The “xenophobic” messages include “Fuck Tanya Woo—get her out” and “Tanya Woo Hates Black People”

By Erica C. Barnett

Last week, the Northwest Asian Weekly newspaper ran an article denouncing what the author described as “anti-Asian hatred and xenophobia” targeting Seattle City Councilmember Tanya Woo. According to the story, historic buildings and parking pay stations had been tagged with graffiti that “included hate speech, references to race, and evoked themes of exclusion.”

The image accompanying the story shows a parking pay station on which someone has crudely scrawled “fuck Tanya Woo get her out”—a phrase that, while disrespectful, isn’t hate speech. (Posters bearing similar messages about various council members have been seen on Capitol Hill for many years, generally targeting whoever happens to be the most conservative members of the council members.)

A quick afternon walk around the area identified in the NW Asian Weekly article—which, according to the Stranger, was submitted by Woo herself—turned up just one other clear example of anti-Woo graffiti: A message scrawled in two-inch-high letters in the alley behind the Louisa Hotel apartments, owned by Woo and her family: “Fuck Tanya Woo/Tanya Woo Hates Black People!” The Stranger apparently took a similar walk and turned up another example that, while hard to read, seems to call Woo racist.

During the city council’s weekly briefing on Monday, Woo said she had been reluctant to say anything about the “hateful attacks,” but was persuaded to speak up because “the graffiti was done on historical buildings and landmarks”—a reference, apparently, to her family’s own property. She also said the CID community “doesn’t understand politics” and would be more likely to think of “exclusion laws and xenophobia” when they saw the graffiti than booting Woo out of office.

By Tuesday, the parking pay stations had been painted over with lumpy gray paint, but the graffiti on the bricks remained. “With the landmark structure,” Woo said, “we can’t take that off. It’s still there. That’s going to require even more thought and permitting and implementation to get that repainted.” Woo did not mention that the landmark structure was her family’s property.

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Woo said she was threatened by two men in the CID some time after the graffiti went up, including one who said he was going to kill her and another who “came at me with a large stick that he’s swinging around like a bat. He pointed it right at me, and just kind of repeated what the graffiti said,” Woo recalled.

During their comments, other councilmembers referred to the graffiti as “misogynistic [and] xenophobic” (Rob Saka), a “racist attack” (Sara Nelson), “destruction [of] historic buildings” (Joy Hollingsworth), and “hate speech” (Maritza Rivera, Cathy Moore) that was designed to “try to intimidate [Woo] out of office” (Nelson again.)

A spokesperson for the Seattle Police Department said Woo herself reported the graffiti to the FBI. “Our Bias Crimes detective is aware of this incident,” they said, but “SPD has not yet received a police report.”

A spokesman for the FBI’s Seattle branch, Steve Bernd, said that while he couldn’t comment on a specific case, investigators looking into hate crime allegations generally consider three factors: “Use of force or the threat of force or conspiracy to use or threaten force or willfully cause bodily injury; [t]argeting the victim because of actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, or familial status; and [a]dditional motive to injure, intimidate, or interfere with some specific federally protected activity or right,” like the right to vote.

“No matter how offensive to some, we are keenly aware that expressing views is not a crime by itself and that the protections afforded under the Constitution cannot be compromised,” Bernd said. “Non-threatening hate conduct is protected by the First Amendment and the FBI does not investigation that conduct.”

Woo responded to PubliCola’s questions, which included a request for any additional examples of graffiti that might include more explicitly anti-Asian, xenophobic, misogynistic, or hateful messages, by referring to her remarks during the council briefing.

“My hope is that people will direct their comments to me, as their city council representative, instead of defacing property and local businesses,” Woo said. “It’s unacceptable that workers and small business owners should have to deal with these types of property crimes.”

During the 2020 protests against police violence, then-mayor Jenny Durkan argued for closing down the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) zone because of “homophobic slurs” left-wing protesters had supposedly graffitied in the area, harming the queer community in a “historic sanctuary” for LGBTQ+ people, Capitol Hill. As we reported, the so-called “slurs” turned out to be tags from self-described “fags against cops,” “dykes for anarchy,” and “dykes for BLM,” protesting Durkan’s administration and policies.