PubliCola Questions: City Council District 2 Candidate Adonis Ducksworth
The city transportation staffer says he wants to make streets safer and reduce gun violence in Southeast Seattle—and finish a skate park in Rainier Beach.
By Erica C. Barnett
This November, voters in District 2 will choose a replacement for Tammy Morales, the progressive councilmember who resigned in January and was replaced, on a short-term basis, by SPD crime prevention coordinator Mark Solomon, who has said he will not run for the position.
The election will mark the end of an unusually tumultuous time for the council, which consists overwhelmingly of first-time members, most of them elected in 2023. With first-term council president Sara Nelson on the ballot as well, it’s conceivable that by this time next year, the council will have only one member, Dan Strauss, serving a second term—an unprecedented situation, according to Seattle Municipal Archive records.
District 2’s new council member will have their work cut out for them. Many citywide problems, including displacement, a lack of affordable housing, gun violence, traffic deaths, disinvestment in social services, and inequitable access to amenities like grocery stores and parks, are magnified in Southeast Seattle. Rainier Avenue South, for example, has consistently been one of the two deadliest roads in the city for many years, yet efforts to slow traffic and decrease collisions on the busy arterial have been limited to gentrified neighborhoods, like Columbia City, or ineffective at reducing deaths and injuries.
Beyond these district-specific concerns, the new councilmember will have to address a looming budget crisis, vote on a new police contract that can and should fix accountability issues that the most recent contract ignored, and come up with solutions to the citywide housing shortage—all at a time when cuts to federal funding threaten to make every problem facing the city exponentially worse.
So far, four candidates have filed to run for Council District 2; more could join the race before the May 9 filing deadline.
Adonis Ducksworth, a longtime Seattle Department of Transportation staffer who recently returned to SDOT after a stint as Mayor Bruce Harrell's transportation advisor, grew up on Beacon Hill and now lives in Rainier Beach. As a longtime skateboarder who credits skating (and golf) for keeping him out of trouble in his teens, Ducksworth is a passionate advocate for the Rainier Beach Skate Park, a project that has been delayed repeatedly and is currently scheduled to open later this year. Ducksworth wants to enclose the park so that skaters in South Seattle can have a place to skate in the winter, just like those in North Seattle.
We spoke with Ducksworth last week; this interview has been edited for length and clarity.
PubliCola (ECB): You sought this seat earlier this year, when Tammy Morales stepped down. What made you decide to run for election after the council chose Mark Solomon?
Adonis Ducksworth (AD): I grew up on Beacon Hill, and I live in Rainier Beach with my wife and two daughters. I have a 10-year-old and a 15-year-old. I want them and their friends to be safe when they cross the street, ride the bus, go to the community center or go to school, and whether people have lived here in the South End their whole lives, or are new to the area, or thinking about making South Seattle home, people want a district they can be proud of. That's why I believe we need to change the narrative about South Seattle. We need to change the narrative that we have the most dangerous roads and the most dangerous neighborhoods.
I believe we need leaders that are from the district and understand the district. We need leaders who know how to bring people together. I'm the only candidate that I know of with the track record of bringing diverse groups of people and ideas together to get some of the city's most complex projects done and policy adopted, whether it was both phases of 23rd, the West Seattle bridge closure, the Madison [bus rapid transit] project, the Seattle Transportation Plan, or the 2024 Transportation Levy. I know what it takes to get these things done.
ECB: The city may be facing major budget cuts, due to a revenue forecast that shows ongoing shortfalls in 2025 and 2026, plus an already forecasted deficit in 2027 and beyond. That’s before the city even starts trying to address federal cuts at the local level. How would you propose addressing these shortfalls?
AD: All options are on the table, including new progressive revenue, as well as expanding existing progressive revenue and looking at other sources of revenue. If spending cuts are on the table, I would fight to protect our city workers—those are the folks that keep our streets functioning, keep our potholes filled, do garbage collection, and keep our lights on, plus our planners and engineers. And I believe a lesson learned from COVID, especially as times get hard, is that we need to keep departments like Human Services whole, because more than ever, people will need to be connected with resources and solutions during times of need.
ECB: Are there areas that are going to be off limits to cuts, like the police department and the CARE Team?
AD: I think the expansion of the CARE Team has been great, and I think we should definitely continue that. The CARE Team that I would definitely would like to protect if cuts are on the table.
ECB: And just to press again on SPD: The police have a number of positions that are funded but not filled, which comes up as an issue every year. Would you consider cutting SPD?
AD: Like I said, I think all options are on the table. If it makes sense to make cuts to certain departments, I'm definitely willing to explore those.
ECB: Federal funding cuts are coming for local housing and homelessness programs. Would you prioritize housing, which takes years to come online, or immediate responses to the coming funding crisis, like shelter and treatment?
AD: I mean, we definitely need shelters to get people off the street and give them that opportunity to rest and potentially make a better choice. If they're addicted to drugs or if they need help, they need shelter. Obviously, we are in a housing crisis, so building more housing, providing funding for housing— those are both things that I would say are also off the table in terms of cuts. If we are really going into a recession, those are things that we need more than ever.
ECB: I believe you declined, earlier this year, to say whether you voted for or against Proposition 1A, the measure to fund social housing. Now that the funding measure has passed, what policies would you support as a council member to help the social housing developer succeed?
AD: I'm extremely happy that it did pass. We got the result that we wanted. As a council person going into 2026, I will do everything I can to support the implementation of Prop. 1A and social housing. And so that would mean directing funds to the social housing developer to make sure that they can get started as soon as they can on building social housing.
I’ve got my eye on seeing how the council implements HB 1110 to make room for more housing throughout the residential zones. Because social housing could, in my mind, fit into that. You could have a fourplex or a triplex, where you've got market rate [housing], you've got [housing for people making] 60 percent [of median income], and potentially transitional housing.
ECB: All the appeals of the comprehensive plan update have been dismissed, and it seems to be moving forward. If you were on the council today , what would you change about the comprehensive plan?
AD: I'm a transit person. So the one area of I would definitely look to change is around the transit corridors [where denser housing] only goes to 800 feet off the corridor. I would try to expand that to at least a couple of blocks to get more density and more housing around those transit corridors, and not just facing the arterial. I grew up in a triplex two blocks off of Beacon Avenue, on Beacon Hill, and just being a couple blocks off of the arterial gave me the neighborhood experience. I would want to do the same for other folks.
ECB: You mentioned the perception that District 2 is dangerous, and there is more gun violence in Southeast Seattle than all other parts of the city. What’s your plan to reduce gun violence, and what do you think of the city’s current strategy?
AD: I took a look at SPD’s crime dashboard, and just three and a half months into the year, the South Precinct is reporting the same number of shootings and shots fired as in all of 2024. So the trend is going up. The city auditor’s report recommends doing a better job of sharing information about patterns of gun violence and improving investigations—and not just, like, staffing up to do more investigations, but improving the organizational culture around what investigations look like. So I'm definitely curious to see how [Police] Chief [Shon] Barnes turns around the culture at SPD, particularly when it comes to investigations.
The other thing about the City Auditor’s report is it talks about an all-department approach, which I feel like the city has already started to do in some places, with the Downtown Activation Team. But we should also have an all-department approach to things like the Friends of Little Saigon rolled out Phố Đẹp about a month and a half ago, and seeing how the city can support efforts like that to do place-based prevention of violence.
But also, we have to look at giving our kids and our youth other opportunities besides the streets. And so that's why I support things like conflict resolution and diversion programs. Choose 180 has a great diversion program in the schools and court diversion programs. It's not going to solve gun violence, but I will put a plug for community assets like the Rainier Beach Skate Park to give kids who don't fit in can't really find their way something else to do. I know when I was growing up and I was starting to get in trouble in ninth grade, skateboarding is one of the things that that kept me out of trouble. My mom also sent me up to the golf course to play golf, and the community rallied around me, and so I had some options and things to do to keep me from the streets.
We really need a lot more of that in the south end for these young Black and brown boys. Because what's happening is—and we don't talk about it the way we used to talk about it in the ‘90s and when I was growing up—but what we're looking at is Black-on-Black crime. We need to give young Black and brown boys other alternatives to the streets.
ECB: 12th and Jackson is obviously a huge hot spot for District 2. You talked about place-based solutions. What should the city be doing to address that area, beyond just moving people around the block like they’re doing now?
AD: Fentanyl is the issue, and the sale of it feels very organized. It doesn't feel like it's just one or two dealers. And when you’re looking at how law enforcement has broken up organized crimes, it takes coordination, right? And I don't know how much help we're going to get from the federal government, but [we should be] coordinating with King County, SPD, coordinating with King County Metro Transit Police to tackle this—and also partnering with people at the Port, because the port is another place where drugs enter the country. It can’t be solved just at the street level or the corner level.
ECB: Do you think the new SODA law is an effective way to tackle the fentanyl problem in Seattle?
AD: No— the way that it's currently written, I could not support it. You need the resources to enforce it. And I don't think it's been enforced at all. The way that it's written, if that was to be imposed on a person, and let's say they went and got sober. Let's say they were sober for two or three years, You know, that doesn't make sense to me. I get the intent of what council was trying to do, and they're trying to do what they can, but I don't think that's the right way to go about it.
ECB That makes me wonder what you think about the mayor's emphasis on graffiti.
AD: People who are not artists who tag and gangs who mark territory— I don't think there's a place for either one of those. But you're talking to somebody who comes from like, skateboarding, DJ culture. I used to write graffiti as a kid here. Before Capitol Hill was Capitol Hill that we know today, there was a little spot where we could go and we could put up our pieces. So I have nothing but appreciation for really good art, graffiti art, and I think it really brings things to life. I just don't think there's much room for gang tags and gang markings all over the city. But art—I appreciate good art. I appreciate a good piece when I see it.
ECB: I get a little concerned when we get into the government deciding what is and isn’t art.
AD: One hundred percent. I'm just probably a little different than where some of the council members are probably coming from. Graffiti is the kind of thing where you know a good piece when you see a good piece and you know gang graffiti, when you see gang graffiti. It's in the specific ways that it's painted, in specific ways that it's drawn. Art has much more shadow, depth, there's symmetry to it.
ECB: You mentioned the perception that District 2 has the most unsafe streets. I used to bike on Rainier Ave. S, and I’ve been on the light rail when the train has run into a speeding vehicle. What would you support doing to make these dangerous roads safer?
AD: Citywide, fatal and serious injury collisions are up 52 percent from 2019 to 2023, according to SDOT’s 2024 report. And outside the downtown core, a majority of those serious and fatal injuries are happening on Rainer Avenue. So obviously, the goal is to reduce the number of fatal and serious injury collisions. I support Vision Zero. I support the Safe Systems approach—safe people, safe roads, safer vehicles, safer speeds. That includes education, that includes engineering, and that includes enforcement.
I will tell you what my preference is for Rainier Avenue. But as somebody who does outreach and engagement. I also know that we need to bring everybody into the conversation. My preference, obviously, is for an engineering solution that brings people closer to the street, similar to what you see in Columbia City. Because as you enter Columbia City, whether you do it on purpose, whether you know you're doing it on purpose or not, you slow down, and that is because the buildings and the people are closer to the street. And so how do we achieve that on MLK? How do we achieve that on Rainier Avenue? Obviously, MLK has four lanes of traffic, plus the trains. So it's figuring out what we could do with that outside lane. And then just looking long-term, how we can get development to bring those buildings closer.