Socialist Mayor Katie Wilson announces plant to strip Andrew Jackson’s name from Seattle park

Wilson announced Friday that she is launching a campaign to rename Jackson Park because her administration says Andrew Jackson’s legacy doesn’t reflect “Seattle’s values.”

She directed Seattle Parks and Recreation to begin a community process to rename the north Seattle park, which honors the seventh president.

The city’s announcement says Jackson’s “legacy includes policies that forcibly displaced Native American peoples from their ancestral lands.” It says community members have called for a name that is “more culturally appropriate and reflective of Seattle’s values,” but did not cite any of the people who allegedly made the claim.

“We’ve heard from community members who want to change the name of Jackson Park, and now is the right time to move this conversation forward. With new light rail connections and opportunities to make the park more accessible and welcoming, we should have a park that reflects the values of our city,” Wilson said.

“I’m directing Seattle Parks and Recreation to begin a community naming process to find a name that better reflects this place, its history, and the people who enjoy it.”

That historical reckoning apparently stops at the city’s own name. Seattle honors Chief Seattle, also known as Chief Sealth, who owned slaves and participated in slave raids. Historian and biographer David Buerge has documented that he enslaved people and sold or traded captives.

The Chemakum Tribe’s own published history, quoting Buerge, describes an 1847 attack by allied Suquamish and S’Klallam warriors that killed Chemakum men and carried women and children away into slavery. The account identifies Chief Seattle as a leader involved in the campaign.

Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 and championed the removal of Native nations from their homelands. However, Wilson ignored Native American history in an attempt to virtue signal to her activist base.

She also appears to be ignoring Jackson Park’s history of encampment problems and nearby gunfire. In 2020, residents complained about an improvised metal shop inside a homeless encampment, overnight noise, generator fumes, needles and pollution.

An encampment fire prompted a road closure in May 2021. In February 2022, police reported that a suspected gasoline thief fired a shot while fleeing into the golf course’s woods; that May, another gunman repeatedly fired at an occupied car near the course.

Dr. Jose Rizal Park and other Seattle green spaces include open fentanyl use, drug dealing and widespread public disorder just blocks from where Wilson claimed, during the World Cup, that the city would “no longer tolerate open-air drug sale and use and vending stolen goods.”

But the problems continued after Wilson’s promise. In July, Chinatown-International District residents and business owners rallied at Hing Hay Park to protest continuing open-air drug use and neighborhood disorder.

Community advocate Gary Lee directly challenged the mayor’s promise: “She said there would be zero tolerance for drug dealing and the selling of stolen goods, but the corner of 12th and Jackson is worse than ever.”

Protesters vowed to continue demonstrating until the city addressed encampments, drug activity and the damage to neighborhood businesses.

Wilson missed her June goal of creating 500 new shelter beds and pushed her first-year target of 1,000 beds into next year, as trouble in local parks continues to grow.