Summary

King County Councilmember Joe McDermott read the following statement from the Full Council Tuesday in response to a hacked Zoom meeting last week.

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“Last week, at a public meeting where county residents had the opportunity engage directly with the government that serves them – a racist, anti-Semitic, vulgar and generally hate-filled attack occurred in the form of a zoom bomb which interrupted the civil interactions of this civic gathering.

“It is not lost on anyone here on the King County Council that these attacks were directed at the only Black member on our Council, nor that the attacks were directed at the residents of Skyway, the community with the highest concentration of people of color in Washington State. We also understand that structural and institutional racism must be dismantled if we truly care about supporting equitable communities here in the county named for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr..

“But acts of hate-filled bigotry like this are intended to have a chilling and suppressive effect on the practice of democracy, on the exercise of civil rights that are promised to all residents. It is for that reason that we highlight and condemn the reprehensible, hateful actions that the residents of Skyway, County and Council staff experienced last week. And we commit to working in solidarity with community working to undo the centuries of institutional racism that inform our systems and government still today.”