Burien City Manager Filed Complaint Against Public Commenter; Seattle Library Hosts Another Anti-Trans Event

Today's Afternoon Fizz.

1. The Seattle Public Library is, once again, renting out public space to an organization dedicated to eliminating the rights of trans people—this time, a trans eliminationist group called Women's Declaration USA, which will hold a panel discussion in the large auditorium of the Central Library downtown at 7 pm on Sunday, November 17.

Like other anti-trans groups, the WDI argues that being trans is an "ideology," and that their goal is to stop people from believing they are trans, not to eliminate specific trans people. However, their policy prescriptions are dangerous for trans women, in particular, making them potential targets for anti-trans violence and subjecting them to legal discrimination. For example, the group supports banning trans women from using all women-only spaces as well as girl's and women's sports; one of the speakers at next week's event, April Morrow, recently wrote that allowing trans women to be jailed with other women will subject cis women to attacks by "serial killers, pedos, and rapists."

According to the invitation, WDI's event will include discussions about "the atrocity of pediatric sex change"; a rehash of the Olympus Spa case, in which a trans woman sued a Tacoma women's spa for kicking her out; "K-12 indoctrination"; "how women's prisons in Washington state are no longer safe for women due to the inclusion of men," and other inflammatory topics.

The panel will include six different anti-trans activists, including Morrow; Amy Sousa, who argues that "the cult of trans ideology is one of body dissociation and external validation seeking"; detrans activist Elle Palmer; and Carol Dansereau, an activist who argues that parents should "protect" their gender-nonconforming kids by enforcing rigid gender roles.

In a blog post last month, the library said it has no authority to decline to rent their spaces to any person or group unless that group "directly incites imminent criminal activity or comprises specific threats of violence targeting people or groups."

The directors of Capitol Hill Pride and Lynnwood Pride, Charlotte LeFevre and Philip Lipson, asked the library to cancel the event, arguing that members of WDI are associated with far-right militia groups. In response, library director Tom Fay said the library couldn't cancel the event, but doesn't endorse the views of WDI or any other group; he also noted that WDI agreed to hold their event after hours "to mitigate potential disruption and address concerns from staff," and that the library will have additional security, including Seattle Police Department officers, on hand.

We've reached out to the library with a list of questions, including how much they anticipate the extra security will cost and what the threshold is to bar a group for "inciting violence"; we'll update this post when we hear back.

2. The state Public Disclosure Commission has dismissed a complaint against a Burien resident by Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon, who accused Rashell Lisowski of violating state law during a Burien City Council public comment in October, when she urged the council to pass legislation raising the city's minimum wage to $20 an hour instead of sending the proposal to voters.

During the meeting, Burien City Attorney Garmon Newsom II told Lisowski to stop "campaigning for an initiative." She did not urge a yes vote on the measure, but did say Burien residents supported a higher minimum wage.

In addition to asking the council to pass the higher minimum wage, Lisowski—who owns a small business in Burien and works for Washington Community Action Network—used her two minutes to talk about her personal experience working for low wages in the service industry.

Lisowski said it was her first time speaking at a city council meeting, and she found the way the city attorney and city manager "zoomed in on me" shocking. "I didn't know why they were treating me like that," she said. "If I wasn't someone that had been in public speaking situations or had experience dealing with people treating me like that, I would have felt very intimidated and silenced. ...  I’m a constituent, and they treated me like I had no stake at all in the community."

The state's Open Public Meetings A/ct prohibits elected officials and public employees from using public facilities, or allowing them to be used to promote political campaigns. The PDC dismissed the complaint because Lisowski is not a public official, and noted in their dismissal—issued just one week after Bailon filed his complaint—that it's up to the presiding officer of the city council to stop people from electioneering, meaning that Burien Mayor Kevin Schilling, rather than any member of the public, could be liable if he let people use public comment to campaign.

In his complaint, Bailon described Lisowski as "the perpetrator" and provided "screenshots of the Washington Community Action Network website that promotes Ms. Lisowski as an organization employee [and] a website screenshot hosted by the Transit Riders Union, sponsor of Initiative Measure 24.001, that promotes involvement from Ms. Lisowski in their campaign effort." According to Burien budget documents, Bailon made $225,000 as city manager this year.