Seattle Art Museum workers fight for unhoused neighbors | Mask limbo | July 7-13, 2021

Seattle Art Museum workers fight over uninhabited neighbors

Seattle Art Museum employees have organized themselves against management over new installations: barricades and perimeter security checks, “to introduce hostile deterrence policies against our uninhabited neighbors,” according to a group that says they mainly work in the security department.

Stone bollards were installed near the museum entrance on First Avenue and University Street, and a false wall was installed near the Second and University emergency exit. The hostile architecture is supposed to prevent unfamiliar people from sleeping, pitching tents or loitering on the sidewalks.

Employees found out about this policy in mid-June through a leaked email sent internally at SAM. Employees tried to speak to safety management to stop these changes, but to no avail. They then petitioned the policy and contacted the media.

SAM CEO Amada Cruz responded internally to the employee’s reaction. Real Change received Cruz’s response from a Gmail account owned by “SAM Museum Workers”. The email was to “a small, angry group of you (who) chose to petition online to genuinely hurt SAM in public”.

So far, the museum employees have collected 383 signatures in order to dissuade the SAM management from doing this.

Mask limbo

Governor Jay Inslee’s Road to Recovery Plan allowed businesses to return to normal capacity and operations on June 30, with exceptions for large indoor events.

The Washington State Department of Health mandates masks for unvaccinated individuals in public indoors and for all people regardless of vaccination status, in public transportation and train stations, childcare facilities, K-12 schools, health facilities, correctional facilities, and the homeless shelters. Companies continue to have the right to require or require customers and employees to wear masks regardless of their vaccine status.

COVID-19 variants have made some people and policymakers reluctant to stop wearing masks. Alpha is the most common variant in the US, but the other variants are threatening because they can spread faster and a small percentage of vaccinated breakthroughs occur.

According to the Washington State Department of Health’s latest sequencing and variant report dated June 30, “some antibody treatments may be less effective” and “vaccines may be less effective” than the newer variants.

The DOH has tracked breakthrough vaccine cases for nine variants in Washington, including 286 breakthrough alpha vaccine cases, 133 gamma and 113 epsilon cases. There have been a total of 661 breakthrough cases in the state.

Read more in the issue from 7-13. July 2021.