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Tuesday, October 12th
People’s Budget Community Meeting at 3:00pm
Sign up for Budget Public Hearing starting at 3:30pm
Speak in Public Hearing starting at 5:30pm
Dear friends,
This past Monday, September 27, we won two crucial renters’ rights: requiring landlords to give six months notice for rent increases and to pay three months’ rent as assistance when they force tenants to move due to rent increases of 10 percent or more. It reminded us, once again, that when ordinary people get organized and fight back, we can win!
Let’s harness this into a continued fight for citywide rent control. And most immediately, let’s organize to win progressive gains through yet another People’s Budget campaign, as we have done every year.
Join my office and community leaders for a community prep meeting. We will talk about the Mayor’s business-as-usual budget, our People’s Budget movement demands, and how working people can make their voices heard to pressure City Council Council and win!
Fight to increase the Amazon Tax we won last year!
Join the People’s Budget struggle!
Tuesday, October 12th
People’s Budget Community Meeting at 3:00pm
Sign up for Budget Public Hearing starting at 3:30pm
Speak in Public Hearing starting at 5:30pm
This year has been tremendous for renters’ rights victories. And last year, we won the historic Amazon Tax, to fund $2 billion over the next decade for affordable housing and Green New Deal programs.
But the crisis for working people has only begun. We face the existential threat of climate catastrophe, with the capitalist class and the political establishment internationally having completely failed to stem fossil fuel use. For renters and working people in America, COVID debt has reached nearly $20 billion nationally. Every city including Seattle is facing an unprecedented affordable housing and homelessness crisis.
In this context, it is unconscionable that Mayor Durkan’s proposed 2022 budget has slashed over $100 million from the Amazon Tax funds for affordable housing, along with the funds for Green New Deal building weatherization programs.
The People’s Budget campaign this year will be fighting to increase the Amazon Tax that our movement won last year.
Fight to increase the Amazon Tax we won last year!
Join the People’s Budget struggle!
Tuesday, October 12th
People’s Budget Community Meeting at 3:00pm
Sign up for Budget Public Hearing starting at 3:30pm
Speak in Public Hearing starting at 5:30pm
This past summer, we announced the People’s Budget struggle to fund the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church affordable housing project in the historically Black Central District. We won a resolution that set the stage for the upcoming People’s Budget. This is part of the struggle to reverse the racist displacement of working-class Black families from the Central District in the 1950s and 60s, caused by the so-called “Urban Renewal” programs, Weed and Seed, and decades of oppression. The People’s Budget this year, as in previous years, is organized with Vietnamese Seniors to ensure funding for meals and cultural programming for their communities. Union carpenters on strike are fighting for profiteering contractors to pay the often exorbitant costs of parking and for the City to enforce wage theft protections. Most immediately, as I recently announced, my office is developing budget legislation to require all contractors to fully pay for construction worker parking on Seattle job sites.
The annual People’s Budget campaigns, first launched by my Council office alongside activists in 2014, completely changed the conversation on the budget. These campaigns have succeeded in organizing ordinary people to put pressure on the Democrats in City Hall to win a series of significant victories every year. Most importantly, the People’s Budget campaign in the autumn of 2017 laid the groundwork for our Tax Amazon movement to win our historic Amazon Tax last year. We also led the way in winning the first ever gains for encampments of homeless neighbors, which later included the funds we won for Tiny House Villages. We won $522,600 in funds in 2019 to support restorative justice programs that provide an alternative to youth incarceration and the school to prison to deportation pipeline.
We are in solidarity, as before, with the Solidarity Budget, and look forward to getting organized and winning progressive gains together.
Fight to increase the Amazon Tax we won last year!
Join the People’s Budget struggle!
Tuesday, October 12th
People’s Budget Community Meeting at 3:00pm
Sign up for Budget Public Hearing starting at 3:30pm
Speak in Public Hearing starting at 5:30pm
In solidarity,
Kshama
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