Some African American workers who helped build the Sound Transit Link light rail system filed a lawsuit yesterday, alleging that the contracting company they worked for fired black workers and assigned them to menial tasks based on their race, the Seattle PI reports. According to the suit, one superintendent at Traylor Frontier-Kemper Joint Venture — the company contracted to built the light rail network running between Capitol Hill and the University of Washington — bore a swastika tattoo, and made racist remarks about black workers. Seven workers in 2014 filed a similar suit, and more workers may come forward as plaintiffs attempt to receive certification for a class action suit. An investigation by Sound Transit last year found suggestions of a pattern of discriminatory hiring by contracting company Traylor Frontier-Kemper. The company denied the claims then and now.
On Tuesday, Seattle police arrested a man who posted threats online against the Idris Mosque in north Seattle’s Northgate neighborhood. The man claimed he’d bought an assault rifle and ammunition. On Tuesday afternoon, after a short standoff, police took the man into custody. The Seattle Times reports that police in Redmond are working with the FBI to investigate whether this is the same man who on Sunday evening made threatening phone calls to the Muslim Association of Puget Sound, a large Redmond mosque.
Last year, the Seattle City Council approved a measure allowing young people to choose how $700,000 of the city’s budget should be spent. The results are in. As The Stranger points out, it looks like around 3,000 youths between the ages of 11 and 25 voted to spend around $300,000 of the money on helping the homelessness, including $128,500 to build 10 small houses for homeless people. Other expenses included expanding a program for checking out WiFi hotspots from the library, upgrading park bathrooms, and making safer routes to school.
