Tens of millions of my fellow staff are afraid. Afraid to go to work, afraid to take their youngsters to highschool. Afraid to reside the life they deserve. Division of Homeland Safety and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are guilty.
Labor should lead on this essential and dire second. Proper right here in Seattle, staff are being kidnapped by masked federal goons whereas the police stand by and watch. Metropolis Corridor continues to be poised to develop native and federal regulation enforcement’s means to surveil and kidnap individuals. Mayor Katie Wilson has the facility to disclaim ICE a weapon of their struggle towards the individuals of this metropolis. She urgently must train that energy.
Final yr, the Seattle Metropolis Council’s pro-business majority voted to develop a controversial video surveillance system. They did so even within the face of massive public outcry, opposition from privateness and immigration advocates and the ACLU, and a dire warning from the town’s personal Workplace of Civil Rights. These cameras, that are already on Aurora Avenue, Third Avenue downtown and within the Chinatown Worldwide District, are about to be expanded to Capitol Hill’s nightlife space and the Central District round Garfield Excessive Faculty.
Advocates of the expanded surveillance, together with outgoing Seattle Police Guild president Mike Solan and former Mayor Bruce Harrell, declare the know-how is required to cut back violent crime. The proof tells a distinct story.
Seattle’s Workplace of Civil Rights warns in a report that this sort of surveillance doesn’t reliably cut back violent crime, and in reality is prone to enhance racial and financial inequality, particularly when the know-how is concentrated in neighborhoods such because the CID, Capitol Hill and the Central District. The report states, “When these surveillance techniques are disproportionately deployed in neighborhoods the place communities who’re Black, Indigenous, Individuals of Coloration, low-income, disabled, and 2SLGBTQ+ reside, work, and collect, the result’s a coverage suggestions loop that stigmatizes these communities as ‘concentrated crime’ areas.”
The report goes on to forged severe doubt on proponents’ claims of diminished violent crime, stating that “Scientific and peer-reviewed analysis additional underscore the boundaries of CCTV (closed-circuit tv) and RTCCs (Actual Time Crime Facilities). The peer-reviewed literature in regulation, social science, and behavioral science doesn’t assist claims that these surveillance applied sciences cut back ‘persistent felony crimes,’ ‘severe and violent crimes’ and/or ‘gun violence and human trafficking.’ “
The report, issued in August of final yr, additionally raises the difficulty of the potential for exploitation of Seattle’s CCTV system by federal authorities, a priority that has solely grown extra pressing in 2026. The Workplace of Civil Rights references a report on an analogous system in Washington, D.C., that’s utilized by the Trump administration to gather knowledge on perceived enemies of the state.
It’s not a matter of if ICE or different federal companies entry our native surveillance know-how to trace and kidnap our immigrant neighbors and punish dissent, however a matter of when. We can’t merely wait. We should act.
When our new mayor was campaigning final yr, she echoed many of those considerations and spoke out towards increasing video surveillance, citing Medicaid and Department of Licensing knowledge that ICE had already exploited. Nonetheless, since taking workplace virtually a month in the past, Mayor Wilson has taken no motion to deactivate the system and even halt growth, and has made no dedication to take action.
That is unacceptable. Group members have continued to induce the mayor and Metropolis Council to halt the growth of video surveillance within the identify of holding the individuals of Seattle secure from ICE’s terror. Whereas Seattle has but to expertise the dimensions of occupation that our associates in Minneapolis are enduring and resisting, it’s only a matter of time earlier than that turns into our actuality. And ICE is already right here, snatching individuals off the road, together with a number of incidents alongside Aurora Avenue, the place these cameras are already in operation.
A broad coalition of staff got here collectively final yr to tackle the company political institution and elect Katie Wilson to the mayor’s workplace. I’m calling on my fellow staff to carry the mayor to her phrase and demand that she deny the Trump administration a robust device in his racist dragnet. Flip the rattling cameras off.
