An Interview With the Creator of the Seattle City Council Sock Puppets
They're probably not who you think they are.
By Erica C. Barnett
City Hall has been speculating for months about who's behind a series of short Youtube videos featuring the members of the Seattle City Council as sock puppets—each meticulously designed to highlight or scrutinize some aspect of each council member's character.
The vertically shot videos are deceptively simple—each Muppet-style puppet speaks in turn, lip-synching to audio of a council meeting—and often include visual jokes that range from subtle (a tiny Maritza Rivera can barely get her eyes above the dais) to blunt, like the most recent video featuring books the council might be reading on their two-week summer vacations. (Former Councilmember Cathy Moore, who frequently became indignant when people opposed her politically, is reading a copy of White Fragility at the golf course. Layers!)
One of my personal favorites came from a meeting when Rob Saka, unprompted, brought up a supposedly untranslatable Finnish concept called sisu, then proceeded to translate it, at great length, while the rest of the council just kind of sat there. In the video, Saka—the son of a Nigerian dad and a Finnish mom—bobs around in a tiny replica of the dashiki he wore during his 2023 campaign as the Finnish flag unfurls behind him and the Finnish national anthem plays in the background.
The identity of the "The Seattle Channel" puppet master has been a topic of fierce speculation at City Hall. As recently as primary election night, an elected official told me they knew for a fact that it was someone who works for city government, and they were so confident, I believed them. But they were wrong.
"The puppets," as they're referred to at City Hall, are the product of a group of people, but the project was launched by one person—a longtime visual artist who lives on Capitol Hill and has never worked at City Hall. We asked for an interview earlier this year; this week, the originator of the puppet channel finally said yes, on the condition that we not reveal his identity. The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
I love the puppets. What made you decide to start doing these videos?
My story is that I started really tuning in to local politics, I think like a lot of people, in 2020, with the Black Lives Matter/George Floyd/Breonna Taylor uprising in my neighborhood, on Capitol Hill. Through that experience of those protests and the experience of having police bombing my neighborhood and seeing all of that firsthand, I got involved in some local activist groups [like Solidarity Budget and Stop Surveillance City] that are are particularly focused on the mayor and the city council and local politics—groups that are really focused on trying to push the city toward an idea of public safety that’s much more about solidarity and human services and less on policing and courts.
Through that work I started tracking city politics and the city council. When they started with the original legislation proposing CCTV, I was really frustrated at how this particular council seems to be extremely uninterested in listening to public feedback and data and taking in information. Especially with the surveillance bill, because there was such a huge amount of skepticism expressed by the public and the official surveillance working group recommended not passing it. There were lots of reasons they should not have passed that bill and they did it anyway.
There are so many amazing details in your sock puppets that I feel like it takes a keen observer of the city council to notice—like the fact that Bob Kettle's eyebrows are the same color as his skin. What's your process for identifying and including all those details?
At first, I was trying to find socks at a thrift store to try to match the complexion of the council members. I think of Kettle as being a very, very white man, and somehow one of those athletic socks just seemed appropriate. I love making things. I’ve only made some of the puppets. Some of them were made by other people who are also very talented puppet makers. The thing about puppets that’s amazing as an art form is, it takes so little to turn an inanimate object into something animate. You just put some googly eyes on a sock and it suddenly has a personality.
I'm obsessed with the way you chose to do Sara Nelson's hair—it's somehow exactly her hair, even though the yarn is a bunch of tangled-up colors and her actual hair is gray.
She was the first puppet I made and I think it’s partially just kind of the materials I had on hand. It seemed like it worked.
Tell me more about your goals for this project.
The group that is working on the puppets is a group that has been going since 2020. We make all sorts of media for different kind of activist campaigns. The question is, how do you take complicated issues that the city is facing and distill it down in a way that’s poppy enough that it catches somebody's attention that may not be following it closely and doesn’t simplify and flatten it. We’ve done a lot of stuff on social media to try to get people to pay attention to what is happening. This puppet project is in that same spirit. Puppets as a metaphor for politicians who seem to be beholden to interests that are not in the public interest.
In terms of process, there are actually several people in the immediate group who make it with me, and a larger group of people who are regular watchers of the council through the official Seattle Channel because of the activist work that we do. So people send me bits and suggestions. Originally they were going to be much shorter and kind of sillier, which is how they started, but increasingly we got this idea of really trying to base it on whatever happened in the council the week before. And then, obviously, we take audio from the Seattle Channel's recordings of the meetings
Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth has complained that she doesn't have a puppet. Do you only make puppets for the "bad guys"?
I mean, kind of, yeah. The ones who seem like they’re acting the worst are going to get puppets—the ones that seem most unwilling to think about public opinion and be swayed by what people in Seattle really want.
Have you gotten any feedback from anyone featured in your videos?
No, I haven’t really heard from anyone. The only person who really provided feedback from any government position was [CARE Department Chief] Amy Barden. There was video of a meeting where she presented [and was represented by a Barbie doll], and she posted "career highlight!" Because it’s all anonymous, the only feedback I get, really, is from my friends.
Everyone at City Hall watches your videos. I mean, everyone.
Oh my god! That's so funny to hear.
I love that it’s become such a thing in City Hall, and also among the people who follow your reporting closely. I would love to try to reach a broader audience. It’s hard to get people's attention. There’s so much stuff going on and it’s hard to get people to tune in. We’re all so overwhelmed by things that are happening nationally and internationally, but in terms of ways that we can really survive this upcoming time, where I think things are going to get really bad, I think [we should be] focusing locally on city and state politics, and trying to make sure we have a representative democratic government that is focused on how we keep people safe and housed and fed.
The video I think about the most is the one where Bob Kettle says "happy birthday" to Sara Nelson in a bunch of different languages, and then you see the top of Maritza Rivera's head pop up above the dais and add "and Feliz Cumpleaños!"
That’s one of my favorites ever. Their interpersonal dynamics! We were talking the other day—is the genre sort of like The Office? It's the same cast of characters, they come in every day and have their little spats and it just repeats, just like a workplace comedy.