A letter to the people who are vandalizing Olympia’s downtown

Dear Downtown Window Smashers,

Just stop it.

If there was a point to be made by vandalizing downtown Olympia, surely it’s been made by now. Repeating yourselves is not making your message any clearer. So far, your only achievement has been to unite most in the community against you.

And really, few have a clue what your message is. All we know is that most of you are young, white and angry. In the beginning, your graffiti was about Black lives, but lately it’s mostly focused on defunding the police. We find it hard to square that scrawled slogan with vandalism and violence that drive up police overtime costs.

Similarly, throwing rocks intended to injure the police is a surefire way to invite police use of force, thus causing the very thing you purport to oppose.

We also find your claim to association with Black Lives Matter suspect, since your actions are more likely to reduce rather than build public support for that movement. Lately people are even starting to suspect that some of you are FBI infiltrators, or perhaps Russian operatives, since you further their aims of sowing discord and stoking the law-and-order agenda.

Also, we are puzzled about just what your theory of action is. How do you believe that breaking windows and lighting dumpster fires leads to justice, or peace, or whatever you’re after — unless it is chaos? What goals are you pursuing when you graffiti the porous sandstone of our state capitol? You’re not honoring the workmanship of the union craftsmen who built it in the 1920s, or the workers who will now struggle to repair the damage you caused.

What makes you think you have the right to trash our beautiful and historic capitol building, or our downtown? And what makes you want to?

While you operate under cover of darkness, in the light of day all those boarded-up windows make people feel unsafe, and therefore less likely to patronize struggling, local enterprises. This prevents them from rehiring laid-off workers, so you ought to have their impoverishment on your conscience too.

You’ve also insulted all of us who vote in local elections by harassing the mayor and city council members we elected — and scaring their children and their neighbors.

The only people who benefit from your actions are those in the window replacement business.

We are all living through a pandemic, an epic economic downturn, a racial justice reckoning, and a nail-biter of an election season, and all those things are woven into a single Gordian knot we are trying to untie. We have lost our tolerance for meaningless destruction.

So please, enough already. Let go of your self-righteous anger, and open your minds to more productive forms of activism. Your youth, energy and passion could be of great value to our shared future if it were deployed more thoughtfully. We need you.

Have you registered to vote?

Misbehaving local elected officials

On Aug. 10, the Port Commission voted to expand its employee anti-harassment/discrimination policy to include elected Commissioners. The policy had previously applied only to employees.

This was a clear case of closing the barn door after the horse was out. The occasion for this policy change was a publicly aired employee allegation of sexual harassment against Port Commissioner E. J. Zita. Since the policy change was not made until after the allegation and a subsequent investigation, it will not apply to Zita.

A similar problem arose on the Olympia City Council some years ago, when a council member’s anger prompted allegations of creating a hostile work environment. There was no policy in place to guide a response.

In both instances, the lack of clear policy created confusion and consternation. Yet today, neither Lacey nor Olympia have such policies in place. Thurston County’s policy calls for investigating but not penalizing its elected officials. Aggrieved employees must go to the State Human Rights Commission, the federal Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, or hire a lawyer and file a claim.

Tumwater does have a policy, and it’s pretty clear. It spells out a process for investigation, and remedies ranging from reprimand, removal from committees, or referral to legal authorities. These sanctions are to be voted on by the Council.

This is a difficult policy problem, especially if an elected official does something that an employee would be fired for. Some argue that sanctions should include removal from office by the offending officials’ elected peers. We balk at that idea, preferring to rely on the rights and judgment of voters.

Still, a culture of accountability is essential. We urge local councils and commissions to remedy this gap in their policies, the sooner the better. This might seem like a low priority right now, but as we’ve learned, today’s low priority can easily become tomorrow’s headline-grabbing emergency.

This story was originally published September 13, 2020 at 5:45 AM.