COLUMN | Can Seattle's New Mayor Move Past Harrell-Era Policies?

Seattle's mayoral election has been a challenge for many Black and Brown voters. The aftermath will be no different, regardless of Katie Wilson, the "democratic socialist," securing the seat. Locally, and nationally, we stand at a three-pronged fork in the road, where our most basic beliefs will be tested and our actions will reveal what we are willing to allow from those we've chosen to represent us.

We can choose to devolve, revolve, or evolve, and our elected leaders will have to decide which path they want to take. Incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell wanted us to continue to revolve into blame and shame methods, like destroying sites where unhoused people live and throwing away their meager belongings or sending more police and surveillance into struggling communities, all of which have already proven not to work. I believe Wilson wants us to evolve, with forward-thinking ideas like addressing rental junk fees, limiting home buying by private equity firms, and actively enforcing housing laws. As a disabled person who has had to search for accessible housing, her promise to create a database to facilitate the process is a result of going beyond the surface and asking the right questions.

I wonder, however, whether she can resist the tug to simply revolve, especially given the closeness of the vote and the pressure she will face from Seattle's established coalition of neoliberal and so-called conservative corporatists.

Devolution: How Backward Beliefs Still Shape Seattle Policy

The 21st century's devolution relies on white supremacy, rooted in the fake science of eugenics and pseudo-religious Doctrine of Discovery, and believes ordinary people are not intelligent or moral enough to have a say in how the land or community they occupy is governed. It is therefore necessary, they believe, for a small group of intellects or moral superiors to take charge and tell everyone what is best. What they don't ask is how, beyond skin tone, intelligence or morality are measured. What they don't do is pay attention to the evidence that they are wrong.

We see this in everything happening at the federal level. The assumption that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the most milquetoast of programs requiring equal access to resources, somehow results in the hiring of unqualified airline pilots is a prime example of devolutionary thinking. Replacing a battle-tested four-star general with a TV "personality" is another.

Here in our region, these — let's call them devolutionaries — want to return to an era when a small group of white men, and their women, controlled Seattle. They believe anyone who is poor has done something wrong and should be punished. Whether by personal philosophy or religion, they believe people unlike them deserve to suffer. If a child is starving or unhoused, it must be because their parent is an addict or lazy — because apparently there aren't any addicts or lazy people among the rich. If a Black or Brown person achieves financial or educational success, it must be by graft or grift because, they believe, no Black or Brown person could work their way to success — because apparently there are no white grifters.

Criminalizing people who are paid too little to afford housing and giving police the authority to remove them from the few places they find to create safety for themselves is one outcome of devolutionary thinking.

The basic beliefs of these devolutionaries have been effectively challenged over the past five decades. From sports to astrophysics, from theater to cybersecurity, from the kitchen to the White House, Black, Brown, and poor white people have shown our ability to excel. We have climbed every warped ladder and overcome every obstacle devolutionaries put in our way, definitively disproving their assumptions about us while simultaneously exposing their own inability to meet the very standards they created. Many of them may not wear the red hats, but their actions belie their intentions. If they are in leadership positions, rather than listen to the communities impacted by their policies, they repackage and recycle old tropes.

So devolutionaries resort to manipulation and intimidation. They find what I call "designated Negroes (DNs)," people from oppressed populations who will front for them while doing their bidding. It's easy to recognize them because the policies and practices they tout are old, tired, disproven, and ineffective, resulting in further inequity. DNs delude themselves into believing they are part of the insider ruling class because they never hear the snickering behind their backs as long as they stay within their allowed perimeters. They know the right words but insult their meaning.

Revolution: Why Seattle Keeps Spinning Through the Same Failures

To revolve is to turn on a center point, to go back, to return. Revolutions always end up as a new form of the very thing they railed against. Revolution addresses symptoms and challenges everything except the root that produces it: the belief system.

Revolution requires very little of its leaders or followers. They must be disgruntled enough to disrupt while mainstream enough to build a following. They might speak words that identify clearly visible symptoms — homelessness, property crime, rampant drug use — yet rarely challenge the beliefs behind the systems they aim to change —hatred of the poor, lack of social safety nets and mental health services. And if they offer any accountability, it rarely applies to them or their allies.

Currently we are relitigating the Civil War because we never made anyone face the erroneous and vulgar belief systems that created it. These days, employees of some of our largest corporations, including grocers, are going hungry because shareholders somehow believe they have earned the right to dividends that come through the hands of those very workers. Without examining and repairing the false beliefs permitting such flagrant inequity, we are in danger of blaming those workers for their poverty or hunger and creating policies to fix the workers rather than the system rewarding the shareholders for the workers' efforts, ending in the same results.

In our region, we talk about change, affordability, homelessness, and equity, but seldom explore the belief systems birthing the resulting policies. Then we wonder why our solutions don't work.

City and county officials create grand schemes to address the symptoms of homelessness and are surprised when the problem never gets resolved. They use criminalization and prejudice to pass policies aiming to fix or hide unhoused people. But what if those people aren't broken, but simply lack enough money to sustain a place to live?

If we believe people are inherently awful, then we create systems to protect ourselves from them. If we believe people are inherently broken, we create policies to fix them. If we believe other people are just like us, we ask them the questions we would want asked of us and respond with support and empathy.

The revolving door of neoliberal and conservative politicians in our region, regardless of party, is incapable of offering new solutions. Their focus is on satisfying the corporations, regardless of the impact on our society.

For example: Giving Amazon millions of dollars in concessions without demanding they hire from the local workforce brought 250+ people a day into our region without providing for their housing or considering the resources required to support them. Amazon promised jobs, but no one asked who would fill those jobs. And most workers came from the Bay Area, which allowed them to sell homes in California and have enough money to undercut Seattleites in the housing market. Those locals were thrown into the rental market, where prices skyrocketed, forcing low-income renters out in the streets. The symptom was fixed — more jobs — the core questions were never asked, and ultimately, many people suffered as a result.

Evolution: What True Change Could Look Like in City Hall

Evolution is an adaptive change of form. Mother Nature has done us a real favor. Everywhere around us are examples of plants and animals that have gone beyond their original biology and psychology to adapt to a new reality. When their survival is challenged, they find new ways to exist. Wolves figured out humans would take care of them and became dogs. Certain hummingbirds have tongues adapted to the specific flower whose nectar they need. Evolution requires going beyond the symptoms to honestly assess the causes and adapt to conquer modern challenges.

As humans, we have already learned to adapt. For example, nobody likes washing dishes, so dishwashers are standard in most modern U.S. homes. Adaptation is possible. However, there are multi-generational beliefs some of us refuse to give up, and they are destroying our society.

Many people are only now realizing how backwards our health care system is. We, like the grocery workers, do the work while pharmaceutical and insurance company lobbyists, shareholders, and C-suite executives reap all the rewards. There are thousands of houses and apartments sitting empty in our region, yet unhoused people in tents, cars, RVs, and truck cabs line many of our streets or set up in nearby woodlands.

Evolution demands that we examine the core beliefs that allow these injustices to happen, then rectify and repair where those attitudes have resulted in harmful policies and practices. Evolutionaries examine the core of those philosophies, determine which ones are productive and effective and which are not, and build on the positive while eliminating the unproductive and ineffective.

As Katie Wilson and her team move into the hallways of power, I hope they will fearlessly become evolutionaries, resisting the regressive power of devolutionaries and revolutionaries. Most of all, though, I hope we, the people, will examine our own beliefs, be open to new and challenging ideas, and stand as evolutionaries along her path.

Lola E. Peters (she/her) is semi-retired from a 40-year-plus career as an organizational development and training professional. She has written many articles and opinion pieces for the Emerald™ and other publications and published two books of poetry and a book of essays.

Editor's Note: This article was updated on Nov. 17 to include information in the author's bio.