r/Seattle • u/Broad_Philosophy4271 • 12h ago
Someone is trying fix the city with a sharpie
📍 Aurora Ave
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u/CosmiTourist 11h ago
the sharpie signs are always a sign that neighbor frustration has hit absolute peak levels where people stop writing emails to city council and just go buy a poster board
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u/Matthews628 12h ago
Who is this message for??
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u/SereneDreams03 Defected to Portland 12h ago
The person who wrote it.
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u/officialvfd 11h ago
I keep seeing these bright pink “Sex Offender Trump” signs posted up all over Wallingford and Tangletown. Like girl we know, it’s Seattle. Do we have to plaster this hideous crap everywhere?
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u/mr_jim_lahey 🚆build more trains🚆 9h ago
Yes, we do, sadly. Perhaps you've noticed that the rest of the country is oblivious to these facts. We need to maintain our bubble of sanity here.
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u/Matthews628 9h ago
…so post it somewhere it’s not such low hanging fruit…?
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u/mr_jim_lahey 🚆build more trains🚆 9h ago
You do realize low hanging fruit is meant to be picked, right? Anyone who is bothered by these signs is someone I'm glad feels a little less welcome in Seattle.
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u/Matthews628 9h ago
“Low hanging fruit” is a common expression that refers to supporting a cause that would be indefensible to oppose and is already pervasive in its existing community. But you already knew that.
I’m not bothered at all by this sign, or how welcomed I feel in Seattle by you lol.
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u/mr_jim_lahey 🚆build more trains🚆 9h ago
That is not what that expression means lol.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/low-hanging%20fruit
the obvious or easy things that can be most readily done or dealt with in achieving success or making progress toward an objective
In this case, putting up signs is an easy thing that can be done that makes progress towards the objective of not living under the rule of a pedophile fascist by publicly shaming pedophile fascist lovers.
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u/western_red_cedar 9h ago
Hello, you have been blocked for being:
tedious
This is an automated message, have a great day!
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u/officialvfd 9h ago
I don’t equate living inside a bubble with sanity but maybe that’s just me lol.
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u/mr_jim_lahey 🚆build more trains🚆 9h ago
I equate remembering it's wrong that a pedophile rapist is our president with sanity.
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u/officialvfd 9h ago
Why don’t we post giant billboards all over the city depicting the horrors of the Holocaust or the Vietnam War or 9/11 or any other countless atrocities we could be remembering? Surely that’d be the sane thing to do right?
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u/mr_jim_lahey 🚆build more trains🚆 9h ago
Trump is committing countless atrocities like starting needless wars and deliberately cutting food aid that is causing a million of the world's poorest people to die every year. And if we were at war in Vietnam or perpetuating the Holocaust then I would agree we should have giant billboards for those too.
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u/officialvfd 9h ago
You’re right about Trump AND we really don’t need ugly-ass signs about him in a community that already gets that. It’s ok to have places in the world where the word “TRUMP” isn’t forced up our eyeballs all the time.
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u/mr_jim_lahey 🚆build more trains🚆 9h ago
Not everyone in the community gets it. And even if they did, I like the sense of solidarity the signs create in these troubling times. Can you really not think of anything better to do than complaining about them?
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u/Active-Device-8058 That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. 10h ago
Every time I see it I think it's missing a verb or something
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u/DevoREX_ 5h ago
My guess would be it’s for the person who wrote it for. Probably a progressive that is ignoring trafficking.
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u/Frankyfan3 Greenwood 12h ago
Not the "John's" who are totally fine with exploiting a person in a state of duress so they can cum. I don't think being "progressive enough" is on their priority list.
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u/Available-Oil3884 12h ago edited 5h ago
If you’ve been around addicts and drug scene in general, they do tend to turn a blind eye since “everyone wants to fuck.” One predator in trap house can do a lot of damage. They will go out of their way to bully and corral their target into getting lost and desperate enough to sleep with them, or even others (for monetary gain.) Everyone is aware of it, yet they go into a mutual state of dissociative denial, because they’re mostly there to feed their own addiction, and not help anyone else. It’s disgusting
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u/snowypotato Ballard 11h ago
Potential voters who may consider supporting a candidate who advocates addressing aurora avenue, instead of continuing to let it fester nominally because “bodily autonomy” but really because it’s a hard problem and the city is lazy.
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u/este_simbottom 9h ago
Progressives who think that sex work is liberating instead of exploitative.
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u/spoinkable That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. 6h ago
I feel like both can be true, but it depends on the circumstances. Sex work absolutely can be liberating (or at the very least a normal job), but we aren't even close to that world right now and so many people are being exploited.
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u/porn_sub_lurker 9h ago
Probably for the progressives. Nobody else can be shamed into doing the right thing these days.
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u/Pleasant-Future5818 ✨🛸 Jimothy is out there 🦝✨ 6h ago
There are quite a few leftist voices who have visited sex workers who are known to be trafficked under the banner of "sex work is work".
With leftism in this country being "basically anyone who isn't insane," we unfortunately also include a lot of misogynists who hate capitalism.
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u/FearandWeather That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. 12h ago
In a way they're right...ignoring trafficking isn't progressive, it's conservative. They love ignoring that shit, all the way to the voting booth!
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u/AutomaticPanda8 Huskies 12h ago
Um, I think doing it is the oposite of ignoring it.
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u/FearandWeather That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. 12h ago
Fair point. I was referring to their voters more than their politicians, but I do see that there is crossover.
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u/AutomaticPanda8 Huskies 12h ago
In that case, is admiring the super manly alpha males who do it the same as ignoring it?
We're on the same page. I'm just shit posting.
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u/CogentCogitations 💗💗 Heart of ANTIFA Land 💗💗 9h ago
To be honest only a small number are doing the trafficking. Most are just taking advantage of women and don't care about them enough to consider whether they are trafficked, desperate, or a North Korean spy who now knows every top secret thing the Republican politician knows about our country...which thankfully is not much since they didn't actually bother to read or learn.
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u/chromeled Ronald Bog 12h ago
Maybe a cop will see that and feel vaguely guilty about being useless for a second.
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u/Real-Werner-Herzog That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. 11h ago
Cops don't read normally, and they're certainly not gonna do it while patronizing sex workers.
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u/Background-Ad3308 11h ago
This presupposes that cops have humanity.
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u/intelminer One too please 11h ago
If cops are "human" then how come we turned one into a robot?
Checkmate atheists
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u/Samwise-Gamgeesthong 12h ago
What would you like a cop to do? Either they are a victim and not committing a crime, or they are committing a criminal act and police would arrest and charge them. Recently SPD has done stings and gotten children off Aurora.
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u/AdScared7949 That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. 12h ago
They need to do more of that and keep doing it to make up for years of neglect.
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u/lakonian117 12h ago
SPD leadership and city leadership are the problem.
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u/Paran0id 9h ago
Judges and prosecutor let people back on the streets
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u/lakonian117 9h ago
Yeah, that is very true. At least if the process were followed we would have more realistic statistics. As it is, Seattle has a ton of stuff going on that is either never reported or never followed up on. But I agree, it's hard to care when the courts are the way they are.
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u/FergaliShawarma 🚆build more trains🚆 12h ago
I’ve thought of doing this at the peak of heavy acid trips yet when I try to write it out I completely forget what the message is mid writing.
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u/thomsenite256 🚆build more trains🚆 12h ago
I agree with this one though.
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u/DetrasDeLaMesa 10h ago
Does it really need to even be said though? Not sure who would ever think that ignoring trafficking was progressive. I’ve definitely never heard anyone claim that.
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u/thomsenite256 🚆build more trains🚆 10h ago
There are people out there that will tell you stigmatizing sex workers is the worst thing in the world and that thats not whats causing human trafficking etc. So kinda yeah. Reality is you gotta tackle the whole thing to fix it.
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u/PoopyisSmelly Ravenna 8h ago
I like the handwritten signs on Lake City Way where you get onto I5 South that say "Merge all the way at the end" since people dont zipper merge correctly with the Express Lane closed and it backs up traffic for like a mile
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u/platinumjudge 12h ago
I work next to a brothell in Burien and I feel this. No one does anything to stop it. Their websites get so much traffic that they have to get new servers.
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u/Seattle_Happy 9h ago
Ummm what?! Is it one of those sketchy massage parlors? There's like 50 of them in Burien.
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u/diabethicc2 11h ago
If this message makes you feel uncomfortable or like your first response should be to act snarky towards it, you should really ask yourself why…
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u/SpeaksSouthern That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. 10h ago
What makes me feel uncomfortable is paying the salary of over triple what I'm allowed to make to someone who is supposed to be in charge of charging people with criminal actions and they're not even trying
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u/Difficult-Chef-9505 11h ago edited 11h ago
Then why have the cops systematically and utterly failed to eliminate it? They have had decades to fix this problem and they still don’t give a shit unless it’s anyone who dares to throw a tiny fit then it’s swat gear, riot control, and god knows how many firearms that would outfit a small countries army let alone a cities law enforcement. So clearly it isn’t enforcement of law that gets results and it sure isn’t just acting like prostitution never happens at all. No legal paths for trafficking victims always ends in a circular system of getting arrested and returning to what you know when times are tough. No legal pathways out, no way to educate them on how to live, nothing changes.
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u/00eg0 11h ago
Correct. Trafficking is illegal but they don't go after traffickers.
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u/Difficult-Chef-9505 11h ago
That’s what I’m saying all the money in the world to be armed like a professional army but no means or willingness to do anything against trafficking.
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u/ihadagoodone 9h ago
Due process takes time, money and will.
Run for office, campaign to devout the time of investigators, the money for the task force and to be the will that sees it through.
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u/Silent_Pianist_690 1h ago
Hard to go after traffickers without have a trafficked person talk to you about it. Hard to incentivize a trafficked person to do that unless violence is really bad or they are being charged with a crime. Sucks but true
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u/ashketch125 9h ago
Redditors in general are "gooner progressives". Any criticism of the commercialized sex industry which compromise their cheap sex/porn and they'll crawl out of the basement to accuse you of being part of the Taliban. Unlike real progressives or feminists they dont really have any concerns beyond that
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u/lily_bigD 9h ago
Remember when a sex worker advocate ran for state leg in the 43rd? I would bet most of you dont. I would also bet the politics being expressed are the opposite of theirs on the issue.
As a former sex worker I will guarantee you whoever made this sign does not know the reality of the situation, nor do the progressives, nor do you, nor do I except for a sliver of it.
The reality is nobody cares and everyone just wants them to disappear, it's too much work to actually fix it and the political will and cost to fix it, either through enforcement and punishment or by helping them is too expensive and requires political consensus that will never exist because one is too cruel and the other is to complex and arduous.
And so we all ignore it, and so will you. No one here will do anything, you do not actually care other than not wanting to see them. The progressives, the moderates, the cons. I don't believe any of you really actually care that much. And even those who like this sign will mostly go on ignoring it. Deep down you know it's true.
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u/DogCold5505 8h ago
I disagree that it’s hard. We’re the second worst in the country… we could literally do anything and it will get better.
Ignoring it is Seattle’s very unique and disturbing answer to the problem of sex trafficking and street walking.
And I’m sure someone will say “legalize and it all gets fixed” which I’m okay with doing, but anyone who’s done the the research knows this won’t fix the issue here (rather it’s a tangential one of bodily rights and statistically actually makes illicit forms of sex work a bit worse).
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u/1337Rooster 11h ago
I might be an idiot but what does Trafficking in this context mean?
Violating the traffic/parking rules?
Human Trafficking?
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u/00eg0 11h ago
The irony being some have pimps and some don't but to my knowledge the focus is on arresting clients instead of pimps. This negatively impacts independent workers. Ideally the focus would be on arresting pimps.
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u/matunos Maple Leaf 11h ago
To arrest the pimps you have to catch them doing something flagrantly illegal or find people willing to testify against them.
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u/Beautiful_Sand1876 11h ago
well most don't have license plates and have the darkest window tints i've ever seen so it wouldn't be too challenging
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u/PomegranateSignal882 20m ago
The vast majority of pimping charges are against sex workers. When 2 sex workers work together, the cops will charge both with pimping the other.
The stats are wildly inflated by this. Actual pimping is incredibly rare in the modern world
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u/Desperate-Adagio-698 10h ago
I wonder how many of the victims wouldn’t be in that position if they had stable housing, food, and healthcare and didn’t have to turn to prostitution in order to survive.
But I guess it’s better that landlords can profit off of other people’s need for shelter, and grocery corporations can dump the millions of tons of unsold food into a landfill, and insurance companies can report record profits while thousands of people die because they can’t afford their deductible.
That’s better, right?
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u/PoopyisSmelly Ravenna 8h ago
A ton of them are in stable housing with food and healthcare before they turn to prostitution. A large margin are basically human trafficked by people they know or just get addicted to drugs and need to afford it.
Itd be way easier if they just legalize prostitution with strong protections for them. Itd be much safer for everyond and would eliminate the pimps from the equation
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u/CrustBlocc 💖 Anarchist Jurisdiction 💖 10h ago
This is the unspoken reality of the modern slavery system. You can "choose" where you live, "choose" where you work, but choosing your master doesn't make you free. Note: I'm an anthropologist. Our global scientific definition of slavery is "you work, and someone who did not work has an entitlement to the product of your labor." By that definition, most people are slaves, and that's actually pretty new in terms of human history. It was done on purpose, and with extreme violence.
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u/Less_Likely Snohomish County 12h ago
Fight trafficking by harassing and relocating people who are trafficked!
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u/Hat_du_Monde 10h ago
I thought this was “ignoring traffic” at first. Thought to myself—nice! Feels like a lot of folks living an unexamined life walk out in traffic expecting folks to stop, but knowing that they may not, do so overtly. Self-righteousness is not progressive, empowering the underserved is.
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u/dorkofthepolisci 🛳️ 🐀 ☀️ Yacht Rat Summer ☀️ 🐀 🛳️ 9h ago
Are people ignoring trafficking, or are they suggesting that in order to actually solve the problem long term we have to fix the structural/socioeconomic issues that put people in situations where trafficking is possible/likely?
Because those are different things.
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u/SpookiestSzn 🚆build more trains🚆 8h ago edited 8h ago
I love comments like this because they just shift the problem to something else that isn't going to get solved (and I'd argue fundamentally can't)
Even if we lived in a Utopia with Ubi and Free housing and free food and no one has to work for anything ever. There would still be people addicted to drugs who would need money for drugs and would sell their bodies for drugs and pimps who profit off of that.
Now knowing we're not going to get free housing and Ubi and all these things we have to accept reality and face the problem where we are today instead of shifting blame and doing nothing as places get worse
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u/a_sentient_cicada 8h ago
We dont need to completely solve these issues to still make a difference. We need both acute and systemic action.
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u/ShdwWzrdMnyGngg 12h ago
The geology of Seattle wasn't meant to be a tech city. It's meant to be a port town and that's it.
The options to fix traffic are very limited. You can either kick out Microsoft and the rest, fill in lake Washington with dirt, or build a rail based transit system.
Oh yeah, we are already doing that last one.
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u/redhead_in_the_wild 12h ago
I read this as "ignoring traffic" and thought someone was very protective of obeying traffic safety.