Jenny Anne Durkan was born in Seattle on May 19, 1958 to Martin Durkan and Lorraine Durkan (nee Noonan). Her family lived on Mercer Island in the mid-1950s and Bellevue in the early 1960s settling in Issaquah by 1963. She…
Category: Blog Posts (page 3)
Let’s Fire the Mayor
48 hours after issuing a 30-day moratorium on tear-gas, Seattle police once again tear-gassed the residential neighborhood of Capitol Hill. Just weeks prior, Mayor Durkan praised Seattle PD as “a national leader in policing and de-escalation” and quietly tried to roll back “virtually all…
2020 Handling of George Floyd Protests
On June 1, during the George Floyd protests in Seattle in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, police in full riot gear barricaded the SPD’s East Precinct building from protesters, using blast balls, flash bang grenades, and pepper spray against the crowd…
2020 Encampment Sweeps During Public Health Emergency
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Durkan continued sweeping homeless encampments, forcing homeless people to leave their campsite and find a different place to live. Homeless shelters had gone on lock down in late March and had limited capabilities. The Centers for…
2019 Racist Workplace Allegations
In April 2019, two of Mayor Durkan’s staffers accused her of mistreatment and called the working environment “toxic“. One alleged that Durkan “grabbed her face and forcibly turned her head” when the employee was making suggestions on how to handle…
2018-2019 Transportation Woes
During Mayor Durkan’s term as mayor, the Seattle Department of Transportation canceled several bicycle lanes and green-way projects that had been planned in previous years under the city’s comprehensive bicycle plan and funded in the 2015 Move Seattle levy. In…