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Early on Wednesday, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell followed through on his promise to clear the sidewalks across from City Hall.

The activists who had prevented a sweep last month were caught off guard, and couldn’t stop it this time.

To their credit, the activists did use the two weeks to find shelter for some of the campers, according to the Seattle Times. But they couldn’t relocate them all.

So, the city took over.

This comes the police scattered the drug market at Third Avenue and Pine Street downtown, and sent a mobile precinct to 12th Avenue and South Jackson Street in Little Saigon.

But like the graffiti sweep along I-5 a few weeks ago – which has already been decorated with new examples of rebellious creativity – it may not last. The tents will pop up again, just like the graffiti, unless two things happen:

1) The campers agree to take the shelter offered – that’s the obvious one …

And 2) the rest of us start going downtown again like we used to.

One of the reasons the downtown homeless problem looks so bad is that in some places they’re the only ones on the sidewalks. The few times I took a walk downtown during the pandemic, it was me and homeless people.

When the sidewalks are empty except for people in crisis, even empathetic people are not going to come downtown.

But I can remember how, once upon a time, on a sunny day, with a couple of cruise ships in town, and maybe a convention, plus thousands of office workers, urban hikers, signature gatherers – you wouldn’t get spooked by the occasional person in crisis because they were vastly outnumbered by the people NOT in crisis.

And that’s what has to happen now. You have to come back.

All of you who are NOT in crisis have to come back downtown and just be you.

Our wishes have been granted. We have survived COVID, the masks are coming off, downtown businesses are paying for extra security while the mayor is bulking up the police force, so it’s time for all of us to come back and outnumber the campers, the shoplifters, and the drug dealers. Not in a mean way – but we have a right be there too, and it’s our spending money that finances all of this outreach.

So, I call on all of you to come back. Especially if you are a person of size! If you played varsity basketball in high school, or were on the offensive line, or the crew team, or ever played rugby – you should be in the first wave to return downtown.

And once we see all of YOU crowding the sidewalks and shopping, and chatting, and dining – the rest of us will follow.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.