In 2023 I had the opportunity to serve as a field director for Tacoma for All on our campaign to win a Tenants’ Bill of Rights for Tacoma and pass the Landlord Fairness Code (LFC) into law. The campaign turned into a point of major contention for the entire city, with regular dueling op-eds, town hall debates between campaign representatives, and, near election day, a record-breaking opposition expenditure, largely from outside landlord and real estate interests. At the time,

Council President Sara Nelson lost her re-election bid so spectacularly, it shows not only how unhappy her short-lived reign made voters, but also calls into question how in touch every elected official who endorsed her is with their Seattle constituency. In fact, anyone who endorsed her should be worried that the same progressive tidal wave that knocked her out will come for them next.  In November, progressive challenger Dionne Foster defeated Nelson, winning an impressive

Seattle’s June 26 FIFA World Cup game will still be gay as fuck despite complaints from soccer federations in Egypt and Iran.  Earlier this year, Seattle’s World Cup organizing committee announced it would designate the game on June 26 as the “Seattle Pride Match," complete with queer-centered community programming surrounding the stadium. “As hundreds of thousands of visitors and millions of viewers turn their attention to Seattle during Pride Weekend, we have a rare opportu

Mayor-elect Katie Wilson distinguished herself from the incumbent she toppled by standing with the overwhelming public opposition toward massively expanding the Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) surveillance cameras capabilities, which advocates worried, rather fairly, would aid in the Trump administration’s unprecedented wave of ICE kidnappings and crackdown on other civil liberties. But now that she’s won her race and even as cities across the state have opted to backpedal

Tuesday marked the official start to what will certainly be a long, bloody battle over the state’s budget. In the space of a few hours, the State legislature’s lone socialist hard launched a proposal for a new, $2 billion payroll tax on the state’s largest corporations and the Governor finally admitted — what advocates had long feared — that he is writing a cuts-only budget.  Tuesday’s dueling proposals cleanly set up lawmakers with the age-old question of whether to balance

Ahead of New York City Mayor Elect Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani viral (and bromantic) meeting with president Donald Trump, the U.S. House passed a glorified subtweet condemning the “horrors of socialism.” The resolution divided House Democrats with 98 voting “no,” 86 siding with Republicans, and 29 staying out of it.  Even in Washington, a State where socialists have recently made impressive gains — winning a seat in the State legislature for the first time in 100 year

King County Executive-elect Girmay Zahilay told The Burner he’s grateful to his constituents for raising concerns in a recent community letter  about his decision to prop up Microsoft President and Vice Chairman Brad Smith as one of four co-chairs on the team guiding his transition to office. Zahilay joined them in condemning “the facilitation of human rights violations in Gaza,” but he did not commit to the chief demand of the letter: Removing the big tech boss they accuse o

After progressive challenger Katie Wilson’s victory, some national outlets are straining to manufacture an anti-Israel storyline in Seattle’s mayoral race where none meaningfully exists. Wilson herself was notably quiet on the issue, despite riding a wave of (admittedly over-generous) comparisons to New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who spoke much more openly and strongly in support of Palestine. The whole narrative is just the latest example of Wilson’s detractors in

In this episode of The Right Wing Made Up A Mayor To Get Mad At : President Donald Trump called Seattle Mayor-elect Katie Wilson a “liberal-slash-communist” as he threatened to move the FIFA World Cup out of Seattle, implying Wilson may make Seattle less safe. While the president has made these threats under the current administration and he didn’t call out a specifically worrisome policy of Wilson’s, his comments fit cleanly into the right-wing narrative that Katie Wilson is

Your Iced Sugar Cookie Latte is going to have to wait. Thursday morning, Starbucks’ baristas went on strike and they won’t be back to business as usual until the company comes back to the table and finalizes a fair union contract with Starbucks Workers United (SWU). Until then, workers ask customers to find a new regular coffee spot — workers are “prepared for this to become the biggest and longest strike in Starbucks history.” According to SWU, workers have waited “nearly a