(BREAKING, 4:59 PM: The Department of Neighborhoods just sent a reply to our inquiries from this morning. Included was this: They asked Unified Outreach for the $1,000 back, and received it. Separate story to come.)
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
We’re at The Hall at Fauntleroy, where the 34th District Democrats‘ monthly meeting has just wrapped up. Two toplines tonight:
*First, this one came toward the end of the meeting: The group is calling for a state and city investigation into a “newspaper” published by an organization called Unified Outreach, with a Seattle Department of Neighborhoods Small Sparks grant.
Unified Outreach’s director David Toledo is campaign manager for King County Council candidate Diana Toledo, and the 34th DDs allege that the group’s “Youth Arts Compendium” is “a piece of campaign literature supporting one candidate, Diana Toledo, and attempting to discredit another, [incumbent] Joe McDermott, in the King County Council District 8 race.” (Note that McDermott is a member of the 34th DDs, which has endorsed him.)
The 10-page “newspaper” includes articles headlined “Diana Toledo’s innovative plan to bring Arts back to Public Schools,” “Artist Community stands with Diana Toledo- Says fund Public School Arts,” “Senior Outrage! Candidate ‘misled us’ says senior community” (regarding an unattributed claim that “seniors” voted for McDermott because they had him confused with believed he was the son of U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott), and “Scandal at the 34th District Democrats Mid-Summer Classic” (the alleged “scandal” is which includes a claim that Joe McDermott left the group’s softball game early and was replaced by David Toledo).
(added 1 am) The publication also addresses politics with a cover story noting that all but 3 of 32 “executive-level decision-makers” in state/county/city government are white, and highlighting two issues in the County Council district in which Toledo and McDermott are running, the South Park Bridge and the Maury Island gravel mine.
The entire back page is devoted to the Toledo-McDermott race, topped with three paragraphs about the 11th District Democrats’ dual endorsement of the candidates, and also including information on the Municipal League’s rating of both candidates, with a quote about each candidate but not including the actual rating (“good” for Toledo, “very good” for McDermott), while noting in the last paragraph “It should be noted that both Candidates were also rated by the Municipal League in 2010. Candidate Diana Toledo has remained consistent in her evaluation, with no change in her rating. However, after one year in office, Joe McDermott has received a lower ranking in 2011 than he did in 2010.” (Their 2010 ratings, according to the Muni League site, were “good” for Toledo and “outstanding” for McDermott.)
The two also were mentioned in a story titled “How the Deep Bore Tunnel will destroy us,” in a list at the end of the story, with CANDIDATES FOR THE TUNNEL (Boo!) followed by eight names including Joe McDermott, and CANDIDATES AGAINST THE TUNNEL (YAY!) followed by four names including Diana Toledo. Above the list is a cartoon depicting the tunnel as a toothed hole, with caricatures of five politicians including McDermott, the only one whose full name is used in the cartoon’s dialogue (“Uh oh, Sally, we’re almost out of tax dollars!” “And the tunnel is still hungry! What else can we feed it?” “Hey Tom, you and Joe McDermott hustle us up some seniors!” “We’re on it!”).
*The rest of the story, including the scanned copy of the publication, is now after this jump*
(added 11:40 am – a scanned PDF of the entire publication – we have to use Scribd as the file is too big for our site to serve directly – you can also view it fullscreen by going here)
Scanned Compendium in Order
(back to original 9:48 pm story) We have a message out to David Toledo asking for comment on the 34th DDs’ claims.
(added 1:26 am) We’ve just received this, in e-mail headed “PRESS RELEASE: The West Seattle’s Political Machine Targets Non-Profit Youth Arts Group”:
It is our understanding that the 34th District Democrats voted today to investigate the Unified Outreach 2011 Youth Arts Compendium, a FREE Community Newspaper written by local youth.
We at Unified Outreach are confused by the allegations. As all stories were written by youth with no intentional biases or promotion of one candidate over another. There was NO input from ANY campaigns or political figures and no copies of the paper were released prior to printing.
Yes, it is true that there were several politicians that were mentioned in the first article (which drew attention to the lack of diversity in our local leadership). Representatives Clarke, McDermott, and Rasmussen were said to identifying with “historically oppressed groups”. Anyone reading this could argue that these candidates received favorable treatment because they were the only politicians mentioned, however, Unified Outreach editors did not dictate how the stories should be written, nor did we demand that one candidate or another should be covered. If a person’s name appeared in the article it was due to one of the following reasons – Either the person’s name was quoted by someone interviewed, the person had a direct hand in an event being reported, or there was an event that is/was directly affecting the person mentioned.
There are no articles promoting one candidate over another or asking voters to cast there ballots in a certain direction. If one candidates statement was included then we included their opponent’s as well (as in the story about the 11th District Democrats Endorsement). The statements were not included to promote one candidate over another, but simply to educate readers on who was being endorsed. As such the statements were copied directly from the KC Elections website with no changes.
If a candidate or political figure received something deemed “positive” it was because that person did something that the youth felt was worthy of kudos. If a youth wrote a story for the paper that praised a certain person’s actions, then we have no right to step in and dumb that story down. We promised the children complete freedom in their writing and we delivered. My advice to the politicians shouting sour grapes is to do something for the community that the kids will want to praise you for, but don’t persecute them because you didn’t like someone else getting a positive write up.
I am shocked and amazed that the political machine would stoop to this level. Anyone reading the 2011 Youth Arts Compendium paper will see there are a number of politicians mentioned and that there is no direction to vote for one candidate over another. It is a shame that because one politician apparently feels that they did not get their due, and as such has begun a persecution of a free youth arts program such as Unified Outreach.
In Unified Outreach’s 10 year history, Unified Outreach has never charged a student a single fee to take an art class or participate in a program or showcase event. Neither has the charity ever received a local, state, or federal grant UNTIL the Department of Neighborhoods asked to partner with us by giving a Small Sparks ($1,000) grant. As discussed in our meeting with the Deptartment of Neighborhoods, we were happy to work with them on a neighborhood project such as the newspaper. As promised we opened the paper up to youth in the greater Seattle area and there were NO submissions turned away. If a youth provided a submission it was ran.
In closing, remember that this attack not only frightens the children who poured their heart into the paper, but it diminishes the over 10 years of FREE youth arts programming, the hundreds of children previously helped, and the continued benefits to our neighborhood, all put at risk by a political machine that feels their chosen candidate did not get enough positive re-enforcement in our paper. Shame on them.
Sincerely,
Unified Outreach
Later this morning, we will be further researching the grant issue. As part of the motion passed at its meeting, the 34th District Democrats directed their leadership to send letters “outlining the organization concerns and the factual basis for those concerns” to the state Public Disclosure Commission and Seattle’s “mayor, appropriate city council members, and the Department of Neighborhoods.”
(Back to the original 34th DDs meeting story) Endorsement votes were tonight’s other big news; more after the jump:
This area’s biggest political group already had a list of endorsements made earlier this summer, but some major races/issues remained.
Biggest among them: The 34th Dems will take NO POSITION on Seattle Transportation Benefit District Proposition 1, the $60 car-tab fee for transportation projects. (added) Before the endorsement votes, there was a 21-minute mini-forum on the issue, with City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen and the 34th DDs’ Kim Becklund taking the “yes” side, and former council candidate David Miller taking the “no” side. Here’s our 21 minutes of unedited video of this discussion in its entirety:
They also are endorsing NO on I-1183, the liquor privatization measure.
In the Seattle School Board races, they endorsed the candidates who are challenging incumbents Peter Maier (they backed Sharon Peaslee) and Harium Martin-Morris (they backed Michelle Buetow), and took no position in the Sherry Carr/Kate Martin race. Earlier in the election season, they had endorsed Marty McLaren, who is running against incumbent and 34th DDs member Steve Sundquist.
ADDED 4:06 AM: The full list of endorsement decisions made Wednesday night is on the group’s website. In other business, they also briefly discussed the redistricting maps just made public this week – the 3th DDs’ home page also has links on that issue. And they recapped last month’s Garden Party (WSB coverage here) as a huge success, with a net profit expected to be around $11,000.
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