hi my name shelly c crest i'm running for state senate here in the washington state legislative district of the great thirty seven i had a wonderful time be an interview with m m r t i that's still special thank you to james for making the interview easy for the wonderful team that is behind the curtain and behind the cameras ms bezel rahel a wet and i d you guys are incredible continually mazing work spread the message of what's happening in the community because the work you do gives voice to what is happening on the ground continue the great work and against  and it is all about yes more terrorists and about the redevelopment that's going on in here and these people who are making the films are the most affected of all because these are the people who live here they're going to be displaced this whole thing is going to change and they're going to make films about what the impact of all of this development is going to have on their community  because people whether they're young or old have to be visible in order to have an influence on events around them if they are invisible they will be shuffled off and  know rich powers that be will get their way and everybody is just a pawn in their game but the way that you are not a pawn in the game in america is you stand up so this is teenagers how to stand up how to the people that are doing this redevelopment are going to be forced to take the people who live here into account and i'm expecting these teenagers to lead the charge and to force them to understand exactly what am running for state senate here in that they're the seventh district and you might ask yourself what's that they do seven it's from madison street so near seattle university all the way down central district all around mt baker in the lake washington keep going down the sky way until you hit the tips of written that's the thirty seventh district and so i'm running for office because we've done a lot of wonderful things my background on the civil rights leader you've heard of the of the mississippi martin luther king and all those great people i've joined that when i got out of college and have been active in that community i work for the urban league and now the civil rights organization and so just community driven through and through that's what's most mostly about me so why are you running for senate why am i running for senate i'm running because there's a little boy that your age he's about fifteen years old he's being sentenced right now as an adult that means by the time he serves his time he's going to have gray hair he's not going to know how to operate inside of the community those types of things that bothers me i'm writing because there's talent here you know you're in school you're in high school leaving the schools are wonderful as well there's talent that many students they need to make certain that they're prepared for work force or they're prepared to be able to go to college i've got three wonderful children myself two are in college one is just now completing middle school i want to make certain that when they graduate if they want to go to college student debt is something that no one should have to live with it is a burden i mean you finish school and then before you can even get a job you've got a hundred thousand dollar debt that chain to your ankle that's something that we as state policymakers we've got to grapple with how can we make education more affordable we've got to find solutions to how can we make certain that the children inside of our middle schools here in seattle that they are being prepared for you know a workforce so are we teaching them science do they have the math skills are they prepared for the engineering the stem that's what they call in stem courses do are regular middle school schoolers are they prepared to take on that type of hard curriculum because young people you raise if we don't teach you right you are not going to be able to represent us in a world wide society i mean it's competition internationally now and so that's one of the reasons why i'm running education's important to me then i'm running because public safety is an issue it's such an issue you guys remember the trayvon martin case i was in florida at the time when that decision came down and i was sick to my core not so much just because of how the decision came but you know george zimmerman was found not guilty but it really caused us to look at a statewide level what are we doing to make certain that when we leave our home everyone feels safe what are we doing to make certain that when a police officer puts on that badge and he's willing to risk his life that he's been given the training that he needs to be able to police our communities we've got a long way to go and so statewide i want to make certain that we've got things like making it illegal to racial pro trial and how do we find out if racial profiling is taking place are we collecting all of the numbers who stopped what color are they the call that desegregating the data how do you have those mechanisms in place to know are there training opportunities for the police officers that we're just missing out on because no one's bothered to look at how are they being trained we can't afford to lose anybody here even so that's one of the specialties that i served on here in the city of seattle  i was a part of the movement of make uncertain that we handled things differently a couple years ago police officers were found that and when it came to young black men they talked to him differently they handled them more referer and all of that stuff we had to change that completely changed it we got the department of justice involved then we set new law as i was we were able to take part in that because we knew what was happening inside of the community and we were able to talk with police officers and the young man in the parents and the teachers and we got everyone around the table and we said how can we do this better and so after that discussion i actually worked for the police department for four years i was the tattle tell anything that happened wrong i looked at the site of the police complaints i like that how they conducted the investigation and we started asking questions did this investigation go right did the officer get the training that he needed to be get disciplined it's those types of things that we want to make certain that we bring to a state wide seattle's just one city we saw that i think about skyway we've got to think about king county you know and so we need a statewide policy that brings in those same types of challenges that we you know work so hard for just here in the city level so understanding what you do for the community in why you're running for senate yet if you are elect the we should respect for me when you should expect someone who's going to be both that tenacious bulldog with a smile and i think being down there and being able to you know call for justice and change things but you also need to make certain that we have a watchdog that's what we need we need to make certain that not only are we advocating for the laws that will bring the resources home to the thirty seven here to the central district for instance but we need to make certain that we've got someone out there that says no that's ridiculous don't pass a law like that for instance a couple of years ago they were talking about a gang in this shit if they wanted to pass laws that said if you're found to be a part of a gang you're going to get a harsh r sentence well they didn't think that law entirely through because no one had a clear understanding of what it meant to be a gang member or how to identify someone in the game is a police officer able to just arbitrarily put somebody is name on the list let's say if you've got a little thing in your eyebrow right there does that mean you're a gang member am i going to be able to put your name on a list and then forevermore you are labeled and you have certain restrictions you can't stay out past ten o'clock those types of things that's ridiculous and so we need folks who are in the legislature who are able to say don't pass laws like that that's going to have an impact on certain communities certain citizens so it's those types of discussions that you need the right people in office that that's what you can expect from me and hold me accountable especially even you you can say slowly i interviewed you and you said that you were going to do stuff for education that's that's what we need to expect from the people that we put into office accountability that's what you can expect from me so you've done a lot for the community and you are rigid flyer you promise to work more with the grandmother she's to tell me she said never promise a better tomorrow unless you can summon what you're willing to do for me today and sell here i'm asking for support and promising what i'm going to do in the community on response to some of the violence that we've seen in our community the shooting and skyway the shootings that were just here around the corner the shootings that were in their valley the response isn't necessarily just the higher presence of police officers you know how in new york that was their response to decrease crime let's get more police officers out on the streets san you know show folks that crime has no place here and it was a mess new york was a mess because of all their stop and frisk policies i mean went to the supreme court everything it was horrible we don't want to repeat that same thing and so i worked with the urban league at work but the mayor and i said you know mayor don't increase police officer presence alone we've got to make certain that we're go deeper from the problems most of the violence a lot of gang activity is a lot of that illegal drug activities it's because people are suffering responsibly in a post resident post recession economy meaning times were hard but we're recovering and people are getting jobs no i mean we're getting jobs but those jobs are an increase like more parents are working at mcdonald's now more parents are working at subway more parents are making a minimum wage then ever before in our history that's huge and so we're  the problem of what happens when people are working but they still don't have money to make ends meet at the end of their paycheck what type of ad aggression does that come into play and what happens when you've got folks who are talented but they cannot find jobs i mean period they can't find jobs what happens when someone is getting out of prison and because he's got a criminal record no one is willing to give him a second chance those types of things are  it's happening and so you see the result of what happens when we're not addressing you're looking at symptoms we're talking about violence when you talk about high crime when you're talking about drug addiction usually those are the symptoms of a problem so the problem needs to be addressed so we're telling the mayor let's fix the problem let's make certain that we bring jobs not just any old job let's bring jobs that families can actually live off of and the mayor he said ok and so he gave us some money for this program called career bridge where all we do is we hire right now it's just men we hire black men just strickly that find jobs they have the highest unemployment rate in the nation find jobs for them that's working so when we see that talking we say well ok we get the red is taken care of let's go deeper let's make certain that we find johns for men that are eighteen to twenty five years old and so when you're talking about the violence and all of that stuff we're like let's fix the problem and now we're going to regularly into the youth jobs not just any old type of job we want to make certain that you're making like seventeen dollars an hour if it's in construction he could make thirty one dollars an hour good jobs that is going to actually stop them no one's going to be in the alleys if they've got a job that's going to put food on the table and buy the tissues that they're looking for a set of solutions that type of stuff is what i'm offering so how do you feel about the team government among wage do you think that will create more do i was a very strong supporter for fifteen dollars an hour and fact i can't say that i thought of it on my  own this was actually started from a movement fifty years ago before either you or i was bored or well i had to make certain i said that because i don't want to think and i'm that all before either one of us were born the march on washington for jobs and freedom a big part of that movement was the understanding that people are working especially black folks we are working we're working hard but we're not getting any money there they were just getting out of the sharecropping type of you know economy where you're paying and you know you're working and then at the end of the day you owe more money for the work that he does did i mean it was a scam it was a horrible scam right so they had just gotten out of that they were working but then that job industries that they're working for weren't paying them much either and so that march on washington it was not just for you know discrimination in housing or discrimination for you know better schools a big piece of that because remember jobs in freedom jobs that was what this minimum wage that we just saw a couple of weeks ago that's what that was about the same notion people of color we're still stuck in the minimum wage jobs meaning we enter those jobs and we don't get training we don't get the promotion so we enter the jobs we get stuck there whereas we end up having children we get married and we're crazy emilie's just south of that small little land seattle he said we've got to do better we've got to do better there's more people who are working in those you know small low paying wages than ever before we've got to do better and so  the fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage it was really a carryover from what started fifty years ago the basic idea that if you can make other people be able to afford you know going to the movies right small pleasures like that you know having enough money to do something other than just go to redbox you know being able to go to the movies i don't know something crazy order popcorn and candy when you're at them i mean those basic things when we were interviewing people there is like i can't afford to do that if my car breaks down i can't afford to even get repairs that was that type of society that most of us were living in and so being able to raise that issue up because nationally folks when they hear seattle they're think in sleepless in seattle that movie they've biko's starbucks that we're all sitting there in flip flops drink and live taze all day you know with microsoft here they think washington state that they are all rich and just being able to show look now you know some are some are doing very very well but the majority sixty percent are not doing well in washington state we're not you know that lavish lifestyle that all the television shows and so that's who we were fighting for so successful small businesses won't be impacted that was a major piece a lot of communities of color we don't work for we own our own small businesses and so if you go outside to a restaurant there like i did afford to pay my you know my nephew he's a knucklehead already i just gave my dad because he needed something to get out some help it afford to pay of fifteen dollars an hour and that's going to kill me  but we were able to work with the small businesses they were a part of the discussion got their support because they understood look as long as i'm not having to pay it it's nothing for like employees that  e firms or companies that have less than five hundred people right so we're talking about big big businesses wal mart those types of huge businesses that would be impacted by a fifteen dollars an hour wage not the corner stores that we see in the mom and pops those folks they all say we want people to have more money because if they have more money they're going to go shopping and have big guys sap and they can buy their goods and services from our start so it was a big celebration for a seattle everyone one i've learned a lot about what you do for the community so what kind of message do you give to the idea that you know what the main message would be to make certain that we met remember to hope again that we are we are certain that it's time for us to believe again there's so many people who became disengaged in politics your parents may feel like you know what happens in olympia it doesn't apply to them anymore because a lot of politicians simply they've lost touch with the heart in the ear of the community what's happening on the ground level it's time for us to remember when we put the president and side of office we made history and that was just because your parents every day people folks out there on the street corners they all lined up and they said this is a man who understands our issues he's going to listen he's not me you know someone who's brought up by a big corporation are you know the big political folks he was put into office because the people's movement we put him there and so back in two thousand and eight a lot of us it was freezing cold and we would knock on people's doors on a wake up it's time we you know this is our moment that is happening again in this election this is our moment this is a moment where you've got someone a civil rights background who has been the heart of this community working in this community who's going into olympia to fight on our issues it's back to that obama instead of saying yes he can we all say yes we can that's the message of this campaign again that it's time to hope again and so everyone needs to make certain that they mellin their ballots july sixteenth the ballots are coming out in the mail we've got to make sure that we turn the men like them turned in that day why wait for tomorrow let's do it today but we've got until august fifth to make certain every single ballot is cast that's the message this time to hope again you really hope to learn yes would do you who would be you hope to accomplish in the future the mean after only after the state senate i mean i want to continue to do this work right here civil rights that there's a whole lot of work that needs to be done there is a business owner who you know went out on her own because she didn't like the job that she was at and she said you know if i had the right resources and someone gave me the opportunity i could do you know live out my dream we need to help business owners like that who have got talent and creativity they need state resources we need to make certain that everyone can vote you know we've got folks who came out of prison and they want to make decisions that impact their day to day lives but they can't because they don't have the right you know their rights haven't been restored to vote they old legal financial obligations you know and so they're like everyone can make decisions about my life and i can't do anything about it you know we've got to fight for them we've got to fight for young students who say you know what i'm smart i'm gifted but unless i can get into this advanced placement club class unless i can get into this honors class no college is ever going to see me you know we've got to fight for the college professor who says i've been working here for ten years but i can't get a raise because you know there's no funding that set aside for me as a college professor you know and i want to be able to teach these young talented students but at the same time i've got to feed my family you know those types of things we've got to worry about transportation who's on the bus who's not on the breaks which ones are not i mean i love that stuff and so that's what i want to do for the rest of my life being able to impact lies and be a part of the discussion of what's going on around the table and bring in the right story it's hard sometimes if you are a person of color to be able to say this is how it impacts my community this is my view take for example we were talking there was a study that they connected that said washington state no seattle doesn't half racial profiling seattle doesn't have racial profiling and at the time we read that study we were wait a minute who did they talk to why would they think that there is no racial profiling and getting pulled over by the police officers every single day right there was this huge backlash you know asian community the latino community everyone was late who did they talk to in the only way that we were able to even start the conversation from you know someone saying don't waste we studied it there's no there's no racial profiling you know got a study here it is the only way we were able to send our message through that was through the use of media and back then we were using it was my space so this was before facebook right back they were using my space anything that would just get our message out that no there's another side to the story that you guys never have heard you know don't believe just that one side you know to some people were in a post racial society where racial profiling doesn't exist but tactic communities of color we've got another story to tell you and the only reason why that was successful was through the media and so one of the lessons or if i could say anything about this program is your voice is so instrumental in making certain that you show what's really happening in the communities to and you know don't just take one side you know when you turn on the news in the evening and you hear something about a community that's happening right outside your window you dig deeper and make certain that you are being the voice that showing right to what's really happening what you heard on television is that how you see it and if it's not right you find that story and you make certain that you're bringing people to the table like this discussion and you share the other side that is how we get our message out that's how we create change it's worked for it's going to keep working so on august twenty third we have the summer festival in our lovely ideas and we will go for