Sara Nelson and Nikkita Oliver miles apart in race for Seattle City Council

If one had to explain in two sentences the differences between the candidates for position 9 on the Seattle City Council, one could start with the ideological chasm separating Nikkita Oliver and Sara Nelson.

Nikkita Oliver is an educator, lawyer and activist who wants profound systemic change to move the city further to the left. Sara Nelson is a small business owner who thinks the current city council is already too far left and needs to get closer to the center.

police

Nikkita Oliver is a police abolitionist and criminal justice reformist. They ran for mayor in 2017 and also took part in the 2020 anti-police violence protests, citing leaders of Martin Luther King Jr.

Oliver and other activists called for a 50% cut in the Seattle Police Department’s budget and new spending elsewhere “to invest in black and brown communities and build community-based public health and public safety infrastructure,” Oliver said.

This included a call for more investment in “housing, childcare and youth support systems” included in Oliver’s platform.

Oliver also said that sending armed police officers in certain emergencies is not the best approach.

“The National Institute for Justice, which focuses on issues of mass incarceration and policing, has found, after three years of reviewing SPD 911 data, that 80% of calls were non-criminal and 49% were calls may alternate reaction of the non-sworn officer, “said Oliver.

In general, Oliver said that they want to address the root causes of crime and find alternatives to incarceration rather than see more of the current approach, which they believe is still leading to many arrests and prosecutions.

For her part, Sara Nelson, who co-owns Fremont Brewing and previously advised former city council member Richard Conlin, believes the city has already turned too far to the left on policing. She criticizes the city council’s 20 percent cut in the police budget in 2020 and worries about the number of SPD officials who have left office in the past year and a half.

“I have a long list of ideas on how we should reform and improve the police force, but you are not doing it by cutting the budget, especially without a plan for how you will protect the people,” said Nelson.

Nelson said police response times were at an all-time high.

“People are concerned that if they call 911, no one will come,” Nelson said.

When it comes to police funding, Nelson said they will restore what is needed to ensure there are enough police officers to do the job.

homelessness

Homelessness is a hot topic for voters this year, and it’s also a hot topic for candidates. Both speak of the need to work effectively with the King County’s regional homeless authority, which will take the lead on a regional approach to homelessness from 2022.

But beyond that, the two candidates’ understanding of homelessness and what to do about it goes in almost opposite directions.

Nikkita Oliver is against all masses of homeless camps in public spaces.

“Sweeping people further destabilizes them. And instead of further destabilizing people for whom we don’t have an option that suits their needs, we must do everything we can to create more stability through radical accessibility, ”they said.

By “radical accessibility,” Oliver means that the city should set up a fund within the parks department to help homeless people who live in parks with mobile health clinics, hygiene stations, and other services.

Oliver also believes Seattle and the county need to spend more money to fight homelessness.

“If we spent enough, we would have resolved the crisis,” they said.

For housing, that spending must grow to about $ 400 million a year in Seattle or about $ 1 billion a year at the King County level each year for the next 10 years, Oliver said.

“Having more social housing and more social housing is just an integral part of building a city that actually sees housing as a human right,” they said.

Oliver also believes that one of the underlying reasons for the growing homelessness problem is capitalist speculation on housing. To counteract this, Oliver advocates that the government buy up a large number of apartments that cannot be bought and sold for a profit. Oliver calls this “decommodification” of the housing market.

While critics would describe some of their ideas as radical or extreme, Oliver said that language misses the point.

“DR. Angela Davis uses the word radical to get to the roots, and if I am radical about anything, it is that we want to address the root causes so that we can prevent the crisis we are facing, ever occurs again, ”they said.

In contrast, Sara Nelson believes the current city council is doing a terrible job of tackling homelessness by spending money with no clear plan or no results.

“Let’s make a plan first, let’s show how we’re going to spend the money and if there’s a deficit let’s talk,” she said.

Nelson said Seattle should look to other places that have had more success, such as with clear plans to tackle the chronic homeless.

Nelson also believes there is too much focus on housing itself, leading city guides to neglect related issues such as mental illness and substance abuse. She said she would vote to spend more money on both.

In tent camps, Nelson sees the current behavior rather inhumanly than tolerant, especially for people with drug and alcohol problems, which she partially understands from her own experience.

“As someone in recovery, I know that having the drug of your choice around doesn’t help, so I believe that by not addressing the camps, we make homelessness worse,” said Nelson.

Unlike Oliver, Nelson supports the removal of tent camps from parks and other public spaces.

Funding and Endorsements

According to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, Oliver’s financiers will most likely work for Washington State, Amazon / Whole Foods, Microsoft, and Google, or be currently unemployed.

Nelson has received most of her direct campaign funding from Washington State employees and employees at companies like Amazon, Vulcan, and Microsoft, as well as the current unemployed.

In terms of support, most organized labor groups like the MLC work council support Oliver, while most business organizations like the Downtown Seattle Association support Nelson. As for newspaper endorsements, the two heavy-hitters stand on opposite pages as usual, with The Stranger supporting Oliver and The Seattle Times supporting Nelson.