Council Declares "Defund Is Dead," But Can They Give Up Their Favorite Talking Point?
A purely performative resolution denounces the 2020 council.
By Erica C. Barnett
Six members of the Seattle City Council approved a resolution sponsored by Rob Saka on Tuesday denouncing the "defund movement" and blaming the 2020 city council for the decline in the number of SPD officers that started that year. (Cathy Moore, Dan Strauss, and Alexis Mercedes Rinck were absent.)
The resolution also "reverses any prior commitments or pledges to defund or abolish SPD services or personnel which led to the resignation of hundreds of police officers," formalizing the city's claims that Seattle officers left because the council briefly discussed defunding SPD, and not because of nationwide factors that impacted police departments in every major US city during COVID.
Legally, the nonbinding resolution has no weight. It's a purely performative statement of grievance. But it does offer a near-perfect distillation of the current council's approach to complex problems. After running for office promising to make tough choices and put the city back on track, this council is still blaming the people who were in their positions years ago for persistent problems, rather than interrogating why some of those problems have continued, and in many cases gotten worse, since they took over.
(The council often points to its "14 pieces of transformative public safety legislation" as evidence they're getting something done. The actual list of bills reveals that most of these "transformative" laws consist of bills signing off on SPD surveillance technology, something the previous council also did as a matter of course; approving and sustaining hiring bonuses for police; and bills with minimal or dubious public-safety impact, like one "establishing rules for parking and loading at music venue zones" and a bill imposing a fine for street racing, which was already a gross misdemeanor subject to jail and a fine.)
Saka noted several times that he was not on the council in 2020 and did not agree with that council's response to Black Lives Matter protesters that summer. Those protesters overwhelmingly demanded that the city cut SPD's funding and use that money to fund community-based safety programs; this demand, which the mayor and police chief mischaracterized in real time, was never met, because the council backed down after verbally expressing support.
Several times during his lengthy speech, Saka appeared to suggest that only a few Black people "cherry-picked" by the council wanted to reduce police funding—a claim that requires ignoring the Black-led movements that led protests against racialized police brutality in Seattle in the summer of 2020. The "defund" commitments, Saka said, were "purportedly made in my best interest as a Black man, and reportedly in the best interest of other Black people across our great city. I didn't benefit from that. No communities that I'm involved with benefited from that. It hurt all communities."
Saka also accused the previous council of being "white saviors."
"That commitment to defund the police was made purportedly in the best interest of Black and brown communities, with not one Black person on the council at that time," Saka said. "Look, Black and brown communities, we don't need white saviors. We speak—we are perfectly capable of speaking and self-advocating on our own behalf."
While it's true that the council that briefly considered reducing police funding in 2020 had no Black members (and that the current council has three), Saka's comments completely erased the five brown women who made up a council majority that year—Debora Juarez, Kshama Sawant, Lorena González, Teresa Mosqueda, and Tammy Morales. Four of those women supported funding alternatives to police, the other did not. Regardless of their views, all five belong to the "Black and brown communities" Saka claimed had no representation on the council.
Saka concluded his comments by asserting, "Defund is dead if this passes. That's the headline. If this passes, defund is dead. This legislation allows us to collectively heal from the shameful legacy of defund." The council has been blaming "defund" for the city's ongoing public safety problems for more than a year now. If "defund is dead," let's hope that this is the last time anyone on the council brings it up.
People like Saka, forever on the outside, too uncool, fearful of being left out, they know when to step in and make the grand gesture, the "performance". All without the needed experience, morals, and public service commitment required in our city and state. May he be a one-termer never to rise higher than this perch. Voters, keep checking on this wannabe.
Saka continues to show his lack of intelligence, integrity and leadership. Numbnuts.
A lightweight idiot who should just sit quietly and smile… that way, he might be able to limit the damage he does to himself.