Over the weekend, Susanna Keilman, a failed Republican state legislative candidate from Pierce County, organized a rally at Fourth Avenue and Lenora, the site where Cordell Goosby allegedly shot Eina and Sung Kwon last week.
Eina, who was eight months pregnant, died from her injuries. Doctors delivered the baby girl at Harborview, but she died, too. Sung survived the shooting to the extent that anyone can survive the death of a partner and an expected child.
Goosby, who cops say âappeared to be in some form of crisis whether genuine or knowingly performed,â faces murder and attempted murder charges that could put him behind bars for decades. At a press conference Friday, Chief Adrian Diaz said the Seattle Police Department was âvery well aware of some of the mental health issues [Goosby] experienced.â
I share the anger expressed by the demonstrators at Keilmanâs march to "UNITE FOR SAFETY." Seattleites should not excuse or tolerate violence and suffering on our streets.
Though these particular advocates did not protest in response to the alleged murder of Elijah Lewis, who was shot and killed in front of his nine-year-old nephew in a road rage incident earlier this year; though they didnât protest in response to a police officer hitting and killing Jaahnavi Kandula with his cruiser as she walked across a crosswalk in January; though they didnât protest in response to any of the shootings of anyone not seen as âinnocentâ in their eyes; though they didnât protest in response to the 1,000 overdose deaths last year; I believe advocates would be right to march downtown every day until leaders in Seattle, Olympia, and Washington D.C. actually do something to stop death that Keilman rightly called âpreventable,â according to a credulous bit of reporting on the rally in the Seattle Times.
But it matters what those advocates advocate for. And, judging from the reporting on the demonstration, itâs pretty clear that Keilman held a right-wing rally in drag as a Seattle protest, effectively using this tragedy to promote punitive, ineffective responses to public health problems, all while wrongly blaming the current city council for this death.
A Thinly Veiled March of Conservatives
As DivestSPD pointed out on Twitter, UNITE FOR SAFETY started out life as the âMARCH TO TAKE BACK THE CITY,â according to a flyer circling around Reddit that originally misspelled Einaâs name and included language about âwomen who have been robbed, assaulted, and rapedâ serving as the âhandwriting on the wallâ for this incident. The language of vengeful reclamation echos Donald Trumpâs revanchist speeches, the spelling error is actually just sad, and the gendered fear-mongering regurgitates old-fashioned GOP critiques of crime-infested cities while ignoring the probable/potential underlying cause of the killingâinadequately treated mental illness and the wide availability of guns.
Keilman, who lives in DuPont, WA, wasnât the only far-flung Republican on Seattle streets last Saturday. B-roll of the demo from KING 5 shows far-right Republican State House Rep. Jim Walsh marching right along with the crowd, a long way from his home in Aberdeen. He announced his bid to lead the state GOP party two weeks ago. Conservative commenter Brandi Kruse, who doesnât live in Seattle, also joined the march in plain clothes while apparently reporting on it.
But conservatives from all parties showed up as well. In the video, you can see District 7 city council candidate Bob Kettle, a self-described âpragmatic progressiveâ who voted for Joe Biden in 2020, shuffling along and holding up a pre-printed sign that reads, âSAFETY NOW #safetyisinclusive.â Kettle is running to the right of Council Member Andrew Lewis, as is Olga Sagan, the Piroshky Piroshky owner who wonât tell us if she voted for Donald Trump in 2020.
In the great tradition of Republicans appropriating and corrupting leftist terminology in an attempt to drain it of power (cf: âwokeâ and âmy body, my choiceâ in reference to vaccines), some of the other pre-printed signs read, âPEACE,â âWOMEN AGAINST VIOLENCE,â âSTOP ASIAN HATE!â
Of course, organizers slipped in a couple more standard conservative messages that read, âSUPPORT LAW ENFORCEMENTâ and âPROTECT SMALL BUSINESS,â too.
To get a few examples of concerned locals on the march, a Seattle Times reporter interviewed a real estate broker and the president of a real estate company with an office on nearby Western Avenue. Between the two of them, theyâve donated to the right-wing Recall Sawant campaign, Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, a few of the more conservative Seattle City Council candidates, and Republican Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison.
Speaking of Davison, in her interview with the Times, Keilman echoed a falsehood the City Attorney distributed in a press release to explain why she thought Kwonâs death was preventable, saying, âIt was preventable because of policies recently passed that have now legalized crime. If crime and drugs were still illegal, this would have been preventable.â
Leaving aside the whole âlegalizing crimeâ tautology, drug possession remains illegal in Washington, unfortunately. And Lewis says heâll vote to give the Republican City Attorney the power to prosecute low-level public drug use and possession after a task force draws up some plans for diversion programs and a municipal drug court, which should happen here in a few weeks.
Actual Solutions
I mention all of this not to denigrate or dismiss any genuine feelings of sadness these marchers harbor in response to this tragic killing but rather to highlight the specific political project of the demonstration and the shallow, self-serving nature of its messaging.
Unlike Keilman, I wonât pretend to know what I donât know about this case. I donât know if Goosby was on drugs when he allegedly pulled the trigger. I donât know who stole the gun he allegedly used from Lakewood, WA. I donât know how that gun allegedly wound up in his hands. I donât know his mental health history, though it doesnât seem like his experience with the criminal legal system in Indiana or Illinois put him on the right path.
But I do know that the vast majority of demonstrators at the rally did not advocate for evidence-based solutions to the myriad issues raised by this killing. And I do know that the pre-printed, all-caps signs perfectly align with the groups Republicans need to win over to gain more support for their failing, fractured party.
âPROTECTING SMALL BUSINESS,â whatever that means, would not have stopped this tragedy. But most small business owners vote Republican.
âWOMEN AGAINST VIOLENCEâ is a wild sign to wave from the party that killed Roe v. Wade, fought against womenâs liberation for decades, and still supports a presidential candidate who faces more than two dozen accusations of sexual assault. But Republicans do need to improve their numbers with suburban women.
âSUPPORT LAW ENFORCEMENT,â another empty phrase, also would not have âpreventedâ this killing because cops do not prevent crimeâthey respond to crime. Moreover, increasing their budget and staffing does not seem to correlate with improved clearance rates for the violent cases they do respond to.
SPD homicide clearance rate vs. SPD Budget 2011-2021
â DivestSPD (@DivestSPD) June 19, 2023
2011
45%
$249m
2012
60%
$252m
2013
33%
$263m
2014
50%
$288m
2015
46%
$293m
2016
76%
$300m
2017
62%
$321m
2018
68%
$331m
2019
53%
$363m
2020
30%
$409m
2021
24%
$363m https://t.co/yVwbzyym4W pic.twitter.com/NChxCKLdaD
âSTOP ASIAN HATE!â is particularly rich given Republican opposition to the anti-Asian hate crimes bill. But GOP strategists are now pushing Republicans to do more outreach to Asian Americans, focusing specifically on affirmative action and ârising crime and social instability.â Recently, Republicans showed up to support a protest against a shelter expansion in SODO near the Chinatown-International District, and Washington Asians 4 Equality started up in 2018 to oppose the effort to repeal WAâs ban on affirmative action.
These slogans and Keilmanâs call to crackdown on drug possession only serves to scare you into the arms of the police state, hook you on the cold comfort of consumer capitalism, and trick you into believing that Seattleâs progressive experiment has failedâdespite the fact that such an experiment has yet to begin.
Progressives have never held a majority in city politicsâor in state and federal politics, for that matter. If they did, then Seattle would have safe consumption sites to reduce drug overdose deaths, a functioning drug treatment and recovery system, AT LEAST more mental health care beds than we had in the 1990s, police alternatives to respond to low-level calls so cops can focus on solving violent crimes, scaled up violence-interrupter programs to squash disputes before they escalate, robust victim compensation funds to help make people whole, stricter gun control laws, a guaranteed basic income, enough housing for the poor and the middle-class, rent controls, a fully funded education system, and health care for all.
Those are the real, practical solutions to public safety. Do all that stuffâor even just some of itâand youâll see crime drop dramatically. But as long as Republicans and conservative Democrats keep standing in the way of progress, as long as they keep insisting on pursuing failed approaches to crime as the way forward, then weâll keep falling back into this cycle of violence.