Sometimes it takes getting away to see things in perspective. I had that opportunity this week, when a friend invited me to speak to her social movements class at Bradford University in England.
It’s not like I’m some expert who’s in international demand. Fiona and I go back to our days at University of Massachusetts in Amherst when we were just a couple of crazy kids looking for a chance to get arrested in a good cause.
We found that in 1985, when we travelled to the nation’s capitol and spent three days in jail to support a fast by nationally known homeless activist Mitch Snyder. On the drive from Amherst to D.C., Fiona taught us a traditional song from her homeland.
“Trash trash, trash all the nation. We are the anarchist generation, we’re gonna find a new direction, we’re gonna have an insurrection. Boltcutters! Devolution! We’re gonna have a revolution…” and so forth.
And so, as I was headed to Glasgow for a board meeting of the International Network of Street Papers (INSP), I diverted to Northern England to see my old friend. As these things go, she now teaches in the Peace Studies department, and I’ve been a social movement activist for some 30 years.
Bradford being the second most working class university in the U.K., the students were a diverse mix of ethnicities and ages, eager to hear about Seattle.
I talked about our evolution from working class aerospace and shipping city to high tech global hub and what that’s meant as radical inequality has become the new order.
I described how as the city has become more affluent, and gone the global city route of focusing on amenities for the rich — high-end shopping, culture, and waterfront parks and such — the upscaling of Seattle has come at a price for the poor.
There were former City Attorney Mark Sidran’s laws against sitting and lying on sidewalks, which coincided with the Rhodes Project to redevelop Westlake. There was the zero-tolerance of outdoor camping that came with increased density and the downtown condo boom. Then, the bid to outlaw “aggressive” panhandling that came with the panic of empty storefronts after the crash of 2008.
And finally — as Seattle straddles the contradiction of caring for homeless people while nurturing the aspirations of the most affluent — there is Mayor Ed Murray’s obsession with sweeping encampments.
But the centerpiece of my talk was Real Change’s campaign, nearly a decade ago, to stop a new municipal jail from being built, and how that presented a teachable moment on the nature of race, class and criminal justice.
When plans to build the new jail became public, it was presented as a sad inevitability. We had, the argument went, simply outgrown the capacity offered by arrangements with King County. The question was not, “Should we build a new jail?” The question was “Where do we put it?”
A small group of us were outraged. We knew that if the facility were built, there would be pressure to keep it filled. And since this was a misdemeanant jail, we knew who the new residents would be: poor folks, disproportionately of color, swept up in the drive to make Seattle more upscale consumer friendly.
Long story short, over the course on an initiative campaign and an election cycle, we talked about how this new jail was a bricks and mortar commitment to structural racism. The closing of several schools in Black neighborhoods presented an opportunity to bring up the school to prison pipeline. We did not, we argued, have to be that kind of a city.
The voters agreed. One by one, local elected officials came out against the new facility until the vast majority opposed the project. The remaining hold-outs paid the price, and the mayor, county executive, and city attorney were all replaced. A year after the winners took office, arrangements for jail space with King County were extended to 2040. The new jail was officially dead.
What lessons should a student of social movements draw from this? First, question inevitability. Next, when we work across lines of race and class, we can win.
And finally, this: When the right opportunities are present and recognized, ordinary people can change history.