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Friday, September 17, 2010

Genius Honorary Genius: Tim Harris

Posted by Dominic Holden on Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 11:31 AM

Kelly O
TIM HARRIS: Real Genius

You guys! The Genius Awards party is tonight at the Moore Theatre, which will be swarming with brilliant people (the artists who won the five awards and $5,000 apiece, our arts editors, you!) and people who aren't geniuses (me, my jug of dead Sea Monkeys).

Also in the house will be our honorary political genius (there's no award for excellence in politics and no money, either). But the news team thought it right to bestow the honorary title on Tim Harris, director of Real Change newspaper, who is kicking some incredible ass in Seattle politics. Here's a glimpse of his profile:

The paper does a staggering number of things at the same time: providing social services during a human-services funding drought, running a media outlet—a newspaper that is growing steadily—while most newspapers are shrinking and closing, and parlaying all of that into a political body that converts the most down-and-out scapegoats in society into a virtually unassailable constituency.

Harris has employed hundreds of homeless people, brought the city more shelters, defeated plans to build a new jail, killed a pernicious civility bill, tackled an uppity real-estate lobby in Pioneer Square while doing lots of other great work—and come out stronger at the end of messy battles. He's a freaking genius. Read the whole thing.

Also check out the political genius shortlist of runners up: Dwight Pelz, C.R. Douglas, and Sally Bagshaw.