- We're gathered here at the
Seattle Center, one of our city's great civic spaces.
And of course, we are also here on the traditional
and unceded land of the Coast Salish peoples.
We honor their history, their struggles,
and their stewardship of this land, past and present and future.
And we honor them also through our actions, by taking
seriously our collective responsibility to this land, to the city,
to the natural world, to each other,
and to future generations.
So we're here today to complete
and also to celebrate the transition process
that we began in December, when I was still the mayor elect.
And it is wonderful to see so many people here today.
I am so, so grateful for all of your work.
Last year I campaigned on a big vision.
Affordability, social housing,
childcare, homelessness and much more.
But more than any particular
issue, my campaign promised a different relationship
between our city government and its constituents.
It promised a fuller conception
of democracy and participation
based on an appreciation that, with all of you,
is where the real knowledge lies about what our communities need,
and also where the real power lies to make change that endures,
that the hard things cannot be just handed down from above.
To be successful, they have to be fought for and won and sustained from below.
So when I decided to do my transition process a little differently,
to put my transition team to work, recruiting
and listening to a much larger circle of people,
a much larger circle of advisors, I actually wasn't sure what would happen.
And what happened
is that you all came through in a big way.
The people in this room represent
just some of the over 1500 people
who have lent their expertise and their creativity
and their brilliance to this work over the past two and a half months.
And I am beyond grateful for your time and your dedication
and also for your faith in me and in my administration,
that this process actually is a good use of your time.
So now here we are.
Today marks
the end of our transition process, but it's not the end of our work together.
And my pledge to all of you is that I will take the administrations
or the recommendations that come out of this process very seriously.
They will not be put on a shelf to gather dust.
My administration will be using your recommendations as we build out
our work plan for this year and for the next four years.
Of course, you know that we won't get everything done immediately,
and I'm sure there will be some things
that we can't do and some things that we decide not to do.
But it is my hope and my commitment to you that at the end of four years,
we should all be able to look back at these recommendations
and at what my administration has accomplished with your help
and pressure, because we will continue to need your help and pressure.
And it should be obvious that we have taken the voices
of the community that are embodied in these recommendations,
and we have followed through, and we have put them into action
in a way that people can see and feel in their daily lives.
And as you know, we have already gotten started.
So today is actually my 55th day as your mayor.
And I think that is time that went by very quickly and also very slowly.
It's very strange.
So since the beginning of this year, we have taken new actions to protect our
immigrant and refugee communities from Ice and federal overreach on homelessness.
We have taken action to expedite the expansion of emergency housing
and shelter, and you'll be seeing a lot more on that in the next few weeks.
Our Seattle Department of Transportation is getting
prepared to paint some bus lanes on Denny way.
And after a hard few years for our public transit system
coming out of the pandemic, we are going to be
working on multiple fronts
to achieve irresistibly good public transit in Seattle and across our region.
And we've conducted a renter survey with thousands of respondents
that will inform new legislation to lower costs and create more stability
for renters.
There are many more wheels turning behind the scenes,
and now, with these recommendations in hand, you can expect to see our work
on all these issues accelerate in the months ahead.
Because this is your city.
So with that, I'm going to sit down here in the front row.
And I'm going to listen to, what our transition team has to say.
Thank you very much.
- To walk
us through the transition process and the work completed to date.
Please welcome transition director.
Andrés Mantilla
- Thank you so much.
Thanks, mayor.
I am so honored and thrilled to be here.
Starting this vision in, November and December
and working with so many great partners, so many great community members.
I just before,
we talk about the transition process, I want to give a few thank you's.
First and foremost, thank you to our Seattle Center staff
for helping us put on this event today.
Thank you to our Seattle Channel colleagues for, streaming.
This is also, going out on Seattle Channel right now.
And thank you
to the Uncommon Bridges team, who help support and staff
each of these policy work groups and, help staff logistics and made this a reality.
So thank you, uncommon, for this team.
Each of you should have an agenda on that agenda.
And then also throughout the presentation behind me, you will see a QR code.
That QR code, you can follow that QR code to see the full set of,
summary recommendations through this process, working
with the co-leads, working with the over 1500 members that we engaged.
And then working through the co-chairs, we have
put together a about 30 page document that you will be able to find
if you follow that QR code that summarizes all the recommendations,
you know, and starts to bring forward some of the key recommendations
and early wins, as well as some of the voices from the community.
But that is just a snapshot of the feedback that we got.
As I mentioned, we engaged over 1500 people and that meant thousands of,
documents, interviews, you
know, survey response, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, post, town hall meetings.
So our team is putting that all together in a package that can then be transmitted,
to the mayor's office
so that they can continue to not just see what's in the summary packet,
but to see the kind of holistic nature of the recommendations.
So this transition process, as we
mentioned, started in December.
With, community,
we identified eight policy areas,
kind of spanning a whole host
of, policy, priorities.
And through that, we, worked through four co-chairs.
You're going to hear from the coach from three of the co-chairs today,
and then a series of, co-leads.
And those co-leads were tasked with not just coming to regular meetings,
but really kind of going out into
community and making this transition more participatory.
And through that and all the outreach through town halls,
you know, starting with a transition kickoff meeting, then doing about,
you know, 2 to 2 and a half months of, of deep engagement,
having a transition mid-point check in where we were,
looking at what were some of the emerging themes that were coming forward.
And then that work to kind of convert those themes
into some sort of actionable recommendation,
that we did in February to this point has been such a collaborative effort.
So I just want to thank all of you
for your participation, for your trust in trying something new and different.
And I'm very excited to, get going on, the presentations.
I will just mention that,
at the
back of your packet, when you see that online, there is a
set of cross-cutting themes because although these policy areas,
did their engagement kind of individually,
with their teams, we know the nature of these recommendations.
And early, wins are cross-cutting.
They're intersectional, and they need to work together.
So please
take a look at that as you're reviewing to see how all of this fits together.
Today you're going to I'm going to,
we're going to have our co-chairs come up here, next,
that we're going to hear from our different co-leads,
and they're going to talk about they're going to, review the engagement,
and then they're going to look at the priority recommendations and,
early wins.
So thank you so much for your participation and look forward to diving in.
- We will now begin our policy
deep dives to open session one on housing, shelter and services.
Please welcome co-chair Tiffani McCoy.
Thank you, Andres.
And thank you, Mayor Wilson.
It has been a pleasure serving as a co-chair for this transition process.
As you heard earlier, this approach was new, participatory,
and we were excited to share the results.
I'm here to introduce the two upcoming, discussions
and policy work groups for housing affordability and community needs.
And then our student and our youth advisors,
Seattle voters continue to show strong support for housing,
whether it's voting overwhelmingly to re-up the housing levy or voting
for creation of a social housing developer and then funding it.
Throughout the transition, we heard clearly
housing is the foundation of safety, health and economic stability.
Our work now is to accelerate social housing,
deeply affordable housing, shelter and workforce
housing while pairing it with the services that make housing stick.
You will hear more from our colleagues about early wins and recommendations
for the Student and Youth Advisor panel.
Your youth voices during the transition were clear afterschool programs,
mentorship and safe third places
keep young people connected and supported.
When we invest in young people, we reduce violence.
We strengthen families, and we build the next generation of civic leaders.
You will hear more from our wonderful student and youth
co-leads here shortly.
Presenting key findings on housing affordability
and community needs, here is co-lead John Scholes.
Well, good morning everybody.
We've always been asked to go first.
I feel a little picked on in each one of these report outs.
We are first.
And I want to acknowledge, my colleague, Colleen Echo Hawk,
the CEO of Community Roots Housing, who, is not able to be here today.
She, if you've read, is, trying to make your way back from Mexico.
I'm flying solo because she can't fly.
But I was talking to her last night.
She's doing well.
And, we're sending positive vibes to her for a safe return of her and her family.
Back home here.
I want to acknowledge,
and you can see their names on the second page of the packet.
The members of our,
policy area.
Kate, Albertus, Gregory, Allison, Nikita,
and a big thanks to Eliza and Skyler from Uncommon Bridges for their,
great support and I commend, Mayor Wilson and her team for the way
in which this, transition committee and the work was conducted.
I've been around a number of these, and it's often the case that there's,
you know, 30 or 40 folks in the community that are asked to give their best
thinking to a set of recommendations,
and they're sort of locked in a room and told to,
come up with some recommendations for the new mayor or the new executive.
And, this process was very different.
We were asked to go out and listen and engage with a lot of other
smart individuals engaged individuals in our community.
And I, commend the mayor for the design of this process.
At a time when trust in government is about as low as it's ever been.
And I think it's processes like these where we go out and listen,
bring back information and have a mayor that's committed to implementation.
That's how we rebuild trust and have further engagement in this important work.
So, a great job by the team and,
Uncommon Bridges, for, all the work that went into this.
I'm not going to lie. I'm glad we're done.
I'm glad this is the final minute.
But, it was, a terrific, endeavor.
We had some complex and diverse issues, to tackle.
Our, our group was focused on housing affordability and supply, homelessness
and stability, childcare and families, equitable development of basic needs,
food access and revenue and investment. So, six,
very straightforward and easy topics.
And I would say the and it's struggle to some degree of sort of trying to draw
some common themes from, the outreach we did,
which included a series of roundtables, one on one interviews,
smaller focus groups, and we also, tried to leverage
some of the existing surveys and other work that had already been done.
We didn't feel like there was a, an imperative
to go out and recreate the wheel if there had been some very healthy
and robust, recent input and surveys done in these areas.
So we relied on on that as well.
And I think some of the common themes that we heard was
there's a lot of pressure in each of these areas, right now.
There's fragility is precarious,
whether it's about homelessness or food access or childcare.
And we see the headlines around these issues each and every day
in our community.
And I think can appreciate how fragile, each of these areas, are right now.
And the pressures on the folks that are doing the work today that are providing
those services that are running housing, buildings or the individuals
that are seeking access to these services, and supports.
So that is a common theme.
I want to lift up,
another area is that the city is doing good work in each of these areas,
but there's an opportunity to optimize and draw more efficiency
to deliver more benefit and more abundance in each of these areas.
So that was another common theme, that we heard where the city is currently
in the position of providing, service or taking a lead role.
There's opportunities to optimize.
And then in some cases, you know, city rules, regulation, red tape
that at one point may have made some sense is getting in the way,
further progress of others that are, looking to,
deliver more supply, more access in each of these areas.
And so the city should look at ways
to get out of the way and reduce, some of those hurdles.
And then another key theme is that, you know, we need more partners,
and there's an opportunity for the signal for the city to signal,
a bias toward action and abundance in each of these areas to draw more people
in that can help, provide more access, more abundance, more investment
in each of these areas that this, that the signaling and the optics of,
abundance and a
bias for action coming from, the city in this administration
will be important to drawing, others into each of these areas.
And then as far as a quick win and a critical, recommendation,
we wholeheartedly endorse, the mayor's,
commitment, and desire to produce
and bring to bear 500 units of shelter within our community.
Within the first six months of her administration, we have 4000 people
sleeping on the streets.
4000 people
sleeping on the streets of our city, each and every night.
That's unacceptable.
We should never normalize that.
And there's much we can do with a sense of urgency and focus.
Additional partners?
Yes. Additional investment.
To bring those folks inside and we have to do that
if they're if we're going to be successful in meeting a number of the other needs
that were folk that were a focus area of our, of our work,
we have to bring people inside first.
It starts there.
So we see that as a critical and early action and early win.
And we are behind this mayor in this administration and doing just that. So
thanks for the opportunity to participate on behalf of, Colleen and myself.
Look forward to hearing the other reports.
Thank you, mayor, for your leadership and to the team for this great work.
To discuss the needs of our city's next generation.
Please welcome our student and youth advisors, Leo
Van Monte and Russell McCurdy.
Means.
We had a unique task.
It was summarizing every use opinions in Seattle
and what we are ranged from all around Seattle, Leo and North myself.
A block north of the border,
but on the south side, south side, south side of the border.
I preface
I basically live in White Center.
It's great, but
we touch on every other communities.
We have heard the same things.
I'm confident that we will be parroting some of the ones
you heard earlier, and some you will hear after us,
but to get us started, we have to focus on education.
Youth and education go together hand in hand.
We spend 18 to 23.252 years of our lives.
Unless we want to go get a PhD in our school system.
So no wonder it's the first thing we focused on
throughout this.
We wanted to focus on not just the standard college pathway.
College isn't for everyone
and we need our trades now more than ever.
So I've sat down with many people like Chris Reichel,
our state superintendent, to try to figure out ways to increase
funding for our program through our state of our college system, through South
Seattle College, through the Georgetown and white West Seattle campuses.
Furthermore, Fafsa,
so many of our people I'm on Fafsa love.
That's one great program.
So many people find it confusing.
We don't entirely know how to.
When we're entering our senior year of high school,
we're shoved into adulthood without little to no information.
We need to have this information be more accessible
to our multilingual communities and our school system.
And we are pursuing the mayor to
work with Seattle Public
Schools to increase funding for more of that.
More. Yeah, it's in multiple languages.
Would you like to. Yeah.
Moving to civic power.
You know, I'm the youngest person on this team.
I'm the only high schooler,
on the team.
Often I feel high school voices are not you know, the most.
You know, I listen to you, so I think some of the early wins
we could get with making sure that, you know, high
schoolers are heard and, you know, every, you know, I'm a young person is is fun
and compensated youth led, sessions facilitated by trusted communities.
So it doesn't have to be the government, you know?
Running it.
But, you know, just students being paid to, you know, share their opinions.
Another thing is consider a shift in the Seattle Youth Commission
to a co governance, which would, month make it so more diverse.
Opinions are expressed, that we could host recurring school based assemblies
at City Hall,
where, students could go directly to the,
mayor council and to the mayor to, express their opinions.
We can also upgrade the Youth Connector and the next move
platform and improve city website navigation for youth.
Most youth I know, I don't know how to, you know,
navigate seattle.gov pretty confusing site.
So I think upgrading that itself could be helpful for sure.
You know, as I said before, you know, yeah, you just you know,
especially high schoolers know we can't vote.
We don't have, you know, much money much.
So, making new ways for youth to be able to get their opinions
heard is something that I think would be all important.
Moving
on to the next one is safety and trust.
My, if like 90% of the people we talked to talk
about their fear around surveillance for their community.
So that was one of the main ones.
Along with that, we heard prioritizing non-police safety, including care teams.
At social, my,
workers. Right.
Thank you.
Glasses are messed up and established.
Transparent feedback and loops showing how youth input changes.
Policy.
Some early means for that is public youth accessible
guidance on rights related to Ice and protest.
Increased funding for school based, mental health
and non-police crisis response teams.
Hold youth forums on safety technology and I use in
education and transit and review and publicly report
on surveillance tools impacting schools and youth.
With the goal of removing
surveillance cameras is something that we heard consistently among
youth in Seattle.
Moving on.
Transportation. It was a forward.
It was a number one thing.
Mayor Wilson's campaign,
we heard from our youth consistently
that they are taking busses that come every 30 minutes to get to school.
I am talking about the 22 on the way to Chief Self and many middle school.
We see or we have heard from students
that will be 30 minutes late if they miss their bus
or we see the constant plugging of of ghost busses in the south end, as well
as South Park where the 60, the 128 for these students to get to class on time.
We are pushing the mayor to
direct more funding for busses and around our school system,
so we could guarantee our students make it a school on time
so they could better learn, learn, and contribute to society later in life.
Affordability in housing.
Many of our college students are renters.
They're renting for the first time.
They're kind of shoved out in there without a lot of information.
I know I barely have any information on how to rent a house.
I don't know how to rent an apartment, other than the guide that I've read
before, to listen to our students more, to understand what they came from.
The guide that is on the back of many leases in Seattle.
That is the only story I have.
And why is it at the back of a PDF?
That is my question.
We are pushing the mayor to office to direct more funding
for printing a physical copy of a renters handbook,
to be handed out to renters when they sign that lease, students
in high school and students in high school. We're also pushing it. So,
for an adulting 101 class, I
heard that term used so many times among our youth.
We have, I think at every listening session we heard it.
We heard first people calling for an adulting 101 class.
And I love that terminology.
Labor rights, labor rights alongside of this goes
over, how to pay taxes,
how to sign a lease,
your understanding, your rights, what it is to vote
and where your vote actually goes.
Yeah. We.
Would you like to close here? Just about the transportation.
I got a call at the 65 bus.
I take that every day. You just had to call it out.
Goes by, and Nathan Hale. Right.
Okay, so final one we have here is mental health and well-being.
This is running strange.
Been asking for consistently understanding.
Past administrations have seemed to ignore.
So we are hoping for early wins is to ensure a clear trauma informed
communication regarding arts and activity in the federal enforcement address.
School based trauma to fully funded mental health supports
something that's close to me to stay close to every student.
Something we've been asking for for years on end that we've been able to get.
We are at a point where, you know, mental health counselors are like
one counselor to over 1500 students.
Yeah, 1500 students, which is unacceptable.
And it's not meet, my that nationally
recommended counselor to student
ratio increase city investments in youth serving mental health
providers, crisis stabilization partners and third spaces and pilot
peer mental health ambassadors as well.
Also just on the search for ways to restorative justice and non violent,
not waste time, increased safety around our schools can addressing.
Oh that's perfect.
Thank you again.
And thank you, Mayor Wilson, for pointing us here to.
Next please welcome co-chair Karen Estevan
and to open session to the affordability agenda.
Good morning.
Good morning, people of Seattle.
It's great to be here.
My name is Karen a Stevenson.
I use she her pronouns.
It's been an honor to be a co-chair on this transition team.
And so I want to again thank Mayor Wilson and her team and the transition team and,
all the co-leads
and everyone in this room and many others that participated in this process.
I said something early on in this process that this really felt different
than other transition teams that I've been on it.
It was not symbolic in any way.
As people have said
here, it's been a lot of work and it was very genuine and authentic.
And, the, the posters and all the information,
like Andre said, really is a snapshot.
There's so much information and heartfelt stories and,
things that people desire and want for our city.
And so that was really uplifting to be part of this whole process.
Leon Russell, you all are a hard act to follow.
I'm really inspired by the youth right now.
And, so anyway, this is this has been great to be here.
I am here to talk about the transition recommendations for mobility
and livability.
And that includes economic development and workers rights,
as well as transition and environment and arts, culture and creative economy.
And I'm going to sort of go through all of them.
And then you'll hear from all of the amazing co-leads
that will go into some of the wins and some of the details.
So that,
transition made clear from economic development and workers
rights that affordability and good economic development is not just rent,
it's wages, it's childcare,
transportation and food and a good job.
One job, one job should be in that.
Thank you. Unite here for that.
And it should also
protect workers and make it easier for small businesses
to thrive, to really have a thriving economy in our city.
So you will hear from Karina Bollea, our wonderful co-lead, about a proposed
early wins and recommendations to move us more towards a just and equitable future
in regards to economic development and workers rights.
Then you will hear from Charmaine Moreno.
And honestly,
it's about transportation and environment and throughout the transition.
And this category, we heard a lot that mobility is not just about moving people,
it's also about access to opportunity,
reliable transit, safe sidewalks,
accessible crossings and connected bike networks.
Determine whether residents can get to jobs, school, childcare and health care.
Climate leadership must go hand in hand with cost of living relief,
electrification, green infrastructure and clean air.
Strategies should reduce household energy,
household energy burdens and improve public health, especially in communities.
Disproportionately impacted by pollution.
And finally, within our framework of livability,
we need art and culture and a creative economy.
You will hear from Randy Engstrom and Ben Hunter and this transition team
affirm that arts and culture are not just extras,
they are economic drivers and anchors of belonging.
Transition feedback emphasize that early exposure to creative careers,
mentorship, and arts pathways
empowers young people, builds confidence and strengths,
and strengthens the future workforce in the creative economy.
Supporting arts and culture is not optional.
It is central to a safe, equitable
and thriving city.
Thank you.
And with that, I think Karina is up next.
To present recommendations on economic development
and workers rights, please welcome co-lead Karina
Ebola.
Okay.
Good morning everybody.
My name is Karina.
Ebola I you she they pronouns.
And I'm the political director at MLK labor, Seattle's largest labor
organization, representing 150 unions and 100,000 workers.
I was honored to lead the economic development and workers
rights policy area on Mayor Wilson's transition team.
I want to thank my co-lead, Richard, to Sam Lazaro,
who couldn't be here with us here today, as well as our team Jeannie A reef,
Toshiko, Joe and Terrence, along with co-chairs
Karen and Quinn for their contributions to our findings.
Over the course of the last few months,
our team engaged with stakeholders across Seattle's economy.
We spoke with rank and file workers, small businesses,
union leaders, governmental entities, and tech startup startups.
And across these parties, it became clear that we need
to build an economy that works for both workers and businesses.
When we asked the people of Seattle
what kind of economy they want, the answer was really simple.
They want an economy that work where workers are treated fairly,
where small businesses can grow, where public dollars reward good faith
actors, and where economic growth translates into real stability
for families to work, play and thrive in the city of Seattle.
And they were clear about something else that our group members seemed to know
intuitively strong labor standards and a healthy business environment
with real stake in the future of our city are not in conflict.
They depend on each other.
Our aim must be to strengthen the entire ecosystem.
Because economic development does not exist in isolation.
It's connected to housing affordability, to public safety,
safety, to talent retention and neighborhood vitality.
If workers can't afford
to live here, businesses struggle to hire.
And if small businesses can't navigate city systems, innovation stalls.
If enforcement is inconsistent,
responsible employers who value their workers are undercut.
So the question isn't whether we protect workers or support businesses.
The question is whether we're willing to align our systems
to do both intentionally and consistently.
Which brings us to this moment of opportunity.
Seattle has some of the strongest labor protections nationwide
because of the advocacy of workers and their unions,
and we've passed ordinances that keep workers protected on the job.
And our outreach infrastructure
often educates businesses before violations can even occur.
That leadership matters, but passing policy isn't enough.
Enforcement must be real and sufficiently resourced.
Partnership must be ongoing and support must be practical.
At the same time, small businesses which add
so much life and character to our city, especially women, minority
and community owned businesses, need more than startup encouragement.
They need life cycle support.
Support when they launch, when they grow, when they face rising costs
and when they transition ownership.
Right now, engaging with City Hall feels complex.
And because of that, opportunities for workers
and businesses to solve issues are narrow
and when labor and businesses are engaged separately, friction increases.
But if they're brought together intentionally,
we come out stronger with solutions that work for everyone.
Our main recommendation to strengthen Seattle's economy
is this develops strong partnerships with labor unions throughout the city,
while providing life cycle support for small
and community owned businesses not as parallel tracks
or as competing priorities, but as a unified economic strategy.
Because when labor is at the
table table, early workforce pipelines strengthen.
When small businesses have predictable support, neighborhoods stabilize,
and when enforcement is credible and systems are navigable,
trust increases.
And that's how we create stability for workers
and predictability for employers simultaneously.
That's how we build an economy that works for all of us.
And here's where we begin with an early win,
we must regularly convene small businesses and workers together to pair
well-intended policy designs with the reality of day to day operations,
not as a one time listening session, or only when there's a crisis,
but as a standing practice.
Because policy works best when it reflects lived experience
and because unintended consequences are avoidable when we design together
and because trust grows, when people solve problems side by side.
That's how we move from tension to partnership.
And a strong economy is one where workers are protected, businesses
can grow, and public investment rewards responsibility.
Our strategy to make Seattle's economy work for its people starts
with partnership and with bringing workers and businesses to the same table.
Thank you to Mayor Wilson for your leadership.
Thank you to the Uncommon Bridges team for your work on this transition.
And thank you for your time.
Discussing
the future of transit and sustainability, please welcome transportation
and environment co-leads Shemona Murano and honors
seabirds.
Hello!
Oh my God, this is incredibly nerve wracking.
I'm so sorry.
First, yes, my name is Shmona moreno.
Executive director at 350 Seattle.
She her pronouns and as he works with the non drivers alliance,
thank you so much for having us.
Thank you so much,
Mayor Wilson, for selecting us as co-leads and giving us this opportunity.
I also just want to thank our policy members,
Paulina lopez, Lowell bender.
Gordon Padel, third.
Lindsay goes behind.
And Lee Lambert, thank you so much for working with us.
And thank you to, I don't know, hundreds of people
that we talked to, and collecting all of their information.
We are had, you know, too easy transportation environment,
just like, lumped together. No big deal.
Coming together and talking about all of the things
that we wanted to see this administration accomplish.
And I think the biggest thing a lot of across all the conversations
that we had talked with people, I just wanted to note, like,
the biggest ones is just like a lot of the things that we were looking
to, like, ask questions about, like, we already know the answers.
We already have the plans.
We already have the people in the communities ready to do the work.
And what is needed is for an administration that's
willing to listen, an administration that's willing to take action.
And so like that is like where we heard
a lot of our community kind of like lifting up that piece.
I think a lot of us are really worried, like, this is our shared home.
So we need to think about our shared air, our shared water.
Our shared environment, and to make sure that we can afford to
still be here in this city and then create the beauty around it.
So for, for our group, we're coming from the environmental side
and on a is bringing a lot more of the transportation side.
So for an environment, a lot of the biggest
like one of the recommendations out of many that I wanted to lift up,
is that we prioritize, like affordable clean energy, climate resilience
and, the decarbonization for vulnerable communities.
And that we start with our low, frontline communities, overburdened communities,
those that are often left, behind and not prioritized.
And like I said, we have a lot of these plans already.
And we have a lot of smart people who are willing to put in the work,
and the time and so the, the other kind of like saying
that want to we wanted to uplift with that is that we also build
trust again with these like this administration.
And we see the opportunities before us instead of moving in this way
that is around scarcity, and fear.
But that we actually take, bold action and also accountability
for the fact that, like, we're nowhere near meeting a lot of our goals.
And we should name that, find a way to work on it and, like, move forward.
With to what you said before is like a bias for action.
And so we have several early wins and like our large topic,
but I think one I wanted to lift up, that is around like publishing
polluter data, investing in nonprofit clean energy upgrades,
expanding community solar, and upgrading public buildings.
There's a lot we can do.
I know for a fact that the shadows have been working on these campaigns
for several years, and we're willing to do more work in the years to come.
Yes. So awesome. Thanks, Simona.
It's just one of the best parts of this is getting to work
with you and get to know you better. So, that's been a joy for me.
I also just want to shout out to, how many folks reached out
and were so excited to engage in this process, and,
I that that amount of excitement, I think is, is something that we can hopefully,
channel into making the city work better for all of us.
So that's, that was exciting for me.
So I'm going to touch on a few of the transportation pieces here.
Because that's sort of my focus area.
First of all, just loved hearing from the youth, too,
about the need for more reliable bus service.
I think in nothing is more frustrating than waiting for a bus that doesn't
show up, or a bus that came, you know, two minutes early and you missed it,
and then you're waiting in the rain, in the cold.
Whatever.
And so just making sure that that transit system
can get us where we need to go because we have, the tools
to make the city work really well for everyone, including those of us
who don't have the ability or privilege to drive.
And so,
really, you know, taking this opportunity to start to make, some of those changes,
going back to what Simona was saying around,
you know, we have these targets, we have these plans,
and we need to be honest with when we're not meeting them
and when we're, continuing sort of with status quo projects.
And so one of the recommendations
that I want to really highlight is a need to think about,
we have these climate goals to reduce greenhouse gases,
to reduce vehicle miles traveled for mode shift.
And these are like 20, 35 goals. They're so soon.
They're 2030 goals.
And we're not anywhere close to meeting them.
And so being real about that and then figuring out
what steps we need to take as a city, to start to make those.
And part of that is our transportation policies.
But a lot of it is also land use and housing
making sure that we have the affordable housing close
enough to where people need to be, to their jobs, to their schools.
Right.
And also the piece of,
you know, making sure the services exist in our communities,
getting those grocery stores in the South and right up in, Lake City way.
Yes. The other, piece I want to highlight
is that getting to transit, making sure that those pathways are accessible.
And if you're someone with a disability, having a missing sidewalk,
having a missing curb ramp, having unsafe crossings, and really, for all of us.
Right. Those are barriers.
And so doing the work we need to do as a city to make sure
that those, those pieces are connected and accessible.
You know, 50% of the sidewalks in Seattle are either missing or,
two torn up to be usable, right, for people in wheelchairs.
And so we it's a huge lift.
We started the process before, but really continuing that process to make sure
that we have the funding, and a long term plan to making sure that every,
every address in our city can be reached, in an accessible way.
I think that's possible.
I finally want to just add one and poke me because I can't see the time, but,
we're,
I want to add one piece around,
expanding our park space and creating more opportunities.
I think it's important for us to, to do that.
And one really great examples. Little book.
Brook Park up in Northgate, where and the Lake City Way area
where we took some State Street right away and put in a basketball court,
to allow community to come together and have that access.
And so doing that more through the city, figuring out where we have public space,
perhaps roads that can be, expanded.
And that use can be expanded to bring community together.
So that's it.
Anything else?
All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
Speaking on Creative
Economy, please welcome Arts, culture and Creative
Economy co-leads Randy Engstrom and Ben Hunter.
Good morning everybody.
My name is Benjamin Hunter.
I'm the artistic director for Northwest
Folklife that exists on this lovely campus here.
And my partner, and colleague Randy Engstrom,
who you all probably know was the director of arts and culture for the city
and now is the primary for three way creative.
Thank you all for being here.
A big thank you to our team.
Jesse and Amy and Michael and Edwin,
and Alicia, both for helping guide this process.
It really was an honor to work with such a dynamic team,
and engage in really, really good conversations about
how we were going to do this, the things that we wanted to accomplish.
The, the people that we wanted to communicate with and connect with,
and how we wanted to make the,
you know, effectively the biggest splash we could hear.
It's it's it's really great to be invited to the table.
On this transition team in recognition as, as, as Karen said that
that, arts is not,
a nice to have.
It's a need to have, and it undergirds so much of the systems
that exist in the city on a day to day basis.
Also, a big, thank you to, the Uncommon Bridges team.
Andre Simone.
So, for, for their, their ushering of, of this process
and of course, mayor's team, for, for having us.
And lastly, just a big thank you to the community for showing up.
We had, we touched, you know, over a thousand folks.
We, had,
weekly sessions at the leaders library.
We had, a town hall that was sold out.
And I see many faces in the audience that showed up to all of those things,
each and every time.
So just again, underscoring how important arts is and how,
how much it means to people that they will show up time and time again
to make sure that they're advocating
for arts, culture and creative economy in the city.
Early on in the conversation,
one of the things that, as we are compiling a list of all the things
that we wanted to discuss, we realized that we really needed to trim it down
into, into some three major focuses.
And so we and and through our conversations with community,
we were able to narrow that down to affordability, culture and integration.
So as we discussed the recommendations and the early wins, we're going to
we're going to get into that and I'll invite Randy to,
to start with that, with that conversation.
Thank you, Ben.
Thank you all for being here. How are you guys doing?
I want to.
What are you doing? Yeah.
I want to just appreciate the work
of all of the other transition colleagues up here.
Every team worked incredibly hard, and,
we are all volunteers, and,
I think that, it's it's really an incredible
opportunity and privilege to be able to be at these tables.
I really want to thank Mayor Wilson for the opportunity to see the
the cultural ecosystem for what it is a driver of our cultural life,
and, and a real foundation of our civic ecosystem.
We believe it's critical infrastructure.
We don't think that it's, decorations for the window.
We think that it's how we create jobs.
It's how we create belonging.
It's how we create safety. It's how we keep our kids in school.
It's how we prepare for the workforce of the future.
So the engagement process was pretty vast, and I think
because we had an opportunity to be at this table,
we took that really seriously.
And to a person, everyone
on the transition team reached out to their networks.
We did a survey that reached over a thousand people.
We did about 85, one on one, conversations.
We met with the Arts Commission, the Music
Commission, the Film Commission, Seattle Center, resident organizations,
the Washington Music and Nightlife Association.
We we tried to cover as many bases as we could.
Our CEO, roundtable, regional board chairs, local funders.
We wanted to have every voice in the room
to to tell the best and most complete story that we could.
We held the drop in sessions has been mentioned.
We were really humbled that we sold out a 250 person town hall in four days.
And we also looked at, like a dozen previous studies and reports
that were done
about the cultural and creative economy and arts ecosystems here in our region.
And when we did that analysis and we looked at the recommendations
and the synthesis from what we heard from all of you,
they kind of matched perfectly, which is there's two reasons
why there's three buckets.
And our our poster looks a little bit lighter than the others.
One is that we heard very, very consistent feedback,
not just consistent with each other today,
consistent with what we've heard for the last 15 years.
The other and shout out to Michael Greer, is that if we want the city to take
and advance any of the recommendations that we have, we have to focus.
We cannot give them a list of 100 things.
We have to give them a list of a couple that are actually doable
in a reasonable timeline, and that can be accomplished.
So that's what we set out to do.
I will assure you, there is far more information than either
what's in these packets or what's on that poster board.
And if you want to talk about it and I are available, we have a vast Google Drive.
We invite you to explore.
I also want to just acknowledge that we did a lot of collaborating
with the Civic Narrative team.
Civic narrative was a huge theme that came up across all of our conversations.
Also with the economic development team, thank you.
Brief.
We we were able to do a couple of creative,
creator economy symposiums that helped inform this work.
And the youth were with us through a bunch of our conversations.
And we also did, a really interesting gathering
with a group of Nova High School students that was very informative.
I'll talk
a little bit about the top thing that we heard, which is also
the top thing we've heard for 15 years, which is affordability.
It's about resources.
We know culture can drive a city, but only if we can sustain it.
And so affordability, yes.
Looks like resources. It looks like grants.
It looks like funding.
It also looks like access to finance.
It also looks like things like a municipal bank.
There's a lot of innovative tools that exist that haven't
traditionally been used.
And we're not looking comprehensively at how to support the full ecosystem.
It's true that nonprofits, individual artists, for profit businesses,
and, and film sets
require different interventions and policies,
but all of them are important, and all of them are part of this ecosystem.
And we can access and develop the tools necessary to resource what we need.
But we need access to resources.
Resources is not just the money in the door, but also our time.
We heard from John, and the housing folks.
There's a lot of process. There's a lot of red tape.
We make people work really, really hard to get to the things that we want them
to do.
So if we could shift from a culture of regulation to a culture of cultivation,
where we make it easier to do the things that we say we want to to have happen,
we will see a lot more things happen, whether that's building more housing
or seeing more events in our streets and our parks or activating our storefronts.
Where is that?
And I just, I think resources is also there's there's physical infrastructure,
there's knowledge infrastructure, and there's economic infrastructure.
Economic is the resources.
Physical is the spaces knowledge is that workforce development piece.
How are we training people to get access to the jobs that can give them
that one, wage that that we heard the economic development team talk about?
How can we prepare people for the economy, not of today, but of tomorrow?
Because we know that the creative economy is actually going to be a driver,
especially with the rise of AI and other, interventions.
There's a lot more than that.
But I'll leave affordability there. We're going to come back to it.
You'll see it in our recommendations.
But I'm gonna let Ben talk a little bit about culture and civic narrative.
Thank you.
Randy, I felt like for, like, dude and Ken Peel, like,
stand behind you, like.
We need to come up and drop
the the real talk.
But but but but in all truth,
you know, I think when we talk about culture,
there was a very palpable energy in in the room
with all these conversations that we've had, as Randy mentioned,
you know, we've had these conversations for 15 years
and we've been saying these things for 15 years, and, and
and so in so many ways and, and so many examples, Arts and culture
is the lifeblood of the city, of many cities here and around the world.
And, and that we have neglected
what arts and culture contributes to this city and to this region
and to the state and to this and to into our society in general,
can be defeating,
and so, you know, we're very obviously excited,
to be able to have these conversations, in,
in, in this iterative and, and, and new way.
There is a, there is a palpable, a palpable probability,
that, that, that has come across in a lot of these conversations.
And I think part of that stems from the fact that just generally,
you know, we're we're facing a moment in our, in our world right now
where the culture of, of, of humanity is being challenged
and and that effectively is what arts and culture remedies.
Right is it creates an opportunity for us to see each other,
for us to understand that we belong to each other, for us to understand
the ways in which we engage and see and feel and hear,
for our own self-care, but also for our community self-care.
And so,
you know, one of the things that we wanted to mention when we discussed culture
is that we are in a very unique city.
We're in a very global city, a city that has, a lot of different
identities and communities, neighborhoods, ways of expression.
And that should be seen as a strength, right?
It shouldn't be seen.
And that's and that's hard to identify. Right?
That's hard to, like, condense into like one, one thing and say
that Seattle is this, when in fact Seattle is many things.
Seattle is so many things.
And that's a very beautiful, beautiful sentiment and something that I think
artists, and organizations understand
and perhaps, you know, everybody else as well.
But it's something that we really need to underscore and, and shine a light on.
We're on the campus right now of Seattle Center.
Biased.
Lee is, the host of the Northwest Folklife Festival,
but also hosted 22 other cultural organizations,
through Fest, all that that exist here and demonstrate and perform and showcase
that culture and that community and that vibrancy and that dynamism.
So what does it look like to have a city that has a culture that represents
that soul, right, that represents that, that integrative spirit, and that,
and that leverages that as a strength and as a way to,
unify our communities.
And so, you know, one of the one of the things that we that
we really wanted to take a look at was, was, was culture.
And now I'm like, losing my,
my, thing here.
And so,
what we wanted to, to make sure that we identified
was publicly articulating a civic narrative that highlights arts
and culture as essential to Seattle's recovery, identity, and future.
And develop a unified, data informed civic narrative that positions
arts and culture as essential to that, to Seattle's identity.
And and I'll let, Randy take it to, to
where are you going to talk about integration. Was I going to talk about it?
And I'll let Randy seep into the next thing.
Thanks, Ben.
So we talk a lot about
breaking down silos, and we talk a lot about challenging binaries.
And that's what we mean in many ways by integration.
So, for example, the creative economy is in the title of our, working group.
And the creative economy in our, in
our estimation, is bigger than any one department.
Yes. It's arts and culture.
Yes, it's economic development. It's also Seattle Center.
It's also transportation.
It's also housing. It's also public safety.
These are all functions of what is required to have a thriving
creative economy in a city like Seattle.
So we really think an inter-departmental team
or a sub cabinet
that can call from all those departments in order to come up
with comprehensive strategies and also utilize the brilliance
of all these volunteers on our 138 boards and commissions
who bring their expertise and lived experience to this work.
We have all these boards and commissions
like the film, Music and Arts Commission, who could also help inform.
And I'd like a creative economy, inter-departmental team or sub cabinet.
Well, we really think that we should reopen.
And we heard this from folks.
Reopen the comp plan and think about arts, culture and creative
economy as a driver of growth over the next 10 or 20 years.
Make it embedded in the in the planning framework of the city
and align the emergent, cultural planning efforts that are coming
out of the Office of Arts and Culture into our comprehensive planning efforts.
There's a lot of examples, including a couple here in Seattle,
but around in Oakland, in Boston, in LA, county of cultural strategists
or artists and residents embedding
creative practitioners in other functions of city government.
We think that's is a strategy that should be explored and implemented
because it's yielded incredible results in those other places
and pretty incredible results here with the Department of Transportation.
You know, it'd be great if we kept doing these town halls.
It was really remarkable to see the response that we had
when we have the first one.
A couple of weeks ago, maybe we could do those quarterly
and we could check back on how we're doing against all these ideas that we're
putting out there, all these lofty concepts.
I think, one of the thing I just want to say
is that the Office of Arts and Culture launched the Creative Advantage in 2013.
It's the arts education partnership with Seattle Public Schools.
It's successfully restored arts education to every school in Seattle.
That is possible in other ways, and it is possible
to build on that success. So,
we don't just have to invent new stuff.
We can also build on the stuff that's been working,
and we can try to foster more, inclusion and more collaboration.
I'm going to jump to the top recommendation
because I want to nuance this a little bit.
This lives in the bucket of creative finance.
And when we say remove the ad tax exemption for professional sports,
that's really about, first of all, it's not a binary, right?
Like sports and culture are both part of a civic fabric.
I was in the streets of Pioneer Square the night the Seahawks won the Super Bowl,
and I was in the streets of Pioneer Square for Artwalk.
I am a proud season
ticket holder of the torrent, and I'm a proud amplifier of Kexp.
We don't have to choose between the ways we love our city, right?
We can love our city lots of different ways.
So what this is about is that we already collect site admissions tax.
This is not a punishment on the teams
or a new tax imposed on the citizens of Seattle.
This is something that's
already collected, but it's trapped in the financing of the
of the original stadiums, which were publicly financed many years ago.
The stadiums have been paid off.
Let's engage in a collaborative conversation
about how that money could be used to create outcomes we all want to see.
And maybe that's a conversation with the Sports Commission,
and maybe that's a conversation with team ownership,
and maybe that's a conversation with all the festival producers,
and that we want to see making things happen from North Park to
Northgate to South Park. But,
we think there's an opportunity there.
And that's one of the creative interventions
that's possible along with this idea of a municipal bank,
of of creative bond financing, municipal bonds can do a lot of interesting things.
As I've learned, in these last few months.
And so let's think about not just more grant money
to do more things and not more taxes
that are that are competing with all the other needs that we have.
Let's be creative about what we know exists.
If we're going to pay millions of dollars to paint over tags with gray paint,
could we be investing that money instead in our creative and artist community to
to make those walls beautiful
and to reflect the cultures of our city and our individual identities?
Just as an example.
So with that, I just want to say we're not punishing the sports teams.
We're inviting a collaboration.
We're thinking about a way that we can all be proud of our city together,
and that we can all work towards the sort of experience economy
that we think can make this city, an even better place.
I think we're the only
team right now that's gotten the three minute warning.
As a as a folklorist, I'll just say that there's a huge argument to be made that
that sports has a history and folklore and therefore arts and culture.
Just a, the last, the last thing we wanted to mention
was our early success or quick win.
And this, this speaks to the that the ideas of cultural and integration,
developing a shared living platform
that aggregates civic and cultural assets,
that is supported by a civic and cultural narrative
that can be unveiled, unveiled through citywide celebrations of arts and culture.
Throughout the city.
We already have, all the infrastructure we have.
We have Langston, we have city form.
We have on the block.
We have we have we have we have Festival and Folklife.
We have all the things that we can leverage and utilize to amplify the arts,
arts, and culture of the of the city, especially as we come up, to the World
Cup, where literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people
are going to be flocking our streets.
So how do we leverage that and send it to the places that already exist,
through a platform that aggregates all that data, as cultural assets?
Thank you so much for the time and hope you guys have a good day.
- Opening our session on public safety, please
welcome back co-chair Tiffani cCoy.
- I don't know about you all, but like, my body while they were talking
was, like, getting really energized and, like, I want to be pumped up.
So if you all just want to, like, shake it out, you're welcome to.
Please do.
Also, it is so clear how much you all love the city,
and I just like, deeply appreciate that.
And like, I know we can do better. So thank you for participating.
And thank you also for lifting up a municipal bank there.
team.
I'm here again because our other co-chair, just want to lift her up.
Is not able to be here today.
So I have the pleasure of also introducing our public safety
policy work group and standing up for our values.
First of public safety.
Public safety is about trust, coordination and community well-being.
During this transition process, we heard clearly that Seattle residents
want safety systems that respond to their real needs, not just metrics.
Metrics are important, but as long as if they do not inform
our lives and actually have an impact, they really are just numbers.
On paper,
this means the right response at the right time by the right team.
Whether that's police, our care team, outreach
workers, or crisis specialists.
The transition process also reinforced that Seattle residents
want clear information about safety protocols,
city actions and outcomes.
Standing up for our values as a city means integrating our values
into our policies, protocols and funding decisions.
If that doesn't translate into money, it is again, just words or numbers on
a paper.
Public safety, community trust,
immigrant protections and equity are not separate priorities.
They are all interconnected.
I don't know about you all, but hearing from all of the work groups thus far,
you are already hearing that cross collaboration and everyone
bringing up specific and certain themes over and over again.
So if we and better values into every action,
we create a safer, fairer and more resilient Seattle for everyone.
First, you'll hear from our public safety colleagues,
and that will be followed up by our standing up for our values colleagues.
Thanks everyone for being here.
- Presenting on Neighborhood Safety and Community Resources here.
Our Public Safety, parks and Well-Being co-leads Lisa
Daugaard and Dominique Davis.
- Good morning.
Thank you.
First to Uncommon Bridges for shepherding this,
octopus of an effort,
to the departments and mayors office
staff who are here to listen, which really means so much.
And to the mayor for setting this process in motion.
It takes a truly brave elected official to start
something like this, and it's not over. So.
And I know you want that.
So thank you for inviting everyone to organize and continue to put pressure,
on our on our leaders to make progress.
Our committee was incredible.
Asia. Adam Aaron Goodman,
Reverend Robert Jeffrey, Gregory Joseph and Lanisha
Landry did an enormous amount of work.
And we especially want to thank those who lent
their wisdom and hard won expertise.
To, providing the, insights that
that we used to make the recommendations that we're bringing forward.
Many of them are here today, and it's super meaningful.
So I see a number of you here, and I hope you see your words and,
proposals and suggestions in the materials.
I will say, in the process of synthesizing,
a lot of crucial detail is lost.
So if you see some things that don't look quite
right in the posters, we're going to work to update those.
But we have done, our best to
discern and synthesize some important themes that emerge from this work.
The committee engaged in more
than 60 substantive sessions,
some individual interviews, but a lot of group
meetings, over 200 people participated.
There were several surveys done.
And Reverend
Jeffrey is convening a ministers summit on March 9th with the mayor, I believe.
So that is still coming.
Summary a summary of some key findings.
One of the strongest themes that emerged was that all effort and resources
need to be shifted to methods of working to actually reduce harm
that are effective in reducing harm.
The surprise applies across the board
to the public impact of addiction and public drug use.
People living in areas that are not meant for human habitation,
the sale of goods and the illicit economy.
Domestic violence, gun violence.
The theme is that very often
what we fund is not actually well designed to reduce
those harms, and approaches that are effective are very rarely well resourced.
So there's a universal call to take these objectives seriously
and move forward, approaches that actually
are known to reduce harm.
No one in that entire sphere of engagement
that we interviewed called for enforcement to be the primary strategy.
But everyone who realized that enforcement is rarely the primary strategy insisted
that the alternatives that we rely on be high quality,
accountable, and impactful.
And even though no one
saw enforcement as the primary public safety strategy, almost everyone
we spoke with did call for police to be present when they need to be
to deter unlawful activity, including hate
crimes and federal abuses,
and to perform the functions that only they can.
We have to have a balance with police and community partners all performing
their parts of the division of labor with urgency, skill and cultural humility,
restoring Speedy's detective ranks and the dedicated protection order.
Service capacity that they used to have are both key,
as is the overall staffing level of SPD.
So they can do the pieces only they can do.
We do want to know a
very strong feeling that emerged that more needs to be done to foster
cultural affinity with, and understanding of the East African community at a speed
this goes back many years and it needs priority attention,
and so that SPD can do what only they can do.
It's essential that other public order and well-being issues be
handled by the care department, rather than by sworn police officers.
The Seattle Police Officers Guild contract barriers to care deployment
now preclude care responders from being deployed
primarily for a wide range of issues that the public has been told care is for,
including issues of drug use, drug
possession, encampments,
situations that could give rise
to civil commitment.
Basically everything that if you think of the care department
and you thought that's what they were there to do, they there are barriers
to care deploying, in response to those issues based in the Spa contract,
we need a creative strategy so that the dedicated workers
in the civilian public Safety department, which is an emerging national best
practice, can do what the public has been told it will do.
Also, we need to level up our community violence intervention
approach and redesign homelessness response in a variety of ways.
We resisted
the call to lift up one single most critical recommendation,
because all of the recommendations in this area are actually quite specific,
and the loss of specificity, kind of unifying something
to the point that it's meaningless didn't seem to serve,
but, the theme that's on the slide
is, good summary of, of what we found.
We did want to lift up Aaron. Good.
But I don't know if she's here today.
Did, suggest a restoration
of the city directory, the city employee directory?
And every time she said that, it got a lot of, applause.
So it's not a public safety strategy, but just a good government one.
We have two, early wins.
Turning to dumb for, the first.
- Hello.
And thank you, mayor.
This has been an awesome experience, and it's just beginning.
We're not stopping. So,
due to the situation
that we had, the tragedy that we had down in the Rainier Beach corridor
a few weeks back, which I'm sure pretty much everybody's aware of.
I kind of shifted my vision in focus to address
our young people in our community, especially in our schools.
We do a lot of work in the schools.
There's a lot of organizations doing some really good work in the schools.
And we are underfunded.
And we do need to build more capacity
to be more preventive and more proactive to be ahead of these kind of situations.
But, the voices that I'm hearing and the early wins.
So I should jump to, the early win is the fact that all hands have.
I don't know that the mayor's office, the sheriff's department, SPD, metro,
a lot of people have came together to
to pool their capacity into one area.
And we're in that rainy corridor every day, five days a week.
That's a win on the back of a tragedy.
But I also want to say we can count that as a win.
If we could take that same energy and that same capacity that we built
together and, and organizations, government organizations,
community based organizations together to be in that space to, to,
raise the awareness of safety and be more
aggressive in it and to other schools areas.
The Central District
is the number one priority that we should be focusing on next, right?
We should be over by Garfield and Washington Middle School.
And so I count that as a win.
I count that as a win because we see what it looks like now.
We all are our tent are all of our antennas go up.
And now all of us are going, okay, we got to do something.
We got to do something.
Now we're putting together a 90 day plan with the mayor's office,
very strategically to build more capacity.
But I do want to say we also have to start putting the focus on the North
in schools also, right, that we don't want to wait until another tragedy happens.
We want to go ahead and be proactive in preventive.
So I count that as a win measure.
I do and I'm and I'm going to keep focusing on another topic is
we have to worry about bringing ourselves together, coming together
and collaborating on the ICE situation.
Right.
That ICE situation can be, detrimental if we're not ready for it.
And we need to know what side of the of the line does the city, the county
law enforcement stand on, how they stand on the side of the line
with community, or they stand on the side of the line with the Feds?
Right. What does that look like for us?
So then the community knows how
we need to prepare to be ready for whatever can happen.
- And the
other early win that we wanted to lift up is, in the realm of domestic violence,
I know we I happen to walk in, here with two,
people who are, domestic violence survivors.
I know there are many others in the room.
I myself, have had that experience as a public defender.
I it just stunned me that people who are accused of domestic
violence are in and are prosecuted in court are ordered to do domestic
violence treatment that everyone knows is not only ineffective, that there's
research to indicate that it actually that people who go through it actually
tend to have a higher risk of re-offending than those who don't.
So why are we doing this and this, this recommendation, is one that
I wanted to lift up because it's so perfectly illustrates all effort
and all funding should go to strategies that actually reduce the harm.
That's what it means to take harm seriously, not to do things
for the sake of doing them, but to hold ourselves and our,
governmental efforts, accountable for actually,
achieving that improvement.
So out of these interviews emerged a remarkable consensus
from everyone from prosecutors to,
survivor services advocates all the way
to public defenders and abolitionists,
finding that, there's a new approach
that was innovated at the VA called Strength at Home that,
defendants who are who are ordered to participate in it
as the result of court involvement, find that it is super meaningful.
It's a great experience for them.
It allows families to, in many instances,
remain together in a healthier future.
The families do remain together,
but just often, with ongoing dynamics that are super harmful.
That seems to change that.
And as our abolitionist,
respondents pointed out, this resource should also be made available
to individuals without the need to have the person commit
a crime, be arrested, be charged with a crime, let families
reach out for help before it gets to that point.
So strength at home. Thank you so much.
- Just discussing civil rights and equity initiatives,
please welcome Co-Leads Jaelynn Scott and
Roxana Norouzi.
- Good morning everyone.
What an honor it is to be here where Jaelynn
and I are so honored to have been able to lead this committee,
particularly at a time where there is so much deep fear
facing the communities that Jaelynn I represent.
Thank you, Mayor Wilson, for your leadership, for pulling us all together.
Thank you to the Uncommon Bridges team.
We also want to thank our incredible,
committee policy.
Participants.
Our group did incredible work over the last few months to pull together
these recommendations and to talk to so many folks
from across the city.
I want to say a little bit about our engagements.
We focus deeply on talking directly to the immigrant,
black and LGBTQ communities to ensure that the communities
that are furthest from opportunity, that are facing the deepest fears
are really centered in this process, and that we get to hear directly from them.
And we did that in a couple different ways.
One, many of us had 1 to 1 conversations.
We also met with existing rapid response infrastructure and coalitions to ask
what is already in place and what are the opportunities to expand
and build on the incredible community work that has already been done?
We, also
put out a survey to many of the service providers across the city
to give input into what the city could be doing
to amplify current efforts with additional funding.
And finally, we held a town hall also, sold out,
as I've heard, with over 250 people, folks really eager to come together.
And I want to turn it to Jaellyn to share a little bit
about one of the sentiments
that came out of that town, how that has really grounded these recommendations.
Before we jump in.
- It's great to be with you this morning.
The town hall. I mean, I looked 250.
I think folks showed up and I would like to say that's because of our organizing,
but it really was because someone leaked a story
that Mayor Wilson was going to be there. But it worked.
- We'll take credit for.
- We will take credit for it.
The sentiment of fear and safety was a shared one at this town hall.
Immigrant communities and transgender communities, who were at the town hall
who are here today, shared their stories.
It became evident to everyone that there was a shared concern,
feds labeling us as terrorists,
criminalization of our people,
displacement of our folks with a refugee crisis
both in trans communities and an immigrant communities.
It was a space that I have never experienced, and it was a space
where we had East African Community, Latino Latina community, trans community
talking with each other, crying with each other, listening to each other.
Those are the spaces that we need to be in right now.
If we're actually going to stand up for our
our values and resist federal threats.
It was clear that
what they wanted said is that Seattle has an obligation,
and I believe Mayor Wilson has said this to use its power
to protect all refugees, all refugees
who find a home in this city.
- Thank you, Jaeyllyn.
And that sentiment of as we move into the policy recommendations
of the relationship, the rebuilding of trust,
the connection between city government and community
is essential to how we will lead through this very,
very difficult moment for so many folks are terrified,
are scared to go to the grocery store to pick up their kids from daycare every day.
And the other thing that really undergirds our recommendations is
that the city has an opportunity to not only defend and protect,
but to be a model for the rest of the country
of what it looks like to embrace the diversity of our communities.
What we heard from all the leaders here, what we know is good for immigrants,
trans people of color, is what's good for everyone.
And so these.
So the
recommendations around housing, transportation, childcare,
economic mobility, those are things that we can,
invest in in an even deeper way for the communities most under threat.
And that has to be a North Star for the city.
We also want to move a bit to what are some of the direct policy
recommendations that we heard through our conversations.
Number one is building on what Jaeylynn said, really using the power of the city
to put in as many protections as possible and to separate,
federal immigration enforcement from local police
and the city's every day, day to day, agenda.
This looks like, training for SPD,
but all city departments around the law in Washington state, it is law that,
local and state law enforcement cannot collaborate with Ice
and Customs and Border Patrol, but we believe that there is more
that can be done in the city that goes beyond the floor of what the law is.
At a lot of that includes some policies, but it really does
include trading at a culture in the city of the cities.
Staff at police force are there to protect residents
and not to assist in immigration enforcement.
And we'll talk a little bit about what's already happened if some early wins.
I also want to lift up that, it's not just immigration enforcement.
It is also the anti immigrant sentiment that is creating
a lot of fear in the communities that we have spoken with.
We heard quite a bit from in particular,
the East African Community about some, emboldened
vigilante citizen journalists, people who are threatened,
sometimes daily on their front porches for going about their lives.
And one of the clear recommendations we heard is more training
for city staff and speed and how to respond to those incidents.
Setting up a clear process to report hate crimes, prosecute hate crimes,
and in particular, have an orientation
to how we protect people who feel fear
not only when they are encountering ice and,
any kind of immigration enforcement, but also when they're encountering,
hate crimes and hate generally out there in that community.
The other thing we heard a lot
about is the opportunity to,
allocate resources
to the growing rapid response infrastructure in the city.
We've been so inspired and heard from hundreds of folks,
both the rapid response that has been set up through existing
organizations, but also through everyday people coming together,
creating their infrastructure, figuring out how they're going to support
kids in their local school and families in their local schools.
And there's an opportunity for the city to contribute to that,
to fund that in a really clear and,
supportive way, and to use some of the money
that was allocated to the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs
to beef up legal supports, rapid response and mutual
aid for families that are impacted by immigration enforcement.
- There
was a recommendation, particularly for an office
or an expanded, Office of Immigration and, Refugee Affairs, a regional office
that can work with some of the other local jurisdictions more collaboratively.
And in addition to that, thinking about the transgender,
the threats to transgender people and office for LGBTQ affairs
and a resource liaison so that folks who land here
and the people that exist here, anyone can figure out how to navigate the
the access to rapid response resources.
There's also
the desire on surveillance and coordination
to suspend the use of ALPR and closed circuit television
to really address the concerns about tracking and auditing.
The community is not feeling satisfied with the current, answers to the question
of are they secure from federal threats through CCTV
recordings and through, license plate readers?
- And just to highlight that the,
the ending of surveillance is about community safety and trust.
And it's also deeply connected to the issues of immigration
and making sure that we close every single loophole,
that federal agents can access people's information.
So we really want to, make sure that what we heard from the community
in almost every conversation, that doing an audit of data,
how data is tracked and shared in the city, what task force
SPD is sitting, at the table with in which data and information
can be shared in terms of immigration,
and tracking of people for the purposes
of immigration enforcement came up over and over and over again.
So the issue of surveillance
is both about safety and about it's an immigration issue.
We want to lift up some early wins.
We were so excited and proud to see the executive order
that, was released, I think, two weeks ago. Now,
I will venture to say that it is
one of the strongest in the country in terms of.
Yeah.
In terms of protections for immigrants,
making it very clear the role of, local law enforcement
also inviting small businesses
to participate in protecting their spaces and putting some additional barriers
up to, not allow immigration enforcement to access properties.
And the other, really groundbreaking piece of the executive order
was actually giving clear direction to SPD, what they are to do
if they are to come in contact and actually,
be called to a scene where someone is being
detained because of immigration status, this is groundbreaking.
It will, actually shift the tenor of the whole country if it is done well
and can assist potentially in documenting a lot of human rights abuses
that we know and we all see are happening, both here and across the country.
So really grateful for that.
It's a huge step.
And we want to emphasize the importance of now the implementation of that,
ensuring that the training actually happens,
that it's being evaluated consistently and,
that the protocols in terms of how city government
is communicating directly with community based organizations
who are on the ground responding to these threats, that that continues
to be refined and built out as we learn more every day.
- I think we'll close just in saying that, I you know,
we didn't see this as an early win, but the access,
it really feels like unparalleled
access to certain communities of color,
LGBTQ communities of color, folks who are feeling like they are in crisis
right now, finding any opportunity at all of our town halls,
with the mayor's office directly
being listened to and heard about their deep concerns,
this is the beginning of us moving together as a city.
It's the beginning of us moving together as a movement
to be in the to being a beacon on the hill for the rest of the country.
And that is an early win because we have started the work.
And I'm very thankful
to the transition team to Mayor Wilson for setting this process up.
That is a win.
We're talking to each other and we weren't talking like this six months ago,
but we are now and we're going to get there. Thank you so much.
- And now for our
final policy session on civic identity and major initiatives.
Please welcome Co-Chair Brian Surratt.
- Good morning.
And morning.
We still awake.
So here if, if Jaellynn's last comments didn't get you going, I don't know.
I don't know what will, because,
you know, it's funny.
We were joking, earlier this morning with a few folks around.
Okay. Are we done transitioning? Are we done?
Are we done? Are we ready to do the work?
And I think part of, the reality is, we're always transitioning.
We're always moving.
We're always, trying to be as responsive as possible
to, the needs of today and meeting the moment.
And and, Jaeylynn, what you laid out, is a start is a start. And,
you know, you know, I'm, I'm here to kind of introduce,
you know, our final session around civic narrative.
And I think, what you heard today, this morning,
was part of our story
was part of our, our civic narrative, you know,
you know, civic narrative is not,
some symbolic, abstract thing.
It is collectively how we think about ourselves as collectively.
How do we love our neighbors collectively, how we try to make sure that
whatever role you have, whether you're,
you know, whether you're a student, whether you're a business owner,
a person in government, you know, what is your role in making sure
that this community, is better and, and again, meets
meets the moment,
you know, we all love the city.
Some were born here, some moved here
from all, all corners of the world.
But you all have.
We all have chosen to make Seattle home.
And we love it differently.
We may not always agree on everything about what
we can do to make this city better, but it's grounded in.
And that deep love for this place. And that's for me.
What civic identity is, is how do we care for this place,
and how do we talk about our place to each other and to, to the rest of the world?
And I'm really proud.
I'm really proud of this transition committee and
and just overwhelmed with the amount of work.
This wasn't some, you know, ceremonial transition team.
We told you all at the beginning that this was this was not going to be,
you know, your your grandma's or grand daddy's, transition committee.
This was about work.
And you have delivered to us,
you know,
a book, a book of ideas and thoughts and reflections of how to make our city better
and what we found through, the dialog and your work
and helping push you know, what it means to be a resident
of Seattle, of Seattle, what it means to make the city better.
There are some through lines.
We talked about affordability, safety, belonging, opportunity and accountability.
The work going forward is clear.
We need to be a city that listens.
We need to be a city that learns.
And we need to be a city that acts.
That is what good government is.
That is what,
being, in tune with our sense
of, of community really is grounded in
and our commitment to all of you who's participated
in this transition process is that we're going to be in partnership with you.
Again, we may not always agree with everything, timing,
all those ways, but our commitment is to be transparent and to work,
in community and in constant conversation with everyone. So,
55 days in a lot of work to do.
And, I'm, I'm glad to do it with you all.
Thank you.
- To discuss
public engagement and cross-sector collaboration here, our civic
narrative and major initiatives co-leads Alex Hudson and Joy Shigaki
- Well, it's always good to go last,
but in some ways, the civic narrative piece sort of is wrapping up what,
Brian had sort of set up and the work that's been done by people on this stage,
and thousands of other people who chose to lean in
and bring their voices to this process.
So many thanks to the mayor, to the talented, uncommon Bridges team
who really pushed us as volunteers, though,
to ask the question of how are we going out to really listen
at a very, very deep level in order to really lean into what's best?
And what to improve, to push for care and true belonging and action in the city.
And I think that really has centered our work.
I want to acknowledge members of our policy.
Team.
Who worked hard to really reach out to the grass tops and grass roots.
I think that that was our obligation to keep pushing as hard as possible.
And then you heard a lot of through lines of civic narrative around the arts
and culture group, but also civic narrative
when it comes to really how do you trust in government?
What do you believe in the city and what action actually
is going to continue to help you deepen that belief?
In a narrative about, Our Town?
- Yes, Thank you.
When you ask people about what they believe about the city of Seattle,
it is not hard to get them to talk about this.
People, overwhelmingly, the people that we spoke to, either
in one on ones, in surveys, in small group
discussions with grass tops and grassroots organizations, with community
voices, and, of course, throughout the other transition committees
care very deeply about the city of Seattle and their opinions are,
well forged.
People love being here.
They choose to be here.
They choose to stay here. Oftentimes
when it's harder to be here than other places
because of some of the affordability issues that you've heard and other things.
And they want it to be a wonderful place.
So this was a wonderful opportunity to bring people together.
And we have, five key themes that we are going to trade off
sharing with you about that.
- So the first one is about a shared Northstar,
this idea of a consistent civic narrative that, across all public communications,
positions the city as a place of belonging and stewardship and opportunity.
But in that we have to acknowledge the structural inequities, displacement
and historic exclusion that has happened to in Seattle.
But in that you compare it with power sharing, co-creation, and rooted in lived
experience, which, again, is what you're hearing across many of the, policy groups
today, but embedded in the civic narrative and is public infrastructure, right?
Wayfinding, parks, transit and cultural spaces
that connect daily civic life, to a shared story of place.
So that begins to ground that first recommendation.
- The second one is around our cultural
and public realm as our civic infrastructure.
The city owns many of the pieces of of the infrastructure of social connection.
And people love these places and are cheering for them.
So the first is to treat our essential civic infrastructure
as something that is both known to be valued, but as valuable.
And so we want to make the places and the spaces that make us us
as invested in and as high quality as the people
who are coming to use them and build memories together.
You heard people speak
here to the idea of getting to a city of yes,
that when folks are coming out and wanting to create opportunities for people
to come together, that we move away from regulating and into cultivating that,
making that easier for people to be able to do so.
The idea that every place can be a third place,
that our transit stations and our neighborhood centers
and our everyday gathering places can be as lovely and wonderful
to be as, as any privatized space, and in fact, should be more so.
The idea that you may have heard, I'm referencing people
like Eric Kleinberg and the idea of palaces for the people.
Nothing is too good for everyday people in the city of Seattle.
Yes, I could share that
and that access matters, right?
That we have these incredible
opportunities, these cultural institutions and the professional sports teams,
but they are only as good as your ability to participate in them.
And so we want to make sure that these, these places, these institutions
are creating civic experiences that are rooted in local identity, but
that everyone has a chance to participate.
- The third area is getting the basics right.
We heard a lot about if we're going to move a narrative forward,
we have to be very, very focused on quality of life for everyone.
So, quality of life improvements, of cleanliness, of safety, of maintenance,
so that there's a commitment and belief that basic services
builds, that civic trust and long term transformation of our city.
Right. That's how government can do it best.
But don't get away from the basics.
And breaking down silos.
We heard that a little bit about,
trying to accelerate visible deliveries of neighborhood improvements.
Right.
How do you make sure that we actually make progress
and make it easier and easier to make that happen?
And large scale initiatives in housing and arts
and infrastructure to tangible lived experience outcomes across neighborhoods.
So, again, thinking more at a high level and really an integrated model
and set of things, again, only within their respective buckets.
And some of that too is about monitoring.
We heard a lot about tell the story of what's working
and communicate consistently.
So this one is really about monitoring and consistently communicating results,
right.
Linking small wins to the city's broader initiatives,
which really starts building greater trust and belief that progress is being made.
- The fourth conversation was about the beautiful,
wonderful, vibrant downtown Seattle and its bright future.
So we went downtown.
Downtown's an important place where people come to to do commerce and to work.
But it is so much more than that.
Downtown.
We want to see strategies of mixed use, of lived experience,
housing, public space, cultural venues, that downtown
should be a place for everyone to do everything.
The second is around using opportunities like, I don't know if you guys have heard,
but there's going to be a soccer game here this summer.
That when opportunities like this come to make a splash,
that we want to make sure that that splash makes a lasting benefit for folks.
Of course, downtown is a wonderful place to be.
But it's not the only neighborhood that matters to people.
And so we want to make sure that that, yes, yes.
That as we're thinking about investments in downtown, we're,
we're matching that with equitable levels of investment and other places
that really matter to place to people.
And that we make sure that downtown is, is tended to and it's,
around anti displacement protections and community ownership pathways
that downtown should not just be a neighborhood
for the people who have the most and the people who have the least,
that everybody should be able to find a place to make a home and a life
in the city of Seattle and its downtown.
- And the last recommendation is, oh, that it.
So sorry.
Next page.
Trust, accountability and civic participation.
Again a through line and a question that
and a statement that was made really across a lot of the,
the conversations that we had, that it's really about institutionalizing
co governance models that give community real decision
making power and authority rather than advisory ones.
Right.
Part of that is increasing transparency, you know, through public
dashboards, tracking capital projects, parks, cultural investments.
Again, how do you open up that conversation for people to see really
where where progress is being made or where the challenges are?
Government can't do everything well, but government can also be really,
modeling, how to best, show that learning and be able to show,
what they're doing to reset and learn, and rebuilding neighborhood engagement.
We know that that's an important part.
Again, to be able to make sure that there's a level of local
decisions happening across the city, right across neighborhoods,
and that civic participation pathways can exist in a lot of different ways boards,
commissions, participatory participatory budgeting, leadership, apprentices.
And what we heard is a lot of other invitations to be involved in government.
I think this process has been a reminder of that.
How do you invite people into effective governance?
Is participation in the city of Seattle and not just a one and done,
but a real, intentional, authentic invitation for transparency,
for conversation, for building trust?
- So now we want to future cast our early wins.
So, we just now it is February 24th.
Is that what day it is?
It's February 24th, 2027, and we're reporting back to you
the things that have been the early wins based on these recommendations.
- So one of the first is that we've been hosting service days across the city,
with tens of thousands of residents coming out to really show civic pride,
participation and connection to one another and care for community.
- We've used our subarea planning efforts to recruit people into processes
for building trust, accountability, and ongoing civic participation efforts,
and created neighborhood civic labs across the city's regional centers.
- We've held at least six stakeholder roundtables
connecting to transition priority recommendations to really advance
the work and co-design locally for improvements and programs.
- We've talked to Sound Transit and others about piloting public art activations
and high visibility transportation corridors and hubs and spaces.
This is bringing a rich connection to local artists and animating important places.
- People are experiencing
better hours and more accessible, clean restrooms throughout the city.
Hey. Hello.
So this is real.
This is seeing. This is experienced, right?
Everyday things making it available, for the public.
- And we're continuing to make progress and make real, visible
improvements in downtown and beyond through subarea planning.
This year and into next.
Thank you.
- For final reflections on the transition.
And I'll look at what it's next for Seattle.
Please welcome back, Mayor Katie Wilson.
- Okay.
I'm going to keep this short because y'all have been sitting there for a long time.
This is really exciting.
You know, as I'm sitting there listening to recommendations, listening to,
themes and early wins, I'm just really inspired and excited
by what I think we're going to be able to accomplish together,
together, both this year and over the next four years.
I did notice that there were some pretty massive
ambitions tucked into some of those, quote unquote, early wins.
So I'll just say, like, thank you for your faith in me.
Invite administration to move mountains.
We'll see how it goes.
But no, really, I mean, I think,
part of what is both exciting and a little bit
daunting about this process and what you all have created out of it is,
just the scope from the very kind of like
high level themes, but down to the very detailed, like here
are really specific things that we can do to make our city better.
And I really I just want to reemphasize what Andre said at the beginning,
which is that we have this, you know, 30 page, transition recommendations document.
But that is kind of the tip of the iceberg.
And the iceberg is, you know,
all of the interviews and conversations and processes and all of the documents
that came out of that, which have a lot more detail into,
the things that all of the advisors who participated in this process,
believe can, can make a difference in our city.
And we have that information too, and we will be using it, in the
months and years ahead. So,
just again,
just want to express really profound gratitude for everyone
who has poured their heart and soul and time and energy into this process.
We are going to take this, the, the, the outcome of this process
very seriously.
And also just to reiterate that this is not,
the end this is really, a waystation.
And this is where we're still at the beginning, and we are going to be,
reengaging with you all as we are beginning to put these recommendations
into action, we are going to be checking back at various points,
and really marking our progress. Right.
We want this, you know, this document that has come out of this to be something
that we come back to again and again and we can say, like,
look, here is where we've made progress years.
Maybe we're, we're we're still working on something. So,
thank you, thank you, thank you.
This is your city and, and also keep the pressure on.
Right?
I expect all of you to hold me and my administration, accountable.
As we, as we do this work in the years ahead.
So thank you very much.
- To conclude our program with a special spoken word performance
titled climate, please welcome Josie Ellis and Harlem
Yarbrough.
- Good morning, everybody.
My name is Harlem Yarbrough.
My name is Josie Ellis.
And we're alumni from the spoken word cohort of Seattle theater groups elevate.
And today we'll be doing a poem I.
And today
we'll be doing a poem for a poem for you titled The Climate.
My people came here in
chains binded together with metal hands and feet in cups.
Much like today, my people are still in cuffs.
My ancestors came here in chains.
- I was born in a land built from bones.
Where the soil don't just grow crops, it grows contradictions.
- My people came here in chains binded together.
Would still you still steal our culture?
You want to be black until it's actually time to be black.
We are not immigrants.
- My mama told me. Remember your roots.
Even if they trampled them up.
And baby, they tried.
- We are a stolen kingdom.
You forced us here on boats and then hung us from ropes.
- Ripped them out like weeds labeled other.
Like not from here, like threat.
But my skin has been politicized.
It's too long since the sun kissed it.
- Strange fruit isn't the only thing that's strange.
You stole us to work. But not in our professions.
You made us slaves, enslaved, but from the shores of another place we came.
We are not immigrants.
- I stand with the mothers holding hands at borders
and the sisters beating resistance into their hell.
Black and female double checked by TSA and society.
Me, I walk through
America knowing I owe it nothing, but it acts like I owe it everything.
2026 and we're still building walls.
But truth can't climb like hope.
Can't swim like people don't cross borders with babies on the backs.
- So I fear your textbooks are wrong.
Forced immigrant doesn't cover the immense pain
and suffering my people went through.
We marched into the waters because dying was better than living through.
Something forced you whipped, stole and killed us with no remorse.
This country is built on black backs and the white man found freedom in that.
- No, freedom is a brand name.
Now trademark sold on Red hat and legislated to feel,
on their backs just for a
shot at breathing free. But,
I say we gotta protect all borders.
But nobody protected my red line.
And confined. They drew borders around my block.
Told me who could live, feel love, feel alone.
Here it's a brown ones they feel the most.
The ones who play in languages this country refuses to translate.
The ones who stories or in textbooks.
But tattooed on forearms and whispered across deserts.
They look at me and say, you should understand
you're black. - While we're still held here in bondage.
You called us stupid because we couldn't read and said we didn't have any manners,
but fed us pigs.
Massa was the common word around the fields.
The only name other things that we cried out until Mother Harriet found a way out.
We are not immigrants. I cannot stress it enough.
Have we ever been free? - As this oppression?
It's a passport.
We all stamp in silence, as if liberation ain't tied to their us.
But I know freedom ain't pie.
Most for them don't mean less for me.
I stand with the mothers
holding hands at borders and sisters waiting resistance into their hell.
We've been in bondage since we've arrived and thrive.
You live even if you get rid of the I.
We can't die I, I do not come here in chains.
And neither should of my people, because this country is built
on black backs and the white men found freedom in that.
We are not immigrants.
- I walk
with the brothers who cross fences and find cages.
I speak for the babies who long detention before dream,
and I pray not for the wall to fall, but for a system to crack.
So light can leak through.
Oh, the country.
He loves to ask me where am I really from?
But I ask it where is it going?
Because if justice is the destination, we're driving in circles.
But I'm still here.
We'll still heal, and we're going to stay unapologetically black,
unrelentingly bold and put and soul.
Oh, what if it's because even if they chain our wrists
they could never chain our togetherness, we survived by holding each other up.
Building community where they tried to build cages.
Thank you.
- A round of applause.
- And now to close our event.
Please welcome back to the stage transition director Andreas Mantilla.
- All right.
How's everybody feeling?
Thank you.
Another round of applause for Jose and Harlem.
Thank you again.
Also to Forest Williams, who, was joined us in the morning
to provide some music, during the social hour.
Thank you. Mayor.
Thank you, transition team.
Mayor, as I was listening to the engagement
reports, I think I might have given you
the 1500 number might have been low in terms of engagement here.
So, very, very grateful
to all the work that's, that's taking place,
you know, at the core of this work, as we kind of close this down
and we look at, the packet that again, you have the QR code,
it's on the screen here.
You have the summaries at the back,
and you have this vast amount of, feedback,
knowledge, community voice that we've collected through this process,
you know, be on policies, programs, priorities.
What excited me about this approach and what I want to,
really be thankful to the mayor
is that this approach was about, at the end of the day, building community,
building shared and safe spaces, not reinventing the wheel,
not going back to community and asking for the 20th, 50th time.
What are your priorities? But how do we get to action?
How do we listen and get to action?
So as we leave this, this event and as we close this transition
and as we commit to, ongoing conversations, I really encourage you
to continue that momentum, build on those relationships,
build on those community connections that you've made.
And knowing that it will take all of us, to implement this agenda
and it will take all of us, to achieve these early wins.
So thank you so much. Thank you to the Uncommon Bridges team.
Thank you to you all for coming here today.
And we are adjourned. Thank you so much.