Thread by @KCEquityNow

1/ BREAKING: Sean Goode (@WhyICHOOSE180) resigns from @MayorJenny's "task force" before it starts:

"The role...was not to bake the cake [or] identify the ingredients the community would like to be included but to merely put the icing on so it would be palatable to my people."

2/ "FIRST, any investment that does not align with a corresponding divestment in policing does not actually create the change we need.

Imagine Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center funding both cancer research and the spread of the disease. Sounds ridiculous, right?" #Right

3/ "Yet @MayorJenny plans to spend $100 million to resource BIPOC communities while continuing to spend several times as much on [policing systems] the very thing that perpetuates inequity throughout BIPOC communities."

4/ "We’d be spending $100M each year on trying to create true public health and safety, while SPD received more than 4X that amount in 2020 alone...We will never accomplish...true public health & safety w/o intentionally divesting from the status quo."

5/ Because @MayorJenny refuses to divest from policing, "there is no possibility for an investment strategy that is coupled with a strategic divestment, which virtually nullifies the effectiveness of these dollars." #AntiBlack

6/ "SECOND, this process [is] designed to divide communities of color...If the money to support BIPOC communities doesn’t come from divestments from our failed policing model, where will it come from? All signs point to the mayor pulling from the recently passed JumpStart tax."

7/ "JumpStart was passed due to the efforts of a broad coalition, including racial justice, environmental justice, & climate justice organizations." "That money was earmarked for "much-needed COVID relief, affordable housing, and equitable development."

8/ "JumpStart passed DESPITE @MayorJenny’s veto, and now @MayorJenny seems to be planning to spend that revenue to fill her $100 million promise — thus pitting those who fought for JumpStart against those fighting to divest from SPD and invest in Black communities." #AntiBlack

9/ "Meanwhile, @MayorJenny refuses to contemplate serious cuts to the City’s bloated policing budget, leaving BIPOC communities to fight each other for $100 million while SPD receives that amount nearly four times over." #AntiBlack #FreeTheFunds

10/ "THIRD, a task force handpicked by @MayorJenny is not a participatory budgeting (PB) process. Too often, people most "impacted by the City’s investments have no say in how the dollars are spent." PB is a democratic process where community members decide part of the budget.

11/ PB goes like this: the City collects taxes from its residents. That's us! We brainstorm new ideas on how best/equitably to spend some of our dollars. Residents present project proposals & EVERYONE in community votes. Winning proposals then get funded!

12/ "For the outcome of the process to truly reflect community needs, the process itself needs to be community designed & controlled w/ the City playing a supporting role." You can’t begin w/ chairs hand-selected by @MayorJenny & eventually get to community voice on the back-end.

13/ "Participatory budgeting is a process for which the groundwork is already being laid [by King County Equity Now], with the Black-led research soon to be funded by City Council."

See kingcountyequitynow.com/blackresearch

14/ So, "what the mayor is suggesting is this: she selects the co-chairs and the areas of investment, and then the community can have a voice. This is a modified 'Seattle Process' and doesn’t give power to those who will benefit the most if this money is well spent." #GateKeeping

15/ "We are at a unique time in our country, in our county, and certainly in the city of Seattle where our collective voices and actions are finally beginning to influence the direction our government goes."

16/ "No community is a monolith, so it is not in our homogeneity but in our HARMONY that we hold our elected officials accountable to what is best for the collective 'us.'

17/ "I am not the only person who has been asked to join the task force and has declined."

Community leaders @HolidayTraeanna of @AfricatownCLT & Dominique Davis of @commpassageways declined as well the same reasoning.

18/ "Can our communities benefit from this investment? Yes! Let’s just make sure that the process is the equivalent to a Rolex and not the bootleg Seattle Process with a [fool's] gold crown."

#FreeTheFunds #ParticipatoryBudgeting #DivestToInvest #EquityNow #DurkansAntiBlack