When Seattle’s City Council announced plans this week to repeal its just-passed tax on major corporations—one aimed at raising funds to address the city’s growing homelessness crisis—its members must have known they’d be opening themselves up to (justified) allegations of being corporate stooges. Especially since both Starbucks and Amazon, two corporations who would have been taxed under the new bill, lobbied hard for its repeal.




During Tuesday evening’s repeal vote, Seattle’s pissed-off chickens came home to roost. Reader, meet Andy (his last name was repeatedly mangled by the person announcing him). He’s a self-described “father, veteran and anarchist” who managed to burn the city council to the fucking ground (rhetorically speaking, at least) in under a minute of testimony, beginning with some words we don’t hear nearly enough in politics: “What’s up bootlickers?”


Here are his remarks in full:

I’m tired of this fucking shit. I’m a father, I’m a veteran, and I’m an anarchist. Those are three people you don’t want to piss off, alright? I’m tired of children getting attacked in the streets. I’m tired of them sleeping in the fucking streets. I’m tired of seeing the very people that I swore to defend get attacked by the state. So like I said out there: y’all need to close your fucking beaks, and start moving your feet, and get shit done. Take resources and put them in the hands of people who need them, alright? Seriously—the fuck is wrong with y’all? Who the fuck are y’all to justify letting people die in the streets with your policies and your laws and your legislation. How do you justify that? Killing people. I swore to give my life to defend the people from all forms of oppression. Eventually this shit is gonna stop. Because when it’s our turn, we won’t “make excuses for the terror.” Marx.

Amazingly, the council members seemed relatively unfazed by the well-earned dressing down. After calmly calling the next speaker, one person simply noted that there are “children in the audience.”