Sawant's plans beyond Seattle City Hall: Today So Far

• Seattle Councilmember Sawant will not run for reelection. She plans to do this instead ...
• FBI has been concerned about neo-Nazis targeting the energy grid. There have been 15 such attacks on substations in the Northwest since last summer.

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for January 19, 2023.

Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant will not seek reelection this year, opening up District 3 to a newcomer after 10 years in office.

Sawant's announcement Thursday served two purposes. One is straightforward: She's not running again. The other is to establish an argument for her next steps. Those next steps include forming Workers Strike Back, which she hopes will be a new movement to further the causes she has championed along with her party, Socialist Alternative. Within this argument that Sawant lays out are some fighting words against Democrats, including Seattle's Pramila Jayapal, who represents the region in Congress. She also isn't a fan of Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and calls them both "sell outs," in a "guest rant" in The Stranger today.

After establishing that Democrats basically suck, Sawant says that Workers Strike Back will be the solution. It is here, after leaving office at the end of 2023, that she says she and her supporters will "continue to be disturbers of the political peace in Seattle." Read the full story here.

It's worth noting that earlier this week, Central District's Joy Hollingsworth announced her campaign for District 3. Read more about that here.

While the recent arrests for the Christmas attacks on substations in Pierce County appear to have been motived by a desire to rob local businesses, the FBI has been concerned about such attacks on the power grid for months now. Why? Answer: Neo-Nazis.

Two Puyallup men said they were knocking out power in December in order to commit burglaries at local businesses. Which sounds a bit odd. All that work, over hours, putting their lives in danger, to knock out power at four substations, and all they reportedly got was $100 from a local restaurant's cash register. I suppose if you don't hesitate to poke at a substation processing hundreds of thousands of volts, you may be operating at a level where that all makes sense.

There is no indication that these two men were motivated by extremist ideologies. But according to an FBI memo that KUOW and OPB obtained, the agency has been on alert for neo-Nazis and other extremists with similar intentions. Such extremist reasoning, however, may be just as odd as the alleged Puyallup burglars'.

“The individuals of concern believe that an attack on electrical infrastructure will contribute to their ideological goal of causing societal collapse and a subsequent race war in the United States,” according to the FBI memo.

As KUOW's John Ryan reports, instructions on how to attack the power grid have been going around online extremism websites and discussion boards for a while now, along with calls to attack substations. During this same time, the Northwest has experienced 15 such attacks. In more recent months, the FBI has noted a rise in such threats. One FBI alert in November stated, “The FBI has received reports of threats to electrical infrastructure by threat actors who espouse RMVE ideology to create civil disorder and inspire further violence." That abbreviation, "RMVE," is FBI speak for "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists."

This idea may sound quite illogical to anyone with ... the ability to process logic. The basic thinking here is that the only thing keeping us all from attacking people different than ourselves are light bulbs, binge watching Netflix, and easy access to TikTok. Once those things are powered down, obviously, all hell will break loose. Once Joe Neighbor realizes that he can't microwave his dinner, he'll scratch his head and say to himself, "Huh, I should go pick a fight."

This line of thinking is popular among a range of extremist groups waiting, and hoping, for any sort of tragedy, catastrophe, or crisis to create an opportunity. In 2021, an FBI spokesperson told me that such groups were "popping up left and right" in the Northwest. This world of extremism can be complicated and nuanced, so I wrote up a quick guide to common things you'll come across. At the top of this list is "accelerationism," the effort by groups to accelerate the demise of the state, the region, or the United States. There are many groups, with different motivations, who engage in this. Accelerationists talk about attacks on infrastructure, such as knocking out substations, but they also seek to sow political division, misinformation, and disinformation (sound familiar?). They want people to get angry at each other. Whether this all starts a civil war, or just chaos, they plan to be ready to exert power amid the mayhem.

It's worth noting that some extremists groups, whether or not they are accelerationists, have a goal of going mainstream and some run for election.

While a rational person won't be spurred to start a civil war if the power goes out, there is a significant threat if the power grid is targeted. Emergency services and hospitals, for example, rely on power. It's more than likely that such services have backup plans. Heck, a newspaper I once worked at had backup generators for its printing facility that could power a small town for days. Still, it's best to not have such backup plans activate in the first place.

Check out KUOW's full story on this here.

AS SEEN ON KUOW

Joy Hollingsworth begins a campaign to represent Seattle's District 3 on the City Council, Jan. 17, 2023. (Courtesy of the Joy Hollingsworth campaign)

DID YOU KNOW?

The Earth's ozone layer is on track to recover in 40 years.

Back in 1985, studies indicated that common chemicals in aerosol sprays, solvents, and refrigerants were harming the planet's ozone layer, which is a pretty important part of the Earth. It protects us on the surface from harmful radiation. It spurred an international effort to phase out the chemicals. That effort was massive and is why I could say "chlorofluorocarbons" in grade school.

A recent assessment of the ozone layer states that it is expected to recover to 1980 levels by 2040.

ALSO ON OUR MINDS

Behind your speedy Amazon delivery are serious hazards for workers, government finds

Federal safety inspectors have concluded that the twisting, bending and long reaches that Amazon warehouse workers perform as much as nine times per minute put them at high risk for lower back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders and constitute an unacceptable hazard.

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