when Amazon Corporation like Amazon started to take away jobs.
We don't take that lightly.
We absolutely feel solidarity with construction workers who might feel threatened that their jobs are going to be lost?
Absolutely.
I think we have to stand shoulder to shoulder with them.
But how do we explain that actually their interests are tied with other workers who are not in the trades and working class people as a whole, whether unionized or not, and not with the Amazon bosses?
Um, yeah, so yeah, I was, uh, I, I fully supported the, the tax Amazon campaign in 2018. Um, and yeah, I mean, following, uh, following that there was, uh, yeah, my, my, unfortunately, um, my union leadership, um, sided with Amazon in that, uh, But yeah, I mean, my experience on the job site, you know, I would talk to I remember after the infamous press conference, the crane operator on my job site said, you know, oh, yeah, I saw you saw you at that thing.
You know, that's awesome.
You going out there and, you know, with you with the other ironworkers.
And I said, yeah, it was kind of.
We weren't on the same side of that issue.
He goes, you know, what do you mean?
I support tax Amazon.
He looks at me, why?
And I explained, you know, how it's a race to the bottom if we accept the bullying of these companies.
How Amazon has four and a half billion dollars invested in their campus in Seattle.
And I think it's really important to correct the record on the idea that if we just give as many breaks as possible and just ease the load on big business, uh...
workers will benefit that's that's trickle-down economics i mean uh...
that has been there's not any serious economist uh...
that that that will i mean that was that's been just universally completely debunked george bush back in the nineties but you know said is voodoo economics i mean it's just wild that that this is being repackaged today rights and and there's there's a record on right in two thousand thirteen i remember it was before i got the union but uh...
I've always been pro-union.
I was watching as the machinists, the members just got raked over the coals.
They got raked over the coals.
Boeing threatened to leave.
They threatened they'd take the jobs out.
And in just a disgusting betray of working people, you had all these bipartisan Democrats and Republicans from mayors to the governor saying, you know, take the terrible contracts and we're gonna give them $9 billion.
And what happens?
Boeing ships 13,000 jobs out of the state since then, right?
And yeah, explaining that to him, you know, he had never heard the other part of the argument, right?
Mainstream media doesn't say that.
The media of big business, they didn't say that.
And unfortunately, you know, we weren't having a discussion on that basis in the labor movement.
and when I told him all that he said you know oh well that I mean if what you're saying is true that makes a lot of sense you know and and to be honest I haven't found a single building trades worker on a job site since then that has been like hostile to me because of my position uh they might have been disagreed but you know we would have a discussion about it and even if they were like you know still you know oh you know we'll see or you know I'm not convinced uh they definitely you know there was it's really just there's not a lot of information out there from from our side of things uh of how these things actually work you know and i'm really glad that that this this data from uh from the the staff is is here because yeah this is going to create tens of thousands of jobs for working people that's that's just the way it is right and and we saw during the last recession that that that the private market failed to provide us with jobs.
We need, we need, you know, I'm sorry, I'm willing to work.
And, and, and this, this, this, this very wealthy country owes me a living.
I want to build, you know, I want to build the things that society needs.
That's publicly owned affordable housing.
That's schools for children.
That's hospitals for, for people who need care.
Right.
And all of those things should be available to people.
Right.
But that means that we're going to have to do them on the basis of, for people and not for profit.
And this legislation is addressing that.
And in the process of building that infrastructure, it's gonna mean the difference between what we saw last time, where it was like a third of construction workers unemployed, and it doesn't have to be like that.
So yeah, I appeal to my brothers and sisters in the labor movement, especially in the building trades, this is in our interest.
So yeah, this is something that labor should be overwhelmingly behind.
Thank you so much, Logan, Molly, Colin, all of you.
I think you've presented a very important, you've given us an important glimpse into how on a day to day basis to actually having concrete conversations with our coworkers, we can win each other over.
And certainly, it's a really inspiring example of a reminder of how we're not going to build a strong movement by being in an echo chamber with a few of us who already agree with each other.
But we have to do the hard task of discussing and debating in open but respectful, as Logan said, in open but respectful way.
So I hope that if there are any construction trades workers watching this on the live stream, or somebody who's watching this, somebody in your life, your co-worker, your family member, or friend, is a trade worker and you want to introduce them to this discussion please feel free please feel free to have them contact our office they don't have to agree with us we just want to have a conversation because we need a really powerful labor movement to fight against what's what's inevitably coming against us unless we fight back And part of what we need to fight back against is the austerity in the public sector.
So it's really important that next we have Dr. Zoe Sanstead, who is the vice president of the University of Washington House Staff Association.
And Dr. Sanstead is a primary care doctor and a leader in her union, which has been battling the University of Washington administration for a union contract for well over a year.
And they've been active in the tax Amazon movement as well.
So welcome, Dr. Sanstead.
Take it away.
Thank you.
My name is Zoe Sanstedt, and I'm a family medicine resident physician at UW and the vice president of UWHA, as Katama mentioned, which is the independent labor union for the residents and fellows at UW.
I live in the 6th district and work all over Seattle, but I'm mostly a primary care doctor in Northgate.
I'm joining this call today in solidarity with my colleagues at UW Medicine, including many resident physicians who live paycheck to paycheck and who are rent burdened and my patients who deserve better.
As health care workers, residents are on the front lines of the fight against COVID.
UWHA members have been taking care of patients in the COVID ICUs, acute care wards, and emergency rooms at Harborview, UWMC, and the VA hospital.
Dozens of our members, myself included, were redeployed to cover extra shifts caring for COVID patients without hazard pay.
We have seen firsthand the health and economic impact this pandemic has had on our patients.
This crisis has made it even more evident the systemic inequities and serious problems with our healthcare system and our unjust society that we already knew existed that have never been more important.
I'm a primary care doctor.
I spoke with a patient a little while ago who was discharged from the hospital after recovering from COVID.
And the medications she needed to continue her recovery at home were going to cost $500.
She couldn't pick them up and went days without them.
The COVID ICU I worked in was almost exclusively patients who are immigrants and people of color, showing how this virus does discriminate and how it disproportionately impacts those of us who are already most vulnerable.
While many of our patients are struggling, while they still don't know if they may have a home to go home to, the biggest companies in our city bring in record profits at the expense of our livelihoods.
Even before COVID, nearly half of all Seattle renters struggled to pay rent, including many of our residents and other healthcare staff.
Before COVID, physicians at my clinic were already sounding the alarm that our medical assistants and other frontline staff were not paid enough to survive.
Medical assistants and other staff at UW, as well as residents, are paid far below the standard for their job categories.
Over the holidays, we had a food drive and ended up donating the collected food to members of our own staff, because there were people who were struggling and needy even within our own UW medicine community.
And all the while, our hospital CEO, Dr. Paul Ramsey, takes home a high six-figure salary.
UW Medicine executives have sent out emails claiming to be taking large salary cuts, but this is questionable.
Dr. Ramsey recently admitted that the 20% cut that was claimed in an email might actually just be off of his administrative supplement, which is something we're still trying to figure out what that means.
Big companies tell us that this is a difficult financial time for them.
In our current negotiation sessions with UW, they tell us they have no more money to increase our pay to a fair wage during COVID or to provide hazard pay.
What they miss is that this is a global economic crisis for all people, for the workers, not for the corporations.
The people of Seattle, including our health care workers and our patients, need relief, and we need it now.
Seattle has a responsibility to acknowledge the institutional injustices it's allowed to perpetuate and do something about it.
We must tax big companies to provide the services that our community needs.
Affordable and supportive housing, investments in Green New Deal programs that will protect our environment, and emergency COVID aid.
Thank you, Dr. Sunstead.
We now have Paula Lukashek.
Paula is a plumber at the University of Washington and is the rank and file president of the Washington Federation of State Employees 1488, which proudly includes more than 3,000 workers at the University of Washington, including hundreds of medical center workers who are bravely on the front lines battling COVID and also battling an administration that has dragged its heels in providing workers with even basic protective equipment and supplies.
The UW administration approach is a classic example of austerity, cutting budgets and making workers suffer quite literally.
Welcome, Paula.
Unmute myself.
Am I unmuted?
Yes.
You're not unmuted now, unfortunately.
Unmute.
How's that?
That's better.
OK, thank you.
My name is Paula Lukaszek.
I live in Columbia City in District 7. I work at the University of Washington as a plumber.
And I'm also the president of Local 1488, which is main campus and University of Washington Medical Center.
I represent food workers, custodians, trades, truck drivers, and a lot of low-paid hospital workers.
You know, we need to pass the Salant Morales Act, because for my members, it's about joblessness, emergency relief, and healthcare crisis.
The UW considers us all essential workers.
So we all had to come to work every day.
And we, but we've had to fight for protections.
Main campus employees were told that we couldn't have any PPE or disinfectants because everything had to go to the hospitals.
And for a while, um, there weren't enough masks at the hospital.
So workers were bringing in their mask in from home and management told them they were going to be disciplined if they didn't take them off because they were scaring the patients by having masks on.
Um, So about three weeks ago, after some pressure, we finally got the university to rescind that.
And now they're handing out one mask a day.
The issue with that is, like our custodians who have to clean out patient rooms, COVID rooms, infectious rooms, they're used to getting, changing their mask and PPE every time they finish cleaning a room.
Now they have to get, they have to clean all the rooms for eight hours using the same mask.
You know, how sanitary is that?
The other thing we've been trying to go for is getting plexiglass barriers set up at the university, at the two hospitals.
Management's been fighting us over that.
They said it was ineffectual, even though grocery stores and hardware stores, gas stations, they all have plexiglass barriers.
So a few weeks ago, myself and three other members of Council 28 made a couple of plexiglass barriers.
We went into Harborview, into the ER, and we set our barriers up.
Well, they stayed up for two days before management figured it out.
And they took them down and they told us how embarrassed they were that we would do such a thing.
You know what?
We got a right to try to protect ourselves.
Now, after telling us for months and months how much they appreciated us, they announced last week that they're gonna institute furloughs at the two, three hospitals And then next week, they're going to start discussing furloughs on main campus.
I don't know how you go from, we really appreciate you every day, to here's your pink slip.
It's mind-blowing to people.
I mean, we feel like they kept telling us we're doing a valuable service, and at the end, now we don't need you for a while.
And this is all about the UW and their austerity measure.
They're doing this to try to save some money until the next COVID influx.
Austerity doesn't work.
Cuts in vital services hurts workers and we need, you know, we need more services.
And so we also need bigger business to help do their part.
You know, we're all interconnected.
We're all in this together.
I'm asking the rest of the council members to please support the Swann Morales tax Amazon.
Thank you.
Thank you, Paula.
If I might ask one question to both you and Dr. Santos.
As you mentioned, Paula, austerity is already, you know, it's not like on the horizon, but it's already here for UW workers.
We know it's there for the city of Seattle workers and also for workers in Olympia, can Zoe and Paula, both of you, can you explain what are the discussions within your unions, within the rank and file and the leadership about how to prepare your members to fight against this austerity and how the community at large can help you?
Zoe, if you wanted to get started.
Sure.
Yeah.
I think, um, unfortunately for a lot of our members, they're just feeling pretty dejected, um, right now because, you know, our jobs are incredibly hard.
Residents work up to 80 hours a week.
They only get four days off a month and they're exhausted.
And then a lot of us also got pulled to do extra shifts, uh, in the code units.
And I really agree with what Paula said about how it's so ironic that we get a lot of high fives and parades and free food, which is all great.
Um, but, uh, you know, what we need is wellness in a real sense.
And what we need to be well actually is at the end of the day, when you're so exhausted to not also be worried about paying for rent and childcare and the fact that your spouse was laid off.
Um, and so I think a lot of, Our members are just feeling really, really sick and tired of the way we were being treated, especially because we've been doing this negotiation for so long.
Even before COVID, they were not willing to pay us anywhere near what residents in other expensive cities like San Francisco, LA, San Diego, New York are paid.
And now with COVID, they just have another excuse to continue not paying us anywhere near what they're paid.
And we're a lot luckier than a lot of our other medical staff that we work with.
And so it's also our job in our privileged position as physicians to echo the needs of other UW upper campus and also medical staff too.
And I think some of us are getting some hope from doing that and being a part of the movement and solidarity with everyone else.
But it's still just, I think it's really hard.
Paula?
You know, most of the unions blame Dr. Ramsey for this situation they're in.
You know, he claims there are $500 million in the hole.
Well, he's done a lot of stuff over the last five or 10 years that has cost the hospitals millions of dollars.
You know, he built a new tower that they realized once it got built, they couldn't fill, you know, they didn't really need it.
And, you know, he's really, at fault for what's happening.
And this is a public university, it's their public hospitals, and the public needs to hold the UW medical system accountable for the money that they've been wasting.
They're wasting Medicare money, they're wasting state money, and that's what we're gonna be trying to do is, you know, ask questions about, you know, whatever they spent money on.
And once again, that's what austerity is about.
upper management makes mistakes and they want the workers to pay for it, to make it better, you know, and we're going to fight this.
We just, you know, we can't keep being, having to bear the brunt of every mistake that they make.
Thank you so much, Zoe and Paula.
As Paula said, it's really the austerity is not like an act of God.
It's being carried out by the bureaucrats, the administration at the University of Washington, and they are responsible for it.
And if there's any mismanagement of cash reserves, it's their fault.
And it should not be put on the backs of working people.
And Zoe, I really appreciate You being very, you know, sort of open about how there's a feeling of dejection I appreciate that being articulated, because we know that as this as we head into the worst economic period of our lives.
It is going to be a factor and we have to support one another through this process.
And part of supporting is just acknowledging that we are feeling dejected or demoralized or sad or defeated.
And that those are going to be real things among working people.
And then, as you also said, overcoming that, you know, involves becoming part of a movement where you have the solidarity and you get, you know, you offer solidarity and you get solidarity back.
And so I really appreciate you sharing that because we have to make sure we are, you know, we are all human and we have to build the movement, acknowledging our own and each other's humanity.
And talking about how we can address this together, we now have Matt Mailey, who is an educator and rank and file member of the Seattle Education Association, which I'm proud to report has just voted to endorse our tax Amazon campaign.
So Matt, welcome.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Thank you to Council Member Sawant for hosting this and for all of the other panelists who are on tonight, as well as everybody tuning in from wherever you are.
So as Shama said, my name is Matt Maley.
I am a renter in D3, the Central District.
I live in the Central District.
I am a substitute teacher who, before the crisis, was teaching music at the Nova Project High School here in the Central District.
I'm no longer a substitute teacher, and I am right now working as a residential painter and a contractor, because that's what I usually do during the summers.
So I'm a member of the Seattle Education Association, and as was just mentioned, we recently voted to endorse the Amazon tax movement, specifically the Swamp Morales legislation, including both the funding for immediate cash and hand relief for Seattle families as well as funding housing.
So there's an urgent need for students, for families, for educators to fund housing.
I think what the sisters and brothers from the trades were speaking about earlier with commutes, it maybe isn't as exaggerated for educators, but it's definitely a lot of people will come in from 45 minutes an hour away.
We need housing in the city, in the neighborhoods where we live.
work and teach.
So as a substitute, I work in a lot of different environments, I get to know some some schools quite well, including some students.
And I just want to say housing insecurity doesn't always look the same.
I know students personally who have been in situations where they've lost housing, they've been kicked out of their family homes because they came out with their their true gender identity to their families.
And that's obviously, it's tragic.
That should not happen.
Everybody, especially young people, should be housed.
But it's not always quite so stark or harsh.
A lot of times, it's families and students who are just traveling, staying on people's couches, right?
That is a housing insecurity and can have a huge impact on the school, the ability of students to do school, to engage in school.
A lot of times it's unfortunate, but the first conversation that sometimes you have with students is not necessarily how school, how's your work, but it's what's the housing situation like.
There are a lot of huge questions facing our young people today, and it's a shame that Council Member Swann is the only one here tonight.
and I'm glad that this meeting is being hosted and we're moving forward on this because students can't wait, families can't wait.
The realities of quarantine for educators and for students is distance learning, is maybe not fighting for PPE or fighting for health and safety as might be happening in a lot of other workplaces or people who are on the call with me.
But the question of how students learn when they're at home is a real one, especially as students don't have access to stable housing or, in particular, access to affordable, stable, reliable internet.
Sorry.
There is a multiple emergency for families right now with millions applying for unemployment.
with others working from home now with the added expectation of not only performing childcare for your family, but becoming home teachers as well, homeschooling their students.
So that's why I'm here tonight, proudly standing with my union in supporting the Amazon tax fight.
It's a modest tax on Seattle's biggest businesses, and it's gonna urgently fund a high quality public housing and provide cash and hand relief for families.
I don't think they should be separated.
My union voted to support both halves of that.
And I hope the council members who are at home watching this, hopefully, will support both the emergencies that would be solved by the housing and by immediate cash and hand relief.
So once again, thank you so much.
I absolutely agree with previous speakers.
This is not the time for austerity budgets.
We know where the funding is.
And thank you again to Council Member Sawant's office for hosting this and to everyone else who's on the video tonight.
Thanks again.
Thanks, Matt, for speaking and sharing your union's viewpoint on why this is urgent, and not only for teachers, but also students.
And so the community is united in wanting urgent relief, needing urgent relief, and rejecting austerity.
Next up, we have Krista Sneller, member of ProTech 17, which is the union that represents many of the city of Seattle workers.
Krista works in the human services department of the city of Seattle where she assists elders in our community.
She's also a member of the department's race and social justice change team.
Welcome Krista.
I'm here as, as both a member, um, a city employee, but I also am representing my own opinions and thoughts, um, based on what I've been able to see in working in the community.
Um, one of the main things is really seeing the effects of COVID-19 and on the communities and how clearly disproportionate it is based on how, um, institutions have been set up, um, for decades, um, and centuries, so much time.
And really, our role now is, as these are so evident, it's really important to focus race.
So wherever money comes from, however it is, budgets are looked at and reduced.
The importance of leading with race, which is a value that the city states it has, we should be leading that in all our work.
So, you know, we can talk about examples from locations of where quarantine shelters are, where expansion shelters are, Who's getting reassigned in their work?
Looking at how budgets often affect temporary employees first who are often people of color.
I'm looking at hearing how caregivers now working with our clients who would otherwise likely be in the hospital or institutions are remaining in their home.
Caregivers are very often people of color.
commuting from outside the city because they can't afford to live here.
And just now we're starting to get masks and other protective equipment for them.
So just looking at who are the most vulnerable at these times, who is experiencing the role of a social worker.
I have the privilege of working from home, but there's many tasks and people who are serving and living and working and experiencing and they should be Getting the support that they need right now.
So I, you know, when we're looking at the budget when you look at money coming in, we always say, let's look at it with a racial equity lens.
When we're in emergency mode, we miss the opportunity.
We feel like we need to make so many decisions quickly.
We use that as an excuse to revert back to the systems, how they've been set up.
And really, I'm trying to look at silver linings of things that we're learning from this time, and how we can actually be really working with bringing in decision making to happen from the community, can look at how we're getting support in governance, looking at governance and homelessness and how committees are set up and how we can be doing these things differently.
And that really all is leading with race.
And so whatever funding sources are happening right now, I just feel that it's crucial that we look at how we can do that from a racial lens.
Thank you so much, Krista.
And now we have Dr. Sarah Myrie with us.
Sarah is a climate scientist and environmental justice advocate and has been an integral part of our movement for jobs with a Green New Deal.
Welcome, Dr. Myrie.
Hi, all.
Thanks for having me on today.
I want to thank all the other contributors today to the conversation, the public leaders, the educators, the engineers, the union laborers, and the elected leaders.
So my name is Dr. Sarah Myrie.
I am a climate and ocean scientist.
I'm going to talk today briefly about one of the aspects of the effort to generate progressive revenue.
which is the imperative to lead on climate.
So just for context, the City of Seattle, the Seattle Council in 2017 upheld the Paris Climate Accords to hit the 2°C global target for the maximum mean global warming of 2°C.
In order for the global community to maintain our commitment to the 2°C climate warming targets, which themselves have a massive amount of externalities, which I will reference in a moment, in order to maintain our commitment to those 2°C commitments, we need decarbonization and we need decarbonization So by the city's own calculations, we need a 58% citywide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in reference to a 2008 level by 2030. 2030 is 10 years away.
So we need extensive reduction across all sectors of the city's activities.
What this means is we need effective action across transportation, including passenger transportation, transit, bike, bicycling, and safety.
We need transformation across housing, jobs, and livable communities.
We need transformative change across residential buildings, multifamily residential buildings, commercial buildings, and we need transformative change in the recycling, composting, and waste generation aspects of the city's management.
So we need comprehensive, effective, and scalable action that is going to be implemented now to get us to a 58% reduction by 2030 in order to maintain the city's already existing commitments to climate action.
So part of the city's, the council's language has already committed a goal of establishing adequate funding to fully implement the comprehensive and rapidly approaching deadlines for all of these sectoral changes.
This commitment by the city, by the council particularly, was a moment of absolute clarity in public leadership and I applaud the city council for continuing to maintain its commitment to the Paris Climate Accord It continues to put the city into the echelon of global leadership that we are all wanting to be a part of and applauding as the benchmark for what global leadership looks like right now.
So for the city to adequately address the scale and nature of climate change, what it needs to do is it needs to build progressive revenue sources.
So what, for a moment, what does it mean for the city of Seattle and the state of Washington to adapt and respond to climate change?
Well, we know from the snow drought and the fires of 2015, which were an extreme weather year, which anthropogenic emissions contributed to, that there were costs up and down different domains of public life because of that extreme year.
Public health, equity, our natural resource economy, large sectors of our rural economies were all impacted.
2015 was a harbinger.
It was an example of how very vulnerable we are at a state level to the kind of warming and disruption that is coming from climate change.
But here's another example.
The difference between a global 2 degrees C and a global 1.5 degrees C target is substantial.
And while we are still aiming for a 2 degrees C target, there are massive systemic structural consequences that will come even with this very rapid decarbonization goal.
The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees Cs is literally hundreds of millions of people experiencing water insecurity and poverty from climate-induced factors.
So our ambitious target is still targeting us towards a hot, dangerous and chaotic future.
We can and we should be meeting and exceeding those targeted goals.
This is why it's imperative right now for the Seattle City Council to find progressive, equitable sources of revenue.
And this is why I support the effort now to tax Amazon to generate, as we heard earlier today in the meeting, $120 million annually for Green New Deal funding.
This funding would directly address the areas that need to be decarbonized in the city's purview by a 2030 deadline.
What is fantastic about this is that this is exactly in line with the goals the city council has already stated for itself in order to meet these decarbonization and climate goals.
So if the City Council is willing to listen to epidemiologists and public health officials and to align their actions and behaviors in order to protect people's lives, then it also means to listen to climate and environmental scientists and align the decision making of the Council to protect and steward the lives of those of us in Washington State and across the planet on a decadal timescale, because the actions that we take right now will impact the trajectory of our climate for millennia into the future.
You cannot pick and choose the science that is convenient for you in order to lead in public.
And let me tell you, there is no more inconvenient science than the science behind climate change.
History will judge this generation of public leaders, and I want to ensure that the city council is on the right side of history here.
To be on the right side of history means prioritizing progressive revenue.
It means taxing Amazon, even if it is challenging politically.
And to do so means that it will be able to respond effectively to the nature and scale of the climate crisis that is already here.
Thank you very much to the council and to council members for the time.
And thank you all.
Thank you, Dr. Murray, I just want to follow up on what you just said about how if the council is paying so much attention correctly, so to epidemiologists and health care experts about the following the stay at home decree, which we absolutely all should adhere to in terms of social distancing, then It only makes sense that they should also pay attention to climate scientists and the climate emergency.
Can you say why you believe this is tied to the COVID emergency also?
Because, you know, it's striking that we're having this meeting And I've been completely blown away by the contributions by, you know, all the way from construction workers to climate scientists and doctors and plumbers.
And yet I'm the only elected official here and nobody else is here because of this idea that somehow discussing emergencies is not allowed during an emergency.
Can you talk about how climate emergency is integral to any other kind of emergency we talk about, whether it's pandemic or economics?
Yeah, definitely.
And I'm very thankful for you to continue to undergird and support the kind of evidence-based leadership that is required to respond to the scale and nature of both the COVID crisis and also the emergent climate crisis.
The reason why I am here today is because of my commitment to public leadership and my desire to help steward public decision making that protects people's lives in the future.
The same kind of motivation is happening in epidemiologists and public health officials right now.
We see the same kind of leadership to help steward and protect people's lives.
Now, the COVID crisis and the climate crisis are not are not analogs, they are happening for fundamentally different reasons and at different timescales and with different vectors and different consequences.
And yet we can also see from the COVID crisis, one of the manifestations of our profound interconnectivity and that the The effectiveness of an intersectional justice focus lens here in right action is what is going to be able to lead us towards.
a science-informed society in the future, where we include, as we move forward together, climate, workers' rights, racial justice, environmental justice, and we all collectively move together.
This is an evidence-based approach.
This is not orthogonal from the role that I have as a public scientist and a public scholar.
So that's why I'm here today and I think it is very analogous to any epidemiologist that would stand up and say, I'm here to tell you some bad news about how to protect you and your family.
It is exactly the same thing as climate crisis because what climate crisis, the climate crisis will do is it will hurt you, hurt your family, decrease the stability that you have to go to the places that you want, eat the food that you want, and gather in the places that you want.
It will cause the same kind of disruption, systemic disruption, crisis, and loss of life that we are seeing at an acute level with COVID-19 right now.
Thank you so much.
And, you know, Sarah mentioned the term racial justice, and I thought that was also the theme that was running through what Matt was sharing with us and what Krista was sharing with us, you know, both in the field of public education and public services, social services.
Clearly, that's a big issue that we all deal with.
Krista, you can just talk about how both your co-workers and also the people you serve, the communities you serve, the question of racial injustice keeps emerging everywhere you go, no matter whether you talk about the question of rents, or you talk about jobs, or you talk about how the pandemic is affecting people and whose lives are being lost, how the question of race figures in again and again.
Yeah, thank you.
Okay.
I think we've had a few times where we have been able to pause and speak and share when we do hear about the location of a shelter or something similar to that, where we can be like, well, who is being involved in this decision making?
are people who live in that area involved?
Are people receiving that service involved?
And so both from like a racial, from a language, from a cultural, it's really important to include those voices.
I was just thinking, it's something that we could certainly continue to be doing better.
I think a big area that we see for this is are the workforces, are they representative of the communities we serve?
there are on some levels, but the higher up you go, they are not.
And so just seeing how leadership, how hiring decisions, that's been a big area that we've been working in our department on, how to have our workforce being representative of the communities that we serve.
And that may be very challenging to the system to change how things have been done.
But I would say that's one way of looking at racial equity is trying to support people in positions to give voices, not tokenizing, but to actually have a voice that comes with power.
And that's not just shared, it's actually listened to.
Thank you, Krista.
And Matt, quickly, if you wanted to share a little bit quickly about how the students that you teach, the students, the children of working class people of color are the most impacted by austerity in public education?
Absolutely.
So in education circles, you hear a lot of talk about disproportionality.
And what that means is in a city like Seattle, which is mostly white, you still see far higher percentages of students being disciplined, lacking access to housing.
In particular, I think the question of intersectionality has come up, and it's not just a lack of access to resources, right?
That's a fundamental a problem that a lot of students face for a variety of different reasons.
But the likelihood, if you happen to be LGBTQ as well as black or brown or homeless, all of these factors add up and what really create the crisis that a lot of students are really acutely facing.
Thank you so much.
We had an incredible wealth of workers and activists and union leaders here with us.
It was incredible.
And as I said before, I'm just really feeling how much the other council members have missed.
And I hope they are going to be watching the recording of this incredible meeting.
I know I'm going to be watching even though I'm right here live.
Our next item of course is also equally important and that's about renters and how they can get organized and in fact what we have is renters who are organizing themselves already who are going to share you know sort of a one-on-one with us in terms of what challenges they face and so on.
I just wanted to First of all, open this agenda item with a big apology to our renter speakers who are here and to the renters who are watching this committee.
I know this agenda point is going to be a little bit scrunched, but only because we are going to have a follow-up meeting very soon.
And Adam Dinkowski, community organizer from my office, is going to share a presentation with us and introduce our fellow speakers, and he's going to share Also news about this exciting organizing meeting that we're going to have following this meeting, where we're going to focus on renter organizing.
So Adam, welcome and take it away.
All right.
Thank you so much, Shama.
Really, yeah, that was a phenomenal discussion.
And I know that all the renters on the call also agree that, yeah, we need to tax big business.
And that's another form of making sure that working people, of course, don't pay.
I'm going to go ahead and share the screen.
that of the PowerPoint demonstration so that we can kind of really breeze by and can make sure that we get through quickly.
Let's see.
All right.
So yeah, as I was saying, I'm not going to read the whole PowerPoint display.
We want to get to our organizer, our tenant speakers as quickly as possible.
But we did want to go ahead and make sure that people knew this resource is available.
We're going to be sharing the link to this Organizing 101 in the chats, in the various live streams.
But as people have been talking about, this is one of the biggest economic crises that we're facing with 40 million people nationwide having lost their jobs.
And we know that foreclosure and evictions are going to be the way that corporate landlords and big banks make working people pay.
We've seen foreclosure and eviction moratoriums, but that is not going to protect workers.
We know that thousands of dollars of debt are going to be accumulating, and there is literally zero prospect for most workers who, without jobs, sometimes for several months, there's zero prospect of paying for that back rent.
So in reality, what we're talking about when we hear from these renters, we're talking about organizing, is fighting against a massive wave of evictions that we are going to be seeing unless we organize and fight.
And we don't need to kind of guess about this.
We saw after the Great Recession nearly 8 million working people, working class homeowners, were foreclosed on by the banks.
Even in the midst of this pandemic, we're seeing billionaires increasing their wealth, profiteering, just as we heard in depth before, as they're fighting against paying even modest amounts of taxes so that working people can get basic things.
So we do need to get organized, we need to prepare, and we need to do it right now.
Concretely, what are we talking about when we say that workers shouldn't pay and that corporate management companies, big landlords, and big banks should pay.
We're talking about fighting so that rent, utility, and mortgage are canceled so that we do not have to pay if we're working people who have lost our jobs or lost significant pay and hours as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But we also know, of course, over the past couple of months, as a lot of, literally thousands of renters have begun the process of getting organized in their buildings and beyond, we know that this is not an easy task.
It's not as simple as calling for something like a rent strike.
And we know that building by building organizing is gonna be necessary, but it's gonna take time.
And if we doubt at all, before we're going on to hear from our speakers, if we doubt that this is necessary, well, we can look to the ruling class renters, big business renters, Starbucks, we just found, is demanding a full year of rent breaks.
Cheesecake Factory has done the same.
Subway has also told their owners of their franchises that they don't expect them to be paying full rent.
But we also know another thing, that the political establishment will not protect working class renters and homeowners like it does big business.
And so if we're gonna protect ourselves, we need to get organized, and we need to do that by building our collective power as a movement So without further ado, let's go ahead and hear from a couple renters in Seattle.
They're tenants of buildings that are managed by Cornell and Associates.
This is a company that manages 5,500 units in the Seattle area, 75 buildings in Capitol Hill alone.
So the fate of this organizing doesn't just impact a couple of people.
It's thousands of renters.
First, we're going to hear from Jason Redmond, who's a photojournalist.
He's a tenant at DeSoto Arms.
So go ahead.
Take it from here, Jason.
Are you going to hear me?
Yes.
Awesome.
So, hi, thank you, Adam.
Thank you, Council Member Sawant.
As Adam mentioned, I'm a self-employed photographer.
I live in District 6, Dan Strauss' district, and I'm here representing my own opinions and experiences.
Thankfully, I'm still working, but I do worry about the future for myself and other working-class people.
I have seen too many of my friends and colleagues that were laid off, especially in 2008 when I was laid off and decided to go freelance.
So about my building, my original landlord had owned the building since the 70s and was a very wonderful woman, had a good relationship with the tenants.
And we also had a maintenance worker who was here a lot and knew all the tenants on a first-name basis.
And we had a really good relationship with him.
In October, our landlord retired and sold our building.
And in November, I received a notice from our new billing managers, Cornell and Associates, that rent was going up 37% for my unit beginning February 1st.
This was completely legal with a 60-day advance notice because there is no rent control here in Washington state.
By the way, I should mention that Oregon passed statewide rent control late last year, which is something I'd very much like to see happen in Washington, too.
Also worth mentioning, in Portland, Oregon, they just passed a tax raising $2.5 billion by taxing big business over 10 years to fight homelessness, which I also think is very inspiring.
So the rent increase at my building was very shocking and frustrating.
And over the previous four years that I'd lived here, I had only seen about a 3% annual rent increase, which is what is the standard rent increase.
So when I appealed to Cornell and associates about the excessive increase, I had difficulty getting a quick response from them.
And I was finally able to speak with the person managing my building, and they assured me that they had done extensive research on the rents in my area, and I was paying below market value.
And then they even suggested that they could have charged me more than they did.
Uh, in fact, uh, saying that they could have charged me a 60% increase instead of the almost 40% increase.
Um, so despite, um, this is despite that, uh, the building I live in is 93 years old and it has issues like very low water pressure.
Um, when our showers will be shut off, if a neighbor is running their water and we have really thin walls and you can hear neighbors coughing and, um, When the pandemic hit Seattle, I again reached out to Cornell and Associates to inquire about rents being returned to their original amount to help us get through the pandemic.
But after going through another significant effort to get a response, I got a denial email suggesting, among other things, that we ask our parents for money, put the rent on a credit card, or find a job among the businesses that were still operating during the pandemic.
As a result of the rent increase, several of my neighbors actually decided to move out during the pandemic.
And as a last resort, I decided to appeal to the new building owners directly.
I discovered an article in the October 14th issue of the Daily Journal of Commerce that our building had been purchased by the Petrie family that owns Copiers Northwest.
The article mentioned that after they had sold their South Lake Union building for $28.5 million, they had started buying investment properties like my apartment building.
Eventually, I received a reply from Cornell and Associates that I should not contact the new building owners directly and only to reach out to them through my building's tenant liaison, who would then contact Cornell and Associates.
So basically, Cornell and Associates were hired to do one job, which is to make as much profit as possible for their clients.
In fact, on their website, it explicitly says that, quote, they want to achieve maximum income under constantly changing economic conditions, which while increasing property values.
Unfortunately, there are many examples of breed and price gouging all around us, especially right now during the pandemic.
As renters, we need to stand up for what we feel is fair.
And Cornell Associates is working very hard to shake every penny from our pockets with very little concern about people moving out during this pandemic.
We cannot do this alone.
But if we stand together as neighbors, we can be heard.
If everyone living in one of the 5,500 units managed by Cornell and Associates all signs a petition or sends an email, we could have our requests taken seriously.
This is something I never had to do in all my years as a renter, but I feel it is very important, especially during these uncertain times.
We are not only in a pandemic, we are likely heading into another Great Depression, and we all need to look out for one another and help bring out positive changes.
So to Cornell Associates, I would like to say that we are not just people who pay rent.
We are also the ones who teach your kids.
We work in your hospitals.
We make the music that you enjoy.
We build your housing, and we work in the stores that help make Seattle what the city is that we love to live in.
So thank you, Adam, and thank you, Councilmember.
Thank you, Jason, for those really impactful words.
And we're excited to continue, of course.
This is not a one-off thing.
We're excited to continue working with Jason and other renters.
As Sean had noted, on June 4th, we've got renters organizing meeting to fight against coronavirus evictions.
We'll have a Facebook event posted in a graphic.
But let's go ahead and hear from another Seattle renter right now.
Victoria Price, who is a tissue recovery technician, who's seen her hours massively reduced.
She's a tenant at the East Mercer Apartments, also managed by Cornell and Associates.
So yeah, Victoria, can you go ahead and tell us about your situation, please?
Hi, yeah.
So as a tissue recovery technician, my job is to recover eye tissue to be used for transplant to help cure corneal blindness.
And at the beginning of the year, I was injured pretty badly at work and it took weeks for me to recover.
But then the week that I went back to work happened to be the same exact week that elective surgeries were canceled.
And we saw the demand for tissue, eye tissue, And technicians like myself would drop to virtually zero just overnight.
So that was really, really difficult, especially after having not been able to work for a long time.
And then due to so much uncertainty with the company on how they were going to proceed with their per diem staff and what this meant for cornea donations, I was not able to file for unemployment as quickly as a lot of other people.
And then when I finally did apply, I discovered that the unemployment insurance department had actually no record whatsoever that I had ever worked for this employer.
due to an error from the wage reporting in 2019. So when they calculated my unemployment benefits, they decided to award me about $250 a week based solely on like the one service industry job I'd had for part of 2019. And it's taken weeks to sort this whole thing out and to get all the numbers up to date and figure out where things were Disconnected but I still have not received like the appropriate benefit amount that I should be receiving so Not working for most of the year then no shifts and no donors and then applying for unemployment It's just like that's not an option there either It just kind of turned into this perfect storm where I literally fell through all of these cracks.
And I'm just waiting on everything being finalized in terms of like my workplace injury, in terms of surgeries and what the volumes could be like.
And then also in terms of unemployment, and I've been waiting for weeks.
weeks actually like months for any sort of payment.
So in March, I reached out to my apartment manager concerned that I was not going to be able to pay rent for April.
And I asked if Cornell and Associates was offering any sort of rent relief or suspension to help those who had lost their jobs or income due to COVID-19.
He was super sympathetic, but unfortunately said no and couldn't do much more to help.
And then a few days later, I received a letter from Cornell and Associates stating that all rent would be due at the end of this temporary eviction moratorium with a very strong emphasis on temporary.
They suggested asking friends or family members to give you money to help cover your rent or to take out loans, which was, I mean, for me, a little disturbing.
Almost ask your friends to help pay for your rent.
We're not going to help you out.
But then I reached out to rent relief after seeing some posters around the neighborhood and I learned the tenants of my building were also concerned about paying rent.
I compiled a list of individuals willing to join a request for rent relief with the help of one of my neighbors.
And then soon after, Shama's office and Adam contacted me.
And that's when I was put in touch with some of the tenants over at the Ben Lamond Apartments, also managed by Cornell and Associates, who were on the front page of the Seattle Times a few weeks ago.
And as a renter, I mean, for a few weeks now, I've been working to gather support from individuals for those people who are unable to pay rent due to the impacts of COVID-19.
And as a renter who has both lost all income and gotten minimal unemployment benefits for the last few months, I'm unsure if I will have a home at the end of this pandemic.
And fighting for rent relief, especially while juggling my own personal life and other struggles uh has definitely been really difficult um and I I'm really hopeful and just looking forward to working with other neighbors um so that we can all get the financial support that we need during this difficult time because it's just not fair to the renters um yeah so thanks.
All right well thank you so much Victoria um and we know that it's not just a couple but it's literally thousands of people are in that situation, fearful of not being able to have a home at the end of this pandemic.
And so that's why, you know, one of the big reasons we had this agenda item was to provide a certain 101 for people when they're in that situation.
What are the first steps?
I'm going to go ahead and share my screen again.
And again, I'm not going to be going through each one, but I will kind of speed through it a little bit, and there's a link in the chat to be able to download this.
So yeah, for people who are, you know, experiencing a loss of job or who just want to support their neighbors so that they don't get evicted out of this, there's some very concrete steps we can do to begin that organizing process.
So one of them is just to deliver an online meeting invitation at times from your building.
You see a sample invitation.
not super complex, and we can of course help out with this.
One of the big things that we're emphasizing in this is that people should be in contact with us and other organizations.
The next thing is you got to prepare a first meeting.
You know, send out an agenda.
You can see just a real basic thing like assessing the needs in the building, getting to know your tenants, and then establishing a name and having a next meeting set up.
In terms of the first meeting, We want to, yeah, have a goal of establishing kind of a core group of organizing and developing a plan.
It's not something that's going to be overnight.
If you find one other tenant out of this meeting that wants to organize, that's great.
That's a success.
Of course, more is better, but it requires patience and persistence.
Another thing that we found, and we'll hear from a renter very soon, is that a tenant needs survey is a really good way to reach out to other people in the building, to ask how they've been affected, and then to kind of begin to find those people who are interested in fighting to make it so tenants and working people don't pay the cost of this crisis, but rather the millionaires, the big corporate management companies, the banks that have the money and can.
And that just kind of brings us to the last, you know, simple step of this beginning process, which is building your group.
You know, give your group a name, start a group chat.
And it's really a kind of a not intuitive thing, but it's okay if not everybody wants to join your group automatically.
Of course, we want to be in conversation with everybody.
We want to win over everybody in the building.
But the group should be for people who don't think that renters should have to pay the cost and who do think that we're going to have to come together and fight collectively to win that.
Once you establish a basic group, then we can begin looking forward, drafting a demand letter, delivering the demand letter.
We'll hear in a little bit from organizers at Be Seattle, organizing the training so that you know your rights.
And then, of course, building for public actions and follow-up after that, linking up with the broader movement are all things that we've found and other renters, of course, have found are going to be necessary in order to make it so the people who have all the money right now actually do end up paying the cost of this crisis.
So right now, let's go ahead and listen to, we've got another organizer, renter, who's gone through a lot of these steps.
His name is Sean Case.
He's a line cook currently laid off from the Ben Lomond Apartments.
And so, yeah, Sean, why don't you tell us about your experiences so far doing some of these organizing steps and how that's gone and challenges?
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks, Adam and Shama for having this panel and this meeting as a whole.
I think it's really important and we need to keep having these conversations and keep working together.
Yeah, my name is Sean Case.
I am a laid off wine cook and renter living in Capitol Hill.
I'm also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
So, yeah, I believe that building organizing is really key to achieving any kind of justice for renters in this crisis and beyond it.
You know, a lot of folks are out of work and really scared right now.
A lot of my neighbors are.
And, you know, some are already unable to pay their rents, and others are worried about their ability to pay rent in the coming months.
As the economic fallout from this pandemic plays out, this is going to last a long time.
So getting a sense of what your neighbors need right now is, I think, a really important place to start.
You have to meet your neighbors, get them in a meeting, talk to them, see who needs what.
And you can work on a needs assessment survey, as what we did in our building.
When we first surveyed in my building, we found that about a third of us were out of work due to COVID, which is a pretty significant portion.
Some of those folks are now getting unemployment benefits, but some still aren't.
There's this myth that all these expanded unemployment benefits are being distributed equally to everyone and everyone's going to be fine, but that's not the case.
Being able to show concretely to your neighbors that You know, people in your building are suffering.
It goes a long way to getting more people on board with organizing.
And based on that initial need, we were able to draft a letter with really bold and clear demands for rent relief for those who need it in my building.
And, you know, even though we got nearly 40 signatures on that first letter, which is the majority of my building, it went unanswered by our landlord.
Our property management company, Cornell & Associates, did respond, but it was with a form letter.
And it sounds like it's the same exact one that Jason in Victoria, and I've heard from a handful of other Cornell & Associates tenants in other buildings that got the same exact letter asking you to ask your parents for money, get a new credit card, get a job during COVID, which is just totally out of touch.
So, yeah, they clearly expect to keep collecting their full rent as if there isn't an emergency happening.
So at that point, it was clear that a letter wasn't enough.
Faced with silence from our landlord and passive aggression from Cornell and Associates, we had to elevate the struggle.
A friend of mine put me in touch with a reporter from the Seattle Times.
I talked to him just in my personal capacity about what we were doing and why.
And around that same time, Adam reached out to me from Shama Sawant's office and asked her to help us out.
Shama herself sent a really strong letter to Cornell Associates on our behalf, asking them to meet with us and respond to our needs.
And her office also helped us launch this email campaign during which around 300 community members emailed Cornell Associates demanding that they respond to us.
And, you know, that's like the baseline thing we're asking for is just to start a conversation, and that's just been refused.
That doesn't seem like we're asking for that much, in my opinion.
During the first hours of that campaign, Cornell Associates actually took their website offline.
It was back a few days later, but As of right now, the only available function on the website is now the pay rent button.
I think that's pretty telling.
And, you know, a week after that, we delivered a letter to Cornell Associates office that was signed by renters in three other buildings that they run, but they failed to respond to that letter.
So, you know, the actions we took got reactions, and that's good.
You know, we If we hadn't elevated our struggle, we would have just gotten nothing.
But, you know, we do, we are continued, we continue to be stonewalled by Cornell Associates, essentially.
But I don't see this as a reason to back down and give up.
You know, one lesson I've learned so far in this struggle is that we need to be really patient and keep unity and keep on building.
You know, Cornell Associates would love to just ignore us until this crisis goes away.
But this isn't going away anytime soon, and anyone in touch with reality realizes that.
It's clear to me that what we need is a movement that's big enough to meet the size of the developing economic crisis.
I'm hopeful that we can build that movement.
One well-organized building doesn't win the fight for tenant justice, but a network of well-organized buildings throughout the city can.
And it's important that we share our resources and experiences like we're doing right now and that we continue to do that and work in concert with each other.
This isn't merely about winning rent forgiveness or discounts for renters in one building who have been having a hard time paying rent the last few months, although that is important and we need to do that.
But this is about making sure evictions don't soar once the eviction moratorium is lifted.
It's about making sure that we're all paying attention and we have each other's backs as this crisis develops over the next month.
And it's also about laying the groundwork for a more robust renters movement in Seattle.
You know, one that's going to fight for housing justice beyond COVID and will address the inherent power imbalance of a system that enables big business and the wealthy to profit from the basic human need of housing.
You know, Jason referred to the fact that Seattle doesn't have rent control, and, you know, building a movement like this is how we get rent control.
It's just something we desperately need.
So, you know, I'm determined to keep working with my neighbors, tenants across the city, tenants on this call, tenants watching this call, Shama's office, and any other working person who's ready to get organized and make sure that big landlords, corporate management companies like Cornell Associates and big banks pay for this crisis, not people like us, not working people, because we can't afford to.
So I hope to see everyone at the Seattle Renters Organizing Meeting on June 4th so that we can really get to work on this and keep talking and keep working together.
All right, Sean, thank you.
Yeah, I would tend to agree.
It sounds like Cornell and Associates does not agree with you, given their website has that one function, which is the ability to pay rent right now.
You literally can't make that stuff up.
It's, I'm going to go now to Maya Garfinkel, who is an organizer with B-Seattle.
B-Seattle is an organization that our office, Shama's office, has worked with over the past few years, gathering thousands of signatures for rent control.
They've put on dozens of boot camps, Know Your Right boot camps, and we're really excited that Maya Garfinkel is here.
She's an organizer with B-Seattle.
We're really excited that they're also wanting to participate in this fight to make it so we don't see mass evictions as a result of COVID-19.
So go ahead, Maya.
And while Maya is talking, I'm going to share a screen that she's provided for us.
And I apologize, it's a bit grainy, but I hope people can see it.
And there will be links in the chats on the live stream.
So go ahead, Maya.
Hi, yeah, thank you so much to everyone who's spoken in this agenda point and the previous one.
Um, yeah, so, uh, yeah, I'm an organizer with be Seattle and I just quickly wanted to share two resources.
So the first is we are hosting almost weekly tenant right boot camps, which talk about our rights as renters.
under Seattle and Washington state law.
We address current protections and common questions related to renting during COVID-19.
And we also go into how to some of what we've been talking about tonight, early stages of building organizing.
We think that education is the first step and that organizing is necessary to not only enforce our current protections, but also as part of a bigger fight to re envision what housing looks like in this country.
Our upcoming workshop is tomorrow night at 630pm.
Hopefully a link will be sent out to your might be in the comments but you can also find it at our Facebook page at Seattle.
Um, we would love to work with people who have or are interested in forming building tenant associations.
and leading a workshop directly with you to answer your questions and give a grounding in some of your rights as tenants in Seattle.
And then the second resource is the Tenant Research Portal, which covers Capitol Hill, Central District, Leschi, Madison Valley, Madison Park, Montlake, Mount Baker, and part of North Beacon Hill.
We're working on expanding that, but basically it's a tool that you can use to kind of click on your address and look at who owns the building.
Does it have past code complaints?
Does it have code violations?
Is the landlord a serial evictor?
So this is a great first step to learning what's up with your building in early stages of organizing.
Yeah, and you're welcome to reach out to me and the rest of the BC Seattle team if you're interested in partnering with us to, you know, work on a tenant rights workshop or are in need of organizing support.
So yeah, thank you so much to everyone.
I really appreciate it.
Well, thank you so much, Maya.
And yeah, we'll definitely be in contact.
And I know Maya will be there at the June 4th Seattle Renters Rights, you know, organizing meeting so that we can fight evictions.
And let me go ahead I'm having a little bit of trouble sharing the screen here.
We just got, right now, a few things to close down.
Obviously, it wouldn't be an organizing meeting if we didn't have next steps.
We know that there's next steps, of course, around taxing Amazon to fund COVID-19 relief, to build social housing, and to fund Green New Deal programs.
We're also, of course, gonna be organizing to fight eviction.
So we've got the June 4th organizing meeting.
Please go on Facebook right after this and type in fight coronavirus eviction Seattle tenant organizing meeting.
Hit where you're going and then share it with all your friends.
We've also got a fighting coronavirus eviction survey.
That's the last link I believe we'll be sharing.
Please go there, fill out.
We've got questions.
We want to find out who has been laid off, people who have lost significant pay, people who are wanting to fight.
And then, of course, most importantly, yeah, contact our office.
Get organized.
Come to the organizing meeting.
There's a lot that we can do, of course.
And at the end of the day, as all the tenants have explained, as the speakers for the TaxAmazon of the meeting explained, if we don't organize, if we don't fight, then it's gonna mean a lot of evictions.
It's gonna mean working people are gonna pay this cost instead of the billionaire corporations, the super rich individuals like Jeff Bezos, who we know has literally made $30 billion since this coronavirus pandemic started.
So please reach out to us and please, yeah, let's get organized and fight.
so that we don't pay the cost of this crisis.
I believe Shama, you're gonna take it from here and close out the meeting.
Thank you, Adam.
And thank you to all the renter organizer speakers.
And once again, I wanted to tender my apologies to you all.
And also everybody who was watching this specifically for the renter organizing part, that it got a little bit scrunched, but hopefully you found it as valuable as I did.
And even if it was shorter than the tax Amazon portion, it was extremely informative and exciting to see that tenants are organizing and I, I could not agree more with what Sean said that absolutely every building organizing, even if one building organizes and wins a victory, that's crucial because that will impact their lives.
But indeed, we don't have any need to stop there and we cannot stop there.
And a network of buildings or successfully organizing will begin to constitute the kind of mass movement that we need.
And we need to start building now before the wave of evictions hits us.
And it's not an idle fear.
It is exactly what will happen unless we prepare to fight back.
And fighting back requires getting organized.
And as one of Adam's slides said, evictions, foreclosures, joblessness, the permanent loss of jobs, impoverishment, austerity in the public sector with cuts to jobs or furloughs and cuts to services, cuts to education.
All of these are various forms in which the billionaire class extracts the cost of the recessions from us, you know, putting all the costs on, putting all the price on us and themselves profiteering or else not.
Maybe some of them are not profiteering, but they are not actually paying for this crisis.
And we can't have it this way, because as many of you said, This is simply not fair.
And that's why it was important that we were discussing both taxing big business to create a public works program and jobs, and also how as renters we can fight back and of course, if there are other working class middle class homeowners have lost their jobs.
They're going to face foreclosures as well, just as we saw after the Great Recession.
So we need to unite.
If there are small landlords who are watching and you are on our side, which I know some of you are, absolutely you are welcome to join this movement, as are small businesses who are also getting slammed, while big businesses profit carrying.
So join us on June 4th for the Next steps of the renter organizing June 4th at 6 p.m.
And I wanted to thank everybody who joined us, everybody who stayed with us.
I know it's late, but this was a very, very important meeting.
And I'm so glad that we were able to do this.
Thank you so much.
Last but not least, everybody in my socialist city council office, thanks to all the socialists, our community organizers that have in our office, Sasha Somer, Nick Jones, Ted Verdone, who's been the backbone of all the technology and the incredible Zoom meetings we've had, and to Adam Zimkowski, who's been helping to organize alongside the tenants, and Jonathan Rosenblum, who's been a big part of everything we've done, including organizing the labor movement, helping to organize rank-and-file labor, many of whose voices were here tonight with us.
Thank you all so much.
Take care.
Make sure to maintain social distancing.
Stay at home if you can.
stand in solidarity with essential and frontline workers.
We will continue organizing to win the Amazon tax and to make sure that we win our demands for a complete suspension without any consequences of rent, mortgage, and utility payments.
Solidarity and good night.