Good morning and welcome everybody.
Thank you to the members of the media for joining us.
And thank you to all the activists and organizations who are represented here today for this historic unveiling of the Amazon tax legislation that we've been talking about for more than two years in its draft format.
And it gives me special happiness to say that Council Member Morales and I will be presenting this legislation today and will be co-sponsoring this.
And we are proud to announce that this is something that a real movement is coalescing around.
And at this point, it is safe to say that thousands of people in Seattle are actively either engaged in building the movement or considering being involved in the movement because they care about this.
And the short line of speakers that we have today will reflect the breadth of interest in this legislation.
After Council Member Morales and I finish with our presentations and other speakers speak, we're happy to take media questions.
As we know, Seattle is in the throes of a stunning and unprecedented affordable housing and homelessness crisis.
Sky-high rents and soaring home prices are driving working-class households, seniors, students, but especially working families of color out of our city and increasingly more often into homelessness.
Even as Seattle has experienced a record-breaking construction boom, being recognized as the nation's construction crane capital four years running, the housing crisis has worsened dramatically, demonstrating how the for-profit market has failed working people.
The loss of affordable housing in Seattle and the failure of the market to build new affordable homes is a crisis that is deeply impacting communities not only in the city but across the region.
And we also need to mention the LGBTQ community, immigrant community members, indigenous people, disabled community members who are disproportionately represented among our homeless neighbors.
and who are already waging an intense struggle against the entrenched inequality in our city.
And I'm proud that the legislation we are unveiling today is the product of thousands of conversations with grassroots activists and organizers who are accountable to this vibrant movement that is beginning to build to win the Amazon tax.
The insights and ideas of these working class people, renters, homeowners, people experiencing homelessness, have shaped this legislation.
I also wanted to thank the city council central staff who have worked tirelessly at a breakneck pace to translate these working class ideas into actual draft legislation.
Kirsten Aristid, Dan Eder, Tom Mikesell, Ali Panucci, Tracy Radsliff, Jeff Sims, Patty Weigrant, and I also wanted to thank our Our equally tireless communication staff, Tanner Robinson-Sloat, Stephanie Guzman, and Joseph Peja.
There are two types of legislation, or two pieces of legislation that we are introducing today.
Funding, or as it's called, spending plan.
and a tax revenue plan.
We'll discuss them in order.
The legislation we are unveiling today will tax Amazon and the biggest businesses in Seattle, raising $300 million a year to fund upwards of 8,000 new affordable homes in the first 10 years or about 800 homes per year.
And some of you members of the media who were there on February 12th when we unveiled the outline have seen these display sort of placards, but we thought that they are very informative and we want to share them again today.
About 75% of that $300 million that we raise every year will go to social housing that is publicly owned or controlled, permanently affordable housing, built union and built green, consistent with the most up-to-date Green New Deal standards.
The new housing will increase by about two and a half times the current rate of affordable housing construction in Seattle.
This will be working-class housing broadly available for people experiencing homelessness and many other social challenges, for very low-income people, and also for full-time working-class people who are getting squeezed out of the housing market despite making a salary.
We will prioritize housing and services where the need is most dire, the most immediately, but we want to present a bold and ambitious idea for social housing where we not only address the immediate challenges of homelessness and the challenges faced by our most vulnerable community members, but also provide a real vision, a concrete vision for social housing, which is going to be an actual alternative to the for-profit market, which, if we continue to put our faith in, is going to continue to fail us.
In the coming weeks, Council Member Morales and I want to continue to get community-wide input from working people about how exactly we want to prioritize the new housing.
Those details, some of those details have deliberately not been specified in the legislation because we don't want to do that before we have a wide enough conversation to see what consensus is emerging in the community.
I think I can safely say that both our offices take our responsibility extremely seriously to be accountable to the ordinary people who have got us here and who have fought for the ideals that we are fighting for here.
And that is why it is important that the most important details get carved out as we go on.
And so once we have unveiled this draft as it appears today, we will be continuing our conversations and our meetings where we'll bring hundreds of people together so that they can give us their input on how we should allocate these funds.
going forward.
The other 25% that we raise through the Amazon tax, or about $75 million per year, will fund Green New Deal investments in existing homes, like weatherization, solar installations, transitioning homes from oil and gas to electric, investing in job training programs to ensure a just transition to support workers in the renewable energy economy.
And these programs will be prioritized, just as the housing will be, in communities historically most harmed by economic, racial, and environmental injustice.
We're going to make sure that working people have a strong and ongoing democratic role in how social housing and Green New Deal programs are implemented.
Because as we know, we may pass a law, or voters may pass a law, but then in every subsequent year, the council that sits in City Hall that year will make actual funding allocation decisions.
We want to make sure that every year going forward there is actual democratic public input, a real say into how those dollars are allocated.
And we want to do this right, you know, from step one.
So our legislation calls for the creation of a social housing board whose members are initially appointed but who will eventually be elected from each of the seven city council districts.
It is critical that this housing program be democratically accountable to working people and annually the Social Housing Board will develop a spending plan or as I would prefer to call it a funding plan with broad public input and submit it to the City Council transparently for a vote in full public view.
The Green New Deal, as already the resolution that has been passed by City Hall, will be overseen by the Green New Deal Oversight Board.
My committee, the Sustainable Rentals Rights Committee, will be discussing those appointments, and I welcome public input on suggestions for appointments.
These appointments will happen this spring and the board will be up and running by this summer.
As with the Social Housing Board, we will be fighting to ensure that the Green New Deal Oversight Board members have an active role in developing the funding plan and in particular that they invite workers and their unions to develop plans to ensure a just transition and making sure that community organizations have a say in how those decisions are made.
I'm going to repeat some of the points that I made on February 12th, just in the interest of completion.
As we've said before, the tax will be applicable only for the largest 3% corporations in this city.
That means no small businesses or medium businesses will be impacted.
But furthermore, no non-profit organizations or cooperatives will be paying this tax.
Grocery stores will also be exempted, and government and educational employers will also be exempted.
I had said on February 12th that our calculations at that time indicated a 1.7% tax on corporate payroll and, you know, we've been struggling to come up with precise numbers because this is the first time this is being done.
Well, I have some good news for our community members and maybe Jeff Bezos might think this is good news.
I'm not sure.
We have some new wage and employment data from the state via the city budget office, and I appreciate the staff giving us this help, showing that the biggest 3% of corporations in Seattle are actually much bigger.
This is not good news, but they're actually much bigger than we had earlier estimated.
And so we only need, the latest estimate we have is that we only need a tax rate of 0.7%.
So this is less than 1% of tax on the wealthiest people who own the wealthiest corporations in our city.
And so I want to just emphasize the estimates we had were extremely progressive to begin with, but now new estimates indicate they're even more.
It's very decidedly progressive.
And I defy Jeff Bezos to tell us, explain to us why the richest guy in the world who just bought a $165 million mansion in Los Angeles cannot pay a tax rate of 0.7% on the you know, just unimaginable profits that they make.
I think any rational person will agree that it's more than reasonable what we're doing here.
So I have some more points about how we go from here, which I will share quickly.
But I want to say one thing before I hand it over to Council Member Morales.
We know that at the same time that the momentum is building for this tax Amazon movement, big business is trying to work out a backroom deal with some of the democratic establishment legislators in the state to try and carve out what they call a preemption, but what is essentially going to be a ban, if it's passed, a ban on Seattle's ability to raise taxes.
As you know, we have been fighting against any such ban, and our movement has come really far in putting pressure, but we cannot be complacent.
As long as there is a legislative session going on in Olympia, whether it's regular or special session, we know the threat of a ban is going to be alive as long as our movement is gaining momentum.
So we cannot afford to feel that the threat is gone.
And I think bringing forward a concrete legislation is the best way possible to strengthen our movement.
And I'm incredibly honored that Council Member Morales is standing with me here today, co-sponsoring this legislation, because I know it is greatly strengthening to the movement to have two council members, not one, out here today.
Good morning, everyone.
I am happy to be here.
Since I declared my candidacy initially four years ago, through Election Day and to today, I've been advocating for progressive revenue to serve the needs of our neighbors and to make sure that our community and my constituents have access to the resources that they need.
Today's the first time that I am co-sponsoring legislation, and I've chosen to do that because we know that as many progressives in Seattle feel as I do, there is a deep frustration with our communities being hollowed out by displacement.
There is a deep frustration with the persistent lack of housing for families in Chinatown International District and the Rainier Beach neighborhoods, where the average household makes less than $25,000 a year.
We are a growing city and we need a better way to fund our growing need for infrastructure and for community services.
As we wait for another legislative session in Olympia to come to a close, as we wait for them to address our state's upside-down tax structure, the city has to move forward to ensure that we put people at the center of our decision-making and that we act to provide the kind of housing we need to stop the displacement that's happening in our cities.
And so I'm proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with Council Member Sawant today to co-sponsor this legislation.
This isn't a new idea, but it's long overdue.
And while Sham and I are still working out some of the details, some of the aspects of the legislation, we share common principles about the outcomes that we're looking for.
We need a more equitable way to fund the housing that we need in the city, and we need to ensure that housing is a human right.
That's what we're looking for through this legislation.
And I believe that by co-sponsoring this legislation, we can bring our council colleagues together to have the hard conversations about the challenges that we have in the city and about the solutions that we need in order to start to address these things.
We need to have hard conversations.
I'm looking forward to that.
And I'm really hoping that as a council, we come together to reject a scarcity mentality that asks little of the wealthy while withholding resources from those who really need it in our community.
We have a chance to fund what our community has identified as priorities.
Inclusivity, so that our community benefits from the housing that this will help build and that will stop the displacement that's happening, particularly in Districts 2 and 3. Tax relief, which is so important for our low-income seniors and for others who are overburdened by increasing sales tax and property taxes.
and repairing the harm done to our black and brown communities.
We are committed to making sure that we bring people who are most impacted to the decision making table.
And that means that we have to center racial equity in this conversation.
That's what we're committed to doing.
I'm a former human rights commissioner, and so I was part of the conversation in 2018 around the employee hours tax.
I can tell you that there is a national alliance for human rights cities that is deeply worried about what it means for corporations to have so much influence in our municipal tax policy.
They're worried because what this might mean for our ability to fund services, particularly for folks who are most vulnerable in our cities.
and they're worried with good reason.
Because until now, power has rested in too few hands in our city.
Power brokers have set the rules for how our city functions, and then they turn around and blame poor people, working families, black and brown families for making poor choices in a system that was set up to keep black and brown families down.
We need to make sure that our communities are part of the decision-making in this process.
And my goal is that we move away from the regressive tax structure that we have in this city, whether we're talking about levies or property taxes or sales taxes.
We need to fix this so that working families stop getting pushed out of Seattle.
At the end of the day, we go into this with our eyes wide open.
We know that we will have hard conversations.
We know that we are not going to convince everybody about why this is so important.
But speaking as someone who was sent here by my constituents to demand that we have a right to this city and that we have more justice in the way this city operates, I can tell you that my priority is to make sure that these conversations continue and that we fight for everything we can to make sure folks stop getting pushed out of the city.
I take the responsibility and the trust that voters put in me very seriously.
We've knocked on thousands of doors and I share the sense of urgency that I heard in my community to make sure that we're doing the right thing and that we're repairing the harm done to our communities.
We repair that harm by building power in our communities and that's what this legislation helps us do.
When our community rewrites the rules of power, we can accomplish so much, but only if we do it together.
Our neighbors are looking for relief.
They're looking for relief from displacement.
They're looking for relief from our persistent housing shortage.
And they're looking for relief from an upside down tax structure.
And this bill will help us get there.
So I'm excited to stand with Council Member Sawant and with our constituents and our neighbors who are working in this movement to build power.
I want to introduce one of my constituents who's here with us to talk about why this is so important, Reverend Angela Ying.
Thank you, Councilmember Sawant.
Thank you, Councilmember Morales.
And thank you to all of you for being here this morning.
I just wanted to share with you why I'm participating in this growing, powerful, broad tax Amazon movement where thousands of people are involved.
In a word, it's love.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
And in a word, it's justice.
For Cornel West Shares, never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.
Those who lead the people need to love the people.
And being the state of all 50 states with the most regressive tax system is not loving the people.
It's embarrassing.
Leaders cannot claim to be progressive in Washington state if they do not advocate for progressive revenue that helps working people.
But we have a way forward, thanks to Councilmember Sawant and to Morales.
And that is tax Amazon and the biggest businesses, not workers.
Less than 1%, did you hear?
Less than 1% of the revenue.
I mean, if billionaires in this country can spend millions on campaign ads, then $300 million we the people need for social housing and a Green New Deal for our children and our children's children is not just practical, it's possible.
It's the way forward.
Our city and Martin Luther King Jr.
King County have a serious housing crisis.
We know that.
Yet we have a way forward.
State legislatures must lead by loving the people.
They can pass millions of dollars without preemption, without a state ban on big business taxation.
No preemption, no state ban on taxation of big business.
They can join in the people on this initiative where thousands of homes, not just any homes, affordable, green, energy efficient, union built homes per year for the people.
We have a way forward.
Amazon and the biggest businesses can afford this.
You and I know this.
Less than 1% of their revenue.
We the people, in seeking to do the right thing, in being honest, hardworking, and transparent, have taxed ourselves multiple times for the sake of the people, for the sake of our children and our children's children.
So now is the time.
Now is the time to move forward.
Amazon and the biggest businesses with 90 billion dollars in revenue can afford to tax itself.
Not the workers, not small and medium businesses, not grocery stores, not cooperatives, not students, not labor, not unions.
We're talking about Amazon and the biggest businesses.
Less than 1% of their revenue.
We have a way forward.
And to move forward, not backwards, we call on all leaders to be bold, to love the people, to love our country, and to make Amazon and the biggest businesses pay their just and fair share.
Their just and fair share.
Because if we do, we all win.
We all win.
tax Amazon and the biggest businesses.
No preemption, no state ban on taxing big businesses.
Grace and peace be with you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Reverend Ying, and thank you, Council Member Morales, for those extremely important remarks on why we are standing here together in order to push this forward.
I would like to quickly also introduce other speakers so that we have an important contribution from our community, which is actually leading this, and then we can open up for media questions.
We have Cathy Yasi, who is a District 3 resident, who is a small landlord, who is also supporting rent control.
and is an executive vice president with SEIU 925 and she's speaking here in personal capacity.
Yep, I am a rank-and-file member of my union and a longtime resident of the Central District.
And I remember our city when sidewalks were not crowded with people wrapped in blankets.
I remember our city before the streets were lined with broken-down RVs providing meager shelter.
I remember my very own neighborhood when tents did not dot the planting strips.
I've lived in Seattle for 30 years and these problems just keep growing.
Everyone deserves housing.
Every single one of us.
I can imagine our city as an inviting place again for ordinary workers raising families.
I can imagine childcare providers, food service workers, paraeducators, lab techs, school bus drivers, home health aides, teachers, and other service workers able to afford to return to Seattle and live close to work.
I can imagine good union jobs to build green social housing.
And finally, I can imagine an end to homelessness in Seattle.
This tax on the biggest, the richest corporations, not on working people, is our path forward.
Thank you, Sister Kathy.
As Council Member Morales correctly said, we have to reject a scarcity mentality and bring about a transformation in our thinking of what is possible and what is necessary to have a just society.
I think a similar transformative thinking is necessary to fight climate change.
And today, we're happy to have Peter Fink with us, who is a student at the University of Washington and who has just started a new UW chapter of Extinction Rebellion.
Hi there.
I got into this fight because people matter.
And with the case of climate change, we see that people all around Seattle, people all around Washington, and people all around the world will be suffering the effects of climate change.
Now, there are certain groups, such as Amazon, such as the big corporations, that are responsible for a majority of the emissions that we face and are causing climate change.
And it seems that they have a duty to make sure that because they have caused climate change to a degree and continue to cause climate change, they have a duty towards the citizens who they affect to help and make sure that they can be resilient in this new growing crisis.
That means building green infrastructure for all people.
That means green transportation.
That means a green future.
We need to invest in this city using the money from the groups that continue to be the greatest polluters.
And that is why it is important to tax Amazon.
Thank you very much.
I know that Council Member Morales has a committee to rush to, so quickly, our final speaker is Alicia Lewis, who is a member and leader in Socialist Alternative, and she's actually a constituent of Council Member Morales because she lives in Beacon Hill.
Thank you.
As Councilmember Sawant mentioned, I am a member of Socialist Alternative.
I am a renter in Beacon Hill, and Socialist Alternative has actively been involved in the fight to pass an Amazon tax.
in Seattle this year.
I want to thank Council Member Sawant for putting forward the legislation that she has in solidarity with our tax Amazon movement.
And I also, you know, I want to bring up the fact that this statewide ban, which has been introduced by big business lobbyists in partnership with corporate Democrats in Olympia, is a major threat to the grassroots democratic movement that we've been so hard at work building.
Over 1,500 constituents and activists have come out so far to our mass action conferences, to our marches, to TaxAmazon, because there is so much momentum and excitement for the idea of making billionaires pay their fair share for this affordability crisis.
uh...
in seattle for the climate crisis and the idea that housing really is a human right and this is something we should address if a state ban goes forward uh...
and is added to any bill in the state we have to make it clear that this is a direct attack on our movement uh...
and that socialist alternative along with the tax amazon movement is planning to go to olympia again and even bigger numbers and we are going to be carrying out mass civil disobedience because this is something that we can not allow to go forward without a fight.
It's not only undermines our tax Amazon movement, but the ability of working people at any point in the future to raise the progressive funding we need to fund things like housing, like transit.
like a Green New Deal, anything that is so central to our lives.
And I also want to thank Councilmember Tamir Morales for standing with our movement and agreeing to co-sponsor this legislation with Councilmember Sawant.
And I ask that the other city councilors also stand with our movement pass Councilmember Sawant's legislation, and anyone who believes that it's time that billionaires pay their fair share, and that housing is a human right, join our grassroots democratic tax Amazon movement.
Thank you.
And just to reiterate, this is now Councilmember Morales' and my legislation, not just my legislation.
And so it is it is a call to action for the rest of the council members as well.
And yeah questions for council member Morales with me?
So you decided to join this, but you know there's going to be a lot of pushback.
And you directed both of you out this time.
What's going to be different this time around?
Why did you get on board?
Well, I wasn't here last time, so that's one thing.
And I have been advocating, you know, throughout my campaign, I was talking about the need for progressive revenue and the need to find a more equitable way to finance public services.
And that's what this is really about for me.
We have a growing number of people getting pushed out of the city.
We know that we have a homelessness crisis.
So the things that we need to find funding for, you know, have been declared emergencies in this city for a long time.
This is an important step forward to making sure that we have an equitable way to fund the public services that we need and the growing infrastructure needs that we have in the city.
Until the legislature is willing to find a different way of doing this at the state level, and at this point they seem disinclined, we have to find a way to serve our municipality and this is an important step to do that.
I want to apologize.
I actually need to go to my transportation committee because they need me for quorum.
But you're I'm happy to you can contact our office if there are further questions, and we're happy to take those.
Thank you Thanks, everybody
affordable social homes.
Can you describe what that is?
Yes.
Well, first of all, the basics are, of course, affordability.
I mean, that's the whole crisis we're facing because rents are so high.
And that's going to be something that the commission that will be appointed and elected will be grappling with.
But by the term social housing, what we mean is a real alternative to the for-profit market in providing housing that's affordable for everybody.
What that means is housing for the most vulnerable community members and for those who are already facing homelessness, plus housing that's affordable to the broader working class and middle class as well, because that's how bad the crisis is.
And it really is, the term social housing points to the fundamental problems in a capitalist system where the housing market, because it is driven by the greed for profits at the top, it is fundamentally incapable of building housing that's affordable for the broad range of working people.
And we have a crisis that is impacting not only our most vulnerable members in the community, but also people who otherwise would have been thought of as middle class, but the rent is so high, they are barely able to afford their life.
Thank you.
Thank you all for being here.
We are ready to fight.
Housing is a human right.
We are ready to fight.
Housing is a human right.