SEATTLE—Seahawks defensive linemen sacked New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye a record six times in the LX Super Bowl. In the halftime show, Puerto Rican rock star, Bad Bunny, led a hundred co-performers waving the flags of every nation of the Western Hemisphere, including Venezuela and Cuba, on the Levi’s Stadium playing field in California. Looming over the marchers was a huge sign, “The Only Thing More Powerful Than Hate is Love.” It was in sharp rejection of President Donald Trump’s drumbeat of hatred and fear against Latin America and the ICE murder of U.S. citizens and immigrants in Minneapolis and elsewhere across the nation. It also echoed recent events in Washington State.
This includes a mass walkout on Feb. 5 by high school and middle school students in Seattle and surrounding counties in protest against the terror in Minneapolis, in which masked ICE gunmen murdered Renee Nicole Good and Customs and Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in recent days. The students marched to Seattle City Hall. Fred Podesta, Chief Operations Officer of the Seattle Public Schools, issued a statement that the school system did not promote the walkout. Yet he stressed that the students were acting in the long Seattle tradition of “freedom of assembly.”
A Phys Ed. teacher in Kitsap County, a ferry ride away from Seattle, told this reporter, “The walkout by pupils in my school was organized by Seventh Graders, kids 12 and 13 years old.” He reported that his own daughter, 12, was among those who marched with her sign, “ICE OUT!” It was part of a nationwide “General Strike” sponsored by Indivisible and other defenders of democracy and the Constitution to protest what many see as Trump’s war on immigrants and U.S. citizens.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson denounced the ICE killings at a Jan. 29 news conference at City Hall. She announced that if any federal agents occupy Seattle, they will not be permitted to use any city-owned buildings or property, including jails.
Wilson, a self-described democratic socialist in the mold of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, told the press, “So many of us are shocked and heartbroken by the news out of Minneapolis and share a concern that our city too could come under attack by the federal government.”
“I’m also disturbed by what I’ve been hearing about the huge spike in hotline calls from families that can’t pay their rent because they are afraid to leave home to go to work, and about small businesses at the end of their rope because the federal incursion has made it impossible for them to operate. The federal government is causing profound, long-term harm to so many communities, and we all have a shared responsibility to organize, practice solidarity, and do what we can to keep Seattle safe.”
The outrage against the Trump administration’s actions in Minnesota also erupted in Sequim and Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula, with a candlelight vigil attended by hundreds. The Sequim vigil event, on January 29, was addressed by Rep. Emily Randall, and a picket line was held at the Border Patrol headquarters in Port Angeles, on January 31, attended by many high school and college-age youth. Many of those young people were African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans, demanding that Congress terminate all funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol.
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