All politics is local. There is no ethereal federal level of experiencing day-to-day life. It’s in our streets and our schools, and sleeping in our local parks. This authors sour grapes from losing his local bid to be a city council member shows, and drowning in despair is a terrible look for seeking higher office, especially now. Show me your fight!

TL/DR: Perrenial failed leftie candidate conflates multiple unrelated issues.

@2 extension. Gotta give him credit though. It beats working for a living.

"the common Seattle canard of the houseless resident who “refuses” shelter in order to sleep on the street"

From KIRO:
"Of the people swept in Ballard, he said only two of around 25 accepted the shelter offered, with beds."

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/ballard-businesses-say-neighborhood-tug-of-war-homeless-camps-pop-back-up-after-sweeps/MYQ54D7H6ZEYFOLM6ITF7KCJ5I/

@2: He's going to win this election though, because he's running against a fucking vigilante, in the most liberal district in the state.

I am not sure what the writer is saying because dismantling welfare and regulations on business were federal initiatives that have been in the works for decades now. Homelessness itself is a result of those policies.

"should be cause for reflection for Washingtonians who see our progressive ideals as under siege by Washington, DC."

Why? Nothing about the recent Supreme Court rules requires Seattle to do anything differently. We can continue to indefinitely warehouse our most vulnerable residents in squalid encampments that lack even the most basic sanitation, just like we've been doing for decades.

That said, it might be worth considering whether this is the best approach to untreated mental health and substance abuse problems.

The Stranger uses the infamous “snowy tent” photo at the top of the post to inform readers the post will contain absolute nonsense on the topic of homelessness. This author did not disappoint. As @4 noted, the author takes a demonstrably true statement, and mislabels it as a “canard.”

It’s difficult to see how electing someone with this mindset will help Seattle effectively address the long-running homelessness crisis. Or, for that matter, any other problem it faces.

Shaun is the DSA candidate of the moment (hopefully he flamed out faster than comrade Sawant).

This Guest Rant is a political ad, full stop (hopefully his opponents demand equal time).

@5 he prob will win but will get disillusioned pretty quickly like Harris-Talley did when he finds out no one in Olympia gives a shit about him or his policies. He won’t be willing to put in the work to build coalitions and compromise so he’ll never get anything done and will just get lost in the swamp.

If the citizens of a city vote to tax themselves and establish parks for public use and enjoyment and sidewalks for people to walk in the city, and a few people decide that they will overrule that decision of the citizens and seize the parks and sidewalks for their personal use and effectively foreclose the public from their own spaces, why should a city tolerate that?

Sweep sweep sweep

Sweep em all and keep sweeping.

"the common Seattle canard of the houseless resident who “refuses” shelter"

Which resident is that? And what was the nature of the shelter that they refused? Some truly down-on-their-luck individual who really just needs a hand up to make it? Some crazy person who tries to "burn the place down" over a conflict with the staff (Renton Red Lion housing, for example)? A meth/fentanyl addict who just can't imagine living more than a few hundred feet from their dealer's RV? Or the nut-job that wants to prospect for gold in Seattle parks. Or dig his hole under SR-529?

There are any number of homeless types out there. One housing solution doesn't fit them all. And our housing "navigators" are wholly unqualified to evaluate them on the spot even where the choices to exist. If I was the down on my luck case, I'd certainly refuse housing next door to a fire bug or a loony.

@14 I don’t disagree but we’re talking about the 43rd. Suarez is a classic liberal Dem but in the 43rd that might as well make you a republican. Heck the local Dem district group is an offshoot of socialist alternative. It seems like Scott has everything lined up for him and if he blows this one he should def call it quits.

Progressives love to blame Reagan for just about everything.
They’ll overlook 8 years of Clinton and 8 years of Obama. I’d have to look at the make up of congress during the Clinton years, but I remember the first half of Obama’s first term, democrats held the house and were one vote from a supermajority in the senate. The only thing he managed to do was push through the affordable care act that was broken before it ever went live

@19: “ I’d have to look at the make up of congress during the Clinton years,”

Yeah, try that sometime. After the first two years of his first term, the Republicans retook both Houses for the first time in decades. They spent the next two years trying to stop his re-election, as he outmaneuvered them easily on pretty much everything. After his re-election, they spent the next two years trying to remove him from office, as he outmaneuvered them easily on pretty much everything, until voters almost took away their majority in the House — the worst showing by the opposition party in the sixth year of a presidency since 1822. He retired with a combination of the best economic record of any President, ever, and one of the highest public-approval ratings as well.

The Republicans’ never-ending attempts to double down on their previous failures suggests piling on extra belligerence somehow failed to compensate for their basic lack of intelligence.

Andrea Suarez is a hero to many. She has saved many lives and exposed the Seattle progressive ideological failure and their manufacturing of this crisis for political theatre while denying that it had anything to do with drugs and their own stupid “stop the sweeps” policies that concentrated drug riffraff in Seattle. It is an affordable housing crisis!!! lol. Sorry, the grift is up.