At a Caucasian-owned coffee shop in a historically black neighborhood in Seattle, a call to action to solve gun violence exposed underlying tensions about the changing face of Seattle’s Central District.
“I am sick and tired of waking up at two o'clock in the morning yelling for my kids to get down on the floor,” Sara Mae Brereton, who owns 701 Coffee on 23rd Avenue, said to about a dozen people.
A recent rash of gun crimes on a stretch of 23rd Avenue in mid-March prompted some community members to come together to address the issue, but talks quickly turned tense when those with differing concerns came to the meeting.
“We think that is really a shame that you would take one marginalized people that have experienced real marginalization and try to use that as a shield and an excuse to perpetuate gentrification,” community member K. Wyking Garrett said.
Blaming and name calling ensued. “You're going to see a whole lot of snakes coming out the ground,” one woman declared.
“I’m a snake?” a man asked in response.
Finger pointing became so tense that the mayor’s public safety advisor got up and left.
“At this meeting, some people wanted to address the very real public safety concerns here in the Central District, but there’s also a lot of other underlying issues. Gentrification being one,” Scott Lindsay said, explaining he was there as a community member who lives in the Central District and to relay concerns to the mayor’s office.
Violence made Victoria Beach move, but she believes both violence and gentrification are convincing people to leave the Central District.
“Sometimes I'll be in the neighborhood and I'll see a group of white people walking around, I think that would never be; when I grew up around here that would never happen. It's sad because there's more of them than us now,” Beach said.
Community organizers say they will continue to hold meetings to find a way to move forward.
As far as gun violence, Seattle police told the public at a meeting on Thursday the department is pushing officers and plainclothes officers into areas when crime goes up.
One law enforcement leader called the recent reports of shots fired “particularly dangerous” because of the number of bullets discharged.
