2025 Reflections: Looking Back at Voices

2025 was a year of changes. Here at the Emerald, we started the year with the announcement of our new Executive Director, Florangela Davila. In my own corner of the Emerald, we revamped the newsletter by launching The Roundup, where I talk directly to the South End every week. And in the Voices section, which I edit, we launched a series of new columns by trusted voices in our community. 

In a year where local elections resulted in a new mayor, a new King County Executive, and a slew of new Seattle City Councilmembers, local politics was top of mind. But outside of our city, this year also brought federal funding cuts that hit home, war and genocide that impacted our communities, ICE raids and protests, and too many scandalous headlines for me to list.

But, through it all, the Voices section was here to help make sense of everything happening in our world and our community. Picking three to highlight is always hard, so I'll start with thanking everyone. If you wrote a story, took photos, or if you simply clicked a link and read an article — thank you. I appreciate all of you, and coming together as a community is the most important part of what we do in this section. So I want to show love to y'all.

The first article I'll highlight is commentary on ICE detainments by columnist Lilly Ana Fowler. In it, Lilly discusses masked federal agents detaining people. She examines reported detainments, questions lawmakers' roles and responsibilities in protecting the public, and examines the reality that community members are expected to assume masked individuals in unmarked cars are actually federal agents if they decide to pick someone up. Lilly's immigration coverage this year has been invaluable to our newsroom, and we look forward to having more of her coverage in the year ahead. 

Emerald columnist Gennette Cordova penned a follow-up to reporting she did last year, where she argued that adequate education funding is a path to deterring crime, and to her award-winning 2023 article where she debunked claims that the police have been defunded. This year, Gennette wrote about Seattle's dip in crime that was reported in the first quarter of 2025, despite the fact that the police force was still not fully staffed. Her article explores the drop in crime, offers reasons why it has happened, and makes an argument for how we're in a pivotal moment where we can continue working toward funding community programs to deter crime.

And last, but certainly not least, Emerald Founder and Editor-at-Large Marcus Harrison Green has returned to the newsroom as a columnist this year. He has written a few articles that have deeply resonated with our readers, including his reporting on Homer, the restaurant on Beacon Hill that shuttered due to a fire but continued to pay staff, which was one of our most-read articles of the year. But Marcus also penned an important piece during the mayoral election that must be highlighted: his article on Black voters is an article the Emerald is uniquely positioned to cover. Marcus spoke with more than a dozen Black folks in the community (not all were quoted in the article, but we spent a ton of time discussing these interviews during the editing process) to paint a picture of this complex topic and allow as many perspectives into the conversation as possible.

2025 was a great year for the Voices section. I appreciate everyone involved in reading and writing and look forward to continuing this work in 2026. 

Happy New Year, South End.

Mike Davis is the newsletter editor and Voices editor at the South Seattle Emerald. Born and raised in Seattle's South End, Mike is a longtime journalist who's covered everything from arts and culture to sports to politics.