Last night I did a very un-Seattle thing: I participated in a @weheartseattle panel discussion about some of Seattle’s most polarizing, hot button issues - homelessness and addiction - with people “on the other side” with whom I substantively disagree on some important and consequential things. I feel like we dipped below the surface of what divides us as we talked about seemingly incompatible approaches like “Recovery First” vs. “Housing First,” which has some value, but even better I also think we just scratched the surface of where we actually (in some instances surprisingly) converged towards some important and potentially consequential opportunities to find common ground. No doubt @lisadaugaard and I will take some flack for engaging in good faith dialogue with, rather than condemning, San Francisco-based recovery advocate @Twolfrecovery and Washington Policy Center’s Eric Zimmerman, at an event organized by @weheartfounder Andrea Suarez no less, and moderated by @KIROCharlie Harger, but I’m glad I did it. Naive fool and unrepentant sellout that I am, it seems to me we would benefit from more of these sorts of nuanced and sometimes fraught conversations, rather than dining out yet again on the oh-so-satisfying empty calories of self-righteous condemnation and tribal self-congratulatory groupthink that still dominates much of the menu of Seattle’s civic discourse these days.

The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person. The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment: effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption. #NoDeathPenalty