Today, Everett's Mayor Cassie Franklin allowed for the needlessly cruel sweeping & eviction of our unhoused neighbors at 3217 Rucker.

SnoCo DSA members who were onsite say that while some residents were able to secure motel vouchers, many had no where to go.

Notice was given last night that residents would need to be out by noon today. This comes just four days after this same group was evicted from county property at the courthouse just up the road.

The official notice cited the pandemic as a threat to public health and public safety. This flys in the face of CDC guidelines, which explicitly says to allow people who are living unsheltered or in encampments to remain where they are.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/homeless-shelters/unsheltered-homelessness.html#facility-encampments

The Mayor's defenders cite a lack of permitting and a code violation for the reasoning behind the sweep. But at the end of the day, she had the authority to stop this & chose not to. As a member described it, this is a "please go suffer somewhere we can't see you" order.

This shouldn't be a surprise for anyone who is familiar with Mayor Franklin. Back in February, she hoped to hire an additional 24 new cops. Despite the fact that both property & violent crime have fallen since 2008, she claimed people don't *feel* safe. https://www.heraldnet.com/news/crime-is-down-but-everett-hopes-to-hire-24-more-officers/

And in the face of a global pandemic, and the murder of George Floyd, Mayor Franklin responded by... laying off 160 union AFSCME workers, while maintaining the EPD budget, saying "there’s just a lot of grief and tragedy in the city, and that leads to a lot of unrest.”

People don't feel safe when they don't have homes, Mayor Franklin. Evictions and sweeps lead to grief, tragedy, and unrest.

Shame on you, and everyone else responsible for cruelty.