Nearly 1,000 healthcare workers and union supporters gathered at Harborview Medical Center on Sunday before marching north through Capitol Hill. The march drew approximately equal numbers of teachers, activists, and community members at Seattle Central, creating a coalition of public sector workers focused on immigration enforcement and gun violence concerns.
Lucas MacDonald, an advanced registered nurse practitioner with Harborview Mental Health and Addiction Services, spoke to the healthcare workers’ perspective during the rally. “Alex Pretti was one of the best of us. He was a leader in his ICU. He led them through Covid chaos, mentored younger nurses. As a former ICU nurse, I guarantee when the emotions ran high, he remained calm, and he is dead, killed by some gassed up ice goons who, in a panic, pinned a man down and executed him in the street. We can’t stand for this. We have to stand up against this darkness that descends on our country. We can’t let bullies and thugs define what patriotism is. We serve our country too. We put on masks to protect our patients, not to terrorize neighbors. We put on masks to protect our families, not to murder people in the streets.”
Jesse Hagopian, an educator, writer, and activist, addressed the crowd during the rally. “The world has grown cold and frost is spreading even throughout the places that are supposed to be there to nurture and support our kids and to shelter them, like our schools,” Hagopian said. “In a time when schools can be turned into perilous border crossing areas, when learning is paused by the threat of immigration raids, we are forced to confront a truth that we can no longer deny, that winter is no longer just coming. Winter is already here. The winter for democracy, the winter for justice, the winter for compassion, the winter for the vulnerable, the winter for truth is here. It is winter in America, and we are rapidly confronting an ice age.” He continued: “Yet as sudden as this cold frost is felt around the country, the violence of state repression did not just suddenly appear.”
From Seattle Central, the march continued down Pine Street before turning left onto 2nd Avenue and heading into downtown Seattle. The procession moved through the commercial core as participants chanted “No justice, no peace. No ICE in our streets.” Hundreds of demonstrators gradually left the crowd along the route and the march concluded at the Henry M. Jackson Federal Building, where the remaining participants gathered for a short rally.
Following the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three, Seattle mobilized for a second consecutive night of protest against ICE’s lethal enforcement tactics. Good was shot as she sat in her vehicle after dropping her youngest child at an elementary school, an ordinary moment that turned deadly and exposed the dangers of the agency’s aggressive protocols.
The Trump administration claimed Good attempted to ram federal agents with her Honda Pilot, a characterization directly contradicted by eyewitness video evidence. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey rejected this account after reviewing the footage. Video recordings show an ICE officer aggressively approaching Good’s vehicle and attempting to open her door. When she pulled forward, a second officer positioned in front of the vehicle immediately drew his weapon and fired at least two shots at close range. The officer’s response escalated from an initial aggressive approach to lethal force in less than ten seconds.
Good was not a criminal or immigration violator. A U.S. citizen born in Colorado, she had no criminal record beyond a single traffic ticket. Those who knew her described a devoted mother, published writer and poet, former vocal performance student, and committed Christian. She was simply driving home.
The incident has raised urgent questions about ICE’s training, accountability, and use of lethal force against civilians posing no apparent threat. Seattle activists have demanded the arrest of ICE murderer Jonathan Ross, the abolishment of ICE, and a comprehensive restructuring of federal immigration policy.
What began as a gathering of 15-20 healthcare workers and community activists quickly swelled to over 100 healthcare workers, union members, and supporters. The group first gathered at Harborview Park before marching through downtown Seattle. They made stops at Victor Steinbrueck Park and finally converged on Amazon’s headquarters.
Their message was urgent: looming federal Medicaid cuts threaten to severely reduce healthcare access. At the same time, they warned, billionaires stand to receive massive tax breaks. Speakers denounced this as “the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in U.S. history.”
“We’re seeing billionaires grabbing everything they possibly can, leaving working-class and poor people to scramble for the crumbs,” said Kimela Vigil, a mental health practitioner and vice president of the Harborview Union. She linked the $4.5 trillion in proposed cuts to a broader agenda: “The dismantling of the legal system, attacking education systems, using the military to suppress free speech, all of those are the perfect formula for authoritarianism and fascism… We are in it right now… Our role is to resist, to not be complacent.”
The cuts threaten to reverse healthcare gains at safety-net hospitals like Harborview, where uninsured rates dropped from 12% to 3% under the Affordable Care Act. Now, Vigil warned, the hospital could “lose $8.4 million annually for every 1% of Medicaid patients shifted to uninsured status.” She accused lawmakers of deliberate timing: “They designed these cuts to kick in after the election so they won’t be held accountable.”
The human cost was made starkly clear by frontline workers. “Medicaid is not just for poor people, it is for everyone,” said Harborview RN Sam Conley. “When hospitals can’t get reimbursed for care, our whole system breaks down…When people can’t afford treatment, they don’t get better, they get sicker.” RN Naomi Morris shared a life-or-death example: “Right now I have a 13-year-old patient with diabetes. His care is funded by Medicaid. It’s the reason he continues to survive.”
The rally highlighted how proposed Medicaid cuts fit into a broader pattern of austerity measures, from the elimination of food assistance to reduced childcare funding, while corporations and enforcement agencies reap benefits.
“SNAP cuts have already spiked food bank visits by 200% since 2019,” said Carmen Smith, Executive Director of the White Center Food Bank. “This is not unique to White Center Food Bank. It’s a trend we’re seeing across Washington State and across the nation.”
Meanwhile, the bill triples ICE funding while shrinking child care subsidies. SEIU 925 shared the story of Nicolle Orozco Forero, an asylum-seeking daycare provider detained and deported just days before opening her business—along with her entire family, including her severely ill son.
Corporate tax breaks, dubbed the “Big Ugly Bill” by critics, further fueled outrage. “…the biggest transfer of wealth in American history,” said Sterling Harders, President of SEIU 775, “and yet Amazon has more workers who rely on Medicaid than any other employer in Washington State.”
Yolanda King of SEIU 1199 invoked the spirit of civil rights resistance: “My grandparents stood with Dr. King. They understood that they’re not going to give it to us, we have to take it. Today we are saying that we are going to take back what is ours. This country belongs to us. We are the people, and we need to make a demand.”
Girmay Zahilay, a King County Councilmember, delivered a blunt assessment of the cuts’ local impact: “The budget director of King County told us, there is no way that King County on its own can backfill the scale of cuts coming from the Federal Government.” Zahilay outlined stopgap measures, pointing to the county’s allocation of $1 million to shore up reproductive healthcare clinics after Medicaid cuts threatened Planned Parenthood and Cedar River Clinics.
But he stressed the disparity in resources: “We can use the tools that we have from the state legislator,” he said, referencing a newly passed criminal justice sales tax expected to generate $90 million annually for homelessness and behavioral health services. The state has also authorized a new sales tax, but Zahilay admitted the choice feels wrong. “It’s either use that regressive tax or allow devastating cuts to happen in our community that we can’t stomach,” he said.
Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates greater Seattle organizer Madeline Brown delivered stark projections about the Medicaid cuts’ impact: “These cuts to Medicaid are going to increase and are going to result in 200 clinic closures, 90% of which are going to be in access states like Washington.”
She warned of systemic consequences: “Our healthcare system cannot handle the influx of those patients…after the midterm election, we know that 17 million people are going to be kicked off of their healthcare.”
Brown concluded with the rally’s defining message, met with applause from healthcare workers in scrubs and union members holding signs: “When Republicans choose billionaires, we choose each other.”
Seattle activists with Jewish Voice for Peace staged a sit-in at the Palantir offices in South Lake Union to demand that Washington state sever financial ties with Palantir, accusing the tech giant of profiting from human rights abuses. “We demand that the Washington state investment board and our elected officials divest from genocide by cutting ties with Palantir,” organizers declared at the demonstration.
Speakers said Palantir’s software directly aids Israeli military operations in Gaza. “Palantir is selling surveillance technology to corporations and government, fueling fascism at home and the genocide in Gaza,” one protester said. “Palantir profits off the genocide in Gaza by providing advanced training artificial intelligence to the Israeli Government and the Israeli occupation forces. This means Palantir provides the technology to kill people…individual citizens who are starving and standing in lines trying to get aid and food for their families. More aid workers have been killed during this genocide than in all the wars of the last 30 years.”
Hossam Nasr, a former Microsoft worker who said he was fired “for organizing a vigil on campus to honor the lives of Palestinians,” spoke out about how major tech companies have become “effectively…weapons manufacturers.” Nasr, now an organizer with No Azure for Apartheid, said, “These tech companies have deepened the relationship with the genocidal Israeli military. They saw an opportunity in death and destruction and killing of Palestinians to make profits.”
Nasr singled out Palantir as “leading the charge…the most brazenly, the most explicitly, the most violently.” He added, “Their CEO is publicly saying they’re happy and proud that their technology is killing Palestinians, that their technology is being used to track and detain and kidnap our neighbors.”
He detailed how Palantir built its business by embracing government defense contracts. “Palantir said to hell with that. We are evil and we’re proud, and we’re going to partner with the government because we want to dominate, because we want to kill, because we want to achieve the government’s aims of imperialism,” Nasr said. “Their first…contracts were actually with the US government and the DOD to help them with the war in Iraq. And since then, they have deepened their partnership.”
Protesters warned that these surveillance systems now reach beyond war zones. “Most people don’t know that Palantir is here, let alone that it profits from death and surveillance,” one speaker said. Nasr pointed to Palantir’s $30 million contract with ICE, which he said is creating “a centralized database across the IRS, ICE, other government agencies…to make it easy for us to track and surveil and target people. It’s completely heinous, dystopian, Orwellian, and it is happening with our tax dollars.”
He added, “For them to identify what they claim are immigrants or refugees or whatever, they have to surveil everyone. Your data is in that system, even if you’re a law-abiding legal citizen.”
For two hours, activists blocked entrances and left just before police arrived to arrest them. Protesters pledged to keep organizing. “For far too long, these tech companies have wreaked havoc upon the world. With unity, we must pay our tribute to the Palestinian people and to all victims of US imperialism, and say no more,” they said. “We will not rest until Palestine is free from the river to the sea.”
The Dignity Virus 