What I’m witnessing across Seattle’s political conversations right now isn’t just disagreement. Disagreement is normal. Tension is normal. But the tone, the pressure, the personal edge some people have adopted in the wake of this recent election feels like something deeper. And to be honest, I’m tired. Politics didn’t disappoint me; people did.
In the last few weeks, I’ve watched election discussions drift away from healthy debate and land squarely in the territory of personal attacks, shaming tactics, and attempts to delegitimize anyone who thinks differently. That part is exhausting, not because disagreement is wrong, but because the way we’re engaging with each other betrays the community values we often claim to uphold.
I’ve been working in community as long as I can remember; professionally, first in Seattle, and now in Bellevue. I moved because Seattle, in many ways, chewed me up and spit me out. I navigated housing instability, school system challenges, and the complexities of building a career rooted in service. And from that vantage point, I can say with confidence: no one mayor created these conditions. Each administration inherited decades of systemic, economic, educational, social, and political issues that no single person could ever repair alone.
So, when we reduce all of this to “winning” or “losing” an election, we strip away the truth that community change has never been tied to one individual’s performance. Any mayor, past or present, will ultimately carry the weight of choices made long before they arrived.
What we’re facing today isn’t a sudden fracture. It is exposure.
For years, we’ve spoken as if we were operating under a unified community vision. We were not. If we truly shared one vision or even one collective understanding of what “community” meant this moment would not look the way it does. The tension didn’t appear out of nowhere. It revealed itself because the alignment we thought we had was, in many cases, assumed rather than real.
And there’s another layer to this:
We often talk about “the Black community” in Seattle as if it’s one cohesive body. In reality, it functions in segments—neighborhood-based, leader-based, relationship-based, and historically rooted networks that each hold their own priorities, histories, and perspectives. That’s not wrong; it’s human. But when these segments speak as if they represent the whole, confusion and distrust grow.
This becomes even more complicated when we recall that just a few years ago, when significant funding was on the table, many groups claimed they could reach every corner of the Black community. The promise was unity. The promise was scale. The promise was collective uplift.
Today, the narrative has shifted and now we hear about limitations, capacity challenges, or the impossibility of reaching everyone. And while those realities may be true, they sit in tension with the narratives that were confidently presented when resources were abundant.
None of this is about blame. It is about clarity.
Seattle and King County have a relatively small Black population. It is entirely possible to build systems that reach people—if that is truly the intention. But we cannot build trust without honesty about who we are positioned to serve, and where our influence naturally ends.
Factions are not the problem.
Pretending those factions speak for everyone is.
Community work doesn’t require us to be a monolith. It doesn’t require us to agree on everything. It requires transparency about our reach, our priorities, our limitations, and our values. It requires discipline in how we talk to each other, and discipline in how we show up when the moment calls for more than commentary.
As someone who has been organizing across this region for nearly two decades through housing systems, education systems, public service, policy advocacy, nonprofit leadership, and community development—I believe we are capable of building something healthier. But it starts with honesty, not performance. With structure, not slogans. With collective responsibility, not collective projection.
The fracture we’re seeing today doesn’t have to become our future.
But we do have to name it for what it is.
Not to assign blame, but to build something real on the other side of it.