The protest crowd was huge.
The protest crowd was enormous. Ansel Herz

Thousands of People Marched through Downtown Seattle Last Night: The protests began with a rally at Westlake Park, focused on gathering signatures for an initiative to reform state law. People were pissed and wanted to march. The crowd stretched several blocks. Late in the evening, a small group attempted to run on to a freeway onramp. Seattle police blocked the way and threw two blast balls. The crowd dispersed.

Latest on the Shooting of Dallas Police: This is a tragedy. Five officers are dead after a sniper opened fire on them during an anti-police brutality protest. Police killed the suspected gunman, 25-year-old Micah Johnson, with a bomb robot. According to the Dallas police chief: “The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter… He said he was upset about the recent shootings, he was upset at white people. The suspect said he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers… The suspect said that he was not affiliated with any groups and he stated that he did this alone.” Some Dallas police officers had posed with protesters during the rally (something I haven’t seen in Seattle):

Seattle Police Are Riding in Pairs:

King County Sheriff John Urquhart on Dallas Police Shootings: It’s an “abomination,” the sheriff told KING 5.

Urquhart says he understands the anger aimed at police, but says the frustration needs to be pointed in the right direction.

“They should not be frustrated with law enforcement. They should be frustrated with those individual officers,” said Urquhart. “What we’ve seen is a vilification of law enforcement over what happened, specifically in Louisiana and in Minnesota. And really, the bad guy is not my deputies. It’s not law enforcement in general. There’s 900,000 police officers in this country. If you want to be mad at somebody, be mad at those two officers.”

Obama on the Shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile: “Change has been too slow,” he said in a speech. “We have to have a greater sense of urgency about this.” (Psst: Tell that to your own administration.) And:

“When people say ‘black lives matter,’ that doesn’t mean blue lives don’t matter, it just means all lives matter — but right now the big concern is the fact that the data shows black folks are more vulnerable to these kinds of incidents,” the president said.

“This isn’t a matter of us comparing the value of lives. This is recognizing that there is a particular burden that is being placed on a group of our fellow citizens. And we should care about that. And we can’t dismiss it.

Transphobic Initiative Fails! “Just Want Privacy, the anti-trans group that wanted to make the state vote on trans people’s civil rights, did not get enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot,” Sydney reports.

Hanford Is Such a Mess: KING 5’s Susannah Frame has been doggedly reporting on safety lapses at the nuclear facility for months. Her latest: A union representing 1,200 workers wants safety equipment—a self-contained breathing device—to be mandatory, not optional. The union says it has lost contracts at the site for insisting on greater safety measures before.

Mayor Is Shrinking Seattle’s Preschool Program: Instead of serving a projected 2,000 children in its fourth year, Ed Murray is scaling back the goal to 1,615 children. “That’s because the city will begin paying the program’s preschool providers more money per child, he said,” the Seattle Times reports. The city has had trouble getting preschool providers to join the program.

Seattle Programmers Are Highest Paid in the Country: New data shows Seattle software engineers are paid “more than $59 an hour on average,” KUOW reports. “That makes Seattle ‘the highest paying area nationwide’ for these tech jobs.”

Good Signs for the U.S. Economy: “The US economy added 287,000 jobs in June—exceeding expectations after two months of disappointing job growth,” the Guardian reports. “The unemployment rate went up to 4.9%, the Department of Labor announced on Friday.”

Jill Stein Offers to Step Aside for Bernie Sanders to Run on Green Party Ticket: Good idea from the Greens’ perspective. Bad idea for everyone else.

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