Can the Tacoma City Council play fair on initiatives for once? | Opinion

Tacoma playing dirty on initiative

Here we go again. The Tacoma City Council is being sued for waiting until Aug. 8 to take action on an initiative to create a “Workers Bill of Rights,” even though the signatures for the initiative were filed on June 24. The delayed timeline has meant that the initiative is being postponed until next year’s February election rather than the upcoming election in November.

This is not the first time the Tacoma City Council has used these behind-the-back devilries to subvert local democracy. When Tacoma For All collected enough signatures to get their “Landlord Fairness Code” initiative on the ballot, the Tacoma City Council placed a competing proposal on the same ballot. However, the council’s competing proposal was clearly there to befuddle voters, as it merely restated current law rather than introduce new ordinances.

As with now, the city was sued, and ended up losing the case. It can happen again.

The city’s ongoing ballot subterfuge is not just an insult to Tacoma For All, but to all Tacoma voters. If officials do not like the contents of a ballot initiative, they should campaign against it honestly. Instead, they keep trying to weaken local democracy through bureaucratic shenanigans.

Marco Rosaire Rossi, Tacoma

Don’t support genocide in Gaza

Gaza is home to the highest number of child amputees in the world.

More than 18,000 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli bombs, bullets, and starvation. According to the UN, that’s 28 children a day — the size of a classroom.

Leading rights groups, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — including those inside Israel, like B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights — have found Israel to be committing genocide.

In the past 22 months, 56,000 people, mostly women and children, have been murdered. Israel has been blocking all baby formula from entering Gaza for more than 150 days straight. This deliberate starvation of infants isn’t self-defense — it’s collective punishment, a war crime.

Perhaps just as disturbing, is our local Rep. Marilyn Strickland’s staunch support of Israel.

Rep. Strickland even visited Israel during the genocide and posed with Prime Minister Netanyahu, for whom an international arrest warrant has been issued by the International Criminal Court.

Not only does she refuse to oppose Israel’s bombing and starvation campaign in Gaza, Strickland also refuses to meet with her healthcare worker constituents who have served in Gaza to hear their firsthand eyewitness accounts.

Contact her and let her know your thoughts. Let Gaza live.

Michelle Ryder, Olympia

South Tacoma hostile to bikers

Biking to the gym brings me so much joy. My muscles are already warm when I arrive, and the wind in my hair is such a refreshing way to start the day.

But this Saturday, biking from my home in South Tacoma to Zumba at the People’s Community Center, I almost became another statistic on dangerous South Tacoma Way.

The painted bike lanes here end at every intersection, and with the ongoing construction, it’s even worse. Near Pine Street, the bike lane disappeared and the narrowed road meant I had to take the full lane. A driver in a big white Yukon SUV, apparently unable to wait 15 seconds, close-passed me so dangerously that I lost my balance and fell into the middle of the road. I was left bloody and bruised lying there. He didn’t stop.

Tacoma has made a policy choice to let bike lanes vanish at intersections, putting people on bikes in harm’s way. But drivers also choose whether to be patient or put someone’s life at risk.

South Tacoma, I want to bike in you. I want to shop at your businesses, get to the gym, and enjoy my community. I just wish you were safe.

Sara Kiesler, Tacoma