Send Dan down there to thumbwrestle every member of No New Youth Jail so that he can prove his galaxy brain superiority over them (even though he refused to debate Nikita on the matter).

When will they start building this new facility so that this STUPID STUPID STUPID cause will finally be put to the death it so richly deserves?

Here's some reality for these activists:

1) The current facility is decrepit. It literally says to children and families that we don't care about them.

2) Even in the Utopia of No Caged Youth (the dumbest slogan to match the stupidest cause) we will need a place to process juvenile offenders until we can get them into social services. Would they rather we house them at King County Jail? If they do, they have either never been to King County Jail or they hate children.

3) The Utopia will never happen. There will always be juvenile offenders. I am all for alternatives to incarceration, but there are some children who will need to be locked up. Better to lock them up in a modern, humanely designed facility.

4) Millions of dollars in tax payer money, financed by bonds, have already been spent on this project. Cancelling it now would be a criminal act of financial malfeasance, especially if done to placate a bunch of nitwits. We'll still have to pay off the bonds, just like the Kingdome (which was at least paid by hotel/motel tax) Will we get our money back?

5) Even King County won't vote for some sort of bond issue that promotes a moonpie dopey non-jail for youth offenders, so we are condemning another generation of youth offenders to the same dismal facility that tells them that we don't care about them.

6) Buildings can be re-purposed. Say we reach that golden age of No Caged Youth. Fine. Make it a school. Or a homeless shelter. Or sell it to the highest bidder and build townhomes.

Good grief, this is a dumb cause.

@3 FTW

I was dismayed to see what a struggle it was for the ambulance traffic to/from Harbor View, which is of course just a few blocks up the hill from the protest site. There were 4 private ambulances stuck in gridlock at 4th and Jackson around the time I abandoned my bus to walk the rest of the way.

@3

I'm not sure it's a "dumb" cause; it's at least logically consistent with a broader anarchist political outlook.

But I'd certainly call it pernicious. These are people who think a rape victim should have to sit in class with her convicted rapist, possibly for years, just because the rapist happened to be under the age of 18 at the time of the rape.

They might be ideologically consistent, and they might not be dumb, but they're clearly at least a little bit evil.

@5 - I had the same thought. I informed one of the protesters standing on the side with a sign of this situation (blocking ambulance and other key Harborview traffic), having had to get off a blocked #4 bus carrying a woman on oxygen trying to get to an appointment at Harborview. "I know," the protestor girl said loftily. "YOU'RE STOPPING PEOPLE FROM GETTING TO THE HOSPITAL," I repeated calmly, disbelieving. "I know," she repeated, same lofty tone. I then went to the police officers on the south side and told them the same. They seemed to be extremely frustrated with the situation, but unable to do anything. This egotistical myopia makes me angry.

I'm also sad to see these March for Your Lives organizers, who seem to be a good lot for a good cause, align themselves with these tonedeaf egoists. Seriously, guys, CUT TIES.

I'm as "down with the man" as the next progressive, but this "cause" escapes me. Yes. Let's keep our young offenders in an overcrowded dangerous facility. Or let's just not jail young rapists and murderers at all, I guess?

What a fucking stupid waste of energy and effort.

First customers for the new detention facility.

Seattle knows how to get what it wants. First, we go over the top selling NHL season tickets to get our own team. And now we can fill the new jail before its even built. I love this town.

Good grief, these people have too much time on their hands. BUT, I can appreciate people standing up for something they are passionate about. They obviously don't think this is a stupid cause, even though it sure seems to me to be one. How does one find so much compassion in their hearts to overlook the crime, overlook the victims and only focus on the myriad of circumstances in the offenders life leading up to the point of incarceration.

Can someone explain why they weren’t removed from lying in the street? Seems to me like the police didn’t do their job, just sayin’.

You know, I actually buy the argument that we should lock up people much less than we do now. That most people could be sentenced to intensive monitoring and restriction of movement and behavior, without institutionalizing them, for public safety.

But the last criminals this approach works on is the most impulsive ones, the most likely to do dumb things that hurt themselves. Which describes minors developmentally.

From previous news stories, it sounds like the juvenile justice system already tries quite hard not to lock up children unless they're out of other options for public safety. Correct me if you have examples otherwise.

@8: "YOU'RE STOPPING PEOPLE FROM GETTING TO THE HOSPITAL,"

Well put. And what a shame it would be if that car that pushed through some of them earlier injured one of them, but the ambulance couldn't get through to bring THEM to Harborview.

Seattle protestors continue to use the same tired tactics that do nothing to inform anybody and do everything to annoy and disrupt public life to nobody's benefit.

Remember the years and years of Iraq war protests (later becoming let's-all-bring-all-the-causes-out-and-block-traffic-together)? God what a pain in the ass those were. Sure did a lot of good too.

As a former inmate of a juvenile detention facility, I think the youth jail should be built. If you're going to be locked up, it's really nice to be in a place that has functioning toilets (YAY TOILETS!) and a place of your own to sleep. It's not as if not building a new jail will make the issue of incarcerated kids go away. These protesters no doubt mean well but in the real world, kids need the new facility. Blocking traffic is criminally stupid.

I would love to hear from either the mayor’s office or the SPD as to how a small group of protestors were permitted to disrupt so much of everyone else’s day. “Coddling a small fringe’s lawless actions” is right up there with “not salting the roads” on the list of high-minded decisions that will get officials voted out.

@16 This is a piece of shit thing to say. And you got your wish... someone like you who decided driving over people they don't like is ok did just that. KIRO is reporting someone drove into them.

Christ. It's 4th AVENUE and James STREET. If you're going to write/edit cutlines for "Seattle's only local newspaper," you might want to learn the city's basic geography.

Thank you, cmonster dear. My job is to train people, and one of the things I focus on is basic Seattle addressing, which is both incredibly simple and surprisingly anxiety causing.

@3 (and @24 I guess too): First, thank you for being a voice of reason and civility on this issue and many others on Slog. I always enjoy reading your comments.

Second, construction is already happening on the new facility. Last time I went by there in mid-January, it looked like there were three floors worth of steel framing already up. IIRC, the county says the facility will open in mid-2019, so they've got a good start on it.

@21: Oh please, if those two grandmas in the car wanted to drive over people, they would have driven more than 1 MPH. Even after your they were being assaulted by your little darlings, they stopped the car. They were just trying to get past the inconsiderate jackwads who ruined the day for tens of thousands of people. The same inconsiderate jackwads who had no problem preventing ambulances from getting to Harborview and who kept me and countless others from work so they could have their fun little stunt. If I had gotten my wish, the cops would have hitched the lot of them up to a police horse and drag them the fuck out of our way.

@ 3 Thank you - Agree with your statement completely.

I'm wondering when it the Mayor or the City Council going to make a statement as to why this protest was allowed for so long? Why weren't the people forcibly removed?

Newsmama dear, when it comes to Seattle government the craziest people get the most attention. They do that to distract from the wealthy people, who get the most benefit.

I wish another car would have driven it's front tires right up til about touching and the driver just sat there with the horn firmly depressed, right in their faces. GET A FUCKING PERMIT! Durkin and Police Chief DO YOUR JOBS.

If they want to protest, we can protest them.