The Audacity of Dorsol

You can’t get much further from the
typical candidate for Seattle City Council than Dorsol Plants. He’s 24
years old. He lives in a rented room in a house in West Seattle’s
scrappy Highland Park neighborhood. He doesn’t own a car. Back when he
was working full-time at a Seattle homeless shelter, before daily
campaigning required him to scale back his hours, he was on track to
earn just $20,000 this year. When asked about his leadership
experience, he points to his two tours with the army in Iraq, service
he signed up for after September 11, 2001, in order to do what his
parents repeatedly told him while he was growing up in West Virginia:
“Give as much back as you can.”

Plants shipped off for Iraq as an enthusiastic supporter of the war,
but the experience changed him. “To be honest,” he said, “I was really
young. And to believe that our commander had lied to us—as naive
as it sounds—it was just something that I couldn’t fathom.” But
after participating in a cavalry charge to Baghdad, then policing the
chaotic city, and all the while watching as the rationale for the war
unraveled and veterans back home complained about being abandoned by
the Bush administration, Plants began to fathom just how big a mistake
he’d supported. He took an honorable discharge in 2007 and moved to
Seattle, having visited during breaks from his military service.

“It wasn’t like New York or Chicago,” he said. “I could actually see
trees.” He remembers getting into a spirited political debate with a
stranger in front of the downtown library. He couldn’t believe that the
man not only wanted to drop everything and debate, but also seemed to
enjoy the exchange of views as much as he did. “I’ve been in love with
Seattle ever since,” he said.

Plants quickly got involved in the Highland Park Action Committee,
eventually becoming chair of the group and fighting to keep the city
from building a jail in the neighborhood. He became a huge Barack Obama
fan, served as his neighborhood’s precinct committee officer during the
2008 primary, and tried (unsuccessfully) to become a delegate to the
state nominating convention. Then, frustrated by his feeling that the
best interests of neighborhoods like Highland Park were being ignored,
he decided to run for city council.

Now, Plants is in a tough race for the seat being vacated by Jan
Drago, a well-known and well-connected Seattle politician from

exactly the mold that Dorsol is trying to break. His opponents,
too, are familiar Seattle political types: David Bloom, the aging,
rumpled ­affordable-housing activist, and Sally Bagshaw, the
plugged-in civic do-gooder with a gold-plated résumé and
a lot of powerful Democratic friends. Plants has $6,000 and a core of
about 10 reliable volunteers. He has no professional political
consultants. Nevertheless, he’s getting attention and endorsements for
his platform of improving transportation, listening to neighborhoods,
and promoting sensible density that keeps Seattle livable for people in
his income bracket.

It’s an audacious bid, but Plants has a quick response for those who
say he’s too young, should get more experience first, should,
essentially, wait his turn.

“A lot of the big things we are facing in Seattle are not
two-years-from-now issues,” he says. “They are 20-year issues. We need
someone from our generation on the city council, watching to make sure
the decisions that are being made are going to be the best for us when
we are ‘old enough’ to be on the city council.”