Yesterday, I asked my social media followers to send me questions for King County’s top Health Officer, Dr. Jeff Duchin. By far, the most consistent question I received was:

“If COVID cases are spiking, why hasn’t @KCPubHealth reinstated a mask mandate?”

Fair question. The response from Dr. Duchin, as I understood it, was that Public Health continues to strongly recommend voluntary masking, as well as other strategies like vaccination and ventilation of indoor settings.

As for a return to mandates, they’re continuing to monitor the situation.

Yesterday, I nerded-out on a work trip to Arizona organized by Senator @Dhingrama & Rep @tinaorwall. We’re developing the expertise and partnerships to build alternative responses to bevahioral health crises in Washington by learning from great models in Arizona & Georgia. THREAD Responding to people in mental or addiction crisis through police, jails, and emergency rooms is costly, ineffective, and often harmful.

States like Arizona and Georgia have much more advanced and healing systems of alternative crisis response. Here’s what I learned 👇🏾 (2/)

I’m doing a study tour in Germany this week with @FNFreiheit, learning how local governments operate in a different country. I’ll share any new perspectives I gain w you! One interesting lesson I learned from a local Mayor at this lunch is on #PublicBroadband. 1/

CC: @UpgradeKC She said that a group of people in her county really wanted public broadband, so they formed a community group that knocked on doors asking their neighbors which of them would want a public broadband option, and if yes, asking if they’d be willing to sign a commitment form. 2/

There’s a life and death policy battle coming and I need everyone to retweet this and prepare. Washington state’s upside down tax code exacerbates every major issue we have in our region, whether that’s our housing crisis, homelessness, racial disparities, or climate change. 1/ But every attempt to fix our regressive tax system, which disproportionately burdens the poor and middle class, is met with organized and well-funded resistance from some of the wealthiest people in our state. One such campaign is coming to defeat the recent capital gains tax. 2/

When discussing the harsh economic conditions in our state, we often and correctly point to our regressive tax code as a persistent cause of inequity. But in addition to our taxes, we also need to give more air time to I-200 and the ban on race/gender conscious affirmative action I-200, & its implementing Executive Order 98-01, have had devastating impacts on women & communities of color, especially Black Washingtonians. In the 2 decades since taking effect, these laws have funnelled $billions out of these groups and slashed many educational opportunities

Councilmember Kathy Lambert sent the mailer below to thousands in her district. Given that every police-related policy I’ve supported has had majority Council approval, I wonder why she singled out and used her only Black colleague’s face for fear mongering on the East Side. Some might say it’s because I endorsed her Democratic opponent. Actually, 6 of CM Lambert’s colleagues endorsed her opponent. And yet, of those 6, it’s only my face in a big red bow tie and my name in red boogie man letters that she chose to distribute to thousands of voters.

My deepest apologies to the Skyway residents who joined the Local Services town hall last night. What felt like dozens of Zoom hackers “bombed” the virtual meeting with offensive, anti-Black, anti-Semitic, and sexually explicit images and words. Sending lots of love especially to our Black and Jewish neighbors who were on the zoom call and were repeatedly subjected to the N word and swastikas. Our hard-working local services team acted quickly to shut this down, but the hackers were persistent.