Campaigning for Seattle Council after Defund: Today So Far

• Taking an EV road trip across the Northwest.
• Seattle council members running for re-election talk about efforts to defund Seattle police.
• An update on Tokitae's journey back to the Salish Sea

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for July 17, 2023.

Quick hits

• Top House Democrats reject Rep. Jayapal's comments calling Israel a 'racist state'
• Mike's adventures in art: Amoako Boafo, SIX, XO Seattle
• Tree-sitter seeks to save 'exceptional tree' in Seattle

Range anxiety: The concern that an electric-vehicle driver has over the availability of charging stations when driving long distances. Drivers of gas-powered vehicles have stations all over the place. EV charging stations are more sparse. But when KUOW's John Ryan opted to take an EV on a road trip to Boise, Idaho, recently, range anxiety wasn't really as much of a factor as "charger anxiety."

This is one takeaway from Ryan's trip testing our region's EV infrastructure. He took a Chevy Bolt on a more than 500-mile trek, navigating through the treacherous and wild arid grasslands of Washington, over the infamous charging desert of Eastern Oregon, and on to the rugged, rocky realm of Idaho. He documents his journey along the way, detailing aspects of EV travel that I had never considered before. Charger anxiety, as he calls it, is dealing with different charging stations. Some charge faster or slower. Sometimes you roll up to a charging station only to find it hasn't been maintained and is therefore not working. And many require you to set up an account with your bank card, which can be tedious across different companies.

It seems that EV charging companies have some room for improvement when it comes to ease of use. The only thing I can liken this to is when you go to an arcade or a pinball bar and they annoyingly force you to purchase a card to use on their machines. Or they make you download an app and pay for every game on your phone. Whereas I can simply choose to never return to those arcades, EV drivers have more limited options right now. I personally drive a hybrid, which I'm pretty happy with, but I know an EV will be in my future at some point. It will likely be in yours, too. So this is useful information. Check out the full story on this here.

The Seattle City Council jumped on a lot of measures in 2020, following local protests against police brutality. Some of those actions were in response to the Defund the Police movement, which called for cutting the Seattle Police Department's budget by 50%. The council never actually went as far as 50%, but there were cuts and changes around SPD. The votes were swift at the time, but now some of those council members are up for re-election and are swiftly moving to control the narrative.

Councilmember Tammy Morales is sticking by her 2020 decisions. But as KUOW's David Hyde reports, Councilmember Dan Strauss and Councilmember Andrew Lewis are navigating their re-election campaigns differently. For example, Strauss just sent a mailer to his constituents boldly stating, "Defunding the police was a mistake," followed by a list of measures he voted for in support of public safety and SPD. And Lewis now tells KUOW that, “the whole focus on funding is a mistake." Read more on this here.

An update on Tokitae's journey back to the Salish Sea: The orca is in good health, despite a couple recent illnesses.

Tokitae is the orca that was removed from Puget Sound in the 1970s and taken to the Miami Seaquarium, where she performed for decades under the name "Lolita." The effort to return her to her home waters has gained momentum recently, and a return trip is highly anticipated for later this year.

“All of her parameters are near normal,” Dr. Tom Reidarson said in an update on the Friends of Toki website. “Things are looking really good. Her blood work continues to be stable and look nice. And she is in as good of a clinical condition as I’ve ever seen her.”

Read more here.

AS SEEN ON KUOW

On Friday, July 14, 2023, an activist who goes by the name "Droplet" climbed into a Western red cedar in Seattle's Wedgwood neighborhood that is slated to be cut down, in hopes of preserving it. (Courtesy of Martin Kaste)

DID YOU KNOW?

Alys McKey Bryant took off in an airplane from Seattle's Harbor Island on July 17, 1913. This was just 10 years after the famous Wright Brothers flight, which demonstrated that airplanes could be a thing. Bryant was the West Coast's first woman pilot. At the time, she was still new to the airplane scene. Her first flight was just the year prior, and she began performing exhibition flights just a couple months before her Seattle appearance (that first exhibition was in Yakima on May 3). While flying over Seattle, Bryant set an altitude record for women at 2,900. It was an impressive feat for this era's airplanes. Unfortunately, talk about Bryant's flight was short lived. Apparently, folks were more interested in a riot that happened the next day.

This all happened at Seattle's annual Golden Potlatch festival. The following year also featured an airplane exhibition. War was emerging in Europe at the time, so pilot Silas Christofferson decided to drop bags of flour all over the city to show how these new machines could be used in war. A window was broken, but nobody was hurt.

ALSO ON OUR MINDS

Got tipping rage? This barista reveals what it's like to be behind the tip screen

A lot of tipped workers across the U.S. (many in the food service industry) earn a subminimum wage ($2.13 per hour is the federal subminimum) with the idea that tips will get them up to the minimum wage, but that doesn't always happen.

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