Weather girl Hannah here: REAL Seattle-heads will love this. Today, it's gonna rain. Like, the whole fucking day. This morning, temperatures will hover around the high 40s and then tip over to the low 50s around 1 pm. So I’d suggest some boots and a water-proof jacket, but you’re an adult, you can dress yourself.
Climate pledge who? Wednesday morning, “troublemaker” protesters blocked Amazon’s downtown corporate headquarters, a parking garage, and an Amazon Go store in effort to pressure the e-commerce giant to divest from a natural gas pipeline project that would increase greenhouse gas emissions by 3.47 million metric tons every year for the next three decades, according to a 2022 filing with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The protesters argued that supporting the project runs contrary to the “Climate Pledge,” in which Amazon promised to run strictly on renewable energy by 2025 and to decarbonize by 2040.
Activists block the entrance to Amazon’s Day 1 building Wednesday to protest the company’s involvement with a pipeline expansion to power its data centers in Oregon
— Lauren Rosenblatt (@LRosenblatt_) March 27, 2024
The plan contradicts Amazon’s climate pledge goal to reduce its carbon emissions, protestors say pic.twitter.com/uj6UvQpqWF
Baltimore bridge update: As you read in the Slog yesterday, divers retrieved the bodies of two victims in the recent collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. As of this morning, authorities have not reported finding any more of the six unaccounted for victims, all of whom immigrant workers.
Pay Up: Remember how I told everyone before the election that we could lose the new minimum wage for gig workers if we let big business buy City Hall? Well, today’s the day! Or at least the start. The Seattle City Council will meet today to discuss issues with the new gig worker minimum wage ordinance. You should read all the background here and then check back on the blog tonight because I’m sure I’ll have something to say. I always do!
We are not entitled to unpaid/underpaid labor. If these companies want to claim nobility by calling their service essential, they shouldn't tack on new fees. But they don't care about customers or workers. They care about their profits https://t.co/Fjwr8vOsgn
— Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) March 27, 2024
Crunching the numbers: Recent labor agreements with a coalition of City workers could cost the City of Seattle an additional $280 million over the next four years. The City should absolutely pay their workers well. Full stop. At the same time, the new contracts, in the face of a quarter billion dollar budget crisis, will force even more creativity from a council that seems set on balancing the next budget with a fuckton of cuts to social services instead of taxes on the City's rich and powerful. We'll see if any of them wise up and see that they can't austerity their way out of this one.
Solidarity forever: Last night, Starbucks workers at the 164th & Bothell Highway location in Mill Creek, WA voted 21-1 to unionize. According to a press release, the store joins 410 stores and 10,000 workers who have unionized with Starbucks Workers United in what may be one of the fastest-growing organizing campaigns in modern US history.
ICYMI: As Vivian wrote yesterday, a new state law requires Washington schools to better include the contributions of marginalized people in their curriculum. The goal is not to make a separate course to learn about gay people or people of color, but to acknowledge marginalized people throughout a child's learning experience. For example, Vivian wrote, “...a theoretical problem in a math class could include two moms figuring out how many apples to buy. Science teachers could include lessons about the queer astronaut Wendy Lawrence, or about the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence, Alan Turing, a British man who was later prosecuted and chemically castrated for homosexuality.”
ICYMI x2: If there's any progressives voters in Northwest Washington (Island, San Juan, Skagit, Whatcom County, Lynnwood, Everett) reading this right now, switch tabs to my story from yesterday rn. I broke down the race for the WA02 congressional seat, and it looks like if you want longtime incumbent Rep. Rick Larsen to face a lefty challenger, then y'all have to pick between Lynnwood City Council Member Josh Binda and Green Party member Jason Call.
One of Trump's many, many lawsuits: Trump's lawyers will argue today that the Georgia judge should throw out his election interference case because meddling in the 2020 election actually amounts "political speech and advocacy that lie at the heart of the First Amendment."
Smh: Frontrunner gubernatorial candidate Bob Ferguson is backing the blue HARD in his campaign. This week, he shared on Twitter his plan to recruit and retain more cops. We really shouldn’t be shocked. As Danny Westneat pointed out, the Ferg bragged about an endorsement from none other than Carmen Best, the ex-Chief of Police who gassed protesters all summer in 2020.
Washington ranks last in the country in law enforcement personnel per capita. That must change. As Governor, I will take action to recruit and retain state and local officers.
— Bob Ferguson (@BobFergusonAG) March 27, 2024
1) My budget will include a $100 million grant program to help local governments hire more officers.… pic.twitter.com/o3qvjONTQG
In better campaign news: Sorry, this is kind of old, but we definitely missed it. A few weeks ago, the Seattle Building Trades endorsed I-137, the payroll tax on businesses that pay employees more than $1 million. The money will go to building social housing. Why do I bring this up? It’s a good sign for the campaign because construction workers played a huge role in crushing the head tax in 2018. Sure, the Chamber of Commerce, one of the most powerful and conservative institutions in town, will still oppose the tax, but any group that the I-137 campaigners can pick off from the Chamber's “side” is a win!
The Cut, you will always be famous: The editorial team at The Cut has a talent for picking up ragebait personal essays. In the latest one to catch the internet’s attention, a woman makes the case for marrying older men. She really enjoys the perks of her marriage to a guy who's 10 years older than her—he pays the rent, he travels with her, he has more life skills, etc. I think she’s absolutely right to note that when women date men of the same age and same stage of life as them, they often take on this mother role, but, girl, a 30-year-old man, especially one who is interested in seriously dating a 20-year-old, is probably not the pinnacle of maturity, either. In the piece's one shining moment of feminism, she recognized women's labor in relationships, but the moment felt short-lived in an essay that's otherwise about how she is smarter than other women for marrying an older man. In an ideal world, the writer would have advised men to be better boyfriends instead of shaming women for not dating better, older, (and probably weirder) guys. But then her essay wouldn’t be nearly as masturbatory, and that would sort of defeat the purpose of graduating from Harvard to become a personal essayist. You are not smarter than other women for viewing a romantic partner so transactionally. That’s like, the historic origins of marriage. LOL.
Perhaps the most important song of our generation:
