Mayor Katie Wilson has frequently been compared to fellow Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York City. But as one supporter observed at City Hall on Friday, her inauguration ceremony was almost intimate in comparison to Mamdani’s star-studded event. Surrounded by supporters in yellow Transit Riders Union shirts, Wilson sat, beaming, while listening to speakers who included an organizer for the Nickelsville homeless encampment and a Somali American health services researcher who helped organize for free youth transit passes as a student attending Rainier Beach High School.
The Nickelsville organizer, Jarvis Capucion, noted that he hadn’t been inside the mayor’s office since 2015, when then-mayor Ed Murray declared a state of emergency on homelessness.
The audience was packed with people who aren’t regular fixtures at city hall (yet!); I’ve never seen so many young people in the building for anything other than a protest or public comment opposing some conservative action or budget cut proposed by the City Council. A number of city department heads and their deputies sat, mostly stone-faced, on the indoor steps leading up to council chambers, but the audience on the lobby floor consisted largely of young Wilson supporters, longtime activists, and Black and brown Seattle leaders who stuck their necks out to support Wilson even when ex-mayor Bruce Harrell laid on intense pressure to back him or else…