WEST SEATTLE WEEKEND SCENE: Pre-election vigil at Peace Lutheran Church
(Photos courtesy Deb Barker)
As previewed here, tonight’s the night that Peace Lutheran Church in Gatewood (39th/Thistle) has thrown open its doors to welcome anyone interested in gathering to contemplate the upcoming election, wherever you stand on the candidates and issues. Pastor Erik Kindem explains that the community prayer vigil is happening in the main sanctuary.
Follow the lanterns up the stairs to the doorway. This is an open-house format where people can stay as long as they want to. Instrumental music will alternate with periods of silence. There will be spoken or sung prayers too. This is scheduled to continue until 7 pm.
P.S. Remember to get your ballot in by 8 pm Tuesday via dropbox, earlier if via USPS mail so it’ll be postmarked in time.
At this late stage DO NOT TRUST THE USPS to get your ballot to the King County Election Office ON TIME. Instead physically take your ballot to any one of the four ballot drop boxes located in West Seattle to ensure your ballot is received on time and counted. I learned the hard way back in 2016 when I deposited my ballot in a USPS blue mailbox a week before the election and it was NOT RECEIVED UNTIL AFTER THE ELECTION AND NOT COUNTED!!
Find your local drop box here
https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/elections/how-to-vote/ballots/return-my-ballot/ballot-drop-boxes
I’m a conservative. I voted for President Trump. I pray for peace. I say hello to you and wish you well and offer my hand to help you if you ask. I tutor your kids. I pet your doggies. I pick up trash on our neighborhood. I am not that different from you.
Donald Trump is a white supremacist. If you vote for him, you’re a white supremacist. I wouldn’t even trust you around my dog. We are extremely different.
Oh my, Lucy did not say one bad word about anyone except to state that she is a Conservative.
She didn’t state that she is conservative – she stated that she voted for Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a white supremacist and voting for him is voting for white supremacy.
The leading sentence in Lucy’s comment is: “I’m a conservative.”
I misspoke, Seattlite. What I meant to say was in response to your comment “Lucy did not say one bad word about anyone except to state that she is a Conservative”. The bad word Lucy said is that she voted for Trump, which is in fact a hateful act that shows a lack of care for your community.
I’m a BIPOC woman and also an immigrant. I’m not sure how my voting for Donald Trump makes me a white supremacist. Care to enlighten me?
Happy to! Supporting a white supremacist is supporting white supremacy. White supremacy is about power. You can be a white supremacist regardless of your heritage, immigration status, or the color of your skin. Glad I could clear that up!
Rhonda…You are not a “white supremacist” and neither am I. My Italian grandparents immigrated to the USA legally and became USA citizens. My family is a beautiful blend of colors. In my family, we do not differentiate by color. But, instead, by character. An American is an American and that is what Americans have in common. Politics aside, all Americans should celebrate either having been born as an American or having the legal gateway to American citizenship. No other country has given so much freedom and liberty to its citizens as America under its Constitution. As an American, I am in awe of and grateful for being born in America.
Sure – voting for a white supremacist is supporting white supremacy, no matter what your personal identity is. Cheers :)
Lucy…You are not the only Conservative in Seattle. There are thousands of us who voted for President Trump. Keep the faith. Take care.
You are literally voting for a felon white supremacist
Sadly Jason, they don’t care.
seattlite, you’ve been brainwashed by the cult. I have no problem with the Republican Party, but I do have a huge problem with the MAGA party which Trump. He’s not a republican, he’s MAGA and that is racist and based on white supremacy and there’s no place for that in our community.
You voted for a person promising policies that discriminate against LGBT+ and immigrants, take away health care from millions of people, and shift more of the tax burden to the middle and lower classes, away from the ultra-rich. You support a man who is endorsed by, and supports, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other extremists. I don’t love Kamala Harris, but I can’t even stomach the thought of getting into bed with someone who so openly embraces hatred for marginalized groups. Apparently you can, and that is why you and I are VERY different.
I appreciate your comment, I struggle as I see you so very different than meas a woman in her 70s who fought for civil and gender rights I struggle with any woman who doesn’t see the threat to women and the gross perspective that is being articulated against womeni wish you well but I just don’t understand
Since 2015, my Latin American last name has attracted more openly hostile disdain than it ever had in previous years all because Trump decided to use Latin American countries as a scapegoat for his openly racist rhetoric to get voters like you to froth at the mouth and rail against an “other”. Trump had previously been taken to court for openly discriminating against people of color applying to live in apartment buildings he owned. He used rallies to continue to tap into the blind hatred and racism of his base because he saw that it worked. After the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville that led to the death of Heather Heyer, a counter protester, Trump said there were “very fine people on BOTH SIDES”, knowing full well he was calling neo-Nazis “very fine people”. There is no embracing of or “reaching across the aisle” with people that turn a blind eye to a rising fascist movement that seeks an end-goal of white supremacist dominance and violent intimidation led by a man that regularly praises white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups. A man that immediately purged our government of any oversight so he could divert taxpayer dollars his accounts via inflated housing costs for Secret Service agents at Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago, deliberately diverting U.S. Airforce servicepeople to stay at his resort in Scotland on the country’s dime, diverting BILLIONS of dollars to his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Jared’s brother to allegedly handle the COVID-19 crisis while medical staff across the country were left to fend for themselves, wearing plastic tarps and fashioning masks from craft store plastic as PPE, all while working themselves nearly to death because Trump told them to find their own supplies. Remember when they finally did find their own respirators and he had federal agents confiscate them as they arrived in our country? Remember the news reports informing us that Trump’s wealthy supporters and the exlusive medical facilities they sought services at were the ones receiving all the COVID-19 equipment? Remember the spike in antisemitic violence, the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue, the numerous Jewish cemeteries that were vandalized, the rise in mass shootings by white supremacists at places where people of color congregated… like grocery stores, shopping malls, churches, etc., etc. So and so forth– No. You don’t get to compare yourself to me. If you’d still vote for a con artist, racist, sex offender and convicted felon like Trump, we’re nothing alike.
Very well said R-n-B, +1!
Hi Lucy, I definitely do not support Trump but I support your right to express your opinion. One of the biggest differences between Trump supporters and Democrats is that we watch different news sources. I imagine you watch Fox News. I watch it once in a while just so I understand what Trump supporters are experiencing. I would encourage you to follow other news sources once in a while. I know all of us have been misled by news sources: posts on Facebook that we’ve shared without thinking and later, realizing they’re wrong. I think we Democrats can do better than stereotype all Trump voters as villains. We need to make a gargantuan effort to understand, to communicate and to heal so we can move forward after, God willing,Kamala wins.
Correction for you, it is Fox Entertainment, not Faux News.Trump is a racist, a rapist, a convicted felon. A threat to all woman, he wants to punish woman for abortions. Everytime he opens his mouth, just lies, lies, threats for violence against everyone. He is a threat to the USA and if you listen to him talk, all he does is threaten. He has NO idea of how the run this country. Still no health care plan or any plan. This ass-ole needs to be stopped before he destroys this country. Ya, let go back 50 to 60 years by putting his dumb ass on the White House.
This is so funny to me. Did you realize you are responding hostilely to someone on your own side? Did you take issue with them actually trying to understand people who think differently? I can’t fathom the level of derangement people get over politics. It’s good to be disciplined in messaging and strategy when you are a member of a political party, but past a certain point having tunnel vision and hubris makes you unable to engage in self-criticism. Democrats are extremely divided this election cycle, yes because of Gaza, but over a longer time frame purity tests have been absolutely devastating to the democrat party and caused many people to defect.
Whitman with one of the sane comments on this thread. Roughly half the country will vote for the other person. Are we trying to exile half the country? “You should just leave then!” Etc. The us vs. them mentality is pushed by politicians because it makes people think about winning a game or classic good vs. evil movies where one side is vanquished. It leads to the slippery slope of half truths and boasted up accusations to vilify the other side. I am thankful to live in a country of mostly checks and balances and limited power for presidents. Honestly the incredible slate of local initiatives and seats on the ballot will impact people’s lives much more directly than all this vitoral directed at Presidential politics.
lol Lucy- your statement is so manipulative. Youre not lending a hand nor helping in any way when youre voting for someone who is ready to limit the rights of women and so many others in our country. I would never have you tutor my kids. We are not the same and i’m grateful for that. Also, pray for peace? Nothing peaceful about Jan 6 2021. That was all Trump and thats who you are voting for. Nothing American about that.
Peace, morals, decency, inclusion, honesty, tolerance is everything Trump the divisive racist criminal is not.
There’s a stark difference between George Bush, John McCain, and even Dwight Eisenhower when compared to Trump: they respected the Constitution and the rule of law. Trump wants to be a dictator and his followers want a fascist state. The Republican Party is dead; in it’s place is the MAGA fascist party (I thought we took care of the fascists in 1945?). Unfortunate but true. I don’t care for either party, the Dem Party has their own hypocrisies and dysfunctions (the disgrace against Bernie Sanders comes to mind) but I prefer dysfunction over fascism. I wish for an eventual third party to emerge from this mess 🤞
You’re very different from us Lucy. Voting for a felon to keep him out of jail, not to mention all the horrible things he’s said in the recent weeks? He has no morals, no ethics, no values, and he’s a cult leader. Really?
You expect things to change, but keep putting the same people in office.. Vote for yourself and what you believe. You can cross party lines and vote for the better candidate.
Most precincts in Seattle vote roughly 80% Democrat and 20% Republican. If you are near four other people, one of you is likely a Republican voter, unless you’re in PCC or something.
If you voted for Trump, you are not at all like me and you don’t understand anything about me, my values or my worldview. And likewise, I don’t understand what would make someone want to vote for a con man.
“A politician thinks of the next election, a statesmen thinks of the next generation”
Dear Lucy and all the others voting for Trump. I lean conservative but, would never, vote for someone like Trump. Others have explained well why he will never represent me or my values. I also think that the current government has done well, after the mess left by Trump. I fully support Harris and what she stands for. She represents my values and what I wish for all future generations. She is a strong woman and a great example to all women of my generation. We need a deserve a President we can feel proud of.Let’s hope this week does not turn into a nightmare.
You are about as Conservative as a three-dollar bill.
If anyone was undecided (not sure how that could be but…) just watching the footage of his insane, rambling rallies should be eneough for you…
We DO deserve a president we can be proud of and TRUST. But we’re somehow stuck with a two headed snake for presidential choices. I despise them both. I know how we got here. It will be a miracle if we can escape it and ever get back on track to being the country our loved ones fought so hard to protect. Please pray for peace and enlightenment. That said, I studied long and decided the opposition conservative school superintendent is the better candidate. I think he’s been vilified in the press. I think we wouldn’t be facing school closures here and terrible education if he is elected. David Olson is his name.
We have nothing in common with you Lucy. What are you even doing here in Seattle? Eastern Washington or better yet Idaho would be a much better fit.
Ah yes, the party of inclusion, telling someone with a different opinion to move?… Stay classy.
Well the exclusion starts with Trump and republican party wanting to prop up modern redlining and ridding diversity programs…
“The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that, if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.”The “party of tolerance,” if we accept this straw man argument, tolerates the variety of races, sexes, religions, national origins, sexual identities, and gender identities that make up this country and the human race. It would be stupid to also tolerate the hatred of all of those things, which Donald Trump and his supporters represent.
You are equating intolerance, to having a different view about the path of our country… As voters, we have the American right, to vote the way we choose. If that bothers you, then YOU are intolerant, of individual opinions…
Wanting women not to die because of their pregnancies isn’t “having a different view about the path of our country.” Nor is wanting families to not go through the trauma of separation at the border. Nor is wanting our lgbtq youth to not be at higher risk of suicide in an environment that shows them hate. Not is believing that climate change is real and we should do st minimum something about it. The Trump party stands against these things not because they have different views, but because they have a hateful view that celebrates cruelty and destruction. Those who support Trump don’t have political differences that deserve respect, they have hearts full of hate ant are supporting an ideology of petty destruction. That deserves no respect – it only deserves to be stopped.
I am a fiscal conservative and find Trump to be a despicable person who will never get my vote.
This comment thread is interesting. I’m a conservative republican and no fan of Trump, but I’ll be voting for him. It is funny to read such intolerance from the so-called tolerant party. And I have a ton in common with y’all democrats. I am friends with many and interact with y’all all the time. So yeah we have a lot in common whether you like it or not. I guess if I wore a Trump shirt y’all would be nasty to me without even giving me a chance.
The “tolerant party” is a straw man created by the right. We tolerate different genders, sexual orientations, races, and religions. We don’t tolerate the people who try to oppress those groups. Yes, people probably would be nasty to you if you were to visibly show your support for a senile hate-monger, which is why you likely have enough self awareness to keep it to yourself.
I love that people are using “tolerant” to mean that we are somehow supposed to be “tolerant” of intolerance. No we don’t “tolerate” white supremecists. Hope this helps. People should be nasty to Trump supporters because you are basically saying that women’s rights are not important and neither are equitable rights.
The “you have to be tolerant of intolerance” is called the tolerance
paradox, and it’s a worn out defense of fascism that is intellectually
dishonest and doesn’t actually reveal any hypocrisy in intolerant
attitudes towards fascists.
It’s called a paradox because tolerance as an ideal is contradictory. This is because the tolerant in this case are, by definition, also intolerant, so I can say that applying this maxim means that one should not be tolerated. It results in a situation where it all depends on your perspective and the most important thing is the power to define who is intolerant. To be frank, I’ve never read the original text where this is used but I’ve seen people throw this around so much in a prescriptive way that I am sure cannot possibly be the correct understanding. We don’t need to insist on tolerance to claim constitutional rights that are explicitly spelled out, including civil rights. In fact, part of living in a pluralistic society is accepting others intolerant ideas, and that’s also why we protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.
And here is the defense of why it was okay for the south to claim to “own” human beings based on their skin color even though the majority of the country no longer believed it was acceptable.
When you make an argument like this you should really think it through beforehand by applying it to things that occurred in the past that the entire world feels differently about today. And then consider how long you think it was acceptable for those events to have kept occurring to allow the “intolerant” to learn they were wrong.
Not difficult to understand. You’re either tolerant of siding with a rising fascist regime that openly embraces Nazi ideology, eugenics, and genocide as a means of “purifying” the population of the United States or you’re not. This new breed of Republican party and the white supremacist megalomaniac they’re propping up makes it pretty clear which side they stand on. You can quibble with semantics all you like but the crushing, oppressive, fascist ‘Brown Shirt’-esque militia group promoting GOP of today has been showing its true colors ever since a Black man dared to run for office and won. The successful effort to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with the Holder v. Shelby decision opened the floodgates for attempts at racially motivated voter suppression nationwide. Anyone with the sense to pay attention has seen this. Gaslight away but you can’t hide the truth right in front of our eyes.
Did I live under a fascist regime from 2016-2020? Come on now. I want Harris to win. My life in West Seattle will go on either way.
Kyle, you lived under a regime that was pushing towards fascism from 2016-2020. It will be much, much worse the more time they are in power. If your life in West Seattle will go on either way, that is because you are of one of the intersecting privileged in groups (I’m going to assume some combination of straight, white, male, monied, Christian) that will not be oppressed as much as the scapegoated out-groups. The fact that you can brush off their oppression speaks to something missing deep in your conscience or soul.
Please don’t guess and label me based off an internet comment. What a divisive and hurtful thing to do. Honestly, you sound just as bad as the dark side you claim to be against. My point was we do not live in a totalitarian society. The president does not get to do whatever they want to do thankfully. May you do some soul searching yourself about how you interact with others.
I read of women dying in Texas due to restrictive abortion laws and I can’t help but think about how I have nothing in common with anybody who votes Republican.
Thank you to Peace Lutheran for opening their doors for this event regardless of your faith or viewpoint. Keeping tomorrow in my thoughts and prayers for peace and calm to prevail.
Amen, Kristen. Ironic how a post about a vigil at Peace Lutheran stirred up this vitriol. Thank you for bringing it back to the topic.
This household voted for neither one (Harris/Trump) and left the Presidential portion blank and we found it a sad state of affairs that we felt this way. But the Governor we chose Dave and we chose the person NOT the PARTY to whom we felt could do the State of Washington GOOD.
lol
Ikr?
And if we don’t think or feel the same as you then we are wrong?
No, you aren’t wrong for feeling differently. You are wrong because the specific way you feel differently is bad.
I too lean conservative, and have learned that “liberal” by no means, means tolerant. While in high school in Seattle, I volunteered for both Senator Slade Gortan & Bob Dole, and so a classmate wrote in my yearbook “I hope we never meet on opposite ends of a gun.” In this thread I see the same sort of bullying, intolerance, hatred, name calling and intimidation. Please consider on Election Day what it means to be free, educated and a good neighbor.
Thank you Searunner!✌️
It was a calming space. Much appreciated.
So, it appears Karl Popper’s “Paradox of Tolerance” is the new intellectual toy du jour to be sprayed around indiscrimately. Karl Popper was more famous, justly so, for his Falsibility theory which is the foundation of the scientific method: A theory is not scientific unless it can be proved false.
The paradox of tolerance isn’t being “sprayed around indiscriminately.” If you see it cited often, it’s because authoritarian right wing zealots are parroting “BuT ToLeRaTe mY BiGoTrY!” ad nauseum.
There is a reason it’s called a “paradox” as it is a contradiction by definition. It’s a useful thought experiment, but I think it has limited application to solve – or resolve – disagreements in real life.
If you vote for the guy who tried to upend democracy and kill his vice president, no one wants to hear from you. This isn’t about us being “tolerant” of you trying to further the demise of America. Take a seat.
To the contrary, Karl Popper believed that whenever possible unpopular ideas and opinions should not be suppressed but refuted by rational argument in the public sphere.