Week in Review: September 30, 2022 - EJ Juárez

On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by the former Director of Progressive Majority who has now transitioned into public service but remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington, EJ Juárez. 

This week, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced his proposed budget for 2023-2024, and there are a number of questionable decisions that reveal where the mayor's priorities lie. Beyond moving parking enforcement back to the SPD, the budget invests in a police surveillance tool called ShotSpotter, which has been a failure in other cities where it's been implemented, resulting in lead to police overreach without a reduction in crime. 

At the same time, Harrell's budget is calling to lower the cost-of-living increases for the city's human services workers, a choice that would require a change in law. At a time when inflation is hurting everyone, especially our lowest earners, and we're dealing with a number of public health crises and staffing shortages, the decision to effectively cut the pay of essential workers who are doing crucial work stands in stark contrast to the large hiring bonuses being offered to police.  

King County Executive Dow Constantine and other leaders announced a new property tax that would provide $1.25B to help create new behavioral health crisis centers to help those in need receive necessary support. This proposal will need to be approved by the King County Council before being voted on in an April special election. We'll keep checking in on this plan as it develops.

In a new update on the controversy surrounding former mayor Jenny Durkan's missing text messages, a forensic analysis has found evidence that these messages were intentionally deleted, not accidentally removed. As EJ reminds us, these public records concern an issue that resulted in someone's death, and their deletion has prevented their family from getting closure. If it's determined that these messages were in fact intentionally deleted, the implications are criminal. We'll keep paying attention to this story for updates.

In the 42nd LD in Whatcom County, a State House race has seen a terrible, but not so shocking, revelation. GOP candidate Don Johnson attempted to scrub his social media feeds of racist, misogynist, and anti-semitic posts, but failed to do so before the Bellingham Herald recorded them. The Herald reported on the unacceptable posts this week, revealing a history of dangerous rhetoric and misinformation that Johnson hopped to hide.

Another reminder that Crystal will be hosting a debate between 37th LD State Rep candidates Emijah Smith and Chipalo Street on Tuesday, October 4th at 7:00pm at the Rainier Art Center and streamed live. See seattleemerald.com/debate for more details!

As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.

Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at@finchfrii and find today’s co-host, EJ Juárez, at @EliseoJJuarez. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.

 

Resources

“Harrell’s Budget Would Move Parking Encforcement Back to SPD, Add $10 Million to Homelessness Authority, and Use JumpStart to Backfill Budget" by Erica C. Barentt (@ericacbarnett) from Publicola (@PubliColaNews): https://publicola.com/2022/09/27/harrells-budget-would-move-parking-enforcement-back-to-spd-add-10-million-to-homelessness-authority-and-use-jumpstart-to-backfill-budget/

 

“Harrell budget proposal steps back on Seattle reforms including larger SPD, new plan for big business tax” by jseattle from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2022/09/harrell-budget-proposal-steps-back-on-seattle-reforms-including-larger-spd-new-plan-for-big-business-tax/

 

"City of Seattle and King County Reveal Proposed Budgets for Input" by Vee Hua from The South Seattle Emerald (@SoSeaEmerald): https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/09/28/news-gleams-city-of-seattle-and-king-county-reveal-proposed-budgets-for-input-renton-arts-grants/

 

“The Mayor Wants to Pay Human Service Providers Less” by Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) from The Stranger(@TheStranger): https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/09/28/78543620/the-mayor-wants-to-pay-human-service-providers-less

 

Information on public comments for the budget from The South Seattle Emerald: Written public comment on the city's 2023-2024 budget will be accepted at all meetings of the City Council's Budget Committee. Comments intended for the full council can be sent to council@seattle.gov. There will be three public hearings on the budget at City Hall on these dates:

• Tuesday, Oct. 11, at 5 p.m.

• Tuesday, Nov. 8, at 9:30 a.m.

• Tuesday, Nov. 15, at 5 p.m.

 

"Seattle's Left Proposes Defunding the Police, Stopping Sweeps, and Building Housing in Solidarity Budget" by Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) from The Stranger(@TheStranger): https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/09/23/78520829/seattles-left-proposes-defunding-the-police-stopping-sweeps-and-building-housing-in-solidarity-budget

 

“New Tax Would  Fund Behavioral Crisis Centers” by Erica C. Barentt (@ericacbarnett) from Publicola (@PubliColaNews): https://publicola.com/2022/09/27/new-tax-would-fund-behavioral-crisis-centers-things-to-look-for-in-harrells-first-budget-proposal/

 

"‘Spoliation of Evidence’ - CHOP lawsuit judge asked to rule against City of Seattle over deleted texts” by jseattle from Capital Hill Seattle Blog- https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2022/09/spoliation-of-evidence-chop-lawsuit-judge-asked-to-rule-against-city-of-seattle-over-deleted-texts/ 

 

The Bellingham Herald(@BhamHerald)’s story on Dan Johnson’s hateful social media history [story is behind a paywall]: https://t.co/Xtbq2D6BKD 

 

Tweet thread with information about Whatcom County State House Candidate Dan Johnson's hateful online history: https://twitter.com/finchfrii/status/1574794894807539712?s=20&t=Kn1jkKibpz1cn_fNJUBMzg

 

Next Tuesday, October 4th, at 7:00pm, join Crystal live or in-person as she hosts a debate between 37th LD State Rep candidates Emijah Smith & Chipalo Street! See seattleemerald.com/debate for more details!

 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's cohost: the former Director of Progressive Majority who's now transitioned into public service, but remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington - EJ Juárez. Welcome!

[00:00:57] EJ Juárez: Thanks for having me back.

[00:00:58] Crystal Fincher: Excited to have you back - got tons of feedback from people who are listening and have appreciated your insight on prior shows, so just very much appreciate everything that you contribute. So I guess starting off - real big news in the week - it is budget season. And so Mayor Harrell has announced his proposed budget for the City and it was an interesting one - had a number of different elements. He - it talks about moving parking enforcement back to SPD, adding $10 million to the Homeless Authority, using the JumpStart tax funds to plug holes in the budget, implementing ShotSpotter - a lot of things. So starting with moving parking back to SPD, what are your thoughts on the budget and just starting with the parking issue - how do you think that is going to turn out?

[00:01:59] EJ Juárez: I think this is, sadly, a little expected, right? This is not out of left field for the mayor in terms of how he ran and the kind of mayor he has, I think, sought to become. In that - with all of that community activism, with tens of thousands of people on the streets of Seattle 24 months ago, demanding a different way to fund and allocate resources in our City away from the punitive enforcement of policing - we are now taking the most symbolic of kind of low stakes movement that was won and putting it right back for no clear reason. It's not surprising to me that we also don't have a justification for that move. I think this is a signal - this is a signal definitely to the base of voters that Bruce services to say - Hey, I'm coming in, I'm gonna make sure that folks don't win who want to reallocate resources in a more equitable way.

[00:03:03] Crystal Fincher: And to me it seems like it just gives more depth to the leaked comments from that meeting that he had with SPD that had contradicted things that he said before. His actual budget, his actual policy in action seemed to be in line with what he was saying behind closed doors, not necessarily what he had said as he took office. While he was campaigning, he had talked about wanting to have responders to different issues that if they didn't require a police officer - things like parking, behavioral health crisis issues - those kinds of interventions that aren't quite public safety, but that we have asked public safety people to pick up the slack because we don't have that infrastructure built up elsewhere. He indicated that he was open to that, wanted to do that, implement that - that could potentially be part of his Public Safety Department. And it just seems like we're moving in the opposite direction. And it's a little confusing.

[00:04:02] EJ Juárez: It's confusing and it's also mind-boggling that - time and again, we're watching the mayor say one thing in private to supporters of increased police funding, supporters of a punitive state and the carceral state, and then building budgets that are framed as if they are supposed to be progressive. Because we're being misdirected - the hoopla around the Green New Deal, the hoopla around other pieces of this budget that actually are incongruent with a complete story about who we are as Seattle and also who Bruce Harrell is as a mayor. I'm particularly interested in this idea that - in this budget, the mayor has framed what he values and that value is the police. Every other aspect is a pretty decent departure from past administrations, as well as what the community has been saying is important to them. And unlike previous Mayor Jenny Durkan with her text messages, I think that we have a situation where - at least with the Durkan administration, you would have big, bold ideas being proposed with no funding source. With Bruce, you're having no big, bold ideas and you are actually returning to a Seattle of the 90s - a very traditional idea of what the City should be funding.

[00:05:23] Crystal Fincher: It is confusing - and to your point, just an actual misdirection based on what he has said publicly and the conflicting statements of what he said privately. Another thing that is - even to people who want increased funding for police - he also proposed implementing the ShotSpotter surveillance program, which I wonder how this started. I think to myself sometimes - this is one of those technologies - we hear a lot of times, Oh there's - tech has hacked their way into a solution to this societal ill and all we need to do is implement it, this is gonna solve the problem. So this is a technology that was sold as a way to detect where gunshots are coming from. In the front end, it was actually sold as a way to get away from biased policing and this is purely just objective data that can pinpoint where shots are coming from and help to make everybody safer. As it turned out, it did not do that. It rarely resulted in the detection of actual gun violence - ton of false positives, led to a lot of preemptive police stops and searches in, surprise, overpoliced communities, which are predominantly communities of color, lower income communities. There have been cities forced to withdraw evidence based on ShotSpotter data because the information was deemed unreliable. In implementations of this across the country, it has been a failure and has caused liability issues, problems and has led to the violation of people's civil rights.

So this is something that - 15 years ago, 10 years ago - before it was implemented in places, people thought, Hey, this could legitimately be a way of addressing this problem. But it was implemented and it was a failure and a problem. And so it's just really confusing that we arrive here - after so many highly publicized issues across the country with it - and asking, as we're looking at trimming budgets elsewhere and using JumpStart Tax money to plug holes in the budget, to say this is something that we should spend millions of dollars on. Just confounding. What do you think?

[00:07:43] EJ Juárez: It's confounding for a number of reasons. First and foremost, there's no doubt that - if we're trying to address gun violence through the tools that the mayor has allowed to do so, he has chosen the police force as the primary vehicle to do so. We also have to assume that every time ShotSpotter detects this moment that would require police, they have to go to that site - they have to get in their cars and go there. And in Chicago and other places, time and again, false alarms have wasted countless hours of police time heading out to non-events. So it, to me, it's a nonsensical moment of - we're gonna invest in this tool, when we are under-resourced, that produces all of this waste. Second part of this for me is just - the instinctual reflex to surveil communities of color in moments under the guise of their own protection - I find particularly distasteful, especially from a mayor who used to represent that district. It is - I'm looking for the justification for increased surveillance when this tool has not proven that it actually is more beneficial than harmful in a meta sense.

[00:09:07] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. There are so many options that we have that are being implemented across the country to deal with this. And to be clear, we have to deal with gun violence, we have to deal with all of these offenses against people, we do have to deal with crime. This is actually a very urgent thing, which is why it is so frustrating to see investments in things that have been proven not to work instead of in a multitude of other things that have data supporting us. We have research universities in the state, in our area, in the city, that have criminologists, that have dedicated a ton of research that can be great resources to the mayor and his administration with this. We have lots of organizations on the ground who have data behind the work that they've been doing, who've been getting excellent results. Some of them have been defunded by the mayor himself, so it's just - I don't understand. When we look at - when we take away what his words are saying and we look at what he's proposing in terms of policy, it just seems that we keep doubling down on things that even the police are saying, This ain't it. Because the retention bonuses - where the cops were like, Yeah, it's not gonna make a difference. And yet they fought to provide that for them anyway.

And contrary to another line in his budget, which is cutting the cost of living increases for frontline workers who are dealing with things like homelessness and people at-risk of homelessness, where it's been highly publicized how overworked and underpaid they already are, how short staffed they already are. And now instead of trying to attract more with better pay and benefits and this is an area of priority for the City - it's been a declared emergency - we're trying to cheap it out? I just - another very confusing thing.

[00:11:02] EJ Juárez: This one caught me off guard. It was incredibly unexpected to see a mayor of a major city in this country, on the heels of a pandemic, advocate for a change in law to pay his employees less. Public servants are some of the most underappreciated folks in this country already. They have kept this nation going throughout this pandemic and they're doing the hard work of making sure that vital services are performed while the rest of us are at home taking precautions. And it's striking that - in a moment in which we are now emerging and our habits are changing - that we would basically say to our employees, I'm gonna cut your pay. And even though inflation is going up at incredible rates every week, I'm still gonna pay you less. This one - I - this one truly blows my mind because it just is so out of left field and it is, again, another illustration of where this administration places its importance in how the City should operate. If it doesn't carry a gun and it doesn't have handcuffs, it doesn't deserve to be paid a living wage apparently.

[00:12:17] Crystal Fincher: Couldn't say it better myself. Absolutely agree. Just - it is frustrating 'cause this is a real problem and people are waiting to see progress here and it just doesn't look like we're going to get it. Now, I brought up the Green New Deal earlier and the investments in those - I absolutely think we need to be doing more, should be doing more. I do think it's a positive thing to see the steps taken in that direction. I feel that way across the board - whether it's the legislative, the federal action, or this City of Seattle action that's been taken. I think the investments and the changes are positive, especially seeing so few investments in what look to be forward-looking, build-a-better-future type stuff. So that gave me some hope that we can use that to build on different things. And hopefully with action, combined with action at the legislative and the federal level, we can really make some quick progress in our greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution - everything from soup to nuts - but we'll see how that turns out. And what actually winds up funded - we'll continue to follow this, but very interesting this Harrell budget - will continue to follow through, will also add in the episode notes the opportunities for the public to engage in this budget.

There is a proposed people's budget, which definitely does a lot more to address root causes of the issues that we're seeing, whether it's homelessness or crime - doing things that are more in line with what evidence shows is effective for preventing and reducing that. So I definitely look forward to that. In terms of King County, there were announcements about significant proposed behavioral health investment. What happened there?

[00:14:19] EJ Juárez: So we're watching another levy being proposed, but this time to address one of the most heartbreaking elements of what's happened after this pandemic, where our mental health system has absolutely begun to collapse. In King County, we have 2 million people and we have 43 beds for folks that are in mental health crisis. And we saw Dow Constantine propose two points, or excuse me, a $1.25 billion levy to support a number of things, which would include building five new centers to support people in crisis having mental health issues, preserving treatment beds at existing facilities, as well as two important pieces that meet the structural elements of what's happening here around workforce recruitment and development as well as putting mobile sites where the need is versus asking the public to go to their service. This is a pretty massive announcement. It's also, in my opinion, incredibly welcome. It's just so thoughtful to say, Look, we recognize there is a systems problem here - that we have to build, we have to provide facilities, and there's also the workforce element. We have to make sure that the folks that are providing treatment are not themselves living in poverty and living in crisis. I'm super excited about this. It's gonna be on a April special election, and I sincerely hope that this is the first in many steps towards fixing this broken system.

[00:15:51] Crystal Fincher: I absolutely do. So much of our conversations about this leave out the importance of this resource, or we talk about people who are currently criminalized who are doing things that are potentially harmful to themselves or others. And once again, we're relying predominantly on police to fill this gap and - I don't know so much about now, but it wasn't that long ago where they were loudly and proudly saying, We aren't equipped to deal with this. We talk about the importance of people getting treatment, about jail not being able to solve anything like this - yet we just plain don't have the resources to deal with this problem. And we're seeing the results of that in all areas of society. So we have to do this. I do wish, and you've talked eloquently about this before, that we would look at our system as a whole and look at instead of just trying to piecemeal things here and there - which I appreciate the piecemealing at this point in time because it's better than nothing - but to look at how we can take a more systemic view of this issue, and how we can do a better job of service provision and delivery from beginning to end.

[00:17:13] EJ Juárez: Absolutely. I think a lot about the fact that in King County, if you need a bed and you are in crisis, the average wait time is 44 days. And 44 days is a hell of a long time, regardless of what kind of health treatment you require. Voters are gonna have the chance to weigh in on this in a special election, which is less than ideal but it is what it is. The proponents of this have been incredibly clear that this is not an immediate fix, that we're not gonna see the results on Day One, that this is something that's gonna take a while to ramp up. But the best, most-lasting solutions to some of our hardest problems take time, so super excited about this.

[00:17:54] Crystal Fincher: Yep, and no time better than the present to start on things that are going to take a long time - we have to get started right now. And we got news of a lawsuit that actually uncovered some new information about the infamous deleted texts from former Mayor Jenny Durkan, from former Police Chief Carmen Best, and others. And despite statements to the contrary before, this investigation turned up new evidence that texts were actually intentionally deleted. The reason why this is such a big deal is that these are public documents - as we're seeing play out on a national stage with Trump before - these are public records, these are subject to public disclosure. It is actually a law that everyone who works in the public sector is trained on, is aware of. Jenny Durkan, as a former federal prosecutor, was aware of this in her profession before running for office, was trained on it when running for office, after a violation received a retraining before this happened. No question that there was a repeated awareness that this shouldn't have happened.

Yet, after a lot of things that we saw in the 2020 protest that did not look right and that were controversial, certainly, and they knew would be - it looks like they intentionally deleted texts from that time period after giving a story - I dropped my phone in some salt water, required a reset, somehow a setting to automatically delete those texts got into being so it just automatically deleted them, I don't know what happened, they were lost. And now a report is alleging that they were, and they have evidence that they were, intentionally deleted. What do you see with this?

[00:19:46] EJ Juárez: I would see a former mayor probably sweating a lot right now. I don't want us to lose sight of the fact that someone died during a critical moment in this City's history. People were injured, there were crimes committed, there were whole neighborhoods gassed for days on end - in this City. The public records relating to those activities directed by the mayor and the chief of police are gone. And now this forensic analysis proves that the mayor, who had on many occasions made very definitive statements about not manually deleting texts, in fact did manually delete the texts. This was not some update of a phone. As many folks who have worked for the City and worked for government, myself included - when we delete off of our phones, when we delete messages, it requires us to take a deliberate and thoughtful action. It is not accidental. So for many of us, we knew that rang hollow. We knew that was highly dubious if true. And now the forensic analysis have proven that to be the case.

The other piece of this that's really, I think, sad for us as a city, is the fact that we had a former US Attorney as mayor who destroyed evidence. Evidence that would help bring closure to a family who lost a loved one. Evidence that could help people in Capitol Hill, who were tear gassed in their own homes for nights on end, getting justice. I find the whole situation very sad and I hope charges are brought. It is important for our democracy and it's important for public confidence in our leaders that no one is above the law, especially - somebody who practices law at the very highest levels should know better than to destroy public records.

[00:21:37] Crystal Fincher: Should know better, and I'm also disappointed in the seeming lack of interest and accountability by so many people who have had the power to intervene in this. People who could have referred this for investigation, people who were her allies, but are in power and just took a silent approach to this. And - maybe if we ignore it, it'll go away. We are - several of those people having made comments about Donald Trump and how we have seen him destroy evidence and being up in arms about that. That the problem isn't doing that when you're a Republican, the problem is doing that period. And so to see it takes so long for any kind of accountability when this blatant violation, when as you perfectly described, that so much is at stake really. And understanding the decisions that were made and who made those decisions - did - really, there were questions about did SPD go rogue? Did they receive direction to abandon their precinct? Did they just leave? Just - there are still questions of a very fundamental nature that haven't been answered, that these texts could. And lots of people assume they would be enlightening about what took place during that time. And so it's - has just been frustrating to see this slow trickle of information come out and so much money spent by the City to - seems like half-heartedly - be able to say, Hey, we're doing something to look into it, but we're not asking the contractor that we've hired to look into it some very key fundamental questions that could get to the bottom of this. Some of the issues about the manual deletion, which are key and central to potential criminal felonious liability here - just the contractor that we hired said, Oh, they didn't ask me to look into that, so I didn't.

[00:23:51] EJ Juárez: I think there's something to be said for - you dance with the one that brung ya, right? And when Jenny Durkan ran for office, she brought many of Ed Murray's - excuse me, the alleged sex offender, the proven predator Ed Murray - many of his people went with her in that campaign. Many of the folks who worked in her administration came from that administration. And once again, the City is on the hook for massive legal bills related to misconduct, related to impropriety, related to corruption. So when Seattle is electing its leaders, they should really take a hard look at the crew that they run with. It's frustrating that once again - it's like the Ghost of Ed Murray's crew here with Jenny Durkan coming back to cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars for potentially criminal activity.

[00:24:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it just seems like it's hard to get away from this. So it'll be really interesting to see how this progresses. We will certainly be following what happens next. I think one of the other things that I just wanted to mention - there was some drama afoot in the 42nd Legislative District, which is in Watcom County, northern Washington. It's one of the most competitive legislative districts in the State of Washington. This is a battleground district. It's one that - Democrats and Republicans look really tight, but Republicans may have a slight edge. And so a number of these issues that we're talking about - from abortion to financial issues, people just trying to pay their bills and make it, tax fairness - are all on the table. And as candidates are talking about how they propose to deal with this problem, some news came out about one of these candidates. And basically, State House candidate Dan Johnson thought that he had scrubbed his Facebook, his podcasts. And he did scrub it, but not before The Bellingham Herald archived his numerous sexist, racist, and anti-Semitic posts.

I'm sure people can imagine an extremist, right-wing candidate. We've all heard lots of the rhetoric and this is certainly consistent with a lot of those types of things that we're used to seeing. But everything from sharing memes that sympathized with cult leader David Koresh, white separatist Randy Weaver, anti-government activist Cliven Bundy, comparing the armed sieges at Waco, Ruby Ridge and the [Bundy] Ranch to the 1970 Kent State massacre of students at a nonviolent peace rally. He shared memes from the National Association of Gun Rights, that FactCheck.org said were completely fabricated - quotes from that. A Facebook post from 2013 saying a criticism - basically there were unruly children at a Bellingham supermarket - him saying, "If they were my kids, I would have put them in the ground years ago and started over." Several of his - it's a lot, and it's a lot of a wide variety of stuff. Several of his posts have been flagged by Facebook as being partly false, totally false, or misleading.

He had advocates on his show appearing to advocate for the political assassination of - advocate for political assassinations - in discussion of the Second Amendment. He talked about, The right to bear arms is necessary today as it was 200 years ago. Our government gets more out of control, our citizenry, better known as a well-regulated militia, may someday be needed to put the elected officials back into check or remove them entirely. Given what we've seen, it's scary - after an attempted coup - that that talk is escalating now. A post that features a Star of David - once again, comparing the Holocaust to the vaccination requirements and cards - just a bunch of things. He has since apologized for anti-Semitic posts - and more of an I-got-caught apology than an actual apology - didn't address the misogyny or racism.

But just wanted to make sure, 'cause unfortunately this article was in The Bellingham Herald and behind a hard paywall with that, so hard to see just the numerous vile comments that he made. But State House candidate Dan Johnson is a problem in the 42nd district, and we absolutely need to be making sure voters there are aware of who their candidates are, what their history is, and what they've been saying.

[00:28:46] EJ Juárez: I'll just jump in real quick. Thank God for local journalism that's doing journalism, right? Had The Bellingham Herald not uncovered this, this probably would not have come to light except for in circles of, I don't know, Republican homes across Whatcom County who knew and celebrated this. But great reporting there to pull this up to make sure this is available for voters. But again, I'm - sadly, the state of the Republican party - this is not shocking. This is seemingly very on-brand and good for him for his message discipline of xenophobic racism - very much in line with the Republican party these days.

[00:29:27] Crystal Fincher: Very in line, very consistent over the past several years and yeah, just a problem. Also wanted to give a reminder that I am going to be moderating a South Seattle Emerald electoral debate between 37th Legislative District candidates Emijah Smith and Chipalo Street on Tuesday, October 4th, from 7:00-9:00 PM - it'll be at the Rainier Arts Center at 3515 South Alaska Street. It'll also be simultaneously streamed online live, as well as available to watch after the recording. Doors open at 6:30 PM. RSVPs are encouraged for the show. All guests will be required, who are attending in person, to wear masks and provide a proof of vaccination or a negative rapid test. Tests will be provided at the venue as well as masks. You can RSVP for the show and find out more information at seattleemerald.org/debate and you can also submit questions that you want me to ask at that link. So would love to hear what you want to know from those candidates - what's on the top of your mind and what would be helpful for you as you try and make the decision between Emijah Smith and Chipalo Street. So again, that is going to happen on Tuesday, October 4th - this coming Tuesday - from 7:00-9:00 PM at the Rainier Arts Center and streaming online. @ me if you have any questions.

And with that, I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 30th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, our assistant producer Shannon Cheng, and our Production Assistant is the fly Bryce Cannatelli. Our insightful co-host today was the former Director of Progressive Majority, who's now transitioned into public service but remains involved in numerous political efforts across Washington State, EJ Juárez. You can find EJ on Twitter @EliseoJJuarez and we'll put that in our episode notes. You can also find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks and you can find me @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks anywhere you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek shows delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full text transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.

Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.