Mayor signs City Council resolution opposing two statewide initiatives

Good afternoon everyone.

Welcome.

Glad you could be here.

So I am proud to be the mayor of a city that stands firmly on its values.

Dignity, safety, protection, and belonging.

Seattle has a long and unwavering commitment to protecting the rights and dignity of all people, including our transgender community.

We believe that everyone deserves to live openly and authentically, to be treated with respect, and to feel safe in the city they call home.

This is a scary time across our country.

Civil rights organizations are tracking more than 500 state-level bills that would restrict LGBTQ plus rights, targeting everything from school curricula and activities to restroom access, healthcare, and legal documents.

These escalating attacks on civil and human rights make strong local protections and clear commitments to safety, dignity, and belonging more urgent than ever.

Seattle has long been a place that people come seeking safety, stability, community and affirming care.

Some people have lived here their entire lives.

Others have arrived from states or countries where discrimination, hostile legislation or unsafe conditions have forced them to leave their homes.

Our reputation as a welcoming city carries a responsibility to make that promise real.

and that means ensuring that trans Seattleites, long-time residents, newcomers, workers and refugees alike can thrive.

That means strengthening services, removing barriers to care and opportunity and addressing the unique challenges facing people displaced by discrimination and anti-trans policies.

These policies are not only cruel, they're meant to throw us off balance.

They're designed to distract us from real challenges that are shared by working people across our state and country.

The affordability crisis is not unique to Seattle.

Across our nation, people are struggling to pay for groceries, fill their tanks to get to work, afford a place to live, and navigate skyrocketing healthcare costs.

These are the pressing challenges facing Americans.

And instead of addressing them, bad faith political actors are manufacturing fear, turning neighbor against neighbor, and using the machinery of government to restrict our rights and our freedoms.

These political attacks are designed to make us cede control over our own bodies, our own lives, and even our ability to imagine a different future.

The consequences reach far beyond any one community.

The same forces attacking trans rights are denying women essential healthcare, turning a blind eye to survivors of sexual violence, and subjecting girls to even greater scrutiny and control, all while claiming to protect them.

Under the guise of protection, they would have you believe that inspecting your daughter's genitals is a reasonable condition for playing on a school team.

That stripping some people of their rights somehow makes the rest of us safer.

These policies don't protect women and girls.

They create new pathways for discrimination, surveillance, and abuse.

They make all of us less free and less safe.

But Seattle's values leave no room for confusion.

We do not protect community by taking rights away from another.

We do not make our city safer by policing bodies or identities.

And we will not allow manufactured issues to distract from the work ahead.

In Seattle, people seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care are protected from investigations, arrests, and prosecution.

In Seattle, single-occupant restrooms are available to everyone, regardless of sex or gender identity.

In Seattle, we do not turn back the clock on our rights, be they trans rights or marriage equality.

In Seattle, we stand with survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, and we work to ensure that they are heard, supported, and protected.

In Seattle we know that making sports safer and fairer for women and girls means expanding opportunities, not taking them away.

It means breaking down barriers, protecting athletes from abuse, fighting for equal pay, and creating spaces where all can participate with dignity and confidence.

In Seattle, we are strengthening these commitments through real investments in programs, services, and advocacy.

In Seattle, our core belief that everyone deserves to live, work, and participate fully in our city is upheld by strong civil rights laws that protect people from discrimination and harassment.

In Seattle, these are not competing rights.

We don't have to choose whose dignity to defend, whose safety to prioritize, or whose freedoms to protect.

Our commitment to equity and equality is not wavering.

Our rights are not a zero sum game.

And our values are not up for negotiation.

This is your city.

There is a place for you here in Seattle.

Thank you.

And now, I'm pleased to turn it over to my colleague, Councilman Rink.

Thank you, Mayor Wilson, beautifully said, very well said, and very excited to be here today as we sign this resolution.

Now, from time to time, the City Council has raised its voice via resolution to weigh in on ballot measures and express our stand as an elected body on measures to our peers in Olympia.

And these actions, to be very clear, are not playing politics.

They are an extension of our charter duties of protecting and enhancing the health, safety, environment, and general welfare of the people to allow fair and equitable participation of all persons and to meet the broad needs of a healthy, growing city.

Now, Initiative 001 does not protect our constituents or ensure our community's safety or general welfare.

In fact, if passed, it will put tens of thousands of kids at risk of real harm.

It removes common sense school record protections for victims of child abuse and ends Washington's legal requirement that schools immediately notify parents when a crime against their child is reported.

And if passed, Kids will be less likely to talk to trusted adults about mental health issues, domestic violence, sexual abuse, or bullying.

It puts LGBTQ kids at real risk.

And there's another initiative we're talking about, I-638, and this discriminates against all girls in Washington.

Let's be very clear about that.

Cruelly, it specifically targets a handful of girls and creates barriers to participation in sports and all the benefits that it brings to girls, their families, our schools, our communities.

And for what?

All of this in service, not to the needs of Washington's families, but to the desires of one wealthy MAGA, mega donor.

After failing to convince lawmakers of both parties in Olympia to get on board with his radical politics of exclusion and discrimination, this mega millionaire decided to personally bankroll a deceptive campaign to sidestep the people's representatives and directly force his politics onto our kids.

It's unconscionable.

I won't stand by it.

Our city won't stand by it.

And we will not remain silent when trans people are under attack and our kids' dignity privacy and safety is at risk.

We can and must stand up.

So I encourage all who are standing with us today to join us in this.

Thank you so much, Mayor Wilson.

And now I will turn it to my colleague, Council Member Foster.

That was very well said and it's an honor and a pleasure to be here today to sign, as the mayor signs these resolutions.

I was really proud and pleased to co-sponsor these resolutions with Council Member Rink and on the heels of your description of what they do, I want to talk about why and I want to talk about it a little bit more personally.

I love sports, but I'm not really good at playing them.

My mom, being a great mom, made me play basketball in fifth grade, and my fifth grade basketball team won exactly one game.

It's okay.

Yeah, I'm okay.

I'm okay.

I'm here today.

I made it.

I'm doing all right.

But I learned a lot of things.

I learned how to lose.

I learned how to communicate.

I learned what I'm made of.

I learned how to get through really tough situations.

And I'm glad I had that experience.

I don't want to say it was that experience that led me here today to be a Seattle City Council member, but who knows, right?

Who knows?

I don't know.

But what I can say is that every kid deserves the opportunity to be really bad at sports.

Every kid deserves the opportunity to play.

Every kid deserves the opportunity to have that collegiality, to have those lessons that you learn, to build that grit, to build that community.

And it's really important here in Washington State that we protect our kids' ability to have those lessons.

The other thing that's really important to me, I stand here today as somebody who has a master's in social work, and that training is something I hold really precious and really dear.

You go through a lot, you go through the master's program, you learn how to be a safe person, right?

Whether you're going into clinical work or whether you're going into something else.

And I know it's so important for every kid to have a safe and trusted adult in their life.

And for a lot of kids, maybe that's their parent.

Maybe that's what they have at home.

But for a lot of kids, that might be a school counselor.

That might be a nurse.

That might be a teacher.

That might be some other trusted adult.

And every kid deserves the right to know that they can come to an adult safely to talk to them about what they have going on and not be afraid that it's going to result in retribution because their privacy is violated.

not be afraid that it's going to end up getting back to somebody who's unsafe.

That's how we end up with kids who don't have homes.

That's how we end up with kids who are living outside.

So I was really proud to co-sponsor these resolutions because kids deserve the right to be safe in our state.

So I want to thank the mayor for taking the time to sign these really important bills today and I look forward to what happens next.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you councilmembers for your leadership on these resolutions.

Let's sign them.

Get up there, are you?

We're getting closer, we're getting closer.

Yeah, the iPhone.

Thank you, sorry, appreciate you guys.

You should be going to do that little unlock thing.

Oh yeah, you should be here.

Oh yeah, Dominique.

Okay, ready, smile, Dominique take one step in, sorry.

Awesome.

Okay, let me get one.

Is this both of them or is there like another one that should be signed?

All in one, okay.