Another fantasy for Nothing But Flowers week. This one is from April 2017. 

We have no great candidates running for office in Seattle today. But I have this fantasy of a candidacy for the rest of us; a candidacy for hard working people that are open minded, want fairness and justice, but are tired of traffic, feeling unsafe, and wishing we could solve the problem of rising prices. This is the announcement speech my ideal candidate would give. It is substantially inspired by various speeches by Robert Kennedy, and you’ll hear his voice throughout. I’ve also seeded some Hayek and Burke in there as well. Of course it’s aspirational. That’s what these things are supposed to be. And compare it to Nikkita Oliver’s announcement as well. 

I am today announcing my candidacy to be Mayor of Seattle.

I do not run for Mayor merely to oppose any person or policy, but to propose a new path for our city. I run because I am convinced that this city is today on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I’m obliged to do all that I can to restore hope and a direction to the work of our City government and because I love this place that has been so good to me.

I run to seek new policies – policies to end the scourge of homelessness and addiction in our city, to close the gaps that now exist between black and white, between rich and poor, between young and old, and between those that worry about the impacts of growth and those that are welcoming it.

I run for Mayor because I want our city to choose hope instead of despair, reconciliation instead of fear and anxiety, growth instead of building walls, opportunity instead of scarcity, especially now as our city grows.

I run because it is now unmistakably clear that we must change the disastrous, divisive policies being implemented in our city.

We can make our neighborhoods safe while also supporting and loving our neighbors who do not have traditional housing, who are different, and who make more or less money than we do.

We can work together, landlords and tenants, to improve rental housing.

Our police and our communities of color can collaborate to cure not the symptoms of crime and disorder but the root causes of those problems: abuse, addiction, institutional racism, lack of opportunity, and lack of resources in our schools. We don’t need a new precinct building that will cost our community $160 million dollars. Those resources belong in the community, working to solve the root causes of crime.

We can provide a helping hand for the person in our city that chooses recovery over addiction

We can make our roads, buses, bike lanes, and sidewalks open, useful, and safe. And we can make them efficient so that people in our city can spend more time with their families and in their communities rather than losing their lives commuting and creeping along in traffic.

Specifically, I support expanding the supply of new housing to welcome new people moving to our city, something that will benefit them and reduce competition between tenants for scarce housing among people already here.

I support building on the success of people struggling economically in our city who have spontaneously built community in tent encampments. I promise to work to make those encampments safe, orderly, secure, and to reduce the need for them by creating low barrier shelters and permanent housing solutions.

I promise that this city will not tow away one more persons home. Instead, people who are living in a vehicle will get a helping hand from the City they need to find a better, more sustainable housing solution.

I support safe consumption sites and will work to make them happen — in every quarter of our city. There are far too many needles on our sidewalks, alleyways, and parks. Needles are a sentinel of the pain and devastation, destruction, lost human potential to us all, and costs to us all from addiction. We can help people better if we reduce the harm of addiction and offer alternatives.

I support rent-restricted housing through tax exemption programs that have already created thousands of affordably priced apartments. We will expand and deepen those programs. And I support housing subsidies particularly in the form of direct cash payments from the existing levy for households struggling to make ends meet today, this week, and next month. As Mayor, I won’t waste time talking about housing, I will help pay your rent!

People can’t wait for 5 years or more for the Office of Housing and non-profits to build them a unit. We’ll work to change the way we fund and build subsidized housing so that we more efficiently use tax payer dollars and get help to people who need it fast. And there is only one way to reduce housing prices: build more housing. And we will. Lots and lots of housing, of all kinds, for all levels of income, all over this city.

I want this city to be the lighthouse in a storm for that family that has spent it’s last few dollars to move here with us; perhaps they’ll arrive in a car with an almost empty tank of gas, but hearts full of hope. Welcome home!

I want this city to be a sanctuary for the immigrant family, who tossed about by war and grief, settles here with us and will grace our schools with its children and our economy with their work, and our hearts with their friendship. Welcome home!

I want this city to be the incubator for newly born ideas of the successful entrepreneur, whose brilliance has made her enough money to retire; yet she still wants to create and contribute new ideas, new energy, and new jobs and opportunity for others. Creative minds help create wealth and more opportunity. Welcome home!

Today there is a prisoner in one of our jails in this state who has no place to go, no address to release to. That woman or man must wait longer in jail, hoping for something to change on the outside, for some one to come through with a place to live. We want you and your potential here, with us. We have a place for you. Welcome home!

And to those who have lived here all their lives, who have homes in our single-family neighborhoods, who worked hard, for years, to cobble together a down payment to buy that home in Wallingford, or Fremont, or in Hillman City and seen that investment grow – I will be your Mayor too. You’ve built this city with your hopes, dreams, love, and hard work. You deserve to pass the benefits of your hard work on to your children. We need you. This is your home!

The great cities of history, the ones we remember, that didn’t disappear into the dust, Alexandria, Rome, Athens, and London and many others, all have been global cities, vibrant, diverse, and welcoming cities. Seattle’s greatness depends on having no walls, but open borders and an open economy. All are welcome in our home, and all are welcome at our table!

This isn’t a dream; this is our comprehensive plan.

The Mayor’s policy of Mandatory Inclusionary will kill this hope. By fueling housing costs and punishing those who build housing and commercial space in our city, his policy will make sure that prices and resentments will rise, fueling more discontent and demands for more pain to be inflicted on those who build and do business in our city. The time for setting people who make their living from starting and running businesses and workers against one another is done. I will stop this abhorrent practice and rhetoric in its tracks. We will bring people together, not drive them apart.

Together we can do these important things. There are no villains and there are no victims, only a city that we call home and neighbors we must choose to love and understand, however difficult that may be. Too many people are struggling, suffering, and dying in a city with such prosperity. If we choose a path of divisiveness, division, of party and of ideology, we have chosen to pick winners and losers rather than opportunity, optimism, and hope.

I will not engage in a fight with our President. I will not indulge sanctimonious untruths about ourselves and how fair we are in Seattle. We have needles on our streets, it takes too long to get to work and back home again, and we have tent encampments scattered in our public spaces. I won’t shake my fist at a far off enemy while failing to fulfill our obligations here at home. Opposing the President is not local government’s fight, but solving the problems of homeless, public safety, transportation, and creating opportunity truly is the work of local government.

Our government can do best against any tyranny and hate whether it is down the street, at our nation’s capitol, or someplace else in the world by being an open, loving, and welcoming city. If you want to change the world, come and change it here. As Mayor I will support you making the change you dream about. We will pat your back not our own. We will celebrate you not ourselves. We will be proud of your real wins and the change you make in the world, not of our own empty words.

Finally, as we plan for our future together here in this beautiful place we call home, we must remember our past, even as far back as a time when this place belonged to the Duwamish people and to those generations of settlers that followed.

We are in a great relay race, begun long ago perhaps by people that did not look like us, talk like us, share our values, or even think we’d be here in this rainy, misty place. Our team mates from the past are native peoples, the first settlers, white men looking for gold, hopeful families that crossed the frontier, industrialists, farmers, sketchy politicians and businessmen, people who were systematically discriminated against, Chinese workers who were banned and killed, interred Japanese families, black families segregated in our city, millionaires, billionaires, and more. Each of them ran their race in this place, and now they’ve passed the baton to us. What will we do with it? Shall we keep it? Shall we build a wall around it and hallow it and try to make this moment last forever?

No. We will pass the baton to our children better that it was given to us. We will be spontaneous, and as adventurous as our forebears who took a chance, not letting ourselves ossify into a fossil city. Instead, to our children and to those generations of the future that we can only fleetingly see, like our majestic Olympic mountains off in the sometimes hazy distance, we will confidently say, “Take this place that we’ve made and changed for you. It belongs to you now. Take it and run!” Therefore, I will work each and every day as Mayor remembering that this place doesn’t just belong to us that happen to be here today, but I will uphold our heritage, work to solve today’s problems, and always remember this place belongs to the future too.

Featured Image: Field with Poppies, Vincent van Gogh, 1890