1. In a Q&A with a North Seattle neighborhood group, Seattle City Councilmember Tanya Woo said that if she’s elected in November, she’ll propose legislation to create “buffer zones” in the public space around local elected officials’ houses where people will not be allowed to protest.
The legislation Woo contemplates would establish “a set distance or buffer zone to protect personal safety while ensuring protests take place in appropriate public spaces where free speech can be exercised without infringing on the well-being of individuals.” Police would be on hand to make sure protesters stay inside officially sanctioned protest areas—which, practically speaking, would be in front of other people’s homes.
“I fully support the right to protest,” she told Neighborhoods for Smart Streets, which originally formed to oppose bike lanes in Northeast Seattle, but “I also believe there are limits when it comes to personal safety and privacy. Protesting at the homes of elected officials crosses that line.”
Woo is not, strictly speaking, an elected official—the council, which took a more conservative turn in the last election, appointed her to a citywide position after she lost to District 2 incumbent Tammy Morales, who is now the lone left on the council.
Seattle has a long history of protests on the public streets and sidewalks outside elected officials’ homes, and of enforcing existing laws against harassment and violence when people cross legal lines. In 2012, police investigated when protesters through rocks through the window of then-mayor Mike McGinn’s home in Greenwood. In contrast, no arrests were made when activists with the group SHARE camped in public areas outside council members’ houses, starting with now-Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess, to demand funding for bus tickets.
The most famous “no-protest zone” in Seattle’s history occurred during the WTO protests in 1999, and led to years of lawsuits, costing the city millions of dollars in payouts and legal fees.
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2. Members of the Lived Experience Coalition, an organization that was once closely linked with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, say the KCRHA owes them more than $365,000.
Coalition members and advocates, including several who sit on the KCRHA’s implementation board, said it was imperative that the KCRHA pay the Lived Experience Coalition what they say they are owed. “I don’t understand how a organization can be stood up to support or center lived experience voices, use lived experience to do work, and then dismiss them and not pay them,” said implementation board and LEC member Zsa Zsa Floyd. “It saddens me that we become so political and so money-hungry that we step on, step over, and dismiss folks … who have done work.”
“It’s not just about the money that’s owed to us, it’s about respect and recognition for the invaluable contributions we make,” LEC member Courtney Love told the board. “When we don’t receive the support we are owed, it undermines not only our efforts, but also the trust we strive to build within our community.
The dispute stems from work the LEC did in 2022 and 2023, for which the KCRHA contends they did not have a formal contract. The work included standing up a Youth Action Board—a requirement for the KCRHA to apply for a new federal youth homelessness pilot program—as well as efforts to get unsheltered people indoors in the winter of 2022-2023 and work to create a new ombuds office for the agency.
During last week’s meeting, KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison said the LEC had no written contract with KCRHA to do the work for which they’re now demanding payment. The LEC disputes this, saying that an email from former KCRHA staffer Meg Barclay, in which Barclay assured the LEC they would commit to paying them for the work they did in 2023, constituted an informal, but official, contract.
KCRHA spokeswoman Lisa Edge said agency officials have repeatedly told the LEC that the group “didn’t have a contract with KCRHA and are not owed for the submitted reimbursements. We’ve meticulously reviewed the documentation and determined they were reimbursed by Building Changes [a separate nonprofit that served as the LEC’s fiscal sponsor] with the exception of a small amount that individuals would need to submit documentation for.”
Building Changes, which is no longer the LEC’s fiscal sponsor, declined to comment on its payments to the LEC.
But a representative for the LEC told PubliCola the LEC never received outside compensation for their work, saying the payment from Building Changes came out of the LEC’s own reserves. The LEC and Building Changes parted ways in 2023 amid a dispute over who was to blame when the LEC ran out of money to run an emergency hotel-based shelter program, which the KCRHA took over in April of that year.
“Building Changes was our fiscal sponsor at the time and utilized LEC’s reserves to pay folks,” the LEC representative said. “It is absolutely an outrageous claim and a deflection that Building Changes utilized their funds to pay LEC. …During the 2022 contract year, before LEC had any reserves, Building Changes halted payments instead of allowing LEC to utilize their reserves. LEC learned from this and ensured that we had funds to cover expenses given KCRHA’s not being timely with contracts.”
One last shakedown before the year end books closes.
‘Lived’ Experience is PC BS. It’s just ‘experience’ with a redundant adjective before it to make the victim-class feel special.
Someone, anyone, please: explain to me the difference between so- called ‘lived experience’ and ‘experience.’
(speaking broadly not about this articles subject matter)
Lived experience is learned through experience, but often times in subjects that don’t have degrees or doctorates. Kinda like doing your boss’ job and not receiving the same pay because you don’t have a degree in x, y, or z.
Not to mention proximity to the issue. You can have experience surrounding the situation and miss nuances or perspectives that actually benefit the programs or services to know. If you have not lived through trying to navigate the system how could you ever develop a working system. Or know whats not working without closing the feedback loop?
Since you refer to people with lived experience as victims, wouldn’t that imply they are being harmed or taken advantage of by a System? Meaning, not helped? Wouldn’t you want to know what isn’t working?
Just curious why all lived experience is grouped in with one group that obviously doesn’t represent the entirety of people experiencing, or who have experienced, homelessness?
I think the phrase is just to distinguish it from when people will say they have “experience” with something because they’ve observed it or worked adjacent to it.
The lived experience coalition was in charge of kcrha but show they were incompetent because they didn’t even have a contract signed for their own work much less the work done by a bunch of non profits who also didn’t get paid!! It is all due to their own incompetence – they should have to forfeit their own pay just like the unpaid non profits did.
More politics…which detracts from the original goal of addressing the homeless issue. Cut the fat, reorganize and develop a practical plan that ACTUALLY gets something done!!!
I’m sure those on the street appreciate the value of all this infighting.