cc @democrats.org 👀

Also, as mayor I do absolutely want to support and partner with community-led food system efforts - like Rainier Beach Action Coalition’s Food Hub and Farm Stand, and their longer term plans for a Food Innovation Center near the Rainier Beach Light Rail Station. /

In sum, I would love to do this in principle, but wouldn't want to do it just because it sounds good and then have it turn into a major drain on City time, energy, and resources without real measurable benefits for Seattle residents.

I think a public grocery store will be most successful if it grows out of community organizing and coalition-building within a specific neighborhood. People need to be all-in on making it work, and making it into more than just a grocery store.

One cool thing a public grocery store could do is subsidize some staple goods (bread, milk… eggs, anyone?) and raise the prices of higher-end items to compensate. A co-op near my hometown does this and it seems to work, but obviously depends on an affluent customer base.

Of course, a public grocery store could operate at a loss. But then we need to be clear-eyed about the fact that we’re choosing to subsidize it—and measure the benefits against other ways we might subsidize food costs for low-income households.

Margins in the grocery industry are low. In a food desert, a public grocery store will have the same struggles a for-profit store has.

You’d need multiple stores to be able to buy wholesale, and even then wouldn’t achieve other economies of scale enjoyed by large chains like Kroger or Albertson’s. So it’s not going to be easy to offer lower prices.

To the extent that high prices represent monopoly power in the food industry (not at the grocery store level but further back in the food chain, so to speak), publicly owned stores aren’t going to get a better deal.

The City must fully investigate what happened yesterday, including the decisions that led to the event being held at Cal Anderson, preparations or lack thereof, and the actions of SPD. We have so many years of experience with demonstrations in Seattle, there’s no excuse for this. We can do better. /

As it is, we have 23 arrests, multiple injuries, countless people pepper sprayed & traumatized.  No one from the mayor’s office appears to have even been on-site yesterday during these events. To be absent and to blame all this on infiltration by “anarchists,” as the mayor did, is to pass the buck.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the mayor’s office should have been paying attention. They should have directed the Parks Department to steer the rally to a less contentious spot, and they should have worked with SPD on a plan for crowd control focused on de-escalation and keeping everyone safe.

Mayor Harrell’s statement acknowledges that the rally was held in this location “to provoke a reaction” — although a Mayday USA spokesperson is quoted in The Seattle Times claiming their first choice was Victor Steinbrueck Park, but the City said no.

It was entirely predictable that this would lead to heated confrontations between protesters, counterprotesters, and SPD. This would be a bad idea at any time, but it is especially dangerous when members of our community find themselves under attack from the right-wing forces in Washington D.C.

The mayor’s primary job is to keep people safe, and that means taking action to prevent danger & violence before it starts. A fundamentalist Christian, anti-trans “family values” demonstration never should have been permitted for Cal Anderson, in the heart of Seattle’s historic LGBTQ neighborhood.

"BrO wHat aRe yOu a stAlkEr" give me a break, the evidence is all there, if you can't accept the fact Hasan Parker lied about this shit for clicks while my immigrant brothers and sisters are getting sent to GULAGS! then you're actually crazy, not living in reality fr fr.

We know the exact time of his plane, the exact plane, when he got out. It's not a conspiracy, it's called fact checking.