are very lucky to have with us live in the studios this morning cathy breen cathy brain works at a catholic worker house of hospitality in new york city and she is also with voices for creative nonviolence as part of the iraq peace team she lived in iraq before and during the u s shock and awe campaign in two thousand and three she returned to iraq about eight months later for another three months she has spent time in both jordan and syria with iraqi refugees as witness to their reality and to advocate for their resettlement and in november of last year she went back to iraq to see how iraqis are fairing what they're saying and to see iraqis who had fled to syria but have had to return so start out tell us how is it that you came to go to iraq in the first place i was invited to be part of the iraq peace team kathy kelly one of the co founders of that movement  and i remember after nine eleven purposefully images of hitting of the two towers the twin towers in new york was shown over and over day after day to justify i believe our bombing afghanistan and i was actually in union square in new york city at a demonstration when we got the news that we were bombing afghanistan that we had begun and something in me just like a prim scream cried out silently we need to be there so i think in being invited to be part of the peace team i was able to respond to that call we need to be among ordinary iraqi citizens in the event of an invasion and unfortunately that invasion happened and you actually went to iraq then in late two thousand and two i think it was late september october two thousand and two and then i was able to with others to stay on in the months preceding the five months preceding shock and awe and then actually during shock and awe some of us were in baghdad and we were even able to visit the bombing sites and hospital sites and i'm a nurse by profession and at first i didn't i resisted that but then i forced myself to do that and it's something i'll never regret in fact i just found recently in a binder some of the letters i wrote home to during that time and i have one before me from march twenty third which is today two thousand and three so ten years ago and if i may i'd like to read a little portion of that i just well it starts out dear friends i'm so anxious to get some word of to you while there's is still time even as i write you know there is a bomb exploding threatening to blow out the windows well i'm not getting less fearful of the bombs i think i'm getting more used to them or maybe it's overall lack of sleep that has me moving more slowly i just returned from visiting the yarmouk hospital where a few of us were able to go to see some of the wounded a sad sight as i moved from one bed to another and saw some of the victims of this senseless massacre the hospital received one hundred eight patients in a three hour period on friday evening last night another forty doctor job related the case of a twenty six year old mother who came in with massive injuries saturday night and was taken immediately dysart three her two year old child whoever was killed instantly has the rocket went directly through the door of their home and on i go today in the hospital family members and the wounded asked me why is this happening to us why why in the five months that i have been here i have only met with people who want peace and who pray for peace they do not want war they have done nothing wrong and i imagine that was fairly consistent people just wondering why is the us attacking us and i would be stopped in this street this is before the invasion but it was getting it seemed to be clearing clear that there was going to be a war against them and i remember one woman stopping me in the street and saying is bush going to bomb us because i was from the united states they felt somehow i had a line to the white house and and she lost a son in the first gulf war and she said take our oil but don't bomb were you aware of us media coverage of you and kathy kelly being portrayed as you know human shields at that point in time you know  we tried to keep abreast of the law because i mean the excuse me the media news and we would huddle around a radio shortwave on trying to pick up colin powell as a dress trying to follow step by step so that we could also respond to that you know we were calling people in the united states we were calling on them to do anything necessary any kind of civil disobedience anything disobedience anything necessary in order to stop this ma and at that point in time did the iraqi people make the separation of the difference between what the government was doing versus what the citizens of the us were doing they did they did i and i it's always and to this day it's very humbling how warmly and graciously we received as people coming from the united states i think that shifted when bush was elected the second time that we sent a message to the world that we can no longer say or we can no longer expect people around the world to say we understand that it's the u s government and not the american people that are doing these war crimes because we actually let him take the presidency a second time and he's seen as it were criminal the world over but you know mike i would like if it if you don't mind i having gone for six weeks in the fall winter of last year i would like people to hear what iraq is are saying and not so much what i'm saying how they find their situation ten years into the war for instance i would like to to just let a young twenty twenty three year old woman who graduated from university in english in baghdad speak she was about thirteen when the u s war on iraq broke out and i asked her how she feels the war has affected her country and she told me that she feels people have changed that they think of themselves and it is not good she said things have gotten worse children eight and ten years old think of weapons and killing they do not have the thoughts of children she said i would be afraid for my own children growing up in this atmosphere i have never felt safe since the war we've forgotten the real meaning of safety i hope it doesn't get worse because it is my country i hope for all of the good for it she wants to be a teacher and she says the mass exodus of the professional class has had a big effect on her generation i'm afraid she said the level of education is very little even in the colleges the good teachers have left the country but she wants to teach the new generation in the right way not as her teachers taught her she said i want to do good to positively affect society i have hope for the future and i wish the goodness in people becomes greater than the evil iraqi people are very kind but after the war many changes happened in the psyche and she says that the government should fix the electrical system the water system the roads and make jobs for those who graduate graduate there is corruption inside every ministry she said change has to come from inside the government one of the things i found there is is this feeling of helplessness and hopelessness among iraqis because of the rampant corruption in all the ministries and also because of the lack of security which continues i might say that because because we don't get this news that in two thousand and twelve four thousand four hundred seventy one civilians were killed in iraq and in the month of january this year one hundred seventy seven deaths and in february one hundred thirty six deaths and just recently on the nineteenth of march there were almost one hundred deaths throughout the country on the anniversary of the invasion u s led invasion so i think we need to be clear and this that the war is not over and another young man who is in his third year of in good told me this the war is not over he said to me it continues until now the damage of the wars like hiroshima remember the whole object the survivors our babies are deformed we have many incredible he said many have left their homes to go to another country kidnappings are still happening kidnappings of small children and not only for money but to make us feel scared everyone has hopes for the future but we can't we are scared about the insecurity of the situation what will happen we have to go back to our roots to our holy roots we are entering ten years and what has changed the terrorists have come from outside and  is something that i think we have yet to grasp in this country that and i was told on more than one occasion in this trip you opened terrorism to you brought terrorism here to this country i tried to also speak that a shake that i met a gentle mild mannered man i had a conversation with him in a trip to bosnia we were many hours in a car and i asked him what he felt the effects of violence has been on iraqis and he responded through a translator that the iraqi people were living peacefully different groups together side by side until the iraqi war and then the wealthy  alike were sent to the front to fight and this was the outbreak of violence he said we consider the american people represented by the soldiers who fight at the war against us as war criminals we saw how they were cruel and savage how tanks ran over innocent people it became normal for every household to lose loved ones we saw terrorists to him we caught and handed over to the u s troops later released many hmong doings are credited to islam but the u s was wrong to bring terror to the iraqi people are religious and they will become strong and resilient again he said so on this trip i was able to see karbala to spend time and not just to go many times to baghdad to make a quick trip to bosnia and also to go to  i would really like to let them come to voice especially and we know in fallujah we had the u s carried out two major assaults i believe it was in april and november of two thousand and four and really decimated that country and i had an opportunity to sit in on a lecture in english of fifth year university students and the president of the college s to me if i would say a few words afterwards as an honored guest which was quite awkward and embarrassing for me and the professor actually sped up his powerpoint presentation so i would have some time so here i am standing in front of this lecture hall and  myself somewhat good to give them some context and saying that i hadn't been back for for nine years and i see that there's no water potable water and no a national electrical grid the electricity kept going down the air pollution is so bad that i had to close the window at night in order to sleep but anyway i said i'd actually like to hear from you if i may and and i just stopped talking and then there was complete silence nobody spoke and only sad ones and again there was silence after a while an impassioned young woman from the middle of the lecture hall spoke up and it was obviously not easy for her what she said took me days to recover from she said it's not about water and electricity you have destroyed everything you have destroyed our country you have destroyed our engine civilization you have destroyed what is inside of us you have taken our smiles from us you have taken our dreams someone else then said iraqis cannot forget what americans have done here they destroy the childhood you don't destroy everything and then say we're sorry you don't commit war crimes and then say sorry to bomb us and then send teams to do investigations on the effects of the bomb no it will not be forgotten it is not written on our hearts it is car in our hearts we are happy to make bridges between people but we will not forget what can you do in thirty percent of the babies are born deformed what can you do another person spoke of meeting an american soldier in the airport who had been part of the special forces the soldier told him the bible tells us not to kill but we were taught to kill to kill for nothing just kill i'm so sorry and the young person said build bridges apologize and there was absolutely no rancor in his tone just anger and deep i could say this too outwardly things appear better and iraqis will tell you this outwardly things appear better but they are at a low point they have been working for such a long time and they see no improvement  you see no cars on the road for example salaries are better but they the corruption is so rife in iraq is like the first in the in the world i think in terms of bribes and they said there was no hope and or saddam and there is no hope now the difference is we can talk in front of everyone we can even speak and criticize the government but but nothing changes and we feel helpless and powerless to change about there are still millions of refugees iraqi refugees who have not come back to iraq some that have come back that you had met were promised the equivalent of i think a thousand or three thousand dollars if they returned but that never materialized well i we just are beginning to get a sense of what is happening in the country with term with respect to ministries and how they're functioning and i we were able to meet with someone from the ministry of immigration and displacement i'm sorry i don't even have the title correct but he was able to give me concrete information on how much the government is allocating for returned refugees from syria let's say who are having to come back to i is how it's supposed to work so one of the families we knew that had come back had not yet received this money and we were trying to to question that it i find it very awkward to tell you the treat that as a u s citizen to go to to question anything in the iraqi government because we have been so intrusive and so our again and so it's a it's a  very hard thing to do i find to to to question them now to interrogate them so to speak on how they're doing things correctly or incorrectly because of our history in that country i do want to say this i had the opportunity through that visit to get a tour by car of the green zone and i had not been in the green zone until maybe eight or ten nine months into the occupation when the u s and when the u s embassy was in one of saddam hussein's former palaces that has been given over to maliki and now the u s has built an embassy there and i have to say every u s citizen should see that embassy it's there's almost an obscenity to it i find it's as far as the eye can see it's so big and there are sixteen thousand people employed in that embassy and i believe another eight thousand to go to protect  them and every time i use that figure i have to google it because i can't believe it and iraq he's asked me what are they doing here what are they doing what are sixteen thousand people doing in baghdad in the u s embassy and that's a very good question i would like to know so at the same time that the country doesn't have electricity most of the time and you could touch on that further about it when you know how much people have to pay just for intermittent  yeah i as a nurse i was able to visit hospitals but but just i was very interested in basic services obviously and during my stay of course the electricity kept going down and and the water water there's no national functioning electrical grid and there's no potable water you have to buy the water filter the water and even in visiting the hospitals and seeing the children the sick children half of them maybe in some of the wards that i was where there with gastrointestinal problems and others with respiratory problems not to mention the increasing cancer and that there's still no functioning radiation center in baghdad or in the country there there's one center that has sixty year old cobalt radiation machines and people who need radiation that have to be sent to turkey for radiation they're still in some form under sanctions with respect to radiation and i think it's called chapter seven or chapter eight or somebody could you could easily find that by googling it so the electrical system yes i took photos of all the wires the network of wires that lead to these neighborhood generators when the national grid goes down then that is supposed to kick in and you just a ballpark figure a family might pay ten dollars a month for the national grid and another fifty or sixty to the person who's running that the neighborhood generator of which there's one every couple of blocks and it's just you know and the other thing in baghdad if i had to three words to describe baghdad they would be check checkpoints and cement barricades and traffic jams because of the checkpoints and you have to see it to believe it of course i had heard many stories but but to see the baghdad just all of the cement barricades cordoning off universities neighborhoods it's  been presented as over from our administration and corporate media it's far from over for the people that live there that's right and even assuming that the us was interested in helping to actually rebuild or god forbid some form of reparations even if that started tomorrow with the amount of destruction we're looking at probably couldn't be even solved in our lifetime with that before i think you're correct in saying that a young high school teacher in a village school teaches english said to me the situation is very bad in a dock the politicians are corrupt in the whole country they're looking for their own interest the region didn't serve the people now the government doesn't either i see no hope for the boys don't want to learn they've been affected by the war turned into beast they've seen blood and killing they are violent with no principles no respect and yet then you have another someone who says twenty three year old he says to me i like shakespeare because he gives the world advice to be or not to be he writes poetry all the time and his father complains and he tells his father i must write poetry i cannot stop when i write i fly you know there's this intermingling this juxtaposition of this feeling of helplessness and hopelessness and yet this this tremendous in our resilience and ability to get up and go on which gives me hope you know those yet the young people that i met who want to rebuild their country who are looking for ways to to bring change and even though they feel helpless and say we see no hope they they have a determination that's admirable and that gives me hope you been doing multiple talks here in the greater seattle area and one of the things you focused on was a young man now i guess but he was six years old when he due to all electrical  there's a young man it was the last image actually that i was left with it was the night before i was leaving the next morning to return to the states and dr woman doctor an orthopedic doctor brought this young boy mohammed who is now fourteen and his father to see me and when mohammed was six years old he was coming home from school and he stepped on an electrical wire which had been downed by a u s bomb and he lost both his legs and both his arms and when i saw him he had to leg press this is on and he was able when those priestesses were put on him to stand and walk and i just said to him mohammed you're one of the bravest boys of ever seen but there was something so broken in him to think that since he was six years old he has his arms are severed right up at the at the shoulders he's never been able to touch him self and it's his nose pull up his pants eat be embraced someone and what they wanted was to see if we could help him get one on a simple  so i have that image with me and we've been trying to we hear that shriners has a new house policy that they don't take foreign children no we've been trying to see if in jordan we could help him get family get to jordan to get an arm but but these are the consequences of war that that we don't see you know this child's mother went blind at the time of that accident she still blind it there's a certain name for that that type of blindness that's caused when the shock is so great you just can't see it so i even in my presentation i show his picture as difficult as it is to to look at because this is what war is and this is the kind of war we the consequences of where we're not allowed to see very rarely and is there a concrete way that people can contribute towards getting him well you know i certainly will want to stay in touch mike because if i can come up if we could find a way to get this child maybe in the middle east some attention then there might be a concrete proposal we could put forth for some money  to help in that endeavor and again this is just one example yes this is jay williams that's right my driver who such a dear man his own child his oldest boy was kidnapped when he was six and he's suffering to amend his psychological effects there is no iraqi family without a story i can tell you that there is no iraqi family without story and so many of those families are  iraqis now would leave if they could they would leave the country tragically if they had another option for the sake of the children all right we are just about out of time but you know i there's one thing i would like to close with if i might and i've used it over the years sometimes in speaking or in writing it's from c s lewis and it comes from the preface of the great divorce i do not think that all who choose wrong paths perish but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road a sum can be put right but only by going back to you can find the  and working in a fresh from that point never by simply going on evil can be undone but it cannot develop into good time does not heal it with that we are  pretty much out of time can people i believe people can follow your writings and your work via that they can go also to voices for creative nonviolence and that website is w w w v c n the dot org are very lucky to have with us live in the studio this morning peter steinberg peter steinbrck is a former seattle city council member and former president of c l city council and he is a candidate for the seattle city mayor coming up here the end of this year peter thank you very much for coming and spending time with us this morning thank you mike it's great to be on k x pay so start out tell us why are you running for c l city mayor well i've spent a good part of my  working life in politics first as an activist and then in one thousand nine hundred seven i ran for the city council became council president after two years i've had ten years of rich experience working in city government and working many important initiatives to improve quality of life in the city our neighborhoods and i feel as an architect that i bring a special skill set or problem solving that we need in this city we've got one hundred thousand more people coming to seattle over the next fifteen years or so that produces some pretty extreme growth pressures i think as an architect urban design or problem solver that i'm in the best position with my background and experience leadership role so the inside and outside of city hall to really lead the city into the future so what do you see is the key issues facing the city currently i think the key issues are really how we how we grow  y deal with our transportation conundrum these are the things that affect quality of life in a big way here in seattle every day as people are stuck in traffic i read a figure that we spend something like forty eight hours of additional time per year stuck in traffic now what would you do within the show forty eight hours time that's like more than a week of your time stuck in traffic i think there are ways to approach that obviously we can't build bigger freeways and bigger roads we have to get smarter about how we utilize our roads and also where we live living close to work and making neighborhoods more livable i think is a big goal of mine so that people will choose to live in closer to work  and i would say you know south like you know is a good example of a growing new urban neighborhood but right now there's a huge imbalance between the jobs there and the housing and the livability need some fixing i think  and so those are the kinds of challenges but yet we have some really fantastic opportunities like reviving the central waterfront for example i think is a really exciting once in a lifetime opportunity to revitalize our central waterfront to environmentally and i think we have great aspirations or things break down is implementation we're implementation challenged comes to moving the needle and terms of our environmental sustainability in the city and i've been actually researching that for ben as an activist around the urban environment for years i spent a year at harvard i was warded the loeb fellowship for one year of basically free time to study to my heart's desire and my focus was urban environmental sustainability and and policy and that was after i left the city council in two thousand and nine so i had that great rich experience i've been working mostly in public interest with public interest organizations for the last five years a children's hospital the pike place market has been a central part client of mine working on the relationship  to the waterfront of the future port of seattle of course on the soto arena issue so i've been an advisor a strategic planner to major institutions helping solve problems and many of these issues are have to do with growth and change respects so talked about for an example south lake union where we are broadcasting from there's been the city council has been wrestling with zoning heights of late as well as the cities what the city gets back from developers for low income housing to get solutions well first of all i have a long history with working the south like union environment to support business job growth and housing i led the council's does ignition of south like union as an urban center regionally on our growth management policies i was in the mid two thousand that set the growth targets for jobs and housing i led the result of the seattle mixed which is the current zoning that affects much of the area i lead the reason for amazon dot com and i also led the legislation that supported the mercer mercer mass fix so to speak still in a work in progress let's terms of take thing but i actually led that and there should have to create mercer boulevard so all of my leadership roles directly inform what you see the results that you see today are in part the result of earlier efforts to transform that you know once underutilized area into a new thriving or urban neighborhood now we're not there yet and the problem the central problem with south lake union right now is that the job growth has been to remind us it's been robust twenty three thousand new jobs since the early nineties have been created housing has leg way behind there's only been about four thousand new households created in southlake usa have a big imbalance an even a bigger imbalance in terms of affordability so what what is the answer to that well for some it's simply zoning for greater height towers bring the towers and show me a high rise tower that's affordable to working people in the who earn maybe fifty whose household incomes are fifty to sixty thousand dollars a year show me with where you can get towers that baquba is a perfect example because it is a city of towers it is the second most expensive city in the world repeatedly it receives that you know designation so my my position is yes job south like union yes density let's do it right let's have it well planned let's have it respect the natural environment and respect our territorial views of the lake in the mountains and not overshadow lake union park and create problems for kenmore errors seaplane operations that serve the whole region but as far as what we need to do there to support a more robust growth of households as we have it meaning a diversity of housing and if i were still on the council leading the urban development planning committee as i did for many years on the council i would insist that all new projects in south lake union include housing a housing of different types so yes to towers in the right places i'm fine with that but not at the foot of the park and at the foot of late of the lake there are edges where the towers can go and step down but also at the street level have ground related housing why don't we have row houses in seattle there it's a beautiful model that has worked all over the country and other particularly east coast cities  uses land efficiently it brings people closer to the street and so i'm going i'm suggesting is we need a much more robust diversity of housing in south like unit can support different income levels that people can live and work in south like union they do not today and fact most drive to like union further exacerbating the transportation challenges and there's not a sufficient supply of of workforce housing in south and that's really the big elephant in the room is the the dearth of of not just low income but so called workforce housing that for people who are all those folks who work in amazon while they're living in ballard or outside the city now so it's not really we haven't achieved that kind of balance that creates a twenty four seven neighborhood that is exciting urban walk livable a workable workable livable walkable that's what we need in this city and for our neighborhoods what do you think are you familiar with the proposal nickel condos put out for increasing performance requirements from developers yeah and i have again had a hand in that in two thousand and six with my downtown livability plan which almost doubled the development capacity in downtown we at the same time the council agreed  date many hundreds of new housing units in downtown now that figure that i gave ridgeley it was going to be two dollars and i was able to move it up to nineteen with my my efforts and coalition building on the city council pointing out the dire needs for affordability in our city for housing that hasn't changed since two thousand and six so we are now moving into the seventh year since those figures were set and nothing has changed they need to be revisited the council wisely hired some independent financial consultants to look at that to determine you know what second of all what what will the market support  and if you're talking about new condiment luxury condominiums in high rise towers that command fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars a square foot in their sale price which they would and will yes  we can i think incentivize that kind of development to support the more affordable units that should should be part of you know this massive transformation that is occurring before our eyes right you mentioned are seattle central waterfront and in your website you talk about our maritime history talk about what you would do to support more working class jobs here in seattle of the of the maritime well mike thanks for asking because i'm absolutely passionate about preserving opportunities in seattle for working people for the middle if you will the middle income and we are fast losing the middle in this city it's becoming increasingly expensive more affluent we have the working poor we have the homeless and we have a growing income gap and where is the metal here the metal happens to be solidly placed in the maritime industrial cluster of our economy and that  shipping we're a major deep water port we're one of the best international ports gateways to the pacific anywhere in the country on the west coast we have a fishing operations we have a well developed infrastructure of logistics for transferring a cargo to and from the ships and we have maritime jobs and i should mention a fishing fleet that that is  connected to the alaskan economy in a big way it's extremely important that we recognize that and we support both of these areas of the maritime economy because the jobs there on average pay seventy thousand dollars a year and there are great opportunities vocational training with our community colleges education training opportunities for people who would  choose path a career path in that direction great great opportunity the growth in this maritime cluster sector during the recession was three percent per year during the worst time when seattle lost over forty thousand jobs in maritime sectors the maritime sector was still growing the opportunities are limitless globally making as we are collecting connected here in seattle very directly to the competitive global growth in shipping largely led by china but the developing countries all over the world we are in the pipeline and we're also the pipeline and the supply lines in the provision are for virtually everything that goes on in alaska you see all those big barges out there and what they contain they're going up to alaska they're supplying basically all the cities and industries fishing maritime industries in alaska we've got to recognize that and i'm brace it and partner with our maritime and us drill of businesses and workers and support the job growth the opportunity that will allow people to live in seattle as it becomes more expensive and an explosive this is a check on that so that's partly why i am so insistent and passionate about  supporting maritime jobs and our maritime industrial cluster because it is one of the best things we have going it's historical it's place based we have inherent assets of infrastructure a deep water port that other cities would die for a rail system an interstate transportation system all of the support network is in place let's not walk away from it let's not turn our backs let's not watch watch it dissipate and go to canada which some of this trade is going to prince prince rupert in vancouver on their aggressively pursuing a growth in their shipping lines and we just cannot be complacent here  r we will risk losing you know the mainstay of our regional and statewide economy the official it's terminal had faced severe cutbacks in infrastructure the early two thousand so i defended the facility fisherman's terminal an important component of our our fishing industry both puget sound which granted has shrunk quite a bit because of loss i have a salmon runs but we still have a local fishing fleet here and we have a strictly important as a good link to the alaskan fishing industry and this is this is the home port here at fisherman's terminal for the fishing fleet yes there will be pressure to gentrify upscaled to bring in fancy restaurants condo development it's a beautiful location  so i defended against intentions to gentrify fisherman's terminal to keep it as a working facility primarily for people who are have working vessels and who also need the land side for now it's for repair work for resupplying this is historically how the issue is terminal has served our our fishing fleet and we we cannot let that go we just can't and there are other places where yachts can go there's only one place where i think where the fishers can go  more their vessels reasonable rates and have the resupplying and the provisioning and the repair work that they need to do during the off season and so we've just got to protect that again there are other places to  attended many fisherman fisher women laboring people and neighbors and it was really a great event and i hope to do more of those kinds of things around the city and all corners of the city a very important issue for a lot of people here in town currently is the proposed coal trains coming through washington state and directly through seattle you had i believe taken a stance with the stadium that one of the issues was traffic yeah so talk about that sure well the stadium would bring a million more cars into the dawn mission does trailer i just want to make that one point now if they can prove if the proponents can prove that's not going to hamper handor or delay freight through their primary gateway to the pacific then i could be if they can make a convincing case that we can accommodate that much more traffic and still preserve you know the functionality of our our port operations great somebody's got to pay for any improvements that are going to meet our mitigation to ensure the flow of traffic so that being said coltrane's it's interesting to me that the mayor has called for exhaustive studies of coltrane impacts but has virtually ignored the impacts of bringing a million more cars to the door mission dusters center through a locating source of cilia there so it seems to to be a bit of a disconnect now i want to talk specifically about the issues around coal trains it is a state wide and interstate issue it will not be solved locally yes we should protest yes we should hoot all i'm passion everybody about protecting our health number one because coal dust is very bad the breeze diesel smoke and then of course global environmental concerns about exporting what is now  toxic to you know to our air and not i should say now it's been now widely identified and agreed that you know fossil fuels are poisoning the atmosphere that is a local concern it's a state it's a national one and do we want to be the pipeline for that i think there are very serious issues here but they have to be addressed at the statewide level local jurisdictions this is something that people may not know have no authority to regulate the movement of interstate commerce through the cities and towns we can't stop those trains we can stand in front of them we can protest  but we have no the cities and towns have no legal authority to impede interstate commerce which is what those trains are we can't impose land use restrictions we can't impose sanctions and we can't even force mitigation on the railroads they have a lot of power and autonomy in this country and it's historical in their origins for the interstate you know the transcontinental railroads this is why it is a statewide and national issue and i think some of our legislature later is riven carlisle for example has proposed you know a major impact study at the state level and i think that makes far to carry more and more coal cargo to the ports but try to stop them and you know it's a conundrum i think it's and it's not going to be solved on the local level i guess is my point i think we need awareness of the health effects of potential traffic impacts but we're going to need the state here and possibly some federal role with our congresspeople and senators to deal with this issue and it's  you know as the demand for for fuel is in this case fossil fuel is going to continue to grow globally there's going to be these pressures and i think the mayor of seattle has a role here absolutely in drawing zeroing in on the real issues here and concerns that we have that we have to communicate to the state and federal authorities that there are legitimate issues here that have to be dealt with or we're going to continue to protest hoot and holler and it's going to be difficult for these trains to get through seattle we'll just say that i don't make it very difficult but we need your help i think so just about five minutes left you transportation is also one of your primary focus is talk about oh we're looking at bus service public transportation across the country is getting gutted and seattle is no different i regularly ride the bus it seems like there's fewer routes there just packed standing room only on routes that where that didn't occur before can you talk about that absolutely it rapid but there's some real challenges because because we we don't dedicate right away to translate and sell to any extent we have limited street right away it's not going to grow we have to use our streets more efficiently and we need streets for all modes bicycle pedestrian traffic that general traffic have to share the road and i actually lead the first initiative in the country i believe of a major city for the complete streets concept which is that roads are to be shared and so i join my colleague my colleagues on the city council join me i should say adds and sponsoring this legislation that passed into a obligation of the city for all major arterial improvements be designed for all modes of travel basically the ones i just mention that's a starting point so as we make incremental improvements to our transportation infrastructure we design for all modes and this is where you're seeing the bicycle master plan become implemented and i know that there's growing pains there and there are challenges and there's some you know some experimentation and rethinking of some of the master plan infrastructure improvements but we just have to get more use out of our roads and streets and arterials through other modes and i do not want to say to to moralize about telling people they have to get out of their cars and take away their parking and take away everything that makes it possible to use your car i'm not saying i'm saying instead of eyes and fund other options so that people could be free from the automobile if they would choose to i prefer freedom from the automobile i am auto dependent i think most people in c l are auto dependent we are an auto dependent city we're built around the car the city in many ways so land use and transportation go hand in hand and living closer to work having neighborhoods that are complete neighborhoods if you will jump talking about we're goods and services are all of the within walking distance threats of connections in those neighborhoods that are easy to get to public safety is improve because you have a neighborhood policing model of proactive policing and support you know all means of freedom from the automobile basically reducing travel time reducing number trips providing alternatives we have actually one of the best bus or the most extensive transit systems in the country we don't have an extensive mass transit system however and that's the difference unfortunately bus transport get stuck in the same traffic and as often not a faster choice than driving your car but often it can be when there are dedicated lanes or lane perches asian expressways accept and i think we're going to see over time we're going to see more of the street  being prior ties so that traffic can move through and when people see you know themselves stuck in their car yes you can listen to k x p you can you shouldn't be texting and that car everybody does while you're idling in traffic those forty eight hours a day i year i mention while the buses are with whizzing by you can bet more people are going to take the bus or the cyclists those who can cycle are speeding down or you know moving rapidly through  greenways or on bicycle trails to try lanes you're going to start to think about alternatives i choose to live closer to work myself and i think the workplace is changing  the model of the centralized downtown regional you know employment center where everybody comes from all over long distances i think we're seeing that gradually dissipate i always have an urban downtown center employment center but people are working at home they're working on the bus they're working in the coffee shops i do my bring my work with me it's mobile my work is mobile and you know my laptop and my i phone are the two things that are most important in my mobility right now and i think will be more so in the future we're talking with peter steinberg is former seattle city councilman and candidate for mayor of seattle how can people find out more about your campaign peter for seattle dot com welcome visitors we're building up a great web site they're welcome your ideas i'm actually planning to put a post a blog post there for people to send their ideas to me i don't claim to have all the only ideas for seo i welcomed everybody's ideas and of course volunteers we have now over ninety volunteers we have over four hundred public supporters in the campaign were massively building up and it's very exciting the momentum building and i looking forward to the next four and a half months before the august fifth primary and i think it's great to have this early opportunity to get people engaged in politics in the life of our city quality of our neighborhoods and get involved get engaged in the political process i welcome that and encourage it thank you