There are mayors who speak up when their city’s homeless residents are displaced ahead of major sporting events, and there is Katie Wilson, Seattle’s new democratic socialist mayor, who was described by Fox News as “silent” while demonstrators gathered outside Lumen Field in Seattle to call the treatment of homeless residents near the World Cup venue a “human dumping ground,” which is what people call it when a city moves an encampment before cameras arrive and calls it enforcement.
Wilson won Seattle’s mayoral race in November on a platform that explicitly embraced the democratic socialist label, included significant investment in housing and alternatives to policing, and described the city’s homelessness crisis as a systemic failure requiring systemic solutions rather than enforcement sweeps. She took office in January. The World Cup arrived in June. Lumen Field in Seattle hosted the U.S. men’s national team’s round of 32 match against Bosnia and Herzegovina on July 1 and the round of 16 against Belgium on July 6. The encampments near the stadium were moved before the matches. The protesters described this as a “human dumping ground.” Wilson was silent.
The silence is not inexplicable. Responding to the protesters would require either defending the encampment clearing, which contradicts her platform, or condemning it, which puts her at odds with the World Cup logistics operation that her city agreed to host. Silence is the position that does neither, and which Fox News correctly identified as the position she chose, and which also correctly describes what it looks like when a democratic socialist mayor’s housing platform meets the reality of hosting 70,000 soccer fans who need the area around the stadium to be clear.
The U.S. lost to Belgium 4-1 at Lumen Field on July 6. Lumen Field was full. The displaced residents were elsewhere. Wilson issued no statement on the protests, the displacement, or the result, which is either three missed opportunities or a single unified strategic silence.
When the socialist mayor is silent about homeless residents displaced for the World Cup while her platform explicitly addresses homeless residents, what exactly is the platform doing?
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