Already experiencing COVID-19’s economic fallout, conditions for Seattle’s Black community are on a trajectory to worsen. Against that backdrop, KCEN and many others in the Black community mobilized to divest from policing and demanded correlating investment in pro-Black public safety solutions that work for us, for the first time in Seattle's history.

Emboldened by the overwhelming support of tens of thousands of community members, the Seattle City Council briefly upheld their decision to divest from a percentage of the Seattle Police Department (SPD)'s bloated annual budget and invest modestly in Black communities. It should not have taken such prolonged, sustained community efforts for this long over-due change but we acknlowedge the small percentage of divestment as a break from decades of votes to expand violent, anti-Black policing.

The work of reshaping this region into one that values all Black lives—and moves away from funding racist policing and towards resourcing true public safety for all—is long overdue and not for non-Black folks, unaccountable gatekeepers or non-rooted folks to dictate.

We advocated strongly for monies from the police budget to be invested directly into the Black community and are unmoved on that stance.