Tacoma Safe is a new group spearheaded by Angela Connoly. Connoly is a wealthy, socially conservative, activist, who previously led and funded an anti-LGBT effort called the Just Want Privacy Campaign. That campaign sought to restrict access to public bathrooms for transgender people, forcing them to use the restrooms of their sex at birth. 

She is now targeting our local homeless population, leading Tacoma Safe, an apparent copycat of Safe Seattle. Both groups think we can “cop homelessness away” and see increased law enforcement budgets and patrols as the only solutions to current public safety issues.

Safe Seattle was established in 2015, but came to prominence in 2017. Safe Seattle is an anti-homeless, rather than an anti-homelessness organization. It has been criticized by many in the Seattle community as an anti-homeless hate group and has encouraged increased sweeps and the harassment of homeless people, rather than addressing the causes of homelessness.   

Below are Tacoma Safe’s policy recommendations, they largely mirror Safe Seattle’s, and center mainly around policing, offering nothing to address the escalating housing issues in our region. In this episode, we discussed why this is all wrong-headed and ultimately dangerous.

Cast of Characters

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