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This council seems bound and determined to fuck over poor people and people of color. First they have six public commenters arrested for banging on windows after the City did zero for refugees, then they moved to repeal the gig worker minimum wage at the behest of corporations...

...then they blamed union wages for library closures, then they spiked a bill to build affordable housing and community centers for low-income communities and refugees. ALL OF THIS, as Hannah mentions, is happening simply bc they don't want to tax Amazon. Fucking humiliating.

Ok here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter HOW exactly Rivera’s amendment would hurt EDI projects. The fact is that it would. And if the amendment is not to save the city money, then what is it for? You just want to ruin EDI projects for fun and no other reason? That’s even worse!

CM Rivera says she wants time to correct disinformation about her EDI amendment so wants to pull it from the agenda. She is complaining OPCD has only completed 21 projects so far and that's why she wants to pause the funding.

She's blaming OPCD for the last minute nature of her amendment.

She says existing projects aren't impacted but pauses 2024 funding.

CM Morales thanks everyone who came out to participate in democracy. She doesn't see a benefit to tabling this legislation. They had over 3000 emails over the weekend.

'If you want to propose legislation that rolls back commitments made to Black and brown communities, at least have the courage to stand by your legislation and vote on it. Or acknowledge you made a mistake and withdraw it.'

'It is interesting to me that the programs that are meant to assist in reversing harm done to communities of color are more closely scrutinized than other programs in this city and are consistently at risk for being defunded more than other programs in this city.'

She says it's not just about funding but in fact this is a budget bill that is about funding. If she wants to provide more resources to help community why isn't she introducing new legislation to address that?

She sounds very defensive.

The vote to remove the item from the agenda:

No:Morales Strauss Hollingsworth
Yes: Rivera Moore Kettle Saka Woo Nelson

It is removed and we'll have to do this all again next week

The main thing I took away from today (besides further understanding just how incompetent many Seattle council members are, boo) is that we should put WAY more money into the equitable development initiative and that it should be renamed to the reparations development initiative

My latest op-ed So. Seattle Emerald about the potential Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) freeze. Please consider turning out tomorrow and/or contacting your CMs.

This is the second sign we’ve seen in City Hall pronouncing that Black Lives Matter. These are just words. If Black Lives Matter you don’t move to defund one of the few dedicated revenue sources for Black led initiatives on a Friday before a 3 day weekend. Shame on CM Rivera.

Council President Sara Nelson announcing that she’s postponing the vote on her own policy to reduce gig workers’ wages, less than an hour before the vote was scheduled to take place, communicates two things:

While we were out gathering signatures @ Folklife to fund social housing, CM Maritza Rivera was proposing a last minute amendment to freeze Equitable Development Initiative. One of the few pots of dedicated funding in our city for Black, Brown, and Indigenous Community Projects.

This action by CM Rivera, to introduce this amendment before a long holiday weekend, which will be taken up for a vote today is very telling of the type of CM she wants to be. Rushing devastating funding decisions and voting against more affordable housing.