by Bus Admin | Jul 17, 2024 | Uncategorized
WASHINGTON STATE—The Washington Bus believes that all people deserve the right to live our lives with the safety from violence of any kind—especially political. Whether you are a candidate running for office or a voter engaging in the civic process, everyone everywhere, regardless of civic status, deserves to live free from political violence.
Violence of any kind has no place in our democratic society and weapons of war have no place in our communities. We unequivocally condemn the ongoing and worsening epidemic of political violence against voters, candidates, and people here and across the world.
Together, we must build a future where no one fears for our lives or our loved ones. A future where we ban weapons of war so they’re not used against civilians, regardless of where we are or who we are. A place where the people who represent us respect our freedoms – to live without fear of gun violence, to cast our votes and have them counted, and to decide for ourselves what our futures will hold.
Over this year, we saw countless young people across the country protest and occupy space to demand an end to political violence—we echo their call and recognize that from Butler, to Rafah, we all deserve liberation from political violence.
Our team remains committed to turning out the youth vote this election to build a world that supports young people and you can join us by pledging to vote with us at bit.ly/24PledgeToVote.
In solidarity,
The Bus Staff & Board
by Bus Admin | May 3, 2024 | Uncategorized
Hey Hey Community,
We have gotten a LOT of interest in our endorsements! Thank you all for checking in.
For candidates and their teams:
- When: We will reach out after the Primary for General Election endorsements! We will not be doing Primary election endorsements.
- What: Our endorsement comes with door knocking and voter contact. We will be stepping away from name only endorsements or phone-banking for candidates. Unfortunately, this limits the spread and number of our endorsements but increases the impact! So we will focus on some key regions to maximize our impact.
- Where: we’re currently looking at those key regions being Spokane, Yakima, Clark, Pierce, Whatcom, and South King Counties, but that is subject to change.
- Whomst: Legislative and Local candidates, with the potential for statewide as well.
- Why: to fire up young people to get out the vote!
For Youth and other Volunteers:
- Wanna be involved? We will be making deliberations in September over 2 meetings at our office:
- September 7th is all about how to look into candidates. What’s the PDC?
- September 14th we take all this knowledge and deliberate on endorsements.
- We’ll also have many events for those endorsed candidates through October!
by Bus Admin | Jul 28, 2023 | Uncategorized
Led by Drag Queen Miss Texas 1988, and hosted by yours truly, the Washington Bus, alongside The Stranger, after years of absence we brought back Candidate Survivor—a spectacular, wacky, yet policy-focused and youth-led candidate forum for this year’s Seattle City Council races. With an exciting program that included candidate talent shows, lip-syncing for life, and a spicy showdown at the end, we at the Bus hoped to truly reach and encourage young people to vote in this upcoming local election.
This year, candidates came through with a harmonious musical of instrumental prowess. Performing on the guitar, keyboard, bongos, and harmonica, District 2 candidates Tammy Morales and Margaret Elisabeth, alongside D4 candidate Ron Davis, D5 candidates Nilu Jenks and Shane Macomber, and finally D3 candidate Joy Hollingsworth all played music for the crowd. We saw incredible ad-libs and remixes from Joy, Tammy, Nilu, and Ron as they sang lyrics that rang true to their districts and their constituency. D1 candidate Maren Costa wowed the crowd with a disappearing trick-turned twins that juggle trick while D1 candidate Stephen Brown recited presidents in order, almost getting to all of them before hitting time. Andrew Ashiofu of D3 brought forth an incredible spoken word poetry performance while D6 candidate Dan Strauss instigated a lutefisk eating contest (that he actually ended up losing…) And last, but not least at all, candidates Andrew Lewis of D7 gave a mean tweets presentation while ChrisTiana ObeySumner of D5 slayed the talent show down with an incredible Burlesque performance of Separate Ways by Journey.
Moving into the lip-sync round—District 1 candidates fought in lip-sync combat performing 9 to 5 by Dolly Parton while District 2 ran the show with an incredible performance of Run the World (Girls) by Beyoncé. District 3 came through with a lip-sync performance of Run This Town, and then the scrappy candidates of Districts 4, 6, and 7 all competed with each other to perform Lizzo’s Truth Hurts better than the others. And finally, District 5 threw down with Hey Ya! by Outkast. With all these acts coming together, the audience finally chose the final five to move on to our Spicy Election—voting with their voices. Then, the illustrious Miss Texas 1988 interpreted the roaring electorate, and sent Maren Costa of District 1, Tammy Morales of District 2, Andrew Ashiofu of District 3, Ron Davis of District 4, and ChrisTiana ObeySumner of District 5 to the final round.
After a brief intermission, candidates returned to a set-up reminiscent of a “Hot Ones” challenge, where Bus & Stranger staff asked spicy questions while candidates ate spicy vegan nuggets. Candidates who advanced to our spicy final round faced questions that challenged their progressive values with topics like reparations and corporate taxation. In the end, after various superlatives were awarded and audience cheering was calculated, Andrew Ashiofu of District 3 emerged victorious—grasping Candidate Survivor victory through an incredible spoken word poetry act, an intensive lip-sync showdown, and his even spicier answers to our spicy questions.
Throughout the exciting night, our Fellows at the Washington Bus canvassed the crowds in order to make sure everyone attending had a plan to vote in this upcoming election. Candidate Survivor—though a spectacle on the stage and a night event filled with colorful lights and funny quips—is primarily a Get-Out-The-Vote event, where we engage younger voters in the political process and encourage greater turnout. At the Bus, we’re proud of the amazing work our staff and program participants have been doing in order to build political power for youth, and Candidate Survivor supports this by bringing accessibility for younger voters—engaging them where they are in a language and environment that excites them. Together, with our volunteering candidates, partners at The Stranger, and the amazing youth who turned out for our event, we continue to prove that young people give a damn about local elections.
We want to express our gratitude to all of you, our incredible supporters, for making events like these possible. Your continued dedication to empowering youth and promoting positive change in our community fuels our work! With your support, we hope to host many more Candidate Survivors and countless other electoral events for years to come. And remember, if you’re a voter, remember to turn in your ballots by August 1st and use your Democracy Vouchers. If you are waiting until the last second, we recommend dropping your ballot at your nearest ballot drop box to ensure King County Elections receive and count your vote.
Let’s make our voices heard, because young people give a damn about local elections.
by Bus Admin | Jun 12, 2023 | Uncategorized
Greetings Bus Riders!
The Washington Bus is incredibly proud of the powerful legislative advocacy and political organizing we undertook this past legislative session. This year we saw how the Bus and our community came through and secured incredible wins with a robust legislative agenda! Our agenda covered four core issue areas with 16 bills that were introduced that we worked on and advocated for!
The Bus has a lot to be proud of in this session and gush endlessly about in this blog post, but we would be remiss to not start out with the amazing Bus session stars, our Winterns! Our Winterns came through, learned about their bills and our issue areas, and learned how to mobilize their peers. Backed by our organization and community, Bus Winterns:
- Researched our existing buckets of core issue areas and selected bills they were interested in working on during session,
- Contributed to our robust legislative agenda through our Let Youth Thrive section, where Winterns chose their own bills to add and advocate for during session.
- Learned the ins and outs of the legislative session and engaged in intense community mobilization. Returning to our roots as the Washington Bus, our Winterns participated in our very first in-person Youth Power Lobby Day in collaboration with Latino Community Fund! We had 35 young people descending on the capitol and they made our youth agenda known.
- Winterns and Bus community met with 11 legislators and legislative offices during our Youth Power Lobby Day. We heard amazing speeches from legislative champions Sen. Yasmin Trudeau and Rep. Sharlett Mena!
- With our agenda at the forefront, the Winterns met with several members on Ways and Means to ensure that our bills made it through the fiscal-committee cutoff and were prioritized for floor readings and votes. Every single bill we worked on that made it through the gauntlet of its house of origin went on to survive the opposite chamber and become a law.
- Executed a powerful advocacy and lobbying strategy that ended up with an astonishing 443 actions taken by our Bus community.
Our Wintern Adaora even had the amazing opportunity to write and publish an article in the Everett Herald advocating for the Wealth Tax, a key policy on our legislative agenda. In continuing the advocacy train, Bus Staff engaged with local media in podcasts such as “All Policy Is Local” and Hacks and Wonks in order to advocate for Democracy bills that were running through the senate. Also, for the last few weeks we had our amazing Campus Organizer Edgar, who showed up and helped guide our amazing Winterns through Olympia. We’re so glad to have you Edgar! I hope you read this.
We also wanted to highlight how thrilled we are on getting SB 5208, Updating Online Voter registration passed. Why? Because this is a bill that we came up with after noticing barriers young people were facing with our current online voter registration system, brainstorming with our partners in Oregon. We collaborated with Senator Trudeau and the Secretary of State’s office and advocated hard to move it forward, getting it signed into law within one legislative session.
Moving forward, the Bus is determined to continue our legislative advocacy. This session we got 6 bills passed, but we’ve still got 10 more to work on. Moreover, we’ve got many more issues that we’re really excited to work with, like expanding the right to vote to 16 year olds in local elections. And a huge shout out to statewide democracy vouchers (HB 1755), which didn’t get a hearing, yet, but we are determined to get passed next session.
Writing and passing legislation is no easy task—but we’ve got a lot of allies in the wings in Olympia who do their part to make a better world possible. The Bus wants to make some space to shout out and thank our various prime sponsors and supporters, the legislators who made things happen, and sparked powerful conversations.
SHOUT OUTS
REGISTRATION ROYALTY:
Huge thanks to Senator Yasmin Trudeau for championing SB 5208! Also known as the “Online Voter Registration Update” bill, which makes registering to vote online more accessible by allowing applicants to provide the last four digits of their social security number to verify their identity! And another huge thanks to Representative Tarra Simmons & Senator Sam Hunt, who championed HB 1229 and SB 5112, bills that provided a plethora of well needed updates to our voter registration system. For that, we crown these three Registration Royalty, as our special way of shouting out their incredible leadership in improving our democracy.
CHILDCARE CHAMPION:
Can we get a “woot, woot!” for Senator Claire Wilson for championing SB 5225? This bill aims to increase access to the working connections child care program. At the Bus, all think this is incredibly amazing and totally based. Not only does it expand access to undocumented students, but it also expands eligibility to include many child care employees, which is critical to ensure we have childcare workers and that more students and workers are able to afford childcare! We’re proud to dub Senator Wilson as our amazing Childcare Champion.
KEEPING CORRECTIONS ACCOUNTABLE:
It’s undeniable that our correctional facilities are in crisis. Nationwide, in 2020, around 6,182 people died in U.S. prisons. Locally, people are dying in our correctional facilities, and that includes privately owned detention centers. It’s a grim reality that we face every day that the conditions in which we keep our incarcerated neighbors is, if left unattended, deadly. Because of these grim realities, we are incredibly thankful for Representative Lillian Ortiz-Self for championing HB 1470, known as the bill regarding “Private Detention Conditions.” This legislation ensures that proper inspections of our detention centers are conducted, along with a swath of other regulations which keeps these centers accountable and saves lives. For that, we are incredibly grateful for Representative Ortiz-Self for Keeping Corrections Accountable.
PROTECTING INDIGENOUS LIVES:
Indigenous women and people make up a disproportionate amount of missing persons and murder cases in our nation. And in collaboration with a uniquely positioned coalition, Representative Debra Lekanoff & Senator Manka Dhingra championed HB 1177 and SB 5137, which established a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People Cold Case Investigations Unit. We want to thank Representative Lekanoff and Senator Dhingra for Protecting Indigenous Lives through establishing this investigations unit, and we look forward to continuing to work with community and the legislature on future legislation that will further our fight to end the disparities in missing persons and murder cases in our nation.
FEEDING OUR KIDS:
Across the nation, more and more states like Minnesota, New Mexico, and potentially Rhode Island are adopting free school meals for our public schools—which absolutely feels like a straight-forward policy, feeding kids in a place where they’re legally mandated to be. Surprisingly, the lunch line is a place where some of the most blatant examples of wealth injustice can be seen. Youth who don’t have the money often go days without healthy meals (or meals at all), which impact their ability to learn and grow. Representative Marcus Riccelli put down a proposal through HB 1238 that would establish free school meals in our public school systems. We’d like to thank Rep. Riccelli for putting forward this legislation for Feeding Our Kids. We are bummed that it did not fulfill its intentions and are looking forward to expanding this legislation again once we’re able to.
THANK YOU, WE’LL BE BACK!
BRING THE ULTRA-WEALTHY TO HEEL:
Economists and working families both know the unfortunate reality that Washington State has the most regressive taxation system in our country. With each year under this regressive tax model, funding our public schools, public infrastructure, and support systems for communities in need become more and more difficult. However, Senator Noel Frame and Representative My-Linh Thai rose to the occasion to challenge our regressive tax model with a progressive proposal: SB 5486, a Wealth Tax. More specifically, an incredibly narrow property tax on extreme wealth. While this bill did not pass into law, we are determined more than ever to fight for progressive tax models. For too long, the ultra-wealthy have not been paying their fair share in taxes, and we thank Senator Frame and Representative Thai for their bills to Bring the Ultra-Wealthy to Heel, and we hope to continue working with the two on future legislation that will correct our regressive tax model.
FUND WORKING PEOPLE:
Time and time again it’s becoming more difficult for working families to catch up with rising costs with stagnant wages. However, Representative Liz Berry brought back to the table an amazing proposal to create a guaranteed basic income pilot program through HB 1045, which would have provided 24 payments to around 7,500 qualifying participants in an amount equal to 100 percent of the fair market rent for a two-bedroom dwelling unit. A basic income program would be a game changer for working families, allowing them to catch up, afford their expenses, and keep themselves housed. And for that, we thank Rep. Berry for putting forth legislation that would Fund Working People. Though this bill did not pass the legislature yet, we continue to be determined to work on solutions to keep people furthest from wealth justice and economic equity housed, fed, and thriving.
by Bus Admin | Jan 23, 2023 | Uncategorized
We are so excited to jump into the 2023 Legislative Session! Read about our priorities below.
Democracy Done Right
We are stoked to be leading on three priorities: Statewide Democracy Voucher program for Legislative races, Updating Online Voter Registration (5208) to make it more accessible, and a Constitutional Amendment to allow 16 and 17 year old voting!
Also look out for:
- Automatic Voter Registration (SB 5112), a bill we backed last year and that is making some movement right off the bat! It had a hearing last week in the policy committee and passed out of committee.
- Even Year Elections, a bill we’re keeping an eye out for this one to return to the state house after passing it in King County this Fall!
PreK-BA, Slay
- Cost Free College: We’re working with Communities For our Colleges to get a bill that would make community and technical colleges cost free for all!
- Free School Meals for K-12 students (HB 1238/SB 5339) No student should go hungry at school, and no kid should be in debt for food, which is why we’re supporting OSPI’s push to make all school meals free for all students!
Tax the Rich, Fund the People
- Guaranteed Basic Income Pilot Program (HB 1045), which we were proud to support last year is back with a pilot program! This program would give people experiencing poverty a monthly cash payment that’s enough to cover fair market rent in their county, because no one should struggle to stay housed.
- Wealth Tax (SB 5486 /HB 1473) Our state has the most regressive tax structure in the entire United States. This bill includes people with more than a quarter of a billion dollars in a modest wealth tax will also be coming up soon this session! (A gentle reminder that if you were trying to save up $250,000,000 and saved $100 a day it would take 6,850 years to reach a quarter billion dollars. We’re still talking about an astronomical amount of money.)
Let Youth Thrive
Look out next month to find out what our Winterns want to advocate for under our Let Youth Thrive bucket! They set the agenda here!
Check out the document below for more details.
Legislative Priorities 2023
by Bus Admin | Nov 8, 2022 | Uncategorized
Show some love for our amazing fall interns: Salina, John, and Bailey! We’re so excited by their ideas for making lasting, meaningful political change in Washington!
Hello, my name is Salina (she/her) and I am a student at North Seattle College studying psychology. I chose to intern with the Bus this fall to assist in amplifying the voices of young people within our communities in politics and civil engagement. I am excited to expand my knowledge and carry the skills I learn here both professionally and personally. In my free time I enjoy writing, binge watching shows and spending time with loved ones.
Hi, I am John Paul Purugganan (he/they) 🙂 I am a 4th year Political Science and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Student at the University of Washington. My passions include fashion and skincare, social justice, and personal growth.
My name is E. Bailey Medilo (they/he) and I am a college student, community organizer, and general nuisance local to the South End and International District neighborhoods of Seattle, WA. I am incredibly passionate about fiction writing, political campaigns, and restorative justice. I enjoy reading, cartoons, and graphic design.
