1. Yesterday afternoon, attorneys, representatives of the Seattle/King County NAACP, city council member Kshama Sawant, and local Black Lives Matter activists stood at city hall outside the Bertha Knight Landes room to call on the Seattle Police Department to respect first amendment rights and refrain from using excessive force during the Black Lives Matter protests expected this Friday, Black Friday. 

Black Lives Matter activist and recent University of Washington law school graduate Nikkita Oliver was joined by Patricia Sully of the Public Defender Association, attorney Neil Fox of the Seattle chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, council member Sawant, vice president of the Seattle/King County NAACP Sheley Secrest, high school teacher and activist Jesse Hagopian, and local Black Lives Matter activist Mohawk Kuzma.

Last year, on Black Friday, Black Lives Matter protesters marched in downtown Seattle to protest police brutality, institutional racism, and, of course, the non-indictment of Darren Wilson (the police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown—an unarmed black male—in Ferguson Missouri). Peaceful protesters marched through Westlake Center and Pacific Place malls, disrupting the day’s shopping. After briefly heading to Capitol Hill, they were denied access to the downtown core by the Seattle Police Department (SPD) at the intersections of Pike and Boren and Pine and Boren, where officers utilized flashbangs and bicycle barricades (last year, Capitol Hill Seattle reported on SPD’s stance of defending the rights of “protesters and holiday shoppers alike"). The marchers eventually made it to Westlake Center through alternate routes and disrupted the annual tree-lighting ceremony, which attracts a substantial crowd of holiday season enthusiasts. SPD’s Black Friday crowd control tactics faced criticism from first amendment advocates and council member Sawant, who called in SPD chief Kathleen O’Toole and the rest of the police brass for a hearing.

The coalition that assembled yesterday at city hall hopes SPD will prioritize first amendment rights in their crowd management strategy on Friday and refrain from employing use of force, such as pepper spray or flashbangs.

“Officers of the department repeatedly denied access to downtown based on political ideology, used unprovoked use of force and indiscriminate and unwarranted use of pepper spray, and had an excessive and intimidating presence and engaged in other denials and chilling of the protesters' right to free speech,” said Patricia Sully of the Public Defender Association.

“The Black Lives Matter movement addresses a vital topic in our society and that's police violence towards African-Americans, particularly African-American males. It is really important that we recognize that people have a first amendment right to go to our public spaces and protest about an issue of dramatic public importance,” said Neil Fox of the Seattle chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. “It's particularly important now. Across the country, there are continuing instances of people being murdered by the police.”

Since Ferguson and the death of Michael Brown, police killings of African Americans has continued, including high-profile incidents such as the shooting of unarmed 12-year old Tamir Rice in Cleveland Ohio last year and Walter Scott, also unarmed, who was shot in the back by a Charleston South Carolina police officer after being pulled over for a broken tail light and fleeing. (Last night, protesters marched in the streets of Chicago after the police department finally released dashcam footage of the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald last year.)

In addition, a database compiled by The Guardian puts the to-date tally for police shootings nationwide in the year 2015 at 1027, of which over one-fifth were African American. On November 14, Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old unarmed black male, was shot in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for allegedly interfering with first responders helping an assault victim. A few days earlier, on November 11, 2015, Michal Marshall, a 50-year-old black male, died following an altercation with deputies at a Denver Colorado jail. On September 23, 19-year-old Keith McLeod (also black and unarmed), was shot by officers in a pharmacy parking lot after reaching behind his back—for what officers thought was a weapon—in Reisterstown, Maryland.

(Josh Feit editorializing here, but African American girls are often overlooked in this conversation. Two of the most disturbing instances of endemic and institutionalized racism happened inside a classroom and at a swimming pool when teenage girls were throttled by white officers.)

Sheley Secrest said that this year’s Black Friday protest is an opportunity for SPD to get it right in dealing with protesters. “For the NAACP, we want to see on Friday those lessons learned,” she said. “They [protesters] should be able to deliver the message of police reform to stop police brutality without becoming victims themselves of police brutality.” Both the NAACP and the National Lawyers Guild will be on streets on Friday; the NLG, Fox said, will be "out in force" observing with green and neon hats.

Garfield High School teacher Jesse Hagopian, who was famously pepper sprayed by an SPD officer at this past Martin Luther King Day march, told reporters that it’s a “complete shame that we have to hold a press conference here today to remind the SPD of the constitution.... I'm definitive proof that this police department disrespects the citizens of this city, brutalizes them, assault them without provocation.”

When asked for comment and clarity on their intended strategy for managing this year’s Black Friday protests, SPD provided the following statement: “The Seattle Police Department supports the rights of demonstrators, the community and families enjoying holiday events. We will be providing public safety services to ensure that all can exercise their rights to assembly and free speech.”

James Sido, Spokesperson for the Downtown Seattle Association, told PubliCola that Seafair, the organization putting on this year's tree lighting ceremony, will have its own security on hand, which will work with SPD and mall security to manage the crowds and potential protesters. "It will be a very coordinated effort." (Westlake Center is private property, different from the publically owned Westlake Park across the street.)

City council member Nick Licata aide Lisa Herbold, who's now in a recount for the District One council seat after besting her opponent Shannon Braddock by just 39 votes, had been calling for an observers bill of rights as part of her police accountability platform during this year's election.

2. Speaking of Herbold: With all the election results tallied and certified yesterday, her District One (West Seattle) race is now officially one of just eight races statewide that's going to a recount—and one of just four that will be recounted by hand. (The threshold for a machine recount is when the difference between the two candidates is 0.5 percent of the total votes cast in the race. The threshold for a hand recount is when the difference is at 0.25 percent.) The percent difference between Braddock and Herbold is just 0.1156 percent of the votes cast.

Herbold is ahead 12,459 votes to 12,420, or just 39 votes.

Back on November 10, a week after the election, when Herbold was gaining ground, but down by six votes with several counts left to go, a city hall employee texted me to ask if Herbold was going to win.

I've got to take credit for this one:

3. As the debate over whether the legislature should fix state regulations so the voter-approved charter schools initiative can remain in place (along with the nine current charter schools), Seattle state house representative Gerry Pollet (D-46, North Seattle) is sharing an op-ed he wrote for the Save Our Schools blog with his legislative colleagues.

In the op-ed, Pollet recounts how he provided a group of students from Southeast Seattle's Summit Sierra charter school with a "teaching moment" about their privilege. 

I turned to the students and asked if they thought it was fair that their school could cap enrollment and turn away every student over their class of 120, in order to preserve their low class sizes—while every other school was overcrowded? Was that fair? Was it fair that their lower class sizes meant that other schools would have to have 150 percent more students in a class?

The students know they benefit from individualized attention—similar to that in a private school—from having much lower class sizes, and a much smaller school, than in the surrounding public schools. I could see them pondering the fairness of their privilege. It was clear that this was a new light for the students—a learning moment.

The students’ sense of fairness and equity had bumped into their own privilege.

In his email, questioning the wisdom of green-lighting charter schools, Pollet adds: "Hard questions need to be asked: Who are the 120 students at Summit high school in Seattle?"

He's right. But the answer raises questions about his lesson on privilege.

Sixty percent of Summit Sierra's students are on the free and reduced lunch program for low-income kids compared to 37.6 percent in Seattle schools. 

Forty percent are African American compared to 16.4 percent in the district.

I have a message in to Pollet.

Meanwhile, from the other end of the political spectrum, state representative Chad Magendanz (R-5, Issaquah), the ranking Republican on the house education committee, says the legislature shouldn’t address the Washington State Supreme Court’s McCleary mandate until legilsators agree to give the green light to charter schools.

"Let me be clear," representative Magendanz wrote on his Facebook page: "The biggest political obstacle to wrapping up McCleary right now is a charter school fix. If the Speaker won’t allow a vote, McCleary doesn’t have a chance. Is the teachers union willing to risk $3 billion per biennium just so that 1,300 at-risk kids have fewer options?"