Weather, baby: Hello and good morning, Seattle. If you’ve been awake for a little while already this morning then you may have seen some showers. Post-10 am, we’re over that. For the rest of the day, you can expect clouds, but leave the umbrella at home—if you swing that way. The temperature should hold steady in the mid-40s throughout the day, too. But don’t take my word for it. Check out the weather forecast right here. 

Manuel Ellis: KING 5 reports that the jury is expected to start deliberations today in the trial of three Tacoma police officers charged with killing Manuel Ellis. Back in March 2020, Tacoma cops in a car stopped Ellis on his way home. When he started to walk away, the cops got out of the car and knocked Ellis down to his knees. Video footage shows the cops hitting Ellis over and over again. One cop put him in a choke hold while the other tased his chest. Ellis told the cops he couldn’t breathe before they eventually killed him. The cops’ attorneys gave their final arguments yesterday, trying to get their clients out of trouble. KING 5 broke it down here. 

War on drugs: So far, Seattle cops arrest about one person a day under the recently passed ban against public drug use. Even still, officials said Seattle Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program told the City Council that it will reach its limit for serving new diversion cases by May of next year. Hard to pretend this law is about treatment and not throwing people into jail when the diversion program says we are totally boned in six months. Capitol Hill Seattle Blog has more here.

Impeachment time: Republicans in the House passed a bill to formalize their impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden. Until now, House Republicans failed to get the numbers needed to get the inquiry off the ground since, for those of you who don’t know, the Republicans have literally no dirt on Biden, just vibes. Personally, I get it. I’m a hateful, spiteful bitch. And I would love to launch a congressional impeachment inquiry against this one girl who texts my boyfriend to ask if he has eaten, but until she or Biden actually commits an impeachable offense, the Republicans and I will just have to cope and seethe.

The US war machine: Yesterday the Senate passed a big ol’ defense bill, authorizing $886 billion in national defense spending, which could literally solve homelessness in King County 80 times, but who’s counting? Most notably, the bill will give military peeps a 5.2% raise and it will extend the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. 

Give it a rest, man: After almost two years of war, Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that he’s gonna keep terrorizing Ukraine until Russia achieves its goals of “de-Nazification, de-militarization and a neutral status” of Ukraine.

Yep, this is totally about Hamas: On Tuesday, Israel started raiding Jenin in the West Bank, the region of Palestine controlled not by Israel’s supposed target Hamas, but by the Palestinian Authority. In the last two days, Israel has killed at least 8 Palestinians in a refugee camp and 58 people in the West Bank since October 7. So, no. Israel’s attacks are not just about Hamas’ attack. It’s about ethnic cleansing. 

Bu-bu-bu-budget: Gov. Jay Inslee unveiled his proposal for a $70.9 billion operating budget yesterday. The budget would bump paraeducators’ wages, allocate half a billion to behavioral health services, and pay for 1,350 new housing units for the target of Inslee’s sweeps, the people living on state rights of way. 

Show me the money: Okay, take a really quick guess where the richest and poorest neighborhoods are in King County.

You’ll like this one: Remember how the City Council just narrowly passed a tiny increase on a tax on the biggest of big businesses to fund mental health counselors for Seattle Public Schools? The Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce revealed that it tried to get Mayor Bruce Harrell to veto the measure. In a letter published after the Mayor already approved the budget, the supervillains at the Chamber tattled on themselves, referring to funding mental health services for children as “the ugly” in “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of the budget. Council Member Lisa Herbold has explained time and time again that no, this increase will not put the City’s 500 largest businesses in the red. The council’s move increased the tax one-twentieth of a percent for the smallest big businesses—and make no mistake, those are big businesses, not mom-and-pop shops operating on a shoestring budget. Maybe this is old news, but my bitter, bitter self needed to let it out. What’s more important? Children’s mental health or $20 million in profit spread across 500 of the largest businesses in Seattle? I have my answer!

Daily reminder to decline to sign: A conservative billionaire wants to make Washington’s tax structure even more hostile to working families (if you can believe it). Brian Heywood, some rich dude from Redmond, launched six very bad initiatives, which I broke down here. He and his well-paid signature gatherers have collected enough signatures to qualify two measures for the ballot—a measure to repeal the carbon tax and, most recently, a super redundant parental notification law that basically functions as bait for Christians to GOTV for all six. With a few days left until deadline, rumor has it the campaign will track down enough signatures for all six of the nightmare proposals.

WYD: If you’re fiending for festivities and fun this week, my comrades at The Stranger made an excellent list of shit to do every single day this week. Tonight, Charles Mudede recommends you visit the theater previously known as the Cinerama as it comes back from the dead as SIFF Cinema Downtown. IDK if Wonka is THE movie to welcome the cultural gem back, but hey, it kinda goes nicely with the return of the theater’s iconic chocolate popcorn. 

The Hunger Games broke my brain: I saw the new Hunger Games movie and now all I think about is Rachel Zegler. She lives in my walls.

Hannah Krieg is a staff writer at The Stranger covering everything that goes down at Seattle City Hall. Importantly, she is a Libra. She is also The Stranger's resident Gen Z writer, with an affinity for...

16 replies on “Slog AM: Cinerama Returns as SIFF Cinema Downtown, Drug Bill Arrests to Outpace Diversion Program Capacity, and Israel Kills Eight in West Bank”

  2. “…could literally solve homelessness in King County 80 times, but who’s counting?”

    All of the money Seattle and King County have spent on homelessness in the last decade has utterly failed to “solve homelessness,” even one time, so what’s your basis for saying yet more money could do this better?

    @2: Thanks for that correction. As commenter Bax has repeatedly reminded us, the Stranger could not actually care less about the health of children in Seattle’s public schools. When a group of parents demanded the removal of a violent encampment a block from their children’s public kindergarten, Hannah simply ignored repeated eruptions of gun violence from the encampment, called the parents poor-haters, and essentially told them to just shut up:

    https://www.thestranger.com/news/2023/03/21/78913110/the-parents-dont-want-shelter-they-want-sweeps

  3. @2 She’s young and immature. She hasn’t even grown to the point where she’s figured out that you don’t call someone your “boyfriend” when rando women are contacting them. You recognize the problem is with the person who would take those messages, dump them, and move on. We all were there. We all grew up. She hasn’t yet.

    It will take a few years, and likely some failed attempts to move up the journalistic ladder to realize the difference between advocacy journalism and propaganda.

  4. @2 the demonization of businesses got tired and cliche a long time ago but TS keeps keeping on with the rhetoric that all revenue really belongs to the government and its only via their benevolence that you are allowed to keep any of it. Lost in Hannah’s diatribe about the “tiniest of tiny increases” is that it is $20M dollars. That is $20M that will not go to raises or new hiring but instead be used for nebulous mental health services that are impossible to measure.

    Also not mentioned in Hannah’s round up. The state budget proposed by Inslee is $2.5B times larger than what was proposed in April driven largely by the carbon tax and capital gains tax. Remember that when the state cries poor next year and looks to raise additional revenue.

    The judge in the Ellis trial is considering calling a mistrial due to prosecutor misconduct. He openly chastised the prosecution in court yesterday for repeating statements that would bias the jury toward the defendants even after he warned her not too. If he allows the trial to go to the jury and they vote to convict the conduct of the prosecutor is going to factor largely in the coming appeal.

  5. “…Seattle cops arrest about one person a day under the recently passed ban against public drug use.”

    So, that radical expansion of the War on Drugs has yet to make a massive incarceration police state out of Seattle, eh? Maybe the Stranger’s rhetoric was a bit over the top, one thinks?

  6. I’ve never gotten a remotely satisfactory, or even relevant, answer to why they didn’t even try at all to find a way to continue using the Cinerama name.

    All that’s ever been said was “it didn’t come with the building” and that has nothing to do with finding other ways to get permission to use the name.

    It’s the building’s iconic and familiar name… as well as it’s distinguishing factor. Calling it “Siff Cinema Downtown” negates all of that, as if it was simply the south version of “Siff Cinema Uptown,” which it’s not.

    And they still call the Egyptian “Siff Cinema Egyptian.”

  7. @7: The term “Cinerama” is intellectual property. It was licensed to Vulcan (Paul Allen’s company) when it owned the building. SIFF won’t pay the licensing fee, because they’d rather spend that money on movies, so they can’t use the name; simple as that.

  8. “Remember how the City Council just narrowly passed a tiny increase on a tax”

    Translation: A recent budget amendment resulted in an additional $20 million of funding for mental health counselors in public schools.

  9. Did “Continue reading” take the day off?

    @10: How much was the licensing fee? They spend lots of money on things other than movies so I’m buying that excuse (without knowing the fee amount).

  11. “So, no.

    Israel’s attacks

    are not just about Hamas’

    attack. It’s about ethnic cleansing.”

    yeah

    but it’s just

    a little Lite Ethnic

    Cleansing so totes

    understandable in an

    ongoing open-air prison

    sorta situation. [hand wave].

    the World

    be Damned

    mic

    drop.

  12. @12 This was covered a while back. IIRC, the licensing fee was considered exorbitant. Whether “exorbitant” was $10K or $10M doesn’t really matter that much if SIFF decided it wasn’t worth the money. If you really want to know, fundraise $10K for SIFF and then ask how much more they’d need to raise to get the name.

  13. @6:

    As the article clearly states, money for diversion/rehab will run out in about six months. So, pro-incarceration cops don’t have any real incentive to arrest users if they can’t lock them up in prison. Let’s see what happens after the money runs out; I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see arrest rates skyrocket at that point.

    @7: Maybe read some of the articles about the sale to SIFF: many of them specifically noted that when Vulcan bought the Seattle Cinerama in 1999 it licensed the Cinerama trademark from the owners of the name (The Decurion Corp., which managed L.A.-based Pacific Theatres & ArcLight Cinemas until they were all shut down in 2021). The agreement stipulated the license would be revoked upon resale of the facility, and that the trade name would revert back to sole use by Decurion, which also still owns the Cinerama 3-camera technology.

  14. @18: “I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see arrest rates skyrocket at that point.”

    So, what’s the definition of “skyrocket”? Ten arrests per day? One hundred? One thousand? Because even a five-fold increase would still make for pretty small numbers, especially if compared to the Stranger’s extensive hyperventilation on this topic.

  15. So the Cinerama is called something different now.

    OK.

    As for people being arrested for drug use. Good.

    It’s an easy problem to avoid.

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