On Monday, video emerged of the performance of transgender stripper Beyoncé Black St. James at the annual conference of Seattle and King County officials on solving homelessness on December 9.
Christopher Rufo a contributing editor for City-Journal, posted the video on Twitter, commenting, “Here’s how they’re using taxpayer money.”:
Last week, Seattle and King County leaders hired transgender stripper Beyoncé Black St. James to perform at their annual conference on solving homelessness.
Here's how they're using taxpayer money: pic.twitter.com/J0lCKVVfgO
— Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) December 15, 2019
The incident in question prompted the King County Department of Community and Human Services to place Kira Zylstra, organizer of the conference at South Seattle College, on leave last Thursday.
Journalist Erica C. Barnett reported: “Denise Rothleutner, deputy director of King County’s Department of Community and Human Services, said in an email: ‘The department is aware of an event that occurred during the All Home annual conference on December 9, 2019. We have placed the director of All Home on administrative leave pending the results of an investigation into the event and the leadership of All Home. Because there is an active investigation underway, I am unable to respond to specific questions about the event.’”
The Seattle Times reported that Zylstra was paid roughly $123,000 annually, according to a county spokesperson. The Times added that the only note on the agenda for the annual conference was “Lunch with Cultural Presentation,” without a warning or announcement about the performance itself.
The Times noted, “Zylstra has led All Home, King County’s coordinating agency homeless services, since January 2018. But her job could soon become obsolete as Seattle and King County prepare to replace All Home …”
KIRO radio host Dori Monson commented, “The theme of the conference was ‘Decolonizing our Collective Work.’ How does swinging fake breasts into someone’s face decolonize our collective work?… How do you think we are going to solve the homelessness problem when we have people like these folks in charge of things? How do you think the religiously-affiliated groups that were there, like Catholic Community Services, felt having a drag queen give lap dances at a meeting that should have been about helping those in need?”
Rufo commented on Twitter:
As the video shows, the programming has nothing to do with helping people on the streets—it’s about affirming a radical ideology that puts identity politics above solving real problems. For years, Seattle has claimed that it “needs more resources” to solve homelessness, but as the video shows, they find it totally appropriate to pay for a transgender stripper to grind on members of the region’s homelessness nonprofits and taxpayer-funded organizations. It’s not a lack of resources that prevents Seattle from solving homelessness; it’s a lack of leadership. According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, King County spends more than $1 billion a year on homelessness programs—but have failed to deliver results for decades.
As the video shows, the programming has nothing to do with helping people on the streets—it's about affirming a radical ideology that puts identity politics above solving real problems.
— Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) December 15, 2019
It's not a lack of resources that prevents Seattle from solving homelessness; it's a lack of leadership. According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, King County spends more than $1 billion a year on homelessness programs—but have failed to deliver results for decades.
— Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) December 15, 2019
Rufo has written in the City-Journal:
Seattle has long been known as one of America’s most liberal locales, but in recent years, the city has marched even further left as socialists, once relegated to the margins, have declared war on the Democratic establishment. Socialist Alternative city councilwoman Kshama Sawant claims that the city’s homelessness crisis is the inevitable result of the Amazon boom, greedy landlords, and rapidly increasing rents … Using homelessness as a symbol of “capitalism’s moral failure,” the socialists hope to build support for their agenda of rent control, public housing, minimum-wage hikes, and punitive corporate taxation … What the socialists won’t, or can’t, see is that their agenda cannot solve the homelessness crisis … The city’s compassion campaign has devolved into permissiveness, enablement, crime, and disorder. Public complaints about homeless encampments from the first three months of this year are an array of horrors: theft, drugs, fighting, rape, murder, explosions, prostitution, assaults, needles, and feces.