Letters to the editor for July 15

If you want to fight homelessness, defund the police

There is a constant refrain that something must be done about homelessness. The usual solution is to have the police violently drive the homeless from sight so we can stop thinking about them. Community members who oppose this brutalization of the unhoused are often accused of having no alternative, so I thought I should offer mine:

We know the underlying cause of homelessness is a lack of affordable housing. Increasing homelessness is overwhelmingly correlated with the rising cost of rent, and despite comforting myths to the contrary, most homeless people in Olympia are locals who could no longer afford housing. Housing-first policies are the proven way to decrease homelessness by prioritizing getting people into housing as quickly as possible so they can recover and become self-sufficient.

Cities such as Vienna have found municipal housing to be an excellent investment, being both a net-positive revenue source and supplying low-income units to the public. However, the affordable mixed-income public housing we need requires initial seed money.

If we take seriously the current demand to try non-police solutions to our problems, we should see what we can accomplish for our unhoused by returning the Olympia Police Department to its 2011 funding levels. Such a move would free up over $7 million a year while forcing the police to reevaluate their priorities (e.g. buying chemical weapons), which would allow us to finally end the underlying cause of our homelessness crisis and improve public safety for everyone.

August Waldron, Olympia

Let’s make Juneteenth an official holiday

It is time to make Juneteenth a national legal holiday to celebrate the abolition of slavery in the United States.

June 19, 1865 was the day General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and announced that enslaved people were now free. He read General Order #3, which states “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves. …”

Washington state has recognized Juneteenth as a day of remembrance since 2007. Last year a bill was introduced to make it a legal holiday in Washington, with the same level of observance as Presidents Day and Memorial Day. It didn’t make it to a vote, but it can’t end there.

The victory over slavery and for freedom and liberty is as fundamental to American identity and values as the struggle for American independence. A Juneteenth legal holiday would recognize that all those who fought to end slavery — soldiers, abolitionists, underground railroad conductors, and the slaves who led insurrections to free themselves — were in common cause with the freedom fighters of the American Revolutionary War. We as Americans need finally to say out loud that we could not have become the beacon of freedom and democracy we are in the world today without this victory.

If we agree slavery is a stain on our history, why don’t we celebrate its end?

Ann Vandeman, Olympia