Thank you all for coming, and I appreciate the media being here for this important issue.
I'm really honored to stand here with you all again for the part two of our struggle to save the showbox, alongside activists and fighters who made the hope of saving the showbox a reality.
We won a victory last summer, but we wouldn't have without the over 118,000 people who signed the online petition that was started in the grassroots, without the hundreds who packed City Hall again and again to the gills, demanding the showbox not be destroyed to make way for unaffordable luxury apartments, and without the hundreds of local musicians and artists raising their voice on behalf of their community and forcing the city council and the political establishment to act.
Without any of this, we would not have had a chance of winning.
Another critical component of our movement was the movement having its own elected representative who will always stand with the movement and fight alongside it, and my office has been proud to play that important role.
We also thank Councilmember O'Brien, who supported the showbox legislation from the beginning.
Those who were there last year will recall how, at every opportunity, other council members would say, what is the rush?
Why is someone's office pushing for this boundary extension to apply so soon?
Why is fast-tracking the legislation necessary?
The reality was that if we had done it their way, the way of corporate politicians, by believing that deals can be struck with wealthy landowners or corporate developers, then the Showbox would have had no chance of being saved.
People likely know about the lawsuit filed against the city by Roger Forbes, the building owner of the Showbox.
When the judge reviewing the case threw out significant portions of the lawsuit, As we heard from many media outlets, we also heard that this was due to our movement demanding no delay in action, that the City Council listen to our demands and save the showbox.
When we passed our legislation last year, we knew we had won interim protections, and that we would have to come back this spring and summer to continue building the movement.
And of course, I will be voting yes on the proposed six-month extension, but we are also here to remind people that it should not have come to this, and also what it will take to actually win.
The mayor and the city establishment have had more than enough time to ensure the necessary studies to be conducted in the 10 months since our ordinance passed last August.
Unfortunately, this is what movements can count on happening when the political establishment feels that they can operate without the immediate pressure of ordinary people on them.
That is why our movement must not only stay vigilant in the next months, but also continue building And we are here also to say that the next month and a half is more than enough time for the city departments to conduct their surveys and studies to permanently expand the Pike Place Market historic boundary.
I think it is important to stress also what strategies actually help us to win.
We cannot, I repeat, cannot rely on behind-the-scenes deals and negotiations with developers and corporate landlords, like I said.
But I want to specifically reference this article from Crosscut, from David Croman, which says, new proposal would buy the showbox six more months.
In this article, it is clear that the council members who put their faith in Forbes, who's a multi-millionaire, if not a billionaire, and on his battery of attorneys, putting your faith in such powerful people and expecting that they will stick to any verbal agreement, that is just not going to work.
We know that that is not how it works.
And this article points out that they, obviously, not surprisingly, Forbes and his attorneys just reneged on whatever verbal agreement that they had.
with the city.
This is what shows that instead of doing that, we need the strength of grassroots movements, and that's why we are all here.
Last but not least, I want to thank everyone who's been fundamental to this struggle.
Shannon Wells, who has spent countless hours organizing and putting her heart into this fight.
She's an employee at the Showbox.
She will be speaking today.
But also other employees like Ernie Ashwood, Nick Fillard, and others.
Smoky Brights, Soul, Sassy Black, many of the artists, Ben Gibbard, many of the artists who have student solidarity with the movement in a very active way, and we have Smoky Brights today who have to rush to their show, so we will be inviting them very quickly.
But we've also had a whole community supporting us, and part of that community is Shoa Sanchez who is a musician but he's also a union organizer on the UW campus and a graduate student in the physics program.
So we have the struggle to save the showbox is all-encompassing and it includes many people who are also fighting for affordable housing.
But with no further delays I wanted to invite the artists of the Showbox, I mean, of Smokey Brights, because I know they're in a rush.
Sorry.
Hey, everybody.
My name's Ryan.
And I'm Kim.
And we record and perform music under the name Smokey Brights, and we're based right here in Seattle, Washington.
As active members of this music community, we can attest to how vital the Showbox market is to our music culture.
The Showbox's size, central location, beautiful aesthetics, and quality of acoustics uniquely position it as one of the best venues to see live music in the country.
The quality of acts and the quality of experience music fans receive at the Showbox are testaments to this fact.
We're here to ask City Council to extend the interim Pike Place Market Historic District Expansion by six months and ultimately make the Pike Place Historic District Expansion permanent, thereby protecting the show box and live music in Seattle for generations to come.
As touring musicians, we see the rapid changes happening in cities all across our nation.
A city's vitality and the quality of life of its citizenry is greatly dependent on the arts and entertainment happening within a city on a nightly basis.
A music venue is a place where multiple generations and multiple classes can come together and share in one of the most unifying passions that we share as humans, which is music.
Losing these spaces where these unifying experiences take place actually means losing these experiences, a cost that is, in our estimation, too great.
We travel all over, and the one thing that people ask us about Seattle is music.
That's what we're known for.
We are all so lucky to live in this beautiful city surrounded by incredibly beautiful waterways, clear skies, orca whales, and a thriving music community.
But like our orca neighbors, our community does not continue to exist and thrive without our active work to support it and maintain it.
And because of that, we're calling on City Council today to help us to do the work to maintain this incredibly important part of our music culture and important part of our city's identity.
Thank you guys so much.
Thank you.
Thank you so much to Kim West and Ryan Devlin.
Next, we have Shannon Wells, who's a Showbox employee, and she'll be joined by Nick Philhart.
Please come.
Hi, my name is Shannon Wells.
I am a long-time employee of the Showbox, and I'm also speaking today on behalf of Friends of the Showbox, which is a grassroots community coalition dedicated to saving the Showbox.
The Friends of the Showbox strongly supports the six-month extension of the ordinance that places the venue in the Pike Place Market Historic District.
The ordinance laid out a work plan for the Department of Neighborhoods to study the historic significance of the Showbox and its relationship to the market.
The City was to have conducted outreach to stakeholders by April of this year.
While the City has hired a consultant to do the work, it does not appear that much work has been done.
No stakeholder outreach has occurred at this point.
We feel it is unacceptable for the ordinance to expire without this study or for a rush study to commence just weeks before the deadline.
We want the professional, in-depth analysis that was laid forth in the original ordinance.
For this reason, we urge City Council to approve a six-month extension and ensure this matter receives the proper analysis.
Over the past nine months, the community has been organizing in the absence of city leadership on this.
We stand ready to engage in this process with our historical knowledge and expertise and with our lived experience in the Pike Place Market neighborhood.
Over 118,000 people have now signed the petition to save the Showbox.
It is an icon of Seattle and an important player in Seattle's music ecosystem and also in the market's business today.
Our relationship extends back 80 years.
So please, let's take this seriously.
Please extend the ordinance.
Thank you.
Thanks to Shannon and Nick, we have Shua Sanchez, Seattle musician and UAW 4121 member.
Yep.
Hi, so I'm Shaw Sanchez.
I play electric guitar in a band in Seattle.
I'm not going to use this event to self-promote.
I'll just say I'm one person in one of the hundreds of bands that helped make this city such a cool music city.
On any given night, you know, in dozens of locations, you can see all different kinds of music playing in this city, right?
I think that if you ask musicians in this city what is the greatest theater, what is the best place to see music in this whole city, the vast majority would pick the Showbox.
It is really like the gem of the music scene in Seattle.
When famous Seattle bands go on national and international tours, when they play their last show in Seattle, on their way back home, they go to the Showbox.
That is the destination.
Yeah, so for me as a musician, it's important that we maintain this theater, that we keep it in our community.
For me as a union organizer, I think Shama brought up, I'm an organizer with UAW 4121, which is a union for scientists, academics, and educators at the University of Washington.
So there's about 6,000 of us over there.
Most of us are not from Seattle.
These are high quality medical researchers, educators, all different kinds of people that choose Seattle to come to do work and to teach.
And why do they choose to come to Seattle?
I chose to come here because growing up in the 90s in the Midwest, Seattle was on the map for music and it stayed on the map ever since then.
And if we want to keep this a city where tech workers and scientists and educators want to move to and want to live at, and where the people who are already here want to stay at, then we need to stop destroying the things that make this city so great.
So as part of this movement, I learned that there is actually, I think back in the 70s, an effort to destroy the Pike Place Market.
And that was blocked by a similar grassroots movement like this to give it protection.
Like I can't imagine Seattle without Pike Place Market, right?
And I also can't imagine Seattle without the Showbox.
So we need to win this fight.
We need to keep the Showbox.
We need to keep everything that makes this city great for the next generations.
Thank you.
You heard it here.
We can't imagine Seattle without Pike Place Market.
We can't imagine Seattle without the Showbox.
Next, we are lucky to have Nate Omdahl, who's a musician and also a member of Musicians Association of Seattle, Local 76-493.
Thank you very much.
As Shama said, my name is Nate Omdahl.
I'm the lead organizer at Seattle Musicians Association, Local 76493. I would just like to say that everybody in our union is here in support of the workers and staff and musicians that would call the Showbox the home.
We agree that it's a valuable component in what makes the city of music what the city of music and we are given a literal opportunity for city council to step up and protect one of the main ingredients as we've been hearing from my colleagues of all different industries that's one of the most important things when people look at Seattle and decide to move here so I would urge city council to again extend and then ultimately make this resolution permanent.
Thank you.
We're also happy to have Ernie Ashwood, who's also a Showbox employee and has been fighting for the Showbox since this movement began.
Good afternoon, everybody.
My name is Ernie Ashwood.
I'm an employee at the Showbox.
I also have had the privilege of playing at the Showbox.
For me, I think it's really important to ask ourselves, what does this fight really represent when it comes to the heart and soul of our city?
What does this fight represent when it comes to what we're telling our children is important when it comes to passing down our history, when it comes to passing down our culture?
That's what the show box represents for me.
It's a representation of that fight between profit versus culture.
The choices that we make right now, moving forward, is really going to determine how history looks at us.
It also determines how history looks at the effectivity of how the people are willing to stand up for what they believe in.
We've seen over time and through history that when the people of all different backgrounds are able to gather behind one common idea, amazing changes happen.
It's happened within me.
I'm not one that's ever believed really in city council.
I'm not one that's ever really believed in the process.
But what makes me believe in the process now isn't the city council or the system itself, it's the people behind it that are willing to stand up for what's really right.
That's what we have right now.
We have that opportunity to really set a precedent that profit versus culture is not the way to go.
There are other solutions, so I urge City Council to please consider extending this ordinance.
It's incredibly important.
Thank you very much for your time.
When hundreds of people were here testifying for the showbox last August, I remember Ernie Ashwood saying in front of the city council, this is not a fight between music and housing.
Because that is how the corporate developers and many of the politicians wanted to frame it.
and criticize the movement for the showbox as a movement that's against housing.
We absolutely reject this falsehood.
As Ernie said, this is not a fight between music and housing.
This is a fight between music and culture and affordable housing for all on the one end and profits.
for billionaires on the other.
And city council, pick which side you're on because you can't pick both sides.
It's one or the other.
And that is why it is really important that everybody was here to have their voices heard before the public hearing.
And I urge everybody to stay for the public hearing as well.
But I also wanted to say that one of the most important points that has been highlighted by so many who have spoken for this movement is that our fight to save the Pike Place Market in the 70s, our fight today to save the Showbox, is very much linked with our fight to make this city affordable for everybody regardless of income and prevent it from simply becoming a playground for the wealthy.
So it's really a conflict between two visions for Seattle.
Do you want Seattle just to be a playground for the wealthy?
Or do you want Seattle to be a vibrant, culturally amazing but affordable city for everybody.
And I can tell you the culture and the affordable housing go together, not one without the other.
You can have the culture only if you also have affordable housing for everybody.
In fact, just a few days ago, my office stood in solidarity with the security guards at the Fry Art Museum in District 3, who are also artists, and they'll tell you one of the reasons they're forming a union is because they are fed up of not having affordable housing fed up of being forced to couch surf or be homeless simply to be able to do the job they love.
And that is why we are in solidarity both with music and culture and with affordable housing.
And that is why it's important that we link our Save the Showbox campaign this year to the larger fight for rent control and social housing.
And that is why I wanted to also recognize some people who are fighting hard for affordable housing alongside the Showbox, Emily MacArthur and Mickey Cloud, who are both organizers with Socialist Alternative, which has been helping lead the fight on rent control and social housing.
Last but not least, I wanted to read excerpts from a statement sent by Jay Middleton, who's been a grassroots organizer, who actually started the Change.org petition, which then garnered 118,000 signatures.
He requested that parts of his statement be read, and so I'm going to read it.
My friends, my family, and my fellow supporters of the movement, our love for the showbox needs to carry the momentum through this time.
We haven't reached mission accomplished and we don't have much time.
The hurdles will be tough, the threats will be scary, but if we stand together, it'll prevail through fear and failure.
We must keep rallying, we must stay diligent, and most of all, we must not give up.
The opening words of a classic Rage Against the Machine song keep repeating in my head.
Those words are, no matter how hard you try, you can't stop us now.
And I think that's Jay Middleton's message to the corporate developers, their batteries of attorneys, and the politicians who will represent them.
Jay says further, let's be renegades of Seattle music, of Seattle performance art, of Seattle culture.
I wish I could be with you right now, but I'm with you in spirit.
Solidarity, Jay Middleton.
So I appreciate everybody being here.
And media are free to ask questions of any speakers or people who are here.
But could we end this part of the press conference with a chant?
When we fight, we win.
When we fight, we win.
When we fight, we win.
When we fight, we win.
One more.
When we fight, we win.
Woo!
Whose house?
Our house.
Whose house?
Our house.
Whose house?
Our house.
Whose house?
Our house.
Woo!
So what about the example of El Corazon?
Sorry?
El Corazon and the Funhouse.
Last I checked, that owner did strike a deal with the developer to preserve the music venue, not go down this litigious road.
It sounds like you've already ruled out any more efforts with the property owner or any kind of development groups.
Well, we're not ruling it out.
The property owners and their attorneys are free to come and make a deal and help us preserve the show box anytime they want.
We welcome that.
What I am saying, though, is that it's not going to work to put our blind faith in them because we've already seen that whatever verbal agreements they may have made with any council member actually carry no value because they are not looking out for the showbox.
They are looking out for their millions of dollars of bottom line.
So if we actually want a chance to put pressure on the developers and the owners to actually strike a deal, then the one thing that will make it possible is if we keep building our movement and they understand that we are not going to go away and we are not going to give up.
I would say primarily the holdup is that most of the establishment here and certainly the mayor's office is not really in solidarity with the Save the Showbox movement.
It's not in solidarity with people who are fighting for affordable housing.
Jenny Durkin is Jeff Bezos's mayor.
She is Vulcan's mayor.
She is not our mayor.
And so if we want to end this holdup and actually get the studies completed and get our, you know, of course we are, I'm going to, as council member, I'm going to vote yes on the six-month extension, but what we are fighting for actually is the permanent extension, expansion of the boundary of the Pike Place market to include the showbox so it's no longer under threat.
And so if we want that, we're going to have to keep fighting.
So is there any way to force their hand to get that study done?
This is going to force their hand, putting the establishment on notice.
This is how we won the Interim Expansion in the first place.
At first there was massive opposition from virtually every politician except for Council Member O'Brien who supported me from the very first step.
How did we overcome that and get a unanimous vote?
We built the movement.
Anything else?
What about the property owner's contention that this is spot zoning to put just a show box into the Pike Place market to just take that one thing and include it in?
Well, I don't actually agree that it is spot zoning in any way, but I'll also tell you this.
We cannot rely on legalistic decision making because at the end of the day, I can't promise that the court won't rule in favor of the big owner, you know?
The only way to get favorable judicial outcomes, again, is to build a movement.
I mean, you know, marriage equality didn't start at the Supreme Court.
It started on the streets, and the Supreme Court followed.
Same thing with marijuana legalization.
You name it, every progressive cause started on the streets with the movement, and then it came to the courts.
So if you want favorable outcomes in the courts, then we have to fight here.
The representative for the owner had provided a 2007 letter saying that when it was looked at before by the Department of Neighborhoods, they found that the showbox had been so altered that it would not qualify as a Seattle landmark.
What do you say to that?
I actually don't agree at all, but actually I invite the showbox employees to weigh in on this.
I have a response.
Actually, that was an external survey where they just walked by the building.
So nobody went inside and there are six criteria of the landmark and cultural significance is one of them.
So they were just looking out the external architectural facade and then making a determination based on that.
So no one ever filed for landmark at that time.
So now we're going through that process to say that it that it should be a landmark because it is historically significant to Seattle.
Can we take a photo?