On September 26, DeVitta Briscoe found herself inside Seattle City Hall, a guest of Mayor Ed Murray. The irony was not lost on her. There she was, the sister of a man killed by Seattle police in February, the mother of a teenager killed by another teenager in Tacoma during a 2010 gang fight. She sat in the back, several rows behind Seattle police chief Kathleen O’Toole. She wore white pants and a white shirt, had put on nice earrings and makeup for the event.
She looked excited in moments, and in other moments cynical and fatigued. She chatted and laughed with an old activist friend who’d come to the event with her as everyone waited for Murray to deliver his annual budget speech.
Five months earlier, after her brother’s killing, Briscoe had been on the outside. She’d taken to the streets in highly charged protests in front of City Hall—rallying around a mock coffin that represented the victims of police violence, accusing the police of “terrorism.” She stormed out of community meetings with police officers. O’Toole, for her part, turned down an invitation from Briscoe’s family to attend a meeting about her brother’s death.
“I was so mad,” Briscoe remembered.
But for the mayor’s speech, at least, the doors at City Hall had opened up to her, and she’d decided to step inside. “Now,” Briscoe said, “there’s a whole different outlook. The narrative is shifting because we keep pushing.”