A Seattle-based Amazon employee is suing the company after she says a senior manager raped her on a New York work trip in 2023. According to the Seattle Times, she told Amazon’s HR department, reported the assault to the New York Police Department, and underwent a rape kit exam. The police did not press charges, but they did question the manager and, in one instance, he said he was too drunk after a work event with an open bar to remember what happened. The lawsuit, filed on Monday, alleges Amazon violated Washington’s Silenced No More Act when it told her she could keep her job as long as she didn’t talk about the allegations at work.
Yesterday, Mayor Katie Wilson announced a new approach to homelessness, with the slogan “Commitment to Common Sense.” It would appear that no one told Mayor Wilson that “common sense” is one of MAGA’s favorite phrases. Just look at these signs from JD Vance’s speech in Ohio yesterday:
I would get a new slogan, personally!
What is Wilson’s “Commitment to Common Sense” plan anyway? It’s a “scaling up” of the outreach plan the city used earlier this year to house the homeless population in Pioneer Square ahead of the World Cup. That “plan” involved a lot of encampment sweeps. In a statement, Wilson said that the pilot program ended up “placing 70 out of 80 people into sustained shelter or housing.” The new plan introduces “By-Name lists,” which will track people experiencing homelessness and their specific needs in order to better match them with services. “We will go as fast as we can and I want to see steady, visible improvements,” she said, but, as the Seattle Times points out, during a press conference she “declined to share where the model would first be replicated, or how much the plan would cost the city in total.” As a reminder, Wilson already had to scale back her plan to open 4,000 new shelter beds—1,000 a year—and instead said she would open 960 new beds by the end of 2027.
Is this part of the new “common sense” plan? On Monday, the Seattle City Council passed six ordinances that are effectively an RV ban, which “will require people living in large vehicles to obtain a permit to park for more than two hours. Even with a permit, they’ll still have to move every 72 hours.” Stranger contributor Guy Oron has the full story here.
A Glee reboot is in the works because, for some reason, people keep giving Ryan Murphy money to make nonsense.
Flu season is starting months early and, unusually, hitting the West Coast first, according to people who track such things (scientists and doctors). CNN says “roughly 1 in 10 people tested for the flu in Washington state last week [tested] positive, according to data from the state Department of Public Health.” Get your flu shot!!!!!!
Here’s a heartbreaking headline: “Afraid to cross border for medical help, Canadian living in Point Roberts dies.” Paige Adamson was a Canadian citizen and a US permanent resident. A few days before her death, she fell while at home in Point Roberts, WA. Her primary care doctor was in Bellingham and, because Point Roberts is on a peninsula, she’d have to cross the Canadian border to get there. But after being held and questioned for six hours at the border earlier this year, she was too terrified of being detained to get medical care. She was 61.
Trump says he “loved” watching a protester get punched in the face at a rally in South Carolina yesterday. It would be unprofessional for me to say who I would love to see get punched in the face at a Trump rally.
Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar says she and her family can no longer stay in their Washington, DC home after federal agents raided the property last week. The agents didn’t say what they were looking for, just that the search was “part of an ongoing criminal investigation.” They took “multiple cellphones, notebooks, and her husband’s camera from the 1960s.” At a rally after the raid, Trump, who has repeatedly suggested Rep. Omar “go back to Somalia,” said he had nothing to do with the raid. Meanwhile, the crowd in Ohio chanted “deport.”
Attacking Rep. Omar is just one part of Trump’s constant attacks on Somalis. In this blood-boiling article, the Intercept breaks down all the ways in which the Trump administration has “killed, arrested, deported, and demonized Somalis at home and abroad.”
Does the news make you want to scream? Me too! That’s why I write the Where to Scream column, packed with rallies, workshops, and other ways to get involved throughout the month. Coming up this weekend, on October 24, join La Resistencia outside the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma from 1–3 p.m. to show support for detainees. Can’t be there in person? They also collect donations via PayPal (@laresistencia) and Venmo (@LaResistenciaNW)—in one week in September, they gave $1,450 to detainees for food and supplies from the commissary.
Let’s end this installment of AM with a song that’s fun to scream along with:
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