Warning: I-100 Filed, Democracy May Ensue.

When I called Ari Kohn of the Post-Prison Education Project Thursday to say our initiative, run by a group of community activists known as Citizens for Efficiency and Fairness in Public Safety, was about to be filed with the City Clerk, he insisted on capturing the great moment for posterity. So here it is: Real Change organizers Danina Garcia and Natalie Novak, at the City Clerk window, with copy of said petition firmly in hand. We now await a ballot title from Tom Carr for what will be Initiative 100. Here's what it says:

BE IT ORDAINED BY THE CITY OF SEATTLE AS FOLLOWS:

Section One: Title and Subject.
A. This measure shall be titled the “Efficiency and Fairness in Public Safety Act.”
B. For Constitutional purposes, the subject of this Initiative is “public safety.”

Section Two: Preamble and Statement of Facts:
A. Seattle's decision whether to build a municipal jail for the first time represents an expensive commitment during a time of diminishing public resources. This choice for Seattle's future has long-term consequences, and deserves a thorough and public decision-making process.

Through this Initiative, voters exercise their right to be involved in this public safety decision by mandating that the decision consider cost effective alternatives and racial justice. Voters are also to have a final vote on this critical issue.

B. Citizens of Seattle hereby find that in deciding whether to build a new jail, important factors to consider include: public safety, alternatives that may be more cost effective, and issues of racial justice and fairness. Citizens further find that voters should have a final say on whether to build a new municipal jail.

Section Three: Policies and Process for Deciding Whether to Build a Municipal Jail.
A. Prior to deciding whether to build a new municipal jail, the City of Seattle shall take the actions and/or conduct the evaluations described in this section and publicly report on the same. These actions and evaluations and their outcomes shall be fully considered in the City's decision whether to build a new municipal jail, in addition to other considerations that may be deemed appropriate.

1. The City shall negotiate openly, publicly and in good faith with King County to explore alternatives to a municipal jail, including extending the existing City-County contract for jail services. Currently the City contracts with King County for provision of jail services, under a contract that expires in 2012. The City is considering a municipal jail to replace such jail capacity, despite the possibility that such contract may be renewable under State Law, RCW 39.34.180. Continued cooperation with King County may provide the most cost-effective and progressive public safety option. King County offers nationally recognized model programs for decreasing incarceration rates and recidivism, and already has the infrastructure in place to handle a regional justice system.

2. The City shall conduct a rigorous, public analysis of how incarceration rates could be decreased in the short and long term while increasing public safety and positive outcomes. The City shall analyze how a proactive investment in social service programs, including shelter, supportive housing, early childhood education, drug and alcohol treatment and mental health care, will lower crime and arrest rates in the future. Avenues that should be explored include alternatives to incarceration such as treatment and day monitoring, changes in sentencing guidelines at the misdemeanor level, and a commitment to law enforcement diversion programs that provide better outcomes for less public money in drug cases.

3. The City shall develop and make publicly accessible a strategy to address racial disparity issues in arrest and incarceration rates. Disproportionate incarceration rates among certain communities of color deepen inequality and poverty and are a form of structural racism. A new jail may perpetuate and deepen these inequalities.

B. The City shall place the matter of the new municipal jail before the electorate in a public vote. Voters shall have the final decision on whether to build a new municipal jail. Prior to making a final commitment to build a municipal jail, the matter shall be placed before the voters for approval or rejection. Prior to the vote, the City shall inform voters of the outcomes of the actions and evaluations set forth in Subsection A of this Section. This paragraph does not require voters to be consulted on any siting decision relating to such proposed facility.

Section Four: Definitions.
A. “Municipal jail” means a municipal jail facility that is or may be built and/or operated by the City independently or jointly through an interlocal agreement with other cities, but does not include facilities built and/or operated by King County.

B. A “decision whether to build” a municipal jail means a decision by the City on whether to commit moneys towards the construction and/or operation of a municipal jail, either independently or jointly through an interlocal agreement with other cities. Neither that term nor any part of this Initiative addresses decisions and/or commitments of moneys relating to potential sites, environmental review, and/or any component of the site selection process. Such term also excludes any decisions and/or commitments of moneys relating to facilities operated by the County.

Section Five: Construction.
A. This initiative is to be liberally construed to ensure that the City's major public safety decisions are based upon principles of cost-efficiency and fairness and subject to democratic oversight.

B. Nothing in this Initiative shall be construed or interpreted to influence or constrain the City Council's decision on where to site a municipal jail. If the City and its voters decide that a new municipal jail should be built, the City Council shall have the authority delegated to it under State Law to determine the location of such a facility.

Section Six: Severability.
The provisions of this ordinance are declared to be separate and severable. The Citizens of Seattle declare that they support each of the provisions of this Initiative independently, and their support for this Initiative would not be diminished if one or more of its provisions were to be held invalid. Specifically, Citizens would support this initiative even if it did not apply to jails developed through interlocal agreements. Thus, if any one or more of the provisions of this Initiative is declared to be contrary to law, then such provision or provisions shall be null and void and severed from the rest of this ordinance, and all other provisions of this Initiative shall remain valid and enforceable.

So, running an initiative campaign is an enormous amount of work. Why do it? Speaking strictly for myself, here's my take.

Initiatives are the citizen's tool for when other democratic processes fail. Despite the overwhelmingly negative reception this facility has received in community meeting after community meeting, the Mayor's office has consistently characterized the new municipal jail as inevitable, with the only question on the table being one of where to put the thing. The narrow majority that was attained by Councilmember Nick Licata for a review of alternatives that includes community input is a weak brake at best on what has thus far been the Seattle process equivalent of a speeding locomotive.

A challenging economic environment makes prudent use of public resources that much more important. City plans to pay for construction of a $220 million facility with a bond issue is the household equivalent of putting an expensive but unnecessary remodel on the credit card when you're down to eating rice and beans and not sure you can still afford health insurance. A bond issue isn't free money. You pay later, with interest. In addition to construction, the facility will cost $19 million annually to run. That's about half of what Seattle spends each year on homelessness and housing. The economic outlook is bleak. Yesterday, Boeing announced a layoff of 4,500. Today, Microsoft announced a layoff of 3,500. The shit storm is here and no one knows when it will end. Let's use our limited resources where we need them most, and where they'll do good instead of harm.

The existing alternative of continued cooperation with King County is more than viable, but the City has spurned this option. Capacity exists to extend the current contract past 2012. The offer has been made and ignored. The County is a national leader in programs that reduce recidivism and minimize unnecessary incarceration. King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg is an enlightened public servant who gets that locking people up when better alternatives exist is a huge budget suck that does not improve public safety. Seattle City Attorney Tom Carr has turned out to be a punitive law and order dickhead who is on the wrong side of this issue. Who do we want to empower here?

Unnecessary incarceration deepens and further racializes inequality. A black male high school drop-out has a two-in-three chance of being imprisoned by the age of thirtyfive. The Seattle high school graduation rate for Blacks is 52%, and the schools slated for closure right now are mostly in communities of color. The extreme racial disproportionality that exists in incarceration deepens poverty in Black, Latino, and Indian communities by further reducing the economic prospects of those who are already economically disadvantaged. When people who have lousy alternatives sometimes make bad choices, the best way to make a real difference is to invest in creating better alternatives.

Emergency shelters, prisons, and jails are the dumping ground for those who can't make it in this economy, and their numbers are growing. Even a crappy minimum wage service job needs a high school diploma and a relatively clean police record. Those who lack these things, however inconvenient it may be for the rest of us, generally insist on living anyway. Low-level drug dealing and other forms of street crime are the inevitable result, and locking more and more of them up doesn't make the crime go away. There are many, many ways in which public resources can be put to the use of rebuilding lives. During the current budget cycle, King County's one drug and alcohol treatment center for indigents may well be forced to close. General Assistance - Unemployed, the $339 a month benefit for those certified as too disabled to work and having no other income, may well be eliminated. An expensive, unnecessary new jail isn't going to improve anyone's life prospects or make anyone safer, and the money is better spent elsewhere.

Attend the forum next week and find out how to get involved. "Question Inevitability: A Community Perspective on Alternatives to a New Jail" will take place at Seattle University's Pigott Auditorium from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 28. This forum by the Real Change Organizing Project will include a broad panel of respected and committed activists and experts on incarceration and its effect on communities.

On Kicking the Mayor's Ass, and Marimbas

Last night was the 15th Annual Washington State Jobs with Justice Honoree Dinner, and I enjoyed the extreme pleasure of standing in front of 300 some labor activists and allies to say "We're going to kick the Mayor's ass ... and you're going to help us."

The girls came along with Revel and I. The chocolate chip cookies went over big. They also enjoyed the chicken, although Twin B found it too spicy. She has a strangely low threshold for that sort of thing. Dr. Wes, on the other hand. sat to my left at the Real Change table adding his own habaneros. Twin A was pretty much surgically glued to my lap for the duration. She gets a little clingy under stress. She spent much of the evening placing her eyeballs to my eyeballs to get that cyclops daddy effect she finds so amusing and whispering "I love you daddy" in my ear.

She covered her ears and closed her eyes while I hugged her for most of the performance of the Shumba Youth Marimba Ensemble, which was magnificent. Twin B had the opposite reaction. As she sat in Revel's lap, her eyes never left the stage. I marveled at a few of the players in particular as they hammered out complex musical rhythms with arms swings that came from the shoulder, their eyes lost in trancelike concentration. A mallet broke as one kid who looked about thirteen slammed out the lead melody. He kept it going with one stick while the equally intense girl on second marimba slipped him hers. This is the sort of drama you get to be in on when you're three feet from the stage.

Nick Licata and Real Change received JwJ's "leading the Movement for Social Justice award "for mobilizing the community to stop sweeps of homeless encampments in Seattle and promoting negotiations between the city and community members." The somewhat tense stagemanager told me I had two minutes, which I ignored.

The speech was all about how homeless people can't win unless everyone else does, and how badly we need a broad economic justice movement that lifts up the very poor along with the broad middle class. I said that these were dangerous times, and that we are in the final days of a dying empire, and that the rats are raiding the larders of a sinking ship.

I'm told I dropped an F-bomb. I thought my filter was on. This is always a danger when I don't have a written speech. I'm also told that this is the sort of thing people expect from me, and that it just enhances my cred, so I guess that isn't really a problem. I'll still try not to do this in front of the Metropolitan Democrats.

Then I said something about how the economic meltdown highlights the economic vulnerability that we all face, and that this helped explain the public sympathy for Nickelsville that we've seen, and that for the first time in twenty years of homeless organizing, I had the sense of there being a broad movement behind us. I made a joke about how if SHARE/WHEEL and Real Change could work together, anything is possible. I said that organizing on the sweeps issue was just going to broaden and grow, and that homeless advocates understand that our issues don't exist apart. Rising inequality, I said, is the core problem, and that we can't win without allying with others to win on issues like incarceration and tax fairness. And then I said we were all going to kick the Mayor's ass.

All the while, Twin B, stood at the foot of the stage and beamed up at me like she was in on the enormous cosmic joke. This morning she asked why I was looking at her most of the time while I spoke. The answer is obvious. She and her sister were the most beautiful women in the room. Then the Labor Chorus sang and it was time to clear out. We left as the room was on its feet, fists in the air, for the Internationale. Twin B said she wanted, someday, to sing like these people do. "You will, baby," I said. "You will."

Studies in Surrealism

We were going to have a big thing at City Hall yesterday, but we called it off. Over the few weeks we had to organize — and with the Washington State Coalition for the Homeless Conference beginning today — turn out just wasn't going to be impressive. And we are tired. We decided instead to focus on gathering strength. So today, we felt like we needed to show the flag. There was a meeting of Tim Burgess' Public Safety and Human Services Committee at two with a ten minute window for public testimony. The rally would of been at noon. We decided to show up with donut shaped helium balloons dressed up as the loopholes in the policy and to leaflet with mock camping citations.

As Rachael and Natalie left Real Change to walk to city hall, the loophole balloons — which were fatter and had smaller holes than we'd imagined — looked like a brightly colored bouquet of hemorrhoids floating down Second Ave.

There was a motley crew of about a dozen RCOPers there when the hearing started. Most of us were of the certifiably poor persuasion, had been fighting these sweeps for months, and weren't in a mood for any shit. Before the hearing, we stopped to drop off a "letter" signed by the delegation. I think this was Anitra's idea, inspired by her years with SHARE/WHEEL. Ten people sign a leaflet, and you drop it off to the Mayor's receptionist just as if anyone gave a shit. I didn't sign it, but going up to the Mayor's sounded like fun.

As we came off the seventh floor elevator and turned right, we were greeted by an official photo of Greg looking ten years younger and 80 pounds lighter. "Look," I said too loudly. "A picture of Greg when he wasn't fat." Our poorly dressed crowd milled amusedly. The receptionist faked intense concern with her computer monitor.

I never noticed what a fortess Greg's office is before. I've continued to visualize the old City Hall office, even though I had lunch with him once here. The view is OK, but the furniture's utilitarian. It's like a waiting area in a really nice prison. There's a receptionist behind glass. I presume it's bullet proof. There was a security guard hanging around behind her. No one was getting past the sterile lobby with the view without permission.

We organized ourselves to decide who was going to hand over the signed leaflet. Or they did. I wasn't paying much attention. I heard Natalie ask whether The Mayor was available. She was informed he was not.

"Hmmm," she said. "It sure seems like he's gone a lot."



We did a group photo. It was the best part of the visit. Then it was off to the hearing room. Earlier, we'd decided that Seattle's City Hall, like our space needle, is based on a 1950s futurist aesthetic. It's a great setting for a cheap sci-fi movie, where all the pod people are well-paid slaves to the Vulcan overlords..

We all signed up to testify, assuming that with ten minutes for testimony, we'd be asked to have one or two people speak for the group. Tim Burgess came out to say hi and we shook hands. The light off his high bald forehead was preternaturally bright. My mind grew instantly curious. Is this extreme exfoliation? Does he wax the goddamn thing? Why are rich people always so shiny? I thought about asking, but didn't want to ruin the warm vibe.

This, clearly, is a cheap shot. For myself, it was the Mother of all Bad Hair Days. The thing on top of my head had died sometime last week and was beginning to smell.

There was only one person who wasn't us there to testify. Burgess, Herrell, and Licata were in attendance. The other guy went first. He was wearing a bright lycra biking get-up that showed his deeply cut narcissist pecs to maximum advantage.

"Here is my proposal for what to do with all the drug dealers," he said. "I believe it offers the best use of our tax dollars. The first time, someone is arrested for dealing, see if he's doing it for drugs or to make a profit, and if it's for drugs, offer treatment. The second time, they can get treatment again. The third time, give them a choice between jail and a hundred bucks and a bus ticket out of town. The fourth time, euthanization. This is the best way to leverage tax dollars. This problem is costing beau coup money."

Wow. The moron knows French. He's new to the downtown Shangri-la and just realized he'd be even better off if all the fucked up poor were dead. Thanks for sharing.

Then it was our turn. Tim Burgess allowed everyone a turn, and then asked if anyone who wasn't signed wanted to speak. I wasn't planning on it, but the invitation was there.

My voice was shaky. I was surprised how mad I was. We're all so sick of pointing out the obvious and getting the big brush off from unaccountable power. I was also running on a few hours' sleep. I felt like a big exposed nerve.

"Protocols that are supposed to exist, at least in part, to offer protection and services to campers, but exclude the majority of those campers from protection with huge loopholes, are illegitimate. Protocols on homeless camping that were formed without consulting those most affected, homeless people, and stonewalled advocates from policy formation, are illegitimate."

That was all. Others had said plenty. Anitra said the Ten Year Plan, which doesn't track affordable housing loss or deal with the obvious reality of increasing homelessness is a mockery of the idea of ending homelessness. A woman I don't know said that lots of people she knows are homeless, and they could do a better job of running things than the people up front. Mike Smith, who is basically the Steven Hawking of poor people's organizing, rolled his chair up to say he doesn't understand how the City can chase people around when there isn't enough housing or shelter. Ray Murphy said these people aren't criminals, but they're being criminalized. Revel spoke of the convoluted logic employed to support "a radical trend by government to make homelessness less visible." Others spoke as well. I'm ADHD. Sometimes I drift.

How many ADHD people does it take to screw in a light bulb? I dunno. How many? Do you think the Mariners will make it to the playoffs.

Burgess graciously thanked us for our testimony, and then everyone went off to deliver the hemorrhoids while I remained to watch Acting Human Services Director Alan Painter and some other City employees brief the committee on the Strategic Investment Plan. This is the document that outlines funding priorities. It's all very outcomes based, as is the trend.

If you don't have a Masters in public administration, forget about keeping up with this crowd.

Disturbingly, Burgess asked Painter whether Human Service providers would have to wait until September to learn about cuts to their budgets, or whether some earlier notice could be given to allow more time to explore the richly available alternatives?

Painter patiently explained that advocates were well aware of the City's budget projections, and would be making their case as to why their programs should remain a priority. Score one for Alan.

At another point Burgess asked why we only have aggregate data on homeless usage of services. We should be able, he said, to individually track their successes and failures. Both Painter and Licata tried to explain the long history on this locally, but Burgess remained convinced that truth lies in drilling ever inward into greater mountains of data.

Wouldn't want to look outward would we? No. Instead we'll put the fucked up poor under a microscope where we can examine each and every poor decision in excruciating detail. Commissions will be convened to examine the data.

Licata said something about the invasion of poor people's privacy at a level the middle-class would never stand for and asked where the evidence was that the need for emergency shelter is at all shrinking. "Is there a means to assess the larger picture?"

What an intriguing idea. I love Nick for raising the point, but tracking affordable housing loss and growing misery isn't really scientific enough for this crowd. Governing Board people like Blake Nordstrom, as Bill Block never tires of saying, want to see hard data and bottom line outcomes. And they're not interested in hearing a bunch of commie shit about growing inequality, deepening poverty, and speculation-driven affordable housing loss.

But Bill never says that last part.

After this fascinating briefing of the clueless new Instant-Fucking-Expert on all things homeless (who just became the CEHKC's newest Governing Board member), we were treated to Painter, Bill Block, and the Office of Housing's Bill Rumpf and their "the Ten Year Plan is working" floor show.

Housing First is working, Bill said, because 1,450 new units have been created since the Plan began three years ago, and "an equal number" is in the pipeline.

How reassuring. The 950 units produced annually goal is on track with 50 units to spare. Never mind that half these 1,450 units were "in the pipeline" before the plan ever began and the state of the other 1,450 units now in this "pipeline" is murky at best.

The looseness of these numbers should make a tough business guy like Blake Nordstrom cringe in shame. For people who have such a hard on for data, this sort of vagueness is unbecoming at best.

But if the housing goals are being met, the cuts to shelter will come. That's the logic of the plan. Take from here and put it there because there ain't shit, really, coming from anywhere else.

I've heard enough of Bill's Ten Year Plan rap to almost be able to give it myself. I found it frightening that his brief of Ten Year Plan goals and strategy to the new human services chair and latest member of his governing board differed insubstantially from what he'd say to a group of church folks or college students. Maybe he's assuming Burgess didn't read his Governing Board welcome packet.

There was some obligatory genuflection to the 1811 Eastlake program that, with its 75 units for chronic alcoholics, is the big success that proves the plan is working, and the briefing drew to a tedious close.

Afterwards, it struck me that worlds had collided that day, only to bounce off of each other harmlessly. We got our fifteen minutes. And then the shiny people who run things in a vacuum reassured themselves that everything is fine, and that we are, in fact, totally loony tunes, taking "easy pot shots," as Burgess once put it, at a reality we don't understand.

"I'm fine with it," said Councilman Tim Burgess, who heads the council's Public Safety, Human Services & Education Committee. "I understand those objections but ... it reflects a balance between providing services and shelter while also maintaining the safety of our neighborhoods."

"To suggest that these protocols are some draconian measure to get at the homeless or something like that is just not correct," he said.

"It's easy to take shots at this encampment policy and lose sight of the fact that, from an overall perspective, Seattle does more to help the homeless and prevent homelessness than any city in the region. And, frankly, I'm quite proud of that."

There are unspoken rules that allow this parallel universe of bureaucratized planning to burble happily along, impervious to the growing misery in our streets, and I haven't figured them out yet. It has something to do with embracing an artificially circumscribed logic and hanging on to your mantra for dear life. As long as other powerful people embrace the same logic, you'll always be among friends.

Our testimony had approximately the impact of an errant nerf ball, but I'm glad we came. It's good to know what you're up against.

The Nickels Full Court Press Continues

Well, Wednesday is the rally and overnight encampment at City Hall, and the Mayor's office is pushing their own media offensive to go along with it. We have the Raging Grannies opening the thing and the Seattle Labor Chorus closing. I've been to rallies where that would be half the crowd, but it doesn't feel like this is going to be like that. We had 25 people last night at Real Change's civil disobedience training.

The whole CD thing turns out to be a card we don't need to play right now. We've gone respectable, and the whole thing is permitted. Even the overnight encampment. Rally speakers include Council President Nick Licata, City Councilmember Peter Steinbrueck, Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness Director Alison Eisinger, Real Change Organizing Project participant Revel Smith, Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness co-Chair David Bloom, and Real Change vendor Deb White.

So we turned last night's meeting into a peace keeper's training. We're ready if the folks that the Mayor's office sends out show up to machete our tents and steal our IDs.

Wednesday morning, the City has invited the media to a lower Queen Anne greenbelt on a city guided tour of "the health and safety hazards at these sites."

Since they've been "cleaning" them so regularly, I wouldn't think there'd be much of a problem. I look forward to seeing the photos.

Couldn't be much worse than the goose shit at Green Lake.

Oddly, Real Change didn't get the press release. We apparently aren't on the Human Services Department PR list. That's what they told us anyway.

The first protest I went to when I arrived in Seattle in the Spring of 1994 was about greenbelt clearances near the Kingdome. This isn't new stuff. These things would occur from time to time when neighborhood complaints started to mount. There would be a few of them a year, at most.

What's changed is that now the Mayor's office mobilizes the media and the neighborhoods. It's their proactive approach. Meanwhile, they continue to hold the line against new shelter options, and to tell lies about there being room for more people.

One of the things that happens in the media is that issues turn into cartoons. It's the besieged neighborhoods — over-run by Asian heroin cartels living in concrete bunkers, discarded syringes, and a rising tide of human waste — against the clueless bleeding hearts who are fighting for the right to shit in the woods.

For the record, people shouldn't have to sleep in the woods in the winter unless they have the appropriate REI gear. And shelters shouldn't be an overcrowded poor excuse for a mental health system for the poor. And poor people should be able to afford housing AND food. And the minimum wage should be a livable wage. And there should be universal health care in America. And anyone who wants to get into drug treatment should be able to without jumping through twenty hoops designed to weed out all but the most determined.

And the Mayor shouldn't be able to say he's ending homelessness when he's only hiding the evidence.

But that's not the world we live in, is it? So, maybe we'll see you Wednesday. Click here for info.

Burien's Very Excellent Deal

Wow. Lora Lake has been saved. Burien, a city where 81 percent of the housing stock is affordable to low-income families, as opposed to the the 46 percent King County average, will now have 162 more units of housing for moderate and low-income families. At some point, Seattle housing and homeless activists stopped beating up on Burien for being a bunch of poor-people-hating Troglodytes for having the audacity to follow their own hard won development plan and let the negotiators from King County do their thing.

And Burien got themselves what looks to be a pretty kick-ass deal.

King County Housing Authority will buy the Lora Lake development for an undisclosed fair market value. The County will also purchase two properties south of Lora Lake for development consistent with both Burien's comprehensive plan and a residential Lora Lake. The price there is, again, undisclosed. With another million tossed in as sweetener to support and expedite Burien's Transit Oriented Development project, gentlemen, we have a deal. Last August, the offer on the table from the county was $18 million. It'll be interesting to see where things landed.

There's still some final details to be worked out, but it looks like concerns on all sides were met. Renovations will be completed in time for an April 2008 move-in date for low and moderate income families. Nice work.

Given affordability trends in Seattle, we'll need all the outlying housing we can get. Less than an hour away, even in traffic, Burien's starting to look pretty good.

Maybe now we can bring our focus a little closer to home. Nick Licata's push for $75,000 in this year's budget to fund movement toward a rental housing inspection program, for example, is coming under intense fire from predictable quarters. I look forward to seeing the heavy hitters go to bat against the landlord lobby to score a real win for poor renters. The City Council, by the way, needs to hear your support for this.

How to Play to Win

I made this full page Real Change poster back in 2006, when we were fighting the Downtown for All campaign along with SAGE to get downtown condo developers to pony up a $20 per square foot surcharge for affordable housing for floors that exceeded Seattle's previous height limit. The developers and the Mayor had reached a back room agreement of $10 per square foot that they fully expected to be obediently ratified. It wasn't. We fought the downtown interests and won, and the higher surcharge is expected to raise about $14 million for housing.

We helped build the grassroots support that would take a minority idea favored by Tom Rassmussen, Peter Steinbrueck, and Nick Licata to final approval by the entire Council.

What made this happen?

We worked our relationships. Real Change partnered with SAGE to strategize and bring in other allies, but we also brought in Real Change vendors and their relationships with readers to help build pressure. Many other allies came into motion. At the hearings it was the will and the interests of the people versus the self-interest of the developers, and we were heard.

We made it interesting. We took what had been a sleepy technical issue that was poorly understood by most, and made it about equality and basic fairness. Would the downtown be just for the wealthy, or would it be a Downtown for All?

We did our research. Peter Steinbrueck got the city to commission a neutral third party to produce an expert opinion on whether development at the higher surcharge was still sufficiently profitable. Downtown interests tried their best to delegitimate the report, but they never got traction. One turning point was when Columbia Tower developer and Seattle legend Marty Selig testified that if developers could not pay the $20 surcharge and still make a profit, "they shouldn't be in the business."

We polarized. We made t-shirts that said "Developers Stole My Downtown and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt." We made an issue of the Mayor's clear allegiances. We held a well-attended "Zoned Out" forum on downtown issues and put our council members on the spot. We beat up on weaker kneed allies who were more willing to compromise than we were and got them to back off. We took what had been a sleepy technical issue and made it a moral crusade.

We called their bluff. The downtown establishment kicked and screamed all the way to the final vote, but their dire prognostications of the flight of investor capital to the wilds of Bellevue failed to materialize. What's more, the more they threatened, the less support they seemed to have on the Council, and the more attractive siding with the democratic will of the people became.

As we continue to work on issues of housing affordability, wage equity, and civil rights, we need to remember our successes, and that the downtown interests don't always prevail. People power can trump money and clout, if you're smart about your organizing and play to win.