On Thursday, The Seattle Times reported that a Black candidate for Seattle City Counsel was targeted by a flood of racial slurs in a Zoom campaign event.
"Brianna Thomas was just starting a Zoom session with phone-banking volunteers when someone pasted 50 lines repeating the n-word, in all caps, in the chat, she said," reported Daniel Beckman. "Everyone knows that running for office is hard, 'But this isn't just hard. This is violent,' said Thomas, who is Black."
"Thomas, chief of staff to council President M. Lorena González and a candidate for Position 9, said her campaign manager quickly kicked the person out of the Zoom session," said the report. "The person had apparently registered for the session, which was publicized by the campaign on social media, likely using a pseudonym, Thomas said. The campaign has reported the incident to Zoom. The police have higher-priority work to do, Thomas said."
The report comes amid other racially-motivated incidents of threats and harassment against politicians of color around the country. Michigan state Rep. Cynthia Johnson, for instance, has faced violent threats since questioning Rudy Giuliani during a hearing on the 2020 presidential election, with one person leaving a voicemail telling her, "you should be swinging from a [expletive] rope you Democrat."
