Four Diamonds
This casual spot hosted its grand opening downtown this week, serving boba drinks and Vietnamese fare like pho and rice plates.
Downtown

This is the one customer service desk where the customer is always wrong. And no matter what, you’re going to Hell. by Hannah Murphy Winter

“Welcome to Hell. This is the Hellp Desk.”

A young woman with long, red hair and a glower that would make Miranda Priestly tremble stands in front of the gates of Hell. She holds your Soul File in her hand—a list of everything the Universe weighed when it decided if you were going to Paradise or headed to the gate you’re looking at now.

Most of Hell is run by demons, but Lily, the woman holding your file, is a human: one who had a short lifetime full of customer service experience. And the line you’re in isn’t for everyone. It’s for the Karens, the crypto-bros, people who insist it was “just a joke.” Everyone who, on Earth, learned that if you’re loud, obnoxious, or cruel enough, you’ll eventually get what you want.

Not here. This is the one customer service desk where the customer is always wrong. And no matter what, you’re going to Hell.

All of it is courtesy of Hell’s Belles, the TikTok series created by Seattle’s Jaysea Lynn. Born of two traumas—religious indoctrination and customer service work—Hell’s Belles has built the afterlife we all wish existed: fair, nuanced, respectful of religion but devoid of dogma. The series has spent four years exploring morality, justice, and some of our best and worst human instincts, with a sprinkling of demon smut on top. The series has 1.8 million followers who scroll in five days a week to watch updates from the Hellp Desk.

Hell’s Belles was only supposed to last a few episodes—an idea that Lynn had during a particularly bad day in, you guessed it, customer service. “This lady just told me to go to Hell,” Lynn told The Stranger. “The first skit came to me, and I was like ‘Cool, I’ll do, like, three or four of these. It’ll be cathartic, and I will fade into obscurity.’ And that was almost 600 episodes ago.”

Lynn started out by pulling material from her own life, growing up in Astoria (yes, of The Goonies fame) in a conservative, religious home. “In college, I lived in an all-women’s Christian co-op that was essentially a cult,” she says. “When I connected with those same people after college, we had all left religion—and some of us had left faith completely. And it was like, ‘Okay, what were the things that happened? They mattered and they hurt us, and they’re worth talking about.’ Hell’s Belles was a place where I could start expressing that malcontent and that hurt and not have someone immediately go, ‘Well, that’s not God,’ to make it more comfortable for them to hear. It’s really validating to hear someone say, ‘That’s not what should have happened.’ Or ‘You were assaulted, and it wasn’t God trying to get your attention.’”

In the Hell’s Belles afterlife, we’re all judged by the Universe on the same basic scale: Did you do your honest best to avoid doing harm? If you did, head to the paradise of your choosing. If you didn’t, you’ll find yourself walking past the Hellp Desk toward the gates of Hell. The first two levels aren’t punishment—think of them more like therapy. A place to work through the reasons you weren’t able to be as decent as you should have been on Earth. As you get deeper, the punishments get more severe, but Lynn’s version of Hell assumes that everyone is redeemable. No one is doomed to rot there as long as they’re willing to put in the work.

Some of the desk’s patrons are archetypes: Christian mothers who rejected their queer children, abusers, and backyard puppy mill breeders. Others are pulled straight from headlines: the day Anita Bryant died, Miss Oklahoma came up to the desk (“The gay is not a determining factor in how many stairs you have to do.”) When Luigi Mangione shot and killed Brian Thompson, an unnamed healthcare CEO passed through (“When you were lying in that bed, dying, did you still think it was best for healthcare decisions to be made by an insurance panel with no medical training?” Lily asked. “Your claim for hellp has been denied.”)

But between the Hellp Desk patrons is the whole “life” part of the afterlife. Lily falls in love with a hunky demon named Bel, they have a little found family that passes between the many levels of the afterlife and plays sexy trivia and sings “Margaritaville” karaoke, and of course, that’s where the sprinkling of demon smut comes in.

The show ran for four years, and in addition to the whirlwind that comes with TikTok notoriety, Hell’s Belles also helped reconcile some of that religious trauma in her personal life. “I started living more authentically,” Lynn says. “And it was like creative therapy for me. I’m more willing to talk to my mom about this. And we were able to have these sometimes sad or harsh conversations that built over time.”

But in January, as the TikTok ban loomed, it seemed like a chapter might be coming to an end. But the same week that TikTok went dark (if only for a day), Lynn signed a seven-figure, three-book deal, including her already self-published prequel to the series, For Whom the Belle Tolls. No matter which oligarch owns our various social media platforms, the Hell’s Belles universe will live on.

The series prequel starts when Lily is still alive, sitting in her car that refused to start, just after getting a bleak cancer prognosis: “The doctor had given her options, of course. Options to prolong. To ease. But options were for people with money. People whose cars would start.” By Chapter 3, though, we’re in the afterlife: Lily gets judged by the Universe, sorted into her own paradise, and the Hellp Desk comes to be.

The first book was the largest writing project Lynn has ever taken on—she doesn’t even script the Hell’s Belles episodes. But she’s excited to eventually move away from the daily grind of filming, editing, and posting an episode every day. “It’s not my favorite storytelling medium,” she says. And with a three-book deal, she may have the chance to (very, very slowly) move away from it. “At first I was like ‘Do you have two more books in you?’” she says. “As soon as I had the deal, I was like ‘Maybe I’m a fraud, and I only ever had one book in me, and this was all a fluke, and this is a lie, and they’re gonna put me in author jail.’ And then it was I took a nap and ate something, and I went, ‘No, I think I’ll be okay.’”

There are two possibly perfect descriptions I’ve read of For Whom the Belle Tolls. The first comes from a document titled “Reading waiver for dad.” When Lynn’s religious father expressed interest in reading the manuscript before it was published, she agreed, but first, he had to initial and sign on a few dotted lines. “I know, from prior conversations, that you have read Dostoevsky and believe this book to be similar. While I am flattered, I’m also concerned,” the letter starts. “For Whom the Belle Tolls does—like Dostoevsky—deal with religion, morality, the human experience, and satire. However, it is not, in any way, like anything Dostoevsky wrote. Dostoevsky did not write sexy demons. Dostoevsky did not have customer service trauma that affected his work. Dostoevsky did not write sex scenes.”

The second comes from the book’s dedication: “For anyone who has ever felt temporary. And for the nerds.”

On Tuesday in Seattle, as well as in five other cities across the country, Starbucks workers went on strike to demand a fair contract—provoking a police response that included 16 arrests. This occurred one day before Starbucks held its annual shareholder meeting. by Conor Kelley

On Tuesday in Seattle, as well as in five other cities across the country, Starbucks workers went on strike to demand a fair contract—provoking a police response that included 16 arrests. This occurred one day before Starbucks held its annual shareholder meeting.

It’s the latest episode in a contract battle between Starbucks and its workers that has lasted more than three years.

You may be thinking—“But Conor, weren’t these contract negotiations supposedly wrapping up late last year?” Good eye. As I reported in November, the coffee giant and Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) were engaged in negotiations that both sides swore were moving quickly toward a fair resolution. But given Starbucks’ long history of refusing to accept unions in their ranks and hiring the notorious union-busting law firm Littler Mendleson to argue against workers’ rights in court, some (certainly not me) were skeptical that the company would suddenly start playing nice.

Yeah, they didn’t.

In the final bargaining meeting in December, Starbucks reportedly offered SBWU no new wage increases, only a 1.5% increase in future years, and broke their promise to resolve the hundreds of pending Unfair Labor Practice charges the union has filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

The union viewed this offer as outrageous. “This is backtracking on months and months of progress and promises from the company to work toward an end-of-year framework ratification,” union leader Michelle Eisen said at the time.

In response, SBWU coordinated escalating strikes over five days starting on December 20, typically a very profitable time of year for Starbucks. The strike peaked on Christmas Eve, when 5,000 baristas at over 300 stores walked out.

On January 31, the two sides agreed to bring in the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to help them hash out a framework contract for their 550 unionized stores representing over 11,000 workers. Those talks are ongoing. Neither side will disclose details on how the talks are proceeding, but perhaps this latest action speaks to its progress—or lack thereof.

Tuesday, community members aligned with Starbucks workers staged over 100 actions they dubbed “sip-ins” in six cities: Easton, PA; Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and here in Seattle at the shop on The Ave and 42nd.

This location, just a couple blocks off the UW campus, has been a hotbed for activity in this years-long saga. In 2022, workers called the store a “high-incident” location with frequent disruptions and security issues they felt ill-equipped to handle, but expressed concerns that if they filed incident reports with corporate, theirs would be the next store closed on dubious grounds.

Last month, on February 11, workers at this store walked out after Starbucks spent millions to run a Super Bowl promotion offering a free coffee at any of their locations—but neglected to staff up for the huge crush of folks who arrived and overwhelmed the staff.

Two weeks ago, UW students protested the school’s relationship with Starbucks, demanding in a letter to UW administration that the school stop serving Starbucks coffee on campus until the company offers their workers an acceptable contract.

On Tuesday morning, nearly 100 workers and community supporters sat inside the shop and protested outside, holding signs and chanting, “No contract, no coffee! No workers, no Starbucks!”

This week, we took direct action to show Starbucks the urgency of finalizing contracts with the wages, staffing, and protections we need to thrive.

We’re doing what it takes to win. And we won't stop until we do.

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— Starbucks Workers United (@sbworkersunited.org) March 13, 2025 at 10:51 AM

 “I’m out here because our store won a union election in 2022 and it's 2025 and we have yet to see our first contract,” said Emma Cox, a barista trainer. “Starbucks pledged to proceed with bargaining in good faith last year but they have not followed through with that promise. It’s never been that they don’t have the money to give us raises. It’s that they don’t put the needs of their workers first.”

Police scanner audio confirms that around 1 p.m., the store manager called the cops and requested seven protestors inside the store be “trespassed”—arrested for trespassing. Store management also informed the police they would “assist in prosecution,” according to police scanner audio.

SPD leapt into action, dispatching officers a mere three hours later to set up a “command post” in a parking lot at 42nd and Brooklyn, equipped with a “crowd management package,” which according to the SPD manual consists of blast balls and pepper spray. A photo a Reddit user posted shows Seattle’s Finest standing around chatting. That same user later reported seeing two more vans and four other officers around the corner, making a grand total of 10 vehicles and 20 officers deployed for a peaceful protest in a little coffee shop. SPD cleared out the protestors by around 5:15 p.m., without altercation.

Your tax dollars hard at work!

“Tuesday’s actions here in Seattle and across the country sent a clear message to Starbucks shareholders: It’s time for fair contracts. Starbucks needs to take care of their workers and the first step of that would be to finalize fair contracts with the wages, staffing, and protections baristas need to thrive,” said Ty Newbill, a Bremerton barista present at the protest.

“It's disappointing to see Workers United disrupt our stores and undermine the ongoing mediation process for single store contracts,” said a representative from Starbucks. “Since last April, Starbucks and Workers United have made significant progress through respectful dialogue and have reached a number of important agreements. Our success starts and ends with our partners (employees) and we’re committed to providing the best job in retail.”

In January, Starbucks reported $9.4 billion in global net revenue last quarter. Starbucks’ CEO Brian Niccol made $95.8 million in 2024 for four months of remote work from California. Meanwhile, SBWU claims that Starbucks workers make on average only $16.50/hour. The company disputes that—but still claims “the best job in retail” pays $18/hour.

“We are still without a first contract, from a company who can certainly afford to do right by its workers,” said union leader Michelle Eisen, one of 16 protestors arrested nationwide yesterday. “We deserve better.”

The Starbucks shareholder meeting the day after the protests was a spicy one. One shareholder from the well-funded conservative anti-labor National Legal and Policy Center advocacy group proposed that Starbucks consider the “commission of a report on human rights risks related to labor organizing.” (The board recommended voting against it.)

Shareholders also grilled CEO Brian Niccol on his private jet usage and interrogated the company’s lack of diversity on their board of directors.

Later, a shareholder asked when Starbucks would negotiate its first union contract.

Niccol stumbled through the beginnings of an answer before throwing the ball to Sara Kelly, their head of human resources. Kelly talked about how much they value their “partners,” and how much progress they’ve been making in negotiations.

She concluded by saying, “When a partner elects a union to represent them, we are committed to engaging in good faith with that union and the partners who have selected that union to negotiate fair contracts.”

Sound familiar?

Here comes new music from Suzzallo, Dead Bars, Perfume Genius, Kinski, and more! by Stranger Staff Dead Bars

All Dead Bars Go to Heaven

(Iodine Recordings)

March 21

For a certain crowd, the phrase pop punk often conjures up imagery of white dudes with frosted tips singing through their nose about how all girls suck. But Dead Bars aren’t like that. That was 2006. Today’s pop punk is different—it’s not plasticized misogyny, it’s optimistic. It’s punk with a pep in its step, not because everything is great, but because everything is terrible, and at least we have each other. On their new album, All Dead Bars Go to Heaven, the band’s vocalist John Maiello delivers earnest lyrics about finding community in music (“Your favorite singers are on your side / let the riffs come alive”) and visiting dead friends through his records (“I wanna be a ghost tonight / I wanna party with my friends on the other side”). That all may sound a little too saccharine on paper, but the band’s buoyant, melodic punk riffs and rough-and-tumble percussion adds enough of an edge to let you feel like you’re still a badass even while sitting in your feelings. (Dead Bars’ album release show is April 26 at the Sunset) MEGAN SELING 

Glory

(Matador Records)

March 28

In the words of a YouTube comment I read at 2 a.m. on the music video for the Perfume Genius single “It’s a Mirror”: “We’re about to witness the slay of the century.” YES. Give me a big mood, big music, big art direction; by all means, take up space on the strength of an album cover alone. An uncannily strawberry blond Mike Hadreas, in a crop top and low-rise jeans, strewn across the floor of a mysterious cabin? We needed this. For his seventh album, Glory, Hadreas and company swerve towards a fuller, more driving rock sound, while keeping it very weird and very queer. The sweaty, fever-dreamlike videos for both singles, “It’s a Mirror” (featuring a leather-clad Hadreas riding a motorcycle, getting a full facial of gasoline in a field, and so much more) and “No Front Teeth” (featuring Aldous Harding in a psychotic waffle-making-and-eating scene, and so much more) were made by Cody Critcheloe, whose warped aesthetic, as always, sets the whole thing off. (Perfume Genius play the Showbox June 26) EMILY NOKES

Your Love Is All I Know

(LACE Records)

April 4

Sifting through show listings last year, I didn’t expect to find a special band. I knew I had when I heard “Your Turn,” a desperate howl about the last short end of a relationship, at the point you’re ready to ask someone if they still love you, and to show you how. If Your Love Is All I Know is like Swamp Wife’s self-titled first EP, it will be emotionally forthright and play smart with big, brittle guitars. Swamp Wife doesn’t play loud for the sake of it—they play for the friends they wrote the song with. The first single from Your Love Is All I Know, “Cadmium Red Light,” released Valentine’s Day, oozes Chastity Belt, Pixies, and Pixies offshoot the Amps. The band plays like a single dark, mechanical instrument. Singer Abby Wrath stands alone in its murk. As if illuminated in intense red light, Wrath whispers, yells, and stretches each word until it breaks. (Swamp Wife’s EP release show is April 11 at Black Lodge April 11) VIVIAN MCCALL

Something About April III

(Linear Labs Records)

April 18

Self-taught musician, composer, producer, and orchestrater Adrian Younge is known for his work with big names like Kendrick Lamar, Wu-Tang Clan, Ghostface Killah, the Delfonics, and Snoop Dogg. However, the multi-talented artist has also released countless albums and soundtracks on his own. In 2011, Younge released the first installment of his Something about April trilogy—a pseudo-soundtrack series of dark psychedelic soul and cinematic instrumentals. After the album was sampled by hiphop heavies Timbaland and Jay-Z, Younge went on to release part two in 2016, and Something About April III will be released April 18. Don’t miss Younge as he stops by the Tractor Tavern with tracks from the trilogy with his 10-piece orchestra. I just have one question... how will that many musicians fit onto the Tractor’s little stage? (Adrian Younge plays Tractor Tavern on March 26) AUDREY VANN

The Quiet Year

(Thirty Something Records)

May 5

The term supergroup has been overused to the point of meaning nothing at all, but please believe me and put some respect on that word when I tell you Suzzallo is the most exciting supergroup to come from Seattle in quite some time. The band came together in 2022 after vocalist/guitarist Rocky Votolato’s child unexpectedly died in a car accident. Music and loved ones being the balm that they are, Votolato channeled his grief into performing soaring, guitar-driven rock songs with old friends, including his Waxwing bandmate Rudy Gajadhar, Steve Bonnell of Schoolyard Heroes, and, for a few songs, Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. You can almost hear the heart healing—or, at least, finding a sustainable balance of love and grief—within the melodies. If you’re new to town and all these names mean nothing to you, know this: Seattle and the world are so excited about this record that Suzzallo raised more than $100K in presales via Kickstarter to make it happen. (Suzzallo’s album release show is May 17 at Madame Lou’s) MEGAN SELING

February 28
Max Nordile
Crystal Rescue Flux Code cassette
(Music For People)

March 7
Kinski
Stumbledown Terrace
(Comedy Minus One)

March 7
Lake
Bucolic Gone
(Don Giovanni)

March 8
Tennis Pro
Mismatch
(self-released)

March 21
Death Spa
Ewwwphoria
(self-released)

March 28
Great Grandpa
Patience, Moonbeam
(Run for Cover)

April 18
Melvins
Thunderball
(Ipecac)

May 30
The Minus 5
Oar On, Penelope!
(Yep Roc)

June 13
Casual Hex
Zig Zag Lady Illusion II
(Youth Riot Records)

June 13
Sea Lemon
Diving For a Prize
(Luminelle Recordings)

See someone? Say something! by Anonymous

Cute masked person on 3/11 redeye to Detroit

You: Ponytail, green jacket, brown gingham skirt. Me: Long braid, giant sweater. We landed at 6am; I couldn’t think. Are you gay? Coffee?

Missing wallet

To whoever found my wallet on the 36 and brought it to the BECU on Ranier Ave, thank you so much!!! Let me get you a coffee?

My haircut isn’t cool enough

I don’t have a mullet, but I did eavesdrop your compliments to a friend at Rough & Tumble and clapped. Of COURSE your name is Jen (all good ones are!)

Eye contact galore at Taurus Ox

You: Blonde gal with 3 pals at Taurus Ox on 3/7. Me: Bearded guy clad in a sweater vest with 2 pals. Wish we'd traded more than just repeated glances!

Crutching it at Ballard Pool

You hurt your knee skiing but it didn't keep you out of the fast lane! I was too shy to hold the door for you and your chaperone - red jacket, Mondays

T4T friendship?

You and your partner said my boyfriend and I were cute together at Time Warp. We shared gossip from eavesdropping. Want to be friends?

Star-Fated at the Rave

Said you were a Libra and we agreed it was fate. Kept finding you on the dancefloor, but I was coming & you were going. Can the starfated cross again?

Lowe’s Londoner, Mt. Baker

Actually you’re from the north of England and we chatted about my squeegee. I could talk with you 4ever. Me: dude (enthralled), you: so charming.

Is it a match? Leave a comment here or on our Instagram post to connect!

Did you see someone? Say something! Submit your own I Saw U message here and maybe we'll include it in the next roundup!

Seattle's only human generated news quiz. by Sally Neumann & Leah Caglio

Create your own user feedback survey

You're in luck this weekend, because there's plenty to do on a dime. We're suggesting events from 54th Annual St. Patrick's Day Parade to Capitol Hill Swap Meet - CHASM and from Roq La Rue's Grand Re-Opening Party to a Grasslands Barbecue Pop-Up. For more suggestions, check out our top picks of the week and our St. Patrick's Day guide.

Almost Yours
Almost Yours feels like the sarcastic sister of I Saw U, The Stranger's version of Craigslist Missed Connections. If you're a fan of the heart-eyed drama that transpires on either site, head to this improv show, which "brings near-misses and 'what ifs' to life on stage" and is inspired by real-life unspoken connections. It's the perfect place to cry-laugh about what could have been. LINDSAY COSTELLO
(Here-After at the Crocodile, Belltown, $15)

The Stranger's morning news roundup. by Nathalie Graham

When one park closes... Little Saigon's eight-month-old Hoa Mai Park will temporarily close due to public safety concerns. It has become a gathering place for the unhoused and for drug activity such as fentanyl use, according to nearby residents. Unfortunately, since it's in this city's nature to restrict any and all places for impoverished people, the park will close until further notice. This feels like a sweep but in a different font. And, let's be clear—the rising crime in the International District and Little Saigon is correlated with Bruce Harrell's push to "clean up" downtown. There is nowhere for these people to go and there won't be a place unless the city provides one. When it reopens, Hoa Mai Park will do so with a lockable gate and with reduced night time hours. 

... Another park opens: Victor Steinbruck Park, the grassy gathering space next to Pike Place Market, will finally reopen today after two years. A dispute over the totem poles delayed the reopening. Don't you hate it when that happens? The March 14 opening will happen regardless of totem poles. As for the poles, they'll be restored now with the help of a Native carver and will be reinstalled once they're good as new. 

The weather: Gray. Cold, but not too cold. Rain returns tomorrow. 

A Tesla tinderbox: An arsonist in Capitol Hill dumped gasoline onto a Tesla parked at the intersection of 15th Avenue East and East Harrison then lit the car ablaze. No one was injured, but that Tesla sure won't be operable any time soon. Police apprehended the suspect. 

Help a Hoh out: The only road to Olympic National Park's Hoh Rainforest has been washed out with big bites eroded away since December. Each year, the Upper Hoh Road carries 460,000 visitors. Without enough funds in the county and with a federal government unwilling to help, road restoration hope has dwindled. But, tight-pursed Gov. Bob Ferguson announced yesterday the state will help. He directed $623,000 of reserve funds to help patch up the road. One hundred individual donors also contributed a total of $27,000. Thanks, Bob! 

Did you see the Blood Moon and Lunar Eclipse last night? This was the first total lunar eclipse in two years. If you missed it, you can watch this time lapse from the Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles. I hope this is a good omen astrologically. What do we make of it, star readers?

Got home in time for totality! 

2nd picture was taken by my daughter who’s at an observatory! 

#lunareclipse #photography #moon

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— Mubashar “Mubs” Iqbal (@mubashariqbal.com) March 13, 2025 at 11:41 PM

Reading the tea leaves, it seems as if the omen may be bad: There's an impending federal government shutdown. Democrats are in a tricky situation. Do they side with the GOP ghouls and pass a spending bill that erodes much of Congress's power on government spending and gives that power to Donald Trump and the executive branch? Or, do they allow the shutdown to happen and potentially grant Trump more power that way? Minority leader Chuck Schumer announced he's going to side with the Republicans and vote for the spending bill. Why? He thinks a shutdown is the worse option of the two evils and that it would grant Trump and Elon Musk "full authority to deem whole agencies, programs, and personnel nonessential, furloughing staff with no promise that they would ever be rehired." Ugh, yes, but voting alongside the baddies...? There surely must be better ways to resist than to roll over and show your belly, right? 

Dr. Oz goes to Washington: Celebrity doctor and homeopathic freak Dr. Mehmet Oz wants to be the guy who oversees health insurance under the Department of Health. He'll face a confirmation hearing with the Senate Finance Committee today. Seems like he'll get it. Ahead of his confirmation, Oz announced he'd try to mitigate some of his massive financial conflicts of interest and sell "his interest in more than 70 companies and investment funds, including UnitedHealth Group, HCA Healthcare and Amazon, which now has significant health care ventures," according to the New York Times. 

Some good news: People keep booing JD Vance.

JD Vance was booed at the Kennedy Center.

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— Pop Crave (@popcrave.com) March 13, 2025 at 8:03 PM

Go for gold: With uncertainty about tariffs and a cratering stock market, investors are choosing to invest in something solid, something tangible, something... gold. The yellow metal broke $3,000 Friday—an all-time high. Gold dust or bust, baby. 

Parents sue Trump: A class-action federal lawsuit brought by parents against the Trump administration is suing on the grounds that decimating the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights will lead to discrimination at school. That violates the equal protection clause under the Fifth Amendment, according to the suit. Parents brought the suit three days after the Department of Education announced it was firing 1,300 workers including the entire staffs at seven of 12 regional civil rights offices. The firings amounted to a 50% cut in the department's work force.

Are you a potential political enemy of this administration? If you're reading this on this heretical blog, then you probably are. So read this Wired article about how to protect yourself from digital surveillance. 

Climate change stories everywhere: Jessie Holmes, a former cast member on the reality TV show "Life Below Zero," won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. It was the longest Iditarod ever. Why? Well, the route had to change since there wasn't enough snow north of the Alaska Range. You can't sled dog race without snow. The route changed and ballooned from 1,000 miles to 1,129 miles. Holmes and his team of dogs finished the race in 10 days, 14 hours, 55 minutes and 41 seconds. 

New details in Mahmoud Khalil case: I write "case," but there is no case since Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student, committed no crime. He was taken from his New York home in the middle of the night by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers. According to a new lawsuit filed by his lawyers, Khalil said the ICE agents never identified themselves. He felt as though he was "being kidnapped" when they took him from his home in front of his eight-months pregnant wife to a detention facility in Louisiana where he slept without a pillow or blanket. "This is a targeted, retaliatory and extreme attack on the right of free expression,” Khalil's lawyer Donna Lieberman. She said Khalil was only detained "for having ideas." He is still in custody. 

Protesters demand Khalil’s release: Yesterday, progressive Jewish protesters flooded Trump Tower, demanding the release of Khalil—100 were arrested. Their message? “Fight Nazis, not students,” and “We will not comply.” Khalil’s detention is looking less like an immigration case and more like a test run for mass political arrests.
 
Columbia’s federal funds ransom: Nearing final form fascist, the Trump administration has outlined its criteria to restore $400 million of federal funding to Columbia. The demands? The Ivy League university cracks down on protests, redefines antisemitism on Trump’s terms, and hands more power to campus cops. Among the specifics: ban most masks, centralize discipline, and put entire academic departments under government oversight. Columbia has until March 20 to meekly acquiesce or stay cut off.

A song for your Friday: This is stuck in my head this morning. 

We’re back with another batch of newly announced events! If you missed Cyndi Lauper’s farewell tour late last year, the pop icon is coming through the area for a second time this summer. Portland-grown alt-rockers Everclear will celebrate the 30th anniversary of their major label debut Sparkle and Fade on tour this fall. Plus, Iliza Shlesinger will head to Seattle to remind us that elder millennials can be funny, too. Read on for details and some news you can use.

MUSIC

The Brian Jonestown Massacre
The Showbox (Sat Nov 15)

Broncho - Natural Pleasure Tour
Neumos (Sun June 22)

Cyndi Lauper: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour
White River Amphitheatre (Tues Aug 19)

Currant Bistro
This restaurant inside the Sound Hotel will be shaking and stirring up on-theme cocktails like the "Cliffs of Moher" (Jameson and Guinness, of course) and "The Giant's Causeway" (Caffe Vita cold espresso, Bailey's, Jameson, and Georgetown Brewing's 9lb Porter). In between sips, snack on shareable plates of Irish potato salad, corned beef and cabbage sliders, and shepherd's pie.
Belltown

We’ve Got It All is drenched in nostalgia but not in the usual saccharine, obsessed-with-our-fleeting-youth sort of way. by Megan Seling

Alexandra Lockhart’s project Cumulus has always been a collaborative effort. It may have started as a solo(ish) project, at times literally existing in a bedroom, but for more than a decade now, Lockhart has surrounded herself with friends and fellow musicians to help bring her music to life both in the studio and onstage.

Among them, at least since 2018’s Comfort World, has been William Cremin, who’s worked with Travis Thompson, the Torn ACLs, and Skeletons With Flesh on Them, among others. Last year, while recording the fourth Cumulus full-length We’ve Got It All, Lockhart and Cremin made their music partnership official, announcing Cremin was a permanent part of the band. 

“For this new record, I wanted to explore more territory emotionally and sonically that I knew would require being more vulnerable and opening myself up to bigger contributions from William,” says Alex. “So it just made sense to say out in the open: These songs are as much William’s as they are mine!”

We’ve Got It All is drenched in nostalgia but not in the usual saccharine, obsessed-with-our-fleeting-youth sort of way. Instead of getting lost in the good old days, Lockhart remembers the music that shaped her into who she grew up to be and uses those memories as a map to help her find her place in today’s world.

Take, for example, the album's second single, “Lose Your Mind.” Lockhart’s optimistic lyrics are at first only accompanied by piano, but the song blooms into a vibrant burst of harmonies and guitar that almost feel like it was plucked from a jam session from the Band’s The Last Waltz.

For The Stranger’s premiere of the track, Lockhart and Cremin offered a little more insight into the creative process behind the upcoming record, and the music that inspired it.

One thing I’ve always appreciated about Cumulus and your songwriting is your focus on prioritizing comfort, especially when the rest of the world feels so unsettling and scary. Your 2018 album was called Comfort World, in 2022 you offered Something Brighter. You acknowledge the bullshit but then offer not an escape, really, but a cozy place to decompress. A reminder to slow down. Does that trend continue on this album, too? 

Alex: Your observation is going to make me emotional! I’ve always looked to songs that I love as like… being in the company of a good friend. When a songwriter is honest about how they are experiencing the world around them, as a listener, I can’t help but feel connected, inspired, and less alone. If my songs offer a cozy place to decompress, I would say that probably has happened naturally out of the fact that it’s the exact reason I go to music myself. I don’t go to music to escape. I go to music to feel things more deeply, maybe think about things a little differently, and connect myself to the world. Thank you for giving me the best compliment a songwriter could ever ask for! 

William: Yes! There’s always a balance between taking care of yourself and staying engaged with this increasingly horrifying world, not looking away. That’s obviously something we’re all reckoning with, and it’s a big part of this album. For me, one of the most crucial bits of sequencing was putting our self-care mantra, “Welcome Back to Me,” right after “Bad News.” You have to face the heaviness, and you also have to balance that out somehow.

Related to that, We’ve Got It All also celebrates the music that has shaped you. “Wolves,” “Old Friend,” “Dad Song”—several tracks refer to lyrics and liner notes and bonding with others through music. Who are some of the musicians, or what are some of the songs that were running through your mind as you wrote these? 

Alex: I love that you noticed this theme! This was a record where I wanted to be really unabashed about my influences and nostalgia of ’90s/ early-2000s music. “Wolves” is a reflection on growing up in Oak Harbor, a military town, and discovering punk music with these girls I idolized who eventually became my best friends (and still are!). They skateboarded and played in a band, wore their hair in liberty spikes, and in my most vivid memories we would spend hours in the garage just rocking out to the Distillers’ Coral Fang album. They helped me imagine more possibilities for myself. 

“Old Friend” is a song I wrote with Aaron Guest, who plays piano on the record as well. We got together in 2022 and started this song just as a fun co-writing attempt, and in 2024 as I was looking at old notebooks of lyrics, the lyric sheet literally fell out, and I was like, “Oh shit, I love this song!” When Aaron and I initially got together, I think this song leaned heavily into the storytelling tradition of John Prine, and Bruce Springsteen, where the finer details are fiction but still telling a very real story. For both the person who stays in the hometown and gives up a dream, and the person who leaves to chase it—there is real sacrifice, and the grass is always greener on the other side. 

“Dad Song” is a bit of a long story, but ultimately, it’s about my fandom of my dad and also Third Eye Blind. My dad’s love of live music and radio stations like 103.7 the Mountain was infectious to me, and I fell in love with the pop-rock bands of that era. We went to Bumbershoot together in 1998, and I was 10 years old, singing along to every word on “Semi-Charmed Life” with obviously no idea about the drug references. Many years later, as Blue came out, my dad and I were on our yearly summer road trip to Lake Chelan, listening to Third Eye Blind and reading all the liner notes. We got to “Deep Inside of You,” and it became a true “birds and the bees” moment that still cracks me up all these years later. 

You also reference road trips and long drives, so I have to ask (because I love to talk about snacks): What is your go-to road-trip snack?

Alex: I’m a drowsy driver, so I always need caffeine on a road trip, and despite hating most energy drinks, I love the Monster Rehab tea. Maybe some Boom Chicka Pop Sweet and Salty popcorn and some adult Lunchable-type salami-and-cracker snack. 

William: On one tour, I brought a huge stash of GoMacro bars, which absolutely saved the day on more than one occasion.

I read that you are donating a portion of your album proceeds to an organization that focuses on mental health. Can you tell me a little more about that and why that’s important to you to do that in connection with your music? 

Alex: When I was pursuing music full time, one of the biggest struggles was having health insurance so heavily tied to an employer and being in and out of jobs in sacrifice to gigging and touring. I think this is a big part of what prevents creatives from being able to imagine the arts as a lifelong pursuit. MusiCares is a Grammy Foundation non-profit that provides musicians with resources to therapists, coverage for emergency medical care and regular health check clinics, as well as recovery funds for natural disasters like the fires that just happened in LA. I’ve struggled with depression and financial instability for most of my adult life, so I can’t help but want to support an organization like MusiCares, which is one of the only safety nets specifically for musicians and music industry professionals. Working with a non-profit record label like Share It Music is amazing because we get to release a record and give a little bit back. 

You recorded the album with a great group of musicians—John van Deusen from the Lonely Forest, Aaron Guest, Aaron Ball—what will the Cumulus lineup look like for the record release shows in May? Will it be a full band? 

Alex: Yes!! We will be playing as a six-piece band for all three release shows. Aaron Guest (Polecat) on Piano, Aaron Ball (Dryland) on drums, Brad Lockhart (Dryland/husband) on guitar, Jeff Ballew (Baby Cakes) on bass, and William on lead guitar (plus me singing and occasionally strumming!).

Preorder We've Got It All on Bandcamp. Cumulus play three record release shows next month. See them at the Wild Buffalo in Bellingham May 1, the Unknown in Anacortes May 2, and Conor Byrne in Seattle May 3.

Seattle's only news roundup. by Charles Mudede

Say it ain't so. According to U District Advocates, Cedar's of Lebanon, "the oldest restaurant on The Ave," might be replaced by, of all things, a McDonald's. True, this is something rather new in this city, where the normal running of things is to give small businesses the boot for luxury towers that offer hoity-toity dining. In this case, it's the other way around: instead of going up, we are going down to a joint that basically doesn't really serve food, like Cedar's of Lebanon, but something like what humans are in The Matrix: batteries. If this bad business goes through, if we lose Cedar's of Lebanon, a key part of what for many years was known as Little Lebanon (it included Flowers Bar and Restaurant and Samir's Mediterranean Grill Lebanese Cuisine), for a Ronald McDonald, I'm going "to throw up both my hands."

In the words of U District Advocates: "For some of us, the introduction of a corporate chain restaurant, replacing three independent, small businesses with a block-wide façade, directly across the street from the entrance to our main light rail station, is very troubling." Indeed, indeed. And, more importantly, Cedar's of Lebanon has top-notch gyros. As for McDonald's, you have to go all the way up to our vast and once friendly neighbor to eat at that place. Canada actually makes sure their Mickey D's put real eggs and pork in their breakfast sandwiches. 

Beacon Hill also has some bad news on its plate. Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) may cut down a whole bunch of huge, often old Maple trees that line Beacon Avenue. This section of South Seattle demonstrates what Enrique Peñalosa, the former urbanist mayor of Bogota, meant when he described a sidewalk as “relatives of parks—not passing lanes for cars.” Sadly, however, Beacon Avenue's sidewalk is about to look less like a park and more like its opposite. After years of neglecting the street’s cracked and buckling sidewalks, SDOT is now faced with a project that demands a good deal of imagination to solve. But it seems the department wants to take an easy (or more "efficient") way around the problem, which is the destruction of numerous trees. And this destruction could begin tomorrow.

Though SDOT claims it's making every effort to be transparent, its press secretary, Ethan Bergerson, described the plan to me (it "will [get] started over the coming weeks with the initial sidewalk repairs that can be done without affecting trees") in way that doesn't jibe with the announcement SDOT posted on suspect trees: "If  the root pruning needed [for sidewalk improvements] does not allow the tree to remain stable and viable, it may be necessary to remove the tree within 14 days of this posting." The announcement was posted on February 27. That's two weeks ago. When I asked Bergerson if SDOT has ever considered a project that would require the destruction of lots of trees in North Seattle, I received no answer.

Seattle is still refusing to just die already. In fact, its county is growing like it's the "2010s again." Seattle Times' Gene Balk examined the data from the U.S. Census Bureau and found that "[the area's] population grew by about 43,400 from July 1, 2023, to July 1, 2024, for a growth rate of 1.9%." That’s the kind of increase our city saw when Amazon appeared to be a UTFO ("Untouchable Force Organization"). King County now has a population of 2.34 million.

After yesterday's tipping down, Seattle will experience a "'grab-bag' of weather." We have entered that zone of confusion ("confusion de confusiones") between the seasons. Expect days that behave like a nutter. Crying in the morning, laughing in the afternoon, screaming when entering evening, weeping again all night. So, it's not surprising that today we may experience "passing showers," and "a few thunder rumbles," and a "breezy afternoon," and the "occasional peeks of sunshine." 

Last week, two coyotes did a Bonnie and Clyde on Bellevue, reports King 5. One of them was killed by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW); the other is still on the run. Officials have connected both with "five different attacks"—biting legs of citizens; trying to steal or stealing backpacks from defenseless schoolchildren. One of the coyotes even bit the hand of a kid (they will never forget that horrible moment in their childhood). King 5: "Officers are increasing patrols in that area in an attempt to locate the second animal."  

After the Fire, the Rain: Southern California is getting lots and lots and way too much of it. Evacuations and mudslides are just around the corner. Nothing can be normal anymore. We only live in the extremes.

Tech billionaires are now talking about building their own damn cities. Cities that follow their orders and money-fervid fantasies to a tee. No more of this democracy nonsense; no more "government oversight." These will be Freedom Cities. But what could a Freedom City do that, say, Hudson Yards doesn't? Billionaires already have everything. This is not our world; it's yours, all yours. 

Maybe now is a good time to return to these powerful lines by T. S. Eliot:

When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city ?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”? 

Looks like Seattle's iconic billionaire, Bill Gates, is giving up on all "that hopey, changey stuff" and, according to the Seattle Times, "retooling his empire for the Trump era." Breakthrough Energy, a forward-thinking climate organization he bankrolls, has announced it's going the way of our DOGE-slashed Big Government: cuts, cuts, cuts, and more cuts. It's now time for him to play catch-up with the leaders of his pack. He, too, must become a gora (a vulture capitalist); he too must stick his long featherless neck into the rot of America. You see Beyoncé, this is why you should never want to be "a black Bill Gates in the making."  

These VP eyes transpired during the Irish prime minister's White House visit. The VP's socks also made some noise. 

JD Vance went heavy on the eyeliner this morning

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 12, 2025 at 7:17 AM

Let's end with this excellent poem by Badu on the importance of being woke (its on her slamming track Master Teacher):

Even if yo baby ain't got no money
To support ya baby, you
(I stay woke)
Even when the preacher tell you some lies
And cheatin' on ya mama, you stay woke
(I stay woke)
Even though you go through struggle and strife
To keep a healthy life, I stay woke
(I stay woke)
Everybody knows a black or white, there's
Creatures in every shape and size
(I stay woke)

This Saturday, March 15, the Royal Room will celebrate the music and wokeness of badass Erykah Badu with a band lead by Sheila Kay. 

Donald Trump is determined to harm working and poor people’s living standards. With 13 billionaires in his cabinet, including Elon Musk, he has slashed over 14,000 federal union jobs and gutted social programs. His party’s threats to Medicaid come as they push more tax cuts for the rich. by Jozi Uebelhoer

Donald Trump is determined to harm working and poor people’s living standards. With 13 billionaires in his cabinet, including Elon Musk, he has slashed over 14,000 federal union jobs and gutted social programs. His party’s threats to Medicaid come as they push more tax cuts for the rich.

Democrats in Congress have failed to fight back, despite calling Trump an “existential threat.” This is no surprise, as they also serve elite interests. The party recently accepted $2.5 million from a top lobbyist for SpaceX and Palantir, companies set to profit from Trump’s cuts to unions and social programs.

Failing to fight Trump in D.C. is bad enough, but in Washington state, Governor Bob Ferguson is preparing to slash $7 billion from the budget, targeting over 50,000 unionized workers in the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE). These workers provide essential services, from child safety to infrastructure, clean waterways, and public education.

Ferguson plans mandatory monthly furloughs for two years, along with deep cuts to healthcare for low-income residents and firefighting services. This will lead to hospital ward closures, reduced juvenile rehabilitation, and fewer housing options for adults with developmental disabilities.

Republicans in DC have majorities in the house and senate, giving federal Democrats some leeway to claim powerlessness against Trump’s anti-worker attacks. But in Washington, state Democrats control both legislative houses—and yet they still plan to undermine working and poor people’s livelihoods. This comes as the state’s wealth grows, with 13 billionaires and a growing millionaire class. Adding to the hypocrisy, state politicians pushing furloughs on public workers recently gave themselves a 14% salary hike, with Ferguson’s pay rising from $204,205 to $234,275. Meanwhile, public-sector workers face a meager 5% raise over two years, effectively canceled out by furlough days and inflation.

Washington remains a haven for the wealthy while becoming unaffordable for the rest of us. The state’s tax system is the second most regressive in the nation. Democrats have controlled the governor’s office for 30 years, the Senate for 20, and the House for 23—yet they continue serving the elite. 

WFSE leadership rightly opposes the cuts and furloughs, demanding taxes on the rich instead. But a real fightback requires mass protests and a coordinated statewide strike, demanding zero cuts to workers and social programs and full funding through taxation on the rich. This would send a powerful message of working-class resistance against attacks from both Trump and the Democrats.

Without a mass movement, Ferguson and his party will not change course.

Why should we play by their rules? Waiting until after the budget is finalized to bargain again would be disastrous, locking in cuts and demoralizing workers. We’re told we must choose between rejecting furloughs or providing essential services—an outright lie. We must fight for both or risk losing everything.

Statewide union leadership has failed to act, so we, the rank-and-file, are taking it upon ourselves to do so. 

On Monday, the members of WFSE Local 889 unanimously passed a resolution calling for a mass statewide Day of Action on Wednesday, April 9, involving thousands of WFSE members, and solidarity from other unions and working people, before the budget deadline on April 27. The local also passed a resolution calling on WFSE statewide to rescind the endorsement of Governor Ferguson. 

WFSE President Mike Yestramski and labor leaders should be organizing mass protests, solidarity actions, and a one-day strike against Democratic austerity and Trump’s attacks. Workers—not billionaires or their political allies—keep the state running, and shutting it down is the necessary first step to defeating these cuts. Next, WFSE should lead a ballot initiative to end Washington’s regressive tax system, securing funding for housing, healthcare, education, and protecting unions.

We urge WFSE members and working people to join Workers Strike Back at a March 15th town hall to expose Democratic betrayals and organize against both parties of the bosses.

Seattle’s working people showed how to win under Kshama Sawant’s leadership, securing the nation’s highest minimum wage, at the time, through an engaged worker-led movement of everyday people. We must follow this example and fight back with everything we’ve got.

We built mass meetings, rallies, marches, neighborhood action groups, and a ballot initiative to pressure big business and Democrats: pass $15 or face the voters. Despite their attempts to block or weaken it, we won—turning $15 from a slogan into a nationwide movement. In 2020, Sawant and the Tax Amazon movement secured a historic tax on Seattle’s richest corporations, raising over $400 million last year alone for affordable housing. Sawant’s office won these victories alongside workers and union leaders, including WFSE’s Paula Lukaszek.

Now, Workers Strike Back is carrying this strategy forward nationwide. Our Fight the Rich campaign is building a movement to take down Trump, the billionaires, and both their parties. Defeating Trump means confronting the Democrats, whose betrayals let him pose as a friend of workers. Both parties serve the ruling class—we must fight both to win real change.

Capitalism is rule by and for the rich, built on stealing the wealth workers create. But we have the power to shut it down and force real change. Millions would stand with us if we did.

Jozi Uebelhoer is a social worker and a rank-and-file member of WFSE Local 889. Grey Martin is a hospital staff member and a rank-and-file member of WFSE Local 3488. Both are members of Workers Strike Back in Seattle and write in a personal capacity.

Do you need to get something off your chest? Submit an I, Anonymous and we'll illustrate it! by Anonymous

The state of breakfast sandwiches in Seattle is abysmal. Why am I paying $15 for a bacon, egg, and cheese? As a native of the NY tristate area and a former resident of NYC, it absolutely pisses me off to no end.

This is not a luxury sandwich. This is not a sandwich you wake up at 7 a.m. to wait in line for 45 minutes to get. This is a sandwich for the people. It’s a sandwich for the construction worker on their way to their early morning shift. It’s a sandwich for the working single mom who just dropped her kids off at school and needs nourishment before going to work. It's a sandwich for the broke teen who cobbled together $5 in quarters to get an after-school snack and Arizona Iced Tea with their friends. This is why the bacon, egg, and cheese has been a mainstay of NYC bodega culture for so long.

It’s not about the ingredients. Hell, it’s not even about the sandwich itself. It’s about what the sandwich represents—a delectable delicacy made by the working class for the working class. Until Seattle cafes and restaurants reckon with this fact, we are doomed to mediocrity.

Oh, and don’t put scrambled eggs on your bacon, egg, and cheese. And for the love of God, please use a hard roll.

Do you need to get something off your chest? Submit an I, Anonymous and we'll illustrate it! Send your unsigned rant, love letter, confession, or accusation to ianonymous@thestranger.com. Please remember to change the names of the innocent and the guilty.

One really great thing to do every day of the week. by Julianne Bell WEDNESDAY 3/12  

mxmtoon
(MUSIC) I recently discovered the Nashville-based singer-songwriter mxmtoon via the adorable video game Dave the Diver, in which the player splits their time between catching seafood and managing a sushi restaurant—and in which mxmtoon, aka Maia, makes a cameo as a pixelated version of herself. It wasn’t long before I found myself enamored of her charmingly confessional lyrics and floaty melodies. Her latest album, liminal space, evokes the relatable feeling of being stuck in an in-between stage of life, with standout songs like “rain” (which explores nostalgia and the difficulty of staying present) and “i hate texas” (a cheeky kiss-off to an ex). (Showbox SoDo, 8 pm, $35-$40, all ages) JULIANNE BELL

Coyle’s 10th Anniversary Party

(FOOD & DRINK) Rachael Coyle's charming Greenwood bakery is going all out for its brick-and-mortar's 10th birthday with free mini slices of birthday cake (while supplies last), a photo booth, coloring sheets, temporary tattoos, and likely "an absurd number of decorations." A small business surviving the pandemic and making it to a decade is definitely a milestone worth commemorating, especially these days: As Rachael wrote in an email newsletter, "I’m particularly eager to celebrate ten years because our five-year anniversary (in March of 2020), was marked by the beginning of the pandemic, and our future seemed especially uncertain...I’m grateful for the community that has grown up around the shop: our wonderful staff, vendors, and of course, our fantastic customers. My life is so much richer for having this community and I hope that yours is too." (Coyle’s Bakeshop, 7 am–3 pm, free, all ages) JULIANNE BELL

Roq La Rue’s Grand Re-Opening Party

(VISUAL ART) Kirsten Anderson opened Roq La Rue in 1998 in a rundown Belltown storefront that was slated for demolition. It was right around the time pop surrealism was starting to become popular, and it was the place to see artists such as Femke Hiemstra, Todd Schorr, Mark Ryden, and Jim Woodring. Twenty-seven years later, after setting up shop in Capitol Hill, Pioneer Square, and, most recently, Madison Valley, Anderson is returning to her Belltown roots. The newest incarnation of Roq La Rue opens March 14, in a 2,500-square-foot space inside the NW Work Lofts on Denny Way. Anderson’s marking the occasion with three different shows: Spectacle du Petit, a collection of small works from several artists, Unveiled, featuring large-scale work by Beth Cavener, Josie Morway, Carles Gomila, and Jason Puccinelli, as well as Frank Gonzales’s solo show Frequencies. When interviewing Anderson in 2023, to mark the gallery’s 25th anniversary, I asked, “What’s next? Another 25 years?” She chuckled and said, “I’m probably doing this until I die.” Viva Roq la Rue! (Roq La Rue, 6–9 pm, free, all ages) MEGAN SELING

Josh Faught: Sanctuary

(VISUAL ART) San Francisco-based multimedia artist Josh Faught’s varied works blend weaving techniques, found objects, and ephemera to contemplate the queer underpinnings of craft lineages and his own history. (If you dug Joey Veltkamp’s 2022 Bellevue Arts Museum exhibition SPIRIT!, this show might appeal.) I’m intrigued by Faught’s cotton-hemp piece Sanctuary, adorned with a button that reads, “Be kind. I have a teenager.” In a press release, the Henry explained the artist “reimagines systems of classification that assign social and cultural value, investigating how collective and individual identities are shaped and examining structures of social support and visibility.” (Henry Art Gallery, Thurs–Sun, sliding scale, all ages) LINDSAY COSTELLO

Lemon Boy, Fun Parents, Crybabysitter 

(MUSIC) Lemon Boy is the band you listen to when you're pissed off at anything and everyone. Mansplaining? "Guitar Center (Sucks)." The male gaze? "Body Horror." Internalized misogyny? "Sugar Daddy." Insecure assholes projecting their lack of confidence onto you? "Piss Baby." Whatever bullshit you've faced, Yasiman Ahsani and Nicole Giusti have faced it too, and they've channeled that rage into delightfully bratty "fuck you" punk anthems. They even have a metalcore-kissed cover of Britney's "Toxic," which feels especially appropriate after reading Spears's biography. People were terrible to her! All the time! Anyway, this weekend, Lemon Boy will celebrate the arrival of their new drummer with a free show at Cha Cha. It's way cheaper than a therapy session! (Cha Cha, 8 pm, free, 21+) MEGAN SELING

Kells 42nd Annual St. Patricks Irish Festival

(FOOD & DRINK) Kells' 42nd annual shamrock-festooned celebration kicks off on March 8 and continues with daily revelry through St. Patrick's Day (if you've got the stamina). As usual, Post Alley and First Avenue will be closed to traffic and covered by a large tent to support expanded celebrations, including rugby watch parties and performances by local musicians like the Belfast Bandits, Máirtín Ó Huigin, and U2 tribute band Vertigo Zoo. Don't forget the house-brewed beers and classic Irish dishes—corned beef, anyone? (Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub, 10 am, $20, 21+) SHANNON LUBETICH

Nosferatu with Radiohead: A Silents Synced Film

(FILM/MUSIC) Keep the haunted vibes rolling right into March with the bald, spidery, and downright yucky Count Orlok in F.W. Murnau's eerie 1922 classic Nosferatu. Werner Herzog once described it as "the greatest German film," and he should know, right? This screening will be a little different, though—Silents Synched pairs classic silent flicks with "epic rock music." One of the most brazenly millennial things about me is that I love Radiohead, especially their atmospheric aughts-era albums Kid A and Amnesiac. So, I'm actually okay with this. The albums should add mysterious new layers of sonic depth to the 102-year-old film. (Central Cinema, times vary, $12, all ages) LINDSAY COSTELLO

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March 15, Barboza

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March 19, Paramount Theatre

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See Swept Away at the Beacon Cinema, March 9–12. by Charles Mudede

Now that class warfare is in the open, thanks to a certain billionaire, it is a good time to talk about Swept Away.

In the 1974 film directed and written by the late, brilliant, Italian director Lina Wertmüller, when the “puttana ricca” Raffaella Pavone Lanzetti (played by Mariangela Melato) gets knocked around by the deckhand, Gennarino Carunchio (played by Giancarlo Giannini, a regular in the Wertmüller’s cinema), we are plunged into a swarm of conflicted feelings. Yes, she is the worst. Indeed, the sailor has been abused by an economic system that concentrates socially produced wealth into a few hands. But the working-class man becomes a monster.

This confusion of feelings is worsened by the fact that Melato is a brilliant actor. She is Raffaella Pavone Lanzetti: a woman who hates even the smell of labor. And when, on the yacht owned by her filthy rich husband, she treats the deckhand (Giuseppe) like a dog, we do not doubt it for a minute. This is her to the max. Then the storm happens. Then the little boat the deckhand and woman happen to be on is blown to the island. Then Giuseppe, who can fish and do other useful life-supporting things, is in power. He has complete control over Raffaella. And he abuses this power with shocking violence.

We are not talking about the 2002 remake directed by Guy Ritchie. Nothing positive can be said about that film, which has Ritchie’s then-wife, Madonna, as its star. The biggest problem I have with the remake is that I don’t hate Madonna. Sure, she was never much of a singer, but she emerged from a New York City that, between 1978 and 1984, was magical. So watching her portray a rich, ice-cold woman is nothing but brutal.

Madonna can’t act, and so she could never be anything like the horrible character (Amber Leighton) she plays; a woman who never lifted a finger in her life, a woman whose indifference to working-class misery and struggles is total. This is not Madonna. It’s not in her bones. She began as a little mall flower. A dreamer who had nothing but raw, blond ambition. And so when, in the movie, she is stranded on an uninhabited Mediterranean island with a violently misogynistic deckhand, Giuseppe Esposito (Adriano Giannini), who worked on the storm-swept luxury ship her husband chartered, we are horrified. He treats the “rich bitch” like shit. He smacks her around. But all we see is some man hitting and spitting on Madonna! She supported the gay community during the darkest hours in the ’80s. Leon Robinson played a controversial Black saint in her video for the song “Like a Prayer.” Why is this brute punching, kicking, and slapping Madonna?

But the viciousness in the original film is visceral and believable. The most brutal scene in Wertmüller’s movie occurs at the start of its second half. Giuseppe is chasing Raffaella up and down dunes because she disobeyed an order (“undress”). This time, he is going to teach her a lesson. She will pay for everything that’s wrong with society. Whenever he catches or tackles her, he really lays into her while delivering angry commentary about how the rich exploit the poor. “[You] fucking whore. Capitalist. Social democrat.” “This is about the financial session caused by you and your friends.” “[This is] for tax evasion and money you sent to Switzerland.” “This is for the unfortunate who can’t find a bed in the hospital.” “This [is for increasing] meat prices, in parmesan.” “This is for oil and soft drinks.” “This is because you made us afraid of life.” (By the way, Giuseppe is a communist.)

What is going on here? What is Wertmüller pointing out? The limits of Marxism. The thing that must be appreciated in Swept Away is its scientific approach, isolating a system so its basic properties can be examined. Wertmüller does this by isolating two of three properties of capitalism, labor and capital, on an island. The late German economist Peter Flaschel turned to Goethe’s Faust to describe these elementary units of capitalism: “Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast / And each will wrestle for the mastery there.”

But Wertmüller’s story has a twist. She introduces gender into the isolated system (in science, a system is the subject of an experiment, and whatever is outside of it is the universe). What would this experiment have looked like if it isolated Giuseppe and Raffaella’s husband, Signor Pavone Lanzetti (Riccardo Salvino)? Something far less complicated than what we find in Wertmüller’s Swept Away, which challenges the orthodox Marxist insistence that class is universal, and all other issues, such as identity, are secondary or, more philosophically, accidental. The universal subject of history will melt all the accidental properties of capitalism into air. Wertmüller’s experiment does a number on universalist Marxism.

But there is also Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness to consider. Those familiar with this 2022 film will not miss its Swept Away echoes. There is a luxury ship of rich people serviced by the working class. There is a storm that’s followed by an attack by African pirates. There is an explosion, a sinking, and a few survivors on an uninhabited island. One of them knows how to fish and do life-supporting things. This is Abigail (Dolly de Leon), one of the ship’s cleaners. Abigail sees her opportunity and seizes it. But she is not ideological; she is a mere low-wage earner in a capitalism that’s now global.

Wertmüller’s Swept Away is really about Italy, which went through political turbulence during the 1970s. Triangle of Sadness is truly sad because Marxism has been reduced to a ship’s alcoholic captain (Woody Harrelson), who seems to have learned about Marx and socialism from quotes posted on Instagram. As much as we hate Giuseppe in Swept Away, he at least knew his stuff. His critique of capitalism has some depth. In Triangle of Sadness, there is no such depth. The cleaning person’s abuse of power on the island (she demands sex from the boyfriend of an internet influencer) is not shocking. Trading places seems normal in Östlund’s capitalism.

All in all, the system of exploitation that organizes the whole of our planet makes no sense if its opponents exclude race and gender. This was Wertmüller’s explosive contribution to leftist theory. And it is why the left must not abandon identity politics. It is clear that the right hasn’t. All of the president’s men are superrich and white. And they are beating the shit out of the rest.

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See Swept Away at the Beacon Cinema, March 9–12.

Katie Wilson, the General Secretary of the Transit Riders Union and long-time local progressive organizer, is running for Seattle mayor. by Hannah Murphy Winter

Katie Wilson, the General Secretary of the Transit Riders Union and long-time local progressive organizer, is running for Seattle mayor. 

This is Wilson’s first run for office, but she’s already well known in Seattle’s political spheres as an organizer and policy advocate, fighting for—and winning—campaigns for raising the minimum wage, affordable transit, and progressive revenue, as well as a regular columnist for The Stranger and The Urbanist. She joins a small field of emerging challengers against our Chamber of Commerce-backed mayor, Bruce Harrell. 

In an in-depth conversation with The Stranger, Wilson described the mayor she hopes to be: a coalition builder who’s able to reach across the aisle to find common goals, without diluting progressive, research-backed policies; and a bold innovator, willing to test new ideas and push forward on issues that have stagnated in this city for a decade. 

Can she be that mayor? She’s untested in elected office, but for voters wondering if she can get it done, she urges them to look at her record as a policy advocate. “I've spent the last 14 years of my career organizing, building powerful coalitions that win major victories for working people,” she told The Stranger. “And I've done all that from the outside. I would be happy to put my legislative record up against Bruce Harrell's any day of the week.” 

Wilson’s decision to run for mayor solidified just four weeks ago, after Seattle resoundingly voted to support Proposition 1A and fund a social housing developer. In that vote, she saw a city enthusiastically support a bold, new idea. “There's going to be a long road ahead to put the pieces together to make social housing work in Seattle,” she says. “And we need leadership that's going to fight to make that happen.” But when she looked to the person meant to carry out that mandate, it was Mayor Harrell—the literal face of Prop 1A’s opposition. 

For Wilson, that contrast captured just how out-of-step Harrell is with Seattle voters. “That was by no means my only reason for running,” she says, “but that was the moment that tipped my thinking: Seeing Harrell’s face plastered on all those mailers trying to undermine the new social housing developer—a campaign funded by Amazon and the Chamber of Commerce—and seeing the resounding vote of confidence of Seattle voters and the desire to go big and bold on affordable housing.” 

“Seattle voters showed that they want big, bold action,” she said. “And so we need better leadership. That's why I'm running.”

Her frustration with Harrell didn’t begin with Prop 1A. The city’s entire housing and homelessness crisis encapsulates what she sees as Harrell’s failures as a leader: a term defined by inaction and lack of imagination. “Four years ago, when Harrell was running for mayor, he made some big promises on homelessness. He promised to open 2000 units of emergency housing shelter in his first year; he did not even come close to delivering those numbers.”

Instead, the crisis has deepened on his watch—Seattle now has twice as many unsheltered homeless people as New York City—a failure that Wilson thinks was avoidable. “It's unacceptable,” she says. “We need to find a way to get the folks who are currently sleeping on the street inside.”

The first step, she says, would be to acknowledge the crisis of unsheltered homelessness and shift the city’s priorities. “There's been an emphasis here over the past years on building permanent structures, and there are some good reasons for that, but we need to move faster,” she says. “I think we need to be opening Tiny House villages. I think we need to be working more closely with faith communities and other spaces that already exist.” 

She takes inspiration from dynamic programs like Purpose. Dignity. Action.’s JustCARE, which piloted field teams that could take an individualized approach: working on the ground with people in encampments, assessing each individual’s unique mental health history, any criminal background, and cycle of homelessness, before successfully placing them in lodging.  

Homelessness is, at its core, a housing crisis, she says. But it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. This approach allows the city to also address the nexus of unsheltered homelessness, the fentanyl crisis, and mental health. That would mean “rapidly acquiring several buildings, and making sure that people are going to have all the support they need,” she says. “And then we can really focus on especially that very small part of the homeless population that is cycling through the criminal justice system, and that is also often part of the drug-involved population.”

“We need to be offering people the housing and the services that work for them,” she says. “If we're not both investing more in treatment and making sure that that treatment is integrated with housing and continuing support services, then we're just going to fail.”

To approach these convergent crises, Wilson says she’s willing to be iterative, to try new ideas, and to invest in the ones that work. She proposes doing this through pilot programs—testing evidence-based approaches on a smaller scale, and making sure the city can put their money behind the programs that work. 

None of this is possible without new revenue—specifically a progressive revenue stream like a capital gains tax that taxes our city’s wealthiest residents, rather than increasing the tax burden on working and middle-class families. Harrell has shown little interest in such a tax, but if elected, Wilson thinks that she can make that a reality. In 2023, Wilson served on the city’s Revenue Stabilization Workgroup, “and we looked into the city's revenue options. And we have options! Some of them are going to require more work to be shovel ready, but the current administration is not doing that work.”

It’s another place where she says Harrell’s administration is out of step with the city’s residents, pointing to polling that shows a majority of Seattle voters support a capital gains tax. “Obviously, there are going to be some people who don't want to raise new progressive revenue—Chamber of Commerce, I'm looking at you,” she says. “But I think that more broadly, among both the population and stakeholders, people recognize that need.”

This is where she highlights her experience as a coalition builder—the trait she thinks distinguishes her most from other potential progressive candidates. Just last year, she brought together workers, small business owners, and elected officials to pass a higher minimum wage in Burien. 

She’s critical of Harrell’s history of hiring friends and family into essential government roles, and emphasized that one of her strengths is knowing how to build a team that can get it done—no matter what “it” is. “I'm very willing to learn from people,” she says. “I'm not here to say I have no ego, because I don't think anyone can say that. But I want to do a good job, and I want to learn from the people who know their stuff. And so I'm not going to surround myself with yes men. … City Hall shouldn't be an old boys club. We need people who are competent. We need people who are willing to be honest, including to their bosses, when they think things could be working better. And that's the kind of mayor that I would be.”

She’s the first to acknowledge that she’s been a vocal critic of many of the conservative-leaning council members who would be her colleagues and collaborators if she was elected, though. “I don't want to disown that at all. At the same time, I think it's very important for a mayor and council members to work together as far as possible, on as many issues as possible,” she says. 

“There are issues where we want similar, if not exactly the same, things,” she continued. “I think that the council members currently in office all do, in some way or other, genuinely want to do something about homelessness and public safety, for example. So if we can really have a fact-based, evidence-based conversation about what works and about what's necessary to get there, I think we can make progress. We don't all have to have the same politics to make progress.”

Before she decided to run for office, she started writing a series here in The Stranger, examining why the progressive left suffered such serious losses in the 2021 city elections, and what we can learn from them. She used it as a form of self-reflection—to figure out how to reclaim a political narrative on the left that captures voters. And while we’ve had some substantial progressive wins in the last year (see Prop 1A and the election of Alexis Mercedes Rinck), Wilson thinks we still have work to do on reclaiming the narrative of this city.  

In a January column, she sparked controversy and disagreement among progressives when she proposed that the left struggled to speak to the average Seattle voter about homelessness. She argued that the left was correct about the root causes and necessary solutions for homelessness and the opioid epidemic. That visible drug use doesn’t equate to crime; that the “root cause of homelessness is a severe shortage of affordable housing, the result of neoliberal underinvestment in subsidized housing and a long history of exclusionary zoning, intensified by Seattle’s tech boom; [That] the solution is to fund housing, shelter, and services at scale; [and] that sweeping people from one place to another is cruel and useless.” But she also argued that the left (herself included) had largely disregarded the reality that many Seattleites observed on the streets—a visible drug and housing crisis that makes some residents feel less safe, whether or not the statistics back that feeling up. 

In her interview with The Stranger yesterday, Wilson stood by that analysis. “We have to get at the root causes and recognize what those root causes are,” she says. “But at the same time, we need to also look at what people are experiencing on the ground when they walk down the street and they feel unsafe because someone's behaving aggressively and erratically, or doing drugs and dealing drugs. We need to do something in the short term. We can't just say, ‘Well, we're gonna get everyone the things that they need. And in a far-off utopia, you're not gonna have these problems, so just hang tight.’”

To Wilson, that means taking on the very emergency measures she’s proposing—rapid acquisition of shelter, on-site resources, and long-term treatment options. “If we can't address realities like that, then it's not just that we're not politically viable, we're not fit to govern. And I think that we need to learn to govern if we're going to make progress—if we're going to do the visionary things that we want to do and build the world that we want to build. We need to be able to exercise that responsibility. We can't just be shouting from the sidelines.”

That feels especially pressing now that Trump is in office—putting progressive city and state governments on the defensive. Wilson believes that the right progressive city leadership can defend its residents, while still making progress where it’s most important. “If you look at the record of the work that I've done over the years, it's all been focused on getting results,” she says. “It's been focused on winning concrete things that put money in people's pockets and improve their quality of life. That's the focus that I would want to bring into City Hall. Whatever the national situation is, whatever the local political situation is, let's figure out the things that we can get done that will make a difference on the ground, and let's do them.”

“The next few years under Trump, shit is going to be flying at us left and right,” she continued. “And we're also going to have to batten down the hatches and make sure that we're protecting people.” Progressive revenue would allow us to be more resilient if the Trump administration targets us for progressive policies, she says, “and, of course, we're all worried about impacts on immigrant communities, on the LGBTQ community. So it's inevitable that some of the things that we do are going to be reactive, trying to make sure that things don't move backward.”

But if elected, she refuses to stay on the defensive for three years. Even under Trump, she says, “we can have vision.” One such vision is a project she’s been building a coalition around for two years already—a model to support local journalism, similar to our democracy voucher program. It would establish a public funding stream for local news outlets, allowing individual residents to allocate that money to their preferred outlet. “We basically are living in a time when there's no sustainable financial model for much of the journalism industry,” she says. “Here in Seattle, we're poised to not just defend and react, but to do something creative and forward-looking…I think this is a model that really has potential to strengthen our local news ecosystem, expand accountability reporting, so that we have more eyes on City Hall. We have more eyes on the corporations that exert a lot of—often unaccountable—power in our city.”

“I think that we can be both,” she says. “We can both focus on the basics and focus on defense, and we can think about how we can move forward and do visionary things. I mean, we're the city that did the $15 an hour minimum wage—the first big city in the country. So I think we can also imagine the city that we want Seattle to be.”

In this year’s election, she’s asking voters to imagine with her—and believe that she can make it happen. “I'm a critic of City Hall, but I also know City Hall,” she says. “I'm not coming into this as a novice in how politics works and how government works and how governing works and I think that's an important position to fill right now—in a time where the status quo is clearly not working. We need to do things differently, but also we need to do things thoughtfully and from a place of knowledge and experience

The Stranger's morning news roundup. by Marcus Harrison Green

Weather: Imagine a day of sunshine, butterflies, birds, and bees harmonizing in rapturous melody as blue fills the sky on the cusp of spring. Forget about it. Just like yesterday, today will be cloudy and soggy, with a high of 50 degrees. 

Ukraine Ceasefire (Maybe): The US lifted its suspension of military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine after the country said it was open to an immediate 30-day ceasefire with Russia. The suspension of weapons aid followed the recent shitshow Oval Office meeting between Trump, Vance, and Zelensky. Trump’s lapdog, Rubio, stated that Washington would now present the ceasefire option—which includes no security guarantees for Ukraine—to the Kremlin. "He wants to be a president of peace," said Rubio, speaking out of both sides of his mouth about a man who had Mahmoud Khalil disappeared via ICE this week and who continues to fund the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Escalating Trade War: Canada’s just said, “Oh, you want 25 percent on steel and aluminum, US? Hold my beer.” “The 51st state” has announced it will impose 25 percent tariffs on nearly $30 billion worth of US imports, including steel, aluminum, computers, and sports equipment. Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc stated the move is a direct retaliation for the Trump administration's trade policies, targeting goods like machinery and consumer products. And not wanting to let Canada have all the fun, the EU has announced it will impose trade “countermeasures” on up to $28 billion worth of US goods.

Education Dept Cuts: The Department of Education continues to crush its to-do list this week. Last night, it fired another 1,300 workers via email, halving the agency’s workforce and gutting the department’s Office for Civil Rights. Education Secretary Linda McMahon is spinning this as an effort to "deliver services more efficiently"—or, translated from billionaire-speak, “more efficiently dismantle crucial support for grants, scholarships, and services for children with special needs, all while pandering to the so-called 'parental rights movement.'” According to the goals of Project 2025, the department’s next moves are expected to include ending Title I, eliminating free school meals, and making book banning a federal priority. Lawsuits are pending.

Toxic work environment: A House subcommittee hearing ended abruptly yesterday after Texas Republican Rep. Keith Self intentionally misgendered Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride. McBride, the first transgender person elected to Congress, has been the target of hateful attacks from her Republican colleagues since her term began in January. The 71-year-old Rep. Self addressed McBride as "Mr.," prompting Democratic Rep. Bill Keating to criticize him, saying, "Mr. Chairman, you are out of order," and adding, "Have you no decency?" Butt-hurt by that backlash, Self immediately adjourned the hearing to continue his anti-trans attacks on X. Real work getting done by the ruling party.

UW Hiring Freeze: In anticipation of federal funding cuts, the University of Washington has frozen non-essential staff hiring and limited future faculty hiring. Following the UW’s financial mitigation guidelines, departments are exploring ways to reduce spending by 5 to 10 percent. There are currently no plans to implement a furlough strategy, though Governor Ferguson, in his “anything and everything but tax the rich plan,” proposed saving $300 million by requiring most state employees to take one furlough day per month over the next two years.

Ferguson cutting food banks: Because he’d rather literally take food out of the mouths of the poor rather than tax the rich, Gov. Fergusion’s big idea to plug our $15 billion budget hole is to cut food bank funding. God forbid we ask billionaires to chip in while we raid the canned goods aisle. I guess he believes people can fill their empty stomachs by photosynthesis. 

Davison Adding Staff: Well, Disney on Ice must be touring hell. I actually have some sympathy for Ann Davison (and my therapist thought these last two months were lucrative). Seattle dared to defy Trump, so now the feds are yanking funds, killing jobs, and packing up shop like a sore loser taking their ball home. That’s left the City Attorney’s office scrambling to keep up with all the legal battles. Look at the bright side: At least we’re creating some jobs… in the exciting field of suing our own government!

Starbucks Strike: The coffee might be hot, but the labor disputes are boiling. Joining a six-city strike, baristas at the University Way Starbucks walked off the job all because the coffee giant refused to finalize a fair union contract three years after workers won their vote. The strike came a day after UW students rallied on campus to demand the university stop serving Starbucks until the coffee titan settles a fair contract with wages for baristas. Meanwhile, Starbucks execs keep raking in millions, proving once again that while they may run on caffeine, their business model runs on hypocrisy.

Tacoma Toxicity: It used to be the “aroma,” but apparently, nothing quite says Welcome to Tacoma like a bunch of mystery barrels marked with toxic waste just chilling downtown. But no one seems to know where they came from. The city says the barrels are on private property, and the business supposedly responsible isn’t talking. Maybe this is Tacoma embracing its Fallout era?

In a time of climate and ecological emergency, we've seen fire and we've seen rain. Happy Birthday, James Taylor.

On a cold February night, Mary Jane Pepper Lawson was walking outside an apartment building on Union Street on Seattle’s First Hill. According to charging documents from the King County Prosecutor’s office, Lawson heard a man hurling the N-word at her. Lawson described him leaping over a railing and running toward her. Before she could react, she told first responders, the man hit her, knocking her to the ground. While she was down, she said, he continued to punch and kick her before retreating into his apartment. Lawson reported the incident to law enforcement, and responding officers documented visible injuries consistent with an assault. by Gennette Cordova

On a cold February night, Mary Jane Pepper Lawson was walking outside an apartment building on Union Street on Seattle’s First Hill. According to charging documents from the King County Prosecutor’s office, Lawson heard a man hurling the N-word at her. Lawson described him leaping over a railing and running toward her. Before she could react, she told first responders, the man hit her, knocking her to the ground. While she was down, she said, he continued to punch and kick her before retreating into his apartment. Lawson reported the incident to law enforcement, and responding officers documented visible injuries consistent with an assault.

The assailant has since been charged with a hate crime in connection with this attack. Prosecutors, citing the severity of the assault and the threat he poses to public safety, have requested bail be set at $20,000. 

The implications of this attack extend far beyond one man’s violent actions. It is a grim reminder that despite its liberal self-image, that violence is not an anomaly. It is the logical consequence of a system that continues to devalue Black and Indigenous lives in ways both explicit and insidious.

For years now, studies and reports from government agencies have acknowledged the proliferating threat posed by white supremacist extremists. Nationwide, from high-profile mass shootings like Charleston and Buffalo to everyday acts of harassment, the examples are numerous. Yet, this danger has not been met with the same urgency in political and media discourse as foreign terrorism or the war on drugs. The never-ending failure to meaningfully address this racialized violence has not only allowed it to spread but has also reinforced the very systems of oppression that sustain it. 

In 2012, the Seattle Police Department was placed under federal monitoring after a Department of Justice investigation—sparked by the killing of First Nations woodcarver John T. Williams—revealed a pattern of excessive force and biased policing. Four years later, in 2016, Seattle was identified as one of the cities with the worst Black-white education achievement gap in the country. Meanwhile, since 2017, the Seattle metro area has consistently ranked as having the third-worst homelessness crisis in the nation, a crisis that disproportionately impacts Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.

And despite the myth we continue to tell ourselves about this city, the racism here is not merely systemic, but overt. 

Just before the new year, Sonya, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy,  had been given the responsibility in her Seattle apartment complex of having cars towed for unauthorized parking. When a neighbor complained about a resident’s truck blocking a space, Sonya arranged for the vehicle to be towed. The truck’s owner was a repeat offender, so while Sonya anticipated some pushback, she didn’t expect what happened next.

The truck’s owner erupted in rage, directing his anger at both Sonya and the Black on-site manager. The next morning, she discovered one of her tires had been slashed, and a “Trump 2024: Take America Back” sticker had been placed on her car’s rear windshield. Now nearly 70 and living alone, the elderly music teacher is gripped by fear. “I’m talking because something needs to be done,” she said tearfully. Her fear, she said, is compounded by a deep sense of responsibility to create a safer world for her students.

Upon reporting the incident to the police, she made it clear that she believed she was targeted because of her race, and that the vandalism intended to intimidate her. The language on the sticker evokes a sense of unease for those who white nationalists consider “threats” to their vision of an America, rooted in racial dominance. Yet reporting the incident brought little relief. “I’m sleeping odd hours—I’m on edge,” Sonya said. She now feels an unfamiliar vulnerability in a city she’s called home her entire life.

Sonya’s story isn’t an isolated incident. Since 2012, the earliest year of reported bias and hate crime data on the SPD dashboard, anti-Black hate crimes have exceeded all other types of racially biased incidents. This comes even as Black residents make up a dwindling portion of the population. It’s likely the real numbers are even higher; Black communities have historically been less likely to trust the police, let alone call them for help.

Seattle’s police department—tasked with addressing these crimes—is itself mired in a well-documented history of racial bias. A 2021 report found Black people in Seattle are seven times more likely than white people to experience police use of force and five times more likely to be stopped and questioned. In contrast, during a similar period in neighboring Portland, Black people were 1.45 times more likely than white people to experience police use of force, according to 2019 data. For children and young adults, the disparities are even greater. Black youth make up 7% of the city’s population but account for the majority of cases involving police use of force against minors.

While the bigotry we’re witnessing has by no means started with Trump, he has become a symbol of strength for the white nationalist movement, with incidents of overt racism often co-occurring with his rise to prominence. His inauguration featuring Elon Musk twice doing a Nazi salute—a gesture celebrated by far-right extremists and yet to be directly denied by Musk—serves to fan the flames of this alarming trend.

It’s impossible to pinpoint a single moment that triggered this most recent wave of undisguised intolerance. The United States is, after all, a white supremacist nation, built on genocide and chattel slavery. Racism has always been woven into its fabric. However, if we are to examine the roots of this current wave, Barack Obama’s presidency immediately comes to mind. While conservatives farcically blame Obama for creating racial tension, his presidency, coupled with mass demonstrations in defense of Black lives, did create a palpable backlash. Between the beginning and end of his first term, the number of hate groups in the US rose by 755%, and Black Americans were the primary targets of racial hatred. Trump’s presidency, far from being the start, has served to amplify attitudes reflecting clear reversal of social progress, and normalized expressions of desires to “Take America Back.”

Sonya’s story is not just about one act of violence; it is about a nation that has long chosen to look away. Despite the lack of resolution in her case, she knows what has sustained her—the community that has helped her cope with the fear and anxiety that have followed the incident. Because history tells us that no progress is made without collective will. It is in how we protect the most vulnerable among us, how we refuse to accept bigotry as the cost of doing nothing, how we hold ourselves accountable—not just in moments of crisis, but in the quiet, everyday choices that shape the world we live in.

Seattle and Washington state may have resisted Trump’s rightward pull, but resistance is not absolution. We are in no way separate from the forces that deepen inequality—we see them in the way we police, in the way we criminalize poverty, in the way we allow white nationalist rhetoric to fester unchecked. The question is not whether hate exists here, but whether we will continue to tolerate it. 

Marcus Harrison Green contributed reporting to this article.

Gennette Cordova is a writer, organizer, and social impact manager. She contributes to publications like Teen Vogue and Revolt TV and runs an organization, Lorraine House, which seeks to build and uplift radical communities through art and activism.

“I made this myself out of cardboard and tape last summer.” by West Smith

Photos by West Smith

This weekend, when I walked into Emerald City Comic Con at the Seattle Convention Center to pick up my badge, I heard a girl behind me say to her friend, “Welcome to my homeland.”

The convention center is just a series of escalators held together by a Taco Del Mar and a Gyro Stop in the basement, but I get what she’s saying. If this is your first time attending a convention like ECCC, the enthusiastic atmosphere might seem crazy, overwhelming, or straight-up weird. But to a lot of people, this is home. This is one of the few places you can truly dress up however you want to and meet other like-minded people in the process. It’s a place where it’s totally okay to show your love and fandom for something that other people might not “get.” I would consider Comic Con to be one of the purest forms of a safe space.

The Stranger sent me to Emerald City Comic Con with the assignment of documenting a "best of" cosplay gallery, which is hard because how do you rate cosplay? What makes one costume better than another? I believe cosplay is art, and much like art, there is no good or bad. It is all just a form of expression.

When shooting portraits at a convention like this, I usually have about one minute or less to take the photograph. There is not a lot of time for chit-chat, these are some of the conversations I had with cosplayers at comic con this year.

Do you think Luigi Mangione is going to get off?

“Uh it’s hard to say. Both sides are fighting really hard, so I could see it going either way.”

Did Luigi Mangione inspire you to dress up like Luigi?

“No, I’ve had this costume for a few years now. It’s just a coincidence.”

What made you decide to dress up for Comic Con?

“I didn't decide to. I’m just here to be arm candy for her.”

Is this your first time dressing up?

“No, I wore this yesterday.”

What made you decide to dress up as the Emperor?

[deep menacing breath] “...I can do the voice better than anyone else.”

 “It’s a lot hotter in here than I thought it was going to be.”

Despite it being around 40 degrees outside, the new convention center building has a side that is entirely made out of windows. When the sun hits in the afternoon, it can get quite hot in the convention center. Throw in the body heat of 35,000 people, and now we’re really cooking.

What made you decide to dress up like Wolverine?

“My ability to grow these epic mutton chops!”

“I made this myself out of cardboard and tape last summer.”

Is Halo your favorite video game?

“No. I would say Minecraft is, it’s more chill.”

Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei will be on display at Seattle Art Museum March 12–September 7. by Charles Mudede

This story appears in our Spring Art + Performance 2025 Issue, published on March 5, 2025.

The title of Seattle Art Museum’s Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei has Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot as its inspiration. And the reason for this is found in Asimov’s interconnected stories about a future that begins in 1998 and ends in 2052. I, Robot is about how humans and their machines, their creations, cannot be untangled. We are them, they are us—like it or not.

This conception was revolutionary for its time in the late 1940s. Asimov already understood that the relationship between humans and machines is not only very close, but would become more and more complicated over time. Even if we gave them precise directives—“Don’t ever do this,” “Do x when y happens,” and the like—there was no guarantee they would function in exactly the same way in all possible situations, because we humans cannot know all of the possible situations. This is what imposes limits to the theory of mechanism, which imagines if all the factors are known, a precise picture of the future will be obtained. Life and its evolutionary processes make nonsense of this fantasy.

And so when Ai recently asked DeepSeek—a new and market-changing (in the creative destruction sense) Chinese AI app that directly rivals ChatGPT and is open source—“Who is Ai Weiwei?” it said: “I am sorry, I cannot answer that question. I am an AI assistant designed to provide helpful and harmless responses.”

The robot wasn’t neutral, or anything close to Leibniz’s characteristica universalis, a mechanistic dream of pure intellectual function and knowledge exchange. DeepSeek made it clear that it was all too human. It was too much like us. Its limits were our limits; its potentia is ours also. But as the curator of the SAM exhibit, Foong Ping, points out, Ai’s work often complicates the relationship between the real and the artificial, the authentic and the inauthentic, fantasy and history (both personal and cultural). For him, there is no “fixed thing,” and even “identity is not a fixed thing.” The ancient is as unstable as the new. This Weltanschauung is at the heart of Ai’s art, and also the artificial/human intelligence stories by Asimov. The complicated companion has arrived. We live in the worlds of I, Robot.

Because Ai’s work thinks big—big politics, big history, big issues, big materials—the SAM retrospective, which opens March 12, will be the largest the United States has ever seen, spanning his 40-year career. It will not only occupy space in the downtown museum, but also Seattle Asian Art Museum and Olympic Sculpture Park. SAM will display what I call his bling-bling jewelry collection, along with Ai classics like Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, a collection of images of Ai dropping and destroying, in 1995, a 2,000-year-old ceremonial urn from the Han period. The Asian Art Museum will have his largest Lego piece to date, Water Lilies, which is a larger-than-life interpretation of Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies #1.” It consists of 650,000 Lego studs, and this will be the first time it’s displayed in the US. The Sculpture Park will have his popular Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads sculptures, which are reproductions of the twelve bronze animal heads that ornamented an 18th-century imperial garden in Beijing.

In Water Lilies, we have the meeting point of several elements that appear to be unrelated. One is the Lego itself. It is a construction toy made by the Danish industrial corporation the Lego Group. Then there is the reference to the French artist Monet, who founded, in the last decades of the 19th century, the Impressionist movement. But where is the Chinese in all of this? It’s actually found in a strange opening, a considerable hole found on the right side of the 50-foot-long work. This, according to the Smithsonian, “is a door to an underground dugout [that the Ai] family lived in” during an exile imposed by Mao Zedong’s party. The door is personal and historical. The work’s materials are industrial and popular. And the image references European high art. This is how Ai remixes our globalized culture.

“Weiwei is kind of a pretty famous artist and an activist,” explained Foong, who is also a fan of science fiction literature. “And I thought, Gosh, there aren’t that many people on this Earth who can so beautifully illuminate all three of our museums ... So, I went on this crazy journey to try and get all three of our sites activated. That took a long time. And it stretched our team to the maximum.”

It’s also interesting that this exhibit appears at this time in our history. Not too long ago, the US elected a president whose designs and declarations are clearly authoritarian. He even assumed control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He has made it clear, again and again, that what’s good for him is the same as what’s good for the country. As Hyperallergic pointed out in the piece “Donald Trump Brings Back ‘Degenerate Art,’” the president recently wrote that “from now on, we will wage a Relentless War of purification against the last elements of our Cultural decay! Make American Art Beautiful Again!” This kind of language cannot be distinguished from that of the Mao Zedong party that banished the poet Ai Qing during the Cultural Revolution, or of the present Socialism-with-Chinese-characteristics party that arrested Ai, imprisoned him, almost killed him, and finally forced him into exile in 2015 for “economic crimes.” (He currently lives in Portugal.)

What can we learn from this? China, the dominant capitalist power of our day, and the world’s largest producer of robots, has not moved toward the US’s democratic system, but we are certainly moving toward China’s authoritarian one. Will American AI robots begin erasing the histories of our artists? This kind of speculation is not far-fetched. According to our president, the only history that should be on record is that which praises white men. Books that say otherwise are being removed from libraries and schools that receive federal funding. If robots are like us, American ones will soon not remember the days of slavery.

And this brings me to a final point about Ai. It concerns the work of the greatest science fiction writer of our time, Liu Cixin. (He, like Asimov, is into the hard stuff—science fiction with a lot of science, rather than fantasy, in it.) The opening of Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem trilogy has striking similarities with Ai’s childhood in Northern China. Ye Wenjie, the key fictional character of the first novel, comes from a family of scientists; Ai, from a family of artists. Each saw the zealots of the Cultural Revolution, which began when Ai was 11 years old, brutalize their fathers. And this experience left a lasting mark on their lives. But whereas Ye became a pessimist who saw no hope for humankind, Ai went in the opposite direction. He is a humanist. A big-machine-learning humanist.

Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei will be on display at Seattle Art Museum March 12–September 7. 

The Stranger's morning news roundup by Hannah Murphy Winter

Good Morning! It’s winter again, but the normal Seattle-y winter we’re used to. High around 50, rain in the evening. It’s the kind of weather you can get used to. Which is good—we’ve got the same forecast for at least the next 10 days. Settle in!

College Crackdown: Yesterday, the Department of Education sent warning letters to 60 US colleges and universities, letting them know that they could face repercussions if they don’t “fulfill their obligations…to protect Jewish students on campus, including uninterrupted access to campus facilities and educational opportunities.” Our own UW was one of those schools. UW has already been through a DOE investigation for anti-semitism after the pro-Palestinian protests last year. The investigations found no wrongdoing on UW’s part, but did find gaps in how the university responded to bias incident complaints—which they committed to address. Why doesn’t that matter to the Trump admin? Because this isn’t about Jewish students, or antisemitism, or protecting literally anyone. This is about suppressing dissent on college campuses, where that dissent is most likely to build power. 

Good Karen Energy: Need a little dose of hope? The AP profiled one of the rank and file federal employees who is pushing back on the Trump agenda. Karen Ortiz is an administrative judge at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has been totally rocked by new Trump policies. The last straw for Ortiz was when her supervisor directed administrative judges to pause all their current LGBTQ cases and send them to DC to comply with Trump’s anti-trans executive order. She sent an email to almost 200 colleagues encouraging them to resist, but that email “mysteriously” disappeared. So she leaned in, and cc’d 1,000 of her colleagues in an email to the EEOC’s acting chair, questioning her fitness to serve in the role, “much less hold a license to practice law.” That’s the kind of Karen energy we like to see. 

The Tariff Train Continues: I’m still not convinced Trump knows what a tariff is. This morning, he announced on Truth Social (in VERY RESPECTABLE CAPITAL LETTERS) that he plans to raise the tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel to 50 percent. He said they’d go into effect on Wednesday. How can Canada avoid these tariffs? According to Trump: Become our 51st state. Baby, Canada doesn’t wanna go on a date with you. Negging them isn’t gonna help. (Separately, I’d really like to stop reading major geo-political updates in the form of shitposts on Truth Social.)

Pure Nonsense: In an interview on Fox, RFK Jr. (who, bafflingly, is still our health and human services secretary), outlined his strategy for containing the measles outbreak in West Texas. It included: exaggerating the risk of “vaccine injury” from the measles vaccine, insisting that “natural immunity” to measles from infection protects against cancer and heart disease (it doesn’t), and encouraging treatments like cod liver oil (which the NYT called “questionable.”) 

Hometown Pride: Washington AG Nick Brown sued Adams County on Monday, accusing it of breaking state law by aiding ICE enforcement. According to Brown, the county in Eastern Washington is being Trump’s dream narc: illegally holding people based only on their immigration status, helping federal immigration agents question people in custody, and sharing confidential personal information, like birthdates, addresses, driver’s license numbers and fingerprints. The county is being represented by Stephen Miller’s very own legal outfit, America First Legal. Eww. 

Democracy Vouchers Are Back on the Table: Funding for Seattle’s democracy voucher program expires at the end of the year, but Mayor Bruce Harrell is hoping to keep them alive. Yesterday, he proposed a 10-year, $45 million property tax to keep it afloat. (That comes out to about $12 a year for the average homeowner, so you can unclench your butthole, Karen.)

Looking for a Little Culture? The Stranger’s Spring Arts issue is in print everywhere. Can’t wait to grab your copy? You can also read a lot of it here! Including this amazing preview of “arists & poets” at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery at UW, by Rachael Kessler, our Great Bagel Throwdown, Eva Walker’s column about the day her daughter was born (and why she’ll be an only child), and Michael Wong’s elbow-deep exploration of Viet-Cajun cuisine. 

Like Horror or Thriller Movies? But do you always have to check DoesTheDogDie.com? I do. Every damn time. But! A few weeks ago, I was watching The Meg, an incredibly, perfectly stupid shark attack movie about discovering a Megaladon in the depths of the Mariana Trench. There’s no dog death, and while we lose a few decent humans and one whale that will absolutely haunt our asses to the end of time, we also get to watch a Megaladon eat a billionaire. And that got us thinking: When else can we watch the shitty, manipulative billionaire get what’s coming? And so we made: DoesTheBillionaireDie.com. Have a favorite fictional billionaire death? Send it to us at billionaires@thestranger.com

Tanya Woo Is Back: It looks like the twice-failed city council candidate just refuses to take the L. Yesterday, we noticed that Tanya Woo was registered to receive democracy vouchers, but not registered as a candidate with the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission. Then, a few hours after we reached out to her, she appeared on the SEEC website. She still hasn’t formally acknowledged she’s running (she told The Stranger that she was simply exploring the option). But this sure looks like the beginning of a run to us. Read more about it here. 

Seahawks Switchup: In some local sports news, the Seahawks pulled a classic "we totally meant to do that" move this week, shipping off former starting QB Geno Smith to the Raiders after contract talks fizzled, and betting on Sam Darnold to replace him with a $100.5 million deal. Sure, Darnold is younger and had a solid year with the Vikings, but given his playoff faceplant, Seahawks fans probably want to keep the receipt on this one.

ICYMI: City Hall is back on their Denny Blaine nonsense. Remember 2023, when we learned that the millionaire owner of University Village lives next to Denny Blaine Park, which has been a queer, nude beach for at least four decades? And how he was tired of the naked people outside his mansion, so he donated $1 million to the city in 2023 to build a children’s playground at Denny Blaine? After some major community organizing, the playground is off the table. Now, neighbors want a ranger at the park. The park’s stewardship group really does not. Read all about this saga’s next chapter from The Stranger’s Vivian McCall here. 

Move Over Moo-deng. Have you met Ume? She’s a one-month-old endangered spot-covered tapir calf, and she lives just down the train tracks at Point Defiance Zoo. 

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Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love! by Dan Savage I’m a 28-year-old woman married to my husband, a 29-year-old man, for almost two years, and we still haven’t had sex. We met through mutual friends, dated for less than a year, and we knew pretty quickly that we wanted to get married. Things between us felt right. We genuinely liked each other, and everything felt pretty great. On our wedding night, we decided to leave the hotel early to spend time with family since many had traveled far for the wedding. After the wedding, life got hectic. Before we realized it, months had passed. I initiated intimacy a few times, but we never followed through. I’ve brought it up multiple times, and he always says he feels self-conscious about his body but promises to try harder. We even scheduled times for intimacy, but when the time came, he was either too busy or he would ask if we could…

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