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Shaun Scott 🌹🤝 Profile picture
@eyesonthestorm
Jun 26, 2020 • 8 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
I wrote in @Crosscut about why defunding the police is about Seattle ending its centuries-long battle with its own form of Jim Crow.

When the fight for "reform" takes place in literally every generation, the only way forward is some version of abolition. crosscut.com/2020/06/time-a…
Seattle, 1865: A week after Lincoln signs off on the 13th Amendment, Seattle's first City Council bans Indigenous people from appearing in Seattle city limits. The Seattle Police Department is founded in 1869, but doesn't hire a Black officer until 1890.

crosscut.com/2020/06/time-a…
Seattle, 1901: Seattle PD arrests Black journalist Horace Cayton Sr. because he has the temerity to report on police corruption. Cayton's son (a cop) later writes of a police culture of suspicion and condescension towards Black Seattleites in the 1930s. crosscut.com/2020/06/time-a…
Seattle, 1938: Three Seattle police officers kill Black waiter Berry Lawson, accusing him of loitering in the lobby of his own hotel. Civil Rights groups apply pressure to ensure the offending cops are convicted.

The governor later pardons the officers. crosscut.com/2020/06/time-a…
Seattle, 1968: The Seattle Black Panther Party is founded, in part to protect Black Seattle from the police. A 1955 Mayor's panel finds a pattern of racist policing in Seattle. In 1964, police spew racial invective before killing a Black man in Chinatown.

crosscut.com/2020/06/time-a…
Seattle, 1999: In the decade that racist "drug-loitering" and "prostitution-loitering" ordinances are established, Seattle PD wars with demonstrators at the WTO protests. The city's police chief is forced to resign. The Mayor is voted out 3 years later. crosscut.com/2020/06/time-a…
Seattle, 2017: Under federal investigation since 2012 because of a pattern of racist policing and a habit of using force unconstitutionally, Seattle Police kill #CharleenaLyles, a pregnant Black mother, in her home.

The city indemnifies the officers. crosscut.com/2020/06/time-a…
Seattle, 2020: The Seattle Police Department's $407 million budget exceeds the city's entire combined spending on: affordable housing, health and human services, affordable child care, libraries, the arts, and parks, zoos, and aquariums. #DefundSPD crosscut.com/2020/06/time-a…

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More from @eyesonthestorm

Shaun Scott 🌹🤝 Profile picture
Feb 6, 2021
Last week, @soultypechild, @spekulation and I launched the effort to urge City Council to subpoena Seattle PD union president Mike Solan.

100s of Seattleites have contacted the Office of Civil Rights with that demand.

Here's an update on the progress of #SubpoenaSolan:
There's been an outcry police accountability after several Seattle PD officers participated in the coup attempt of January 6th.

We discussed the demands of the #SubpoenaSolan campaign on Tuesday with @Omarisal (13-minute mark):
Also on Tuesday, the Seattle Human Rights LGBTQ Commissions sided with the community demands you reached out to the Office of Civil Rights with.

This is a huge step, and a sign that your e-mails and phone calls are working.

Read 9 tweets
Shaun Scott 🌹🤝 Profile picture
Jun 18, 2020
Police departments operate as active political forces, not just passive enforcers of the law.

Seen that way, Seattle organizers are in the opening stages of a long campaign against Seattle PD. The cop union getting expelled from our county's AFL-CIO federation is the first win.
The next step has to be defunding the Seattle Police Department to rubble. This is a longer, much less "exciting" fight that will need to take place iteratively.

Seattle operates on a biennial budget. What is defunded today can reappear 2 years later.

Or 2 years after that.
The Seattle Police Officer's Guild is out of the King County Labor Council, but that doesn't mean they'll just go away.

Having finally been expelled from the progressive circle of trust (for now), look for their leadership to go on the offensive:
Read 5 tweets
Shaun Scott 🌹🤝 Profile picture
Jun 5, 2020
Racist policing is legally embedded in Seattle's Municipal Code.

On the road to police abolition and dismantling the carceral state, here are two actions Seattle City Council must take to correct that ASAP:
1️⃣ Seattle City Council should repeal SMC 12A.20.050, the "Drug-traffic Loitering" Ordinance.

It was crafted in 1990 and last modified in 1992, when racist Republicans & carceral Democrats enlisted local cops to fight the "War on Drugs."
Even observers at the time noted that this ordinance was a pretext for cops to surveil and harass citizens for simply "looking like" they sold drugs.

It needs to be repealed.

archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=…
Read 6 tweets
Shaun Scott 🌹🤝 Profile picture
May 29, 2020
The Mayor of Seattle is calling for a more exacting degree of police scrutiny in Minneapolis than she wants for officers in her own city, where Seattle PD is already under a DOJ consent decree that the city, with her help, is attempting to have prematurely lifted.
These calls from Mayor Durkan to "prosecute" murderous cops were nowhere to be found when Seattle PD executed Che Taylor and Charleena Lyles; the latter when Durkan was a frontrunner for Mayor in 2017, the former while she was ***literally a U.S. prosecutor.***
If Durkan called for the "prosecution" of killer cops in her own city, it would fracture the support she enjoys from white supremacist police unions & their apologists in Seattle. Taking to Twitter to call out Minneapolis is much easier than taking a stand to end racist policing.
Read 4 tweets
Shaun Scott 🌹🤝 Profile picture
May 27, 2020
Seattleites observing Minneapolis need to internalize that @SeattlePD is still under federal investigation for sustained patterns of racist policing. 2 of their officers once sued *a sitting city councilmember* for correctly calling their dispensation of Che Taylor "murder."
White liberals at the highest levels of government in the city pretend to care about the issue, but then rush to ratify police contracts which reward the same officers who blew away Charleena Lyles--a pregnant Black mother--with impunity.
The Seattle Police Department--with the political cover of a complicit @MayorJenny--are attempting to skirt the federally-mandated consent decree process, using COVID-19 as an excuse. seattletimes.com/seattle-news/i…
Read 5 tweets
Shaun Scott 🌹🤝 Profile picture
Mar 17, 2020
I wrote a few words in @Crosscut about how Seattle could address the present crises of Covid-19 and looming recession with the city’s emergency reserve funds.

crosscut.com/2020/03/corona…
Presently, there is a great movement underway to tax large corporations to pay for economic relief.

We should support the leadership being shown by @cmkshama and @CMTammyMorales by signing and circulating this petition.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI…
I also recognize that a tax like this is a heavy political lift that could take weeks.

I’m confident that City leadership will do the right thing by passing a robust progressive revenue package.

In the mean time, people need help right now.
Read 5 tweets

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