OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A candidate for county council in the Seattle Washington area, described as a progressive candidate in a nonpartisan election, once threatened to blow up a bus full of children.
Ubax Gardheere is running for the King County Council and has been endorsed by several Democrats but a video, circulated by syndicated radio host Joe Pagliarulo on Saturday, showed her making the threat from a video in 2010 and then mocking the children who were fleeing the bus as “cowards.”
“I’m Muslim. I’m covered. I might have a bomb. I might have a gun,” she said to one of the children loud enough so the entire bus could hear her.
Ubax Gardheere is running for King County Council, near Seattle. This is a video of her threatening to blow up a school bus full of children.https://t.co/2GvmOcYTlJ
— Joe Pags Pagliarulo (@JoeTalkShow) July 3, 2021
As a police officer shouted at her to face away from him and walk backwards toward him she said “I’m prepared to die.”
“I don’t care whether you’re prepared to die or not, I’m about prepared to kill you, how’s that?” the officer said as he removed her from the bus, according to the subtitles on the video.
Before the video leaked, Gardheere was endorsed by several prominent Democrats, The Post Millennial reported.
Democrat State Senator Rebecca Saldana said in her endorsement of Gardheere, “I will follow Ubax anywhere.” Former radical Seattle City Council Member and activist Mike O’Brien called Gardheere “An amazing leader.” It is unclear if Saladana or O’Brien were aware of Gardheere’s bomb threats against children on a school bus when they gave their endorsements.
Ghardeere’s campaign has been boosted on social media by Riall Johnson and Prism Washington, both of which have a history of representing and promoting activist socialist candidates such as socialist Seattle City Council Member Tammy Morales, who advocated for riots during last summer’s unrest.
Gardheere told the Seattle Weekly that she was hospitalized for mental illness and that her mental condition worsened after she stopped in Dubai to see in-laws on her way to visit Somalia in 2008.
Six years later, while working as a community organizer, Gardheere appeared in a video produced by Mass Transit now advocating for extending an area light rail project. She is referred to in the video as a “social justice advocate.”
In an interview with the South Seattle Emerald, she claimed that she was being criminalized for mental health issues, as if that somehow forgives threatening kids with a bomb that she did not have.
“Lived experience means at barely age 30 being a single mother of three children and becoming homeless. And overcoming that, within eight years of that, being a homeowner. It means being a brand new mother and going through postpartum depression and then actually having a mental breakdown and being criminalized for that, instead of getting the mental health [support] that I needed. Being a 15-year-old refugee, who came here and suffering from not having enough food or a job or being able to pay bills, and going to bed hungry,” she said.
But that is direct conflict with court documents of the incident and with her own interview given to The Seattle Weekly in which she said, “I’m thinking in my head, ‘what can I say or do that will get you taken to jail instead of a mental institute?'”
In announcing her candidacy she said, “I’m running because I’ve had more than two decades of first-hand experience with the creativity and adaptability of communities in finding systemic solutions to the issues that affect them.”
“I believe that my organizing skills and policy chops will help the county government pivot to community-driven, rather than top-down, policies that truly address the root causes of our multiple crises,” she said.
“I would follow Ubax anywhere,” State Sen. Rebecca Saldaña said. “She is a talented, courageous, no-nonsense leader we need to ensure our county centers Black health, wealth and economic opportunities. Ubax has been integral in shaping policy to address equitable transportation investments, designing communities of opportunities programs, and growing values-based leaders to engage in our democracy through boards and commissions.”
