Comments

1

Common sense from the Seattle City Council. Who wudda thunk it.

4

The judge overseeing the SPD's reforms will review the contract and decide if it's in line with what her court has ordered. That should be good enough.

5

What's the point of voting for Democrats again?

6

The judge overseeing the SPD's reforms will review the contract and decide if it's in line with what the court has ordered. That should be good enough.

It's a bitch making a living I this city - our police deserve to be payed like anyone else.

7

Oh weird double post, sorry not sure what went wrong

9

I always want to giggle when people say the police will all quit. First off, they won't. Most of them can't afford too, and besides the pension and benefits are too good.

Secondly, there's always more angry bullies to fill those slots. We'll never have a problem filling vacancies in the police force.

12

@9 do they still get pensions? I assumed 403(b) ....

14

@9 yes, you are right, particularly with all of the young veterans we have....

15

Why is Kshama wearing our drapes?

16

A sharp and illuminating contrast at the Seattle city council vote:
Socialist fighter Kshama Sawant, versus the 8 corporate catspaws.

Shades of the Sergei Eisenstein movie “Battleship Potemkin”:

All against one — One against all!

All part of the fight for humankind’s Socialist future:
All for one — One for all!

https://www.socialistalternative.org/

17

“This is a difficult decision, involving rules and laws and stuff, so we have no choice but to punt it to the federal judge. Can we haz paycheck now?” — The Lazy Eight

“No matter what I say, I will always vote against actual unions.” — Sawant

Or what @5 said.

18

Jackkay dear, we are all replaceable. You can be damn sure that the day I become eligible for the maximum benefit under the city pension plan, I too will fly the coop and head down to the desert to be a dirty old man, leaving my position for someone younger and hungrier, so how could I blame a cop for wanting that?

But that’s the difference between you and I: I don’t fetishize the police.

20

"All part of the fight for humankind’s Socialist future"

Slow down big boy, you have one seat on a nine seat city council in a mid sized city. Let us know when you have your big boy pants on and we can talk "revolution".

Carry on comrade.

23

" leaves pile up in the gutters and sidewalks all across the poor parts of Seattle"

Well, as the great PJ O'Rourke once said, you're never too poor to clean up around your home. That's what people do in my neighborhood, they clean the leaves from the drains themselves.

27

Woo hoo #20,

Contrary to your silly moniker:
Only socialism is freedom!

Kshama Sawant defeated our corporate overlords’ Democrat-Republican two-headed snake to win a Seattle city council position in 2013.
She won again in 2015.
We’re going all out to win again in 2019 — a terrific struggle, given the deluge of corporate cash bearing down upon us!

Even more importantly, Kshama Sawant uses that single socialist conquest as a megaphone for building mass movements:
• Forcing the 8 corporate council members to concede a $15-per-hour minimum-wage throughout Seattle — we want to extend that victory nationwide!
• Defeating the police and prison-industry’s attempt to build a new police headquarters and youth jail.
• Forcing the 8 corporate council members to tax big business so as to pay for a massive social housing program — but next thing you know, Billionaire Bully Bezos the Amazon CEO wags his finger at them and most of them abjectly cave in, repealing the tax!

Of paramount importance is how Kshama Sawant’s victory has made Seattle a “City of Hope” for all the workers of all the world!
Giving us unassailable arguments.

For example in Nigeria/India/Pakistan:
“Oho, so you think the Buhari/Modi/Khan capitalist butcher regime is too strong for us to defeat?
Then how did your socialist sister Kshama Sawant defeat their ilk in Seattle?
In a major US city.
In the belly of the beast.
So take courage — and strike hard!”

Therefore it’s absolutely vital for us to preserve and extend the socialist beach-head.

Please vote for Kshama Sawant, please donate to us, and please consider joining us:
https://www.socialistalternative.org/

Together we have a world to win!

28

SPOG leadership voted down a contract in 2015 and SPOG membership rejected a contract in 2016 (unquestionably because of police reforms). The pity narrative that highlights that Seattle police have gone nearly four years without a new contract (and the consequent pay raise) ignores the real reason this has happened: police know they will always win back wages in newly negotiated contracts, hence it is a way for them to financially blackmail the City when they choose to fight contract provisions around police reform. This is why many police reform organizations have suggested limiting back-pay in newly negotiated police contracts to reduce the incentives that police unions have for fighting police reforms and delaying contract negotiations.

Because Seattle no longer has any reporter doing investigative journalism on policing (e.g., Ansel Herz and Dominic Holden who consistently challenged official narratives), no one has actually bothered to find out who sat across from SPOG at the negotiating table and hammered out the minutiae of this new contract. That information was accidentally leaked at the October 30th special meeting of the CPC, revealing there were two people who, over the long term, consistently sat across from SPOG: Ian Warner (General Counsel to Mayor Durkan) and Otto G. Klein III (private labor law attorney who for three decades has worked for the management/boss side). This is the real story: two unelected bureaucrats, the first a well known dissembler and prevaricator, the latter a gun for hire, have negotiated away the rights and protections for Seattleites. Ian Warner is best remembered for falsely claiming last fall that arbitration hearings for police would be open to the public, and misleading people on the current contract with false claims about what arbitrators can do and the meaning of contract "re-openers." Warner is nothing if not consistent in his role in police reform as chief dissembler: on May 4, 2017, and again on October 25, 2018 (both at public forums), Warner has repeated the false claim that the SPD has entered a new era of transparency by making publicly available its "Use of Force" reports (the only police reports that can be considered as sworn statements and be the basis for questioning an officer's honesty).
Seattle's 2017 police reform legislation was a "floor," or maybe more accurately a basement when compared to police reform in Newark, New Jersey. To further chip away at that is unconscionable. Seventeen months ago, at a public hearing on the murder of Charleena Lyles, City Council members spoke loftily about how that hearing opened their eyes and changed them. I guess, as with the head tax, they weren't changed enough to fight for change when confronted with economic or political power that pushes back.


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