This event is part of a series of community conversations hosted by Shaun Scott centering on ideas and possibilities put forward by Forward Thrust in the late 1960’s.
Series Schedule:
May 21: Rainier Arts Center
June 10: Phinney Center
June 15: University Lutheran Church
June 20: Pigott Building (Seattle University)
What would Seattle look like today if we had voted for mass transit nearly 50 years ago? In this public discussion forum (the first of four!), Seattle-based author and social historian Shaun Scott assembles Seattle locals to re-examine the Forward Thrust Committee’s work to catapult our city into the future. Forward Thrust was a movement from 1968 to 1970 that proposed several ballot initiatives to renovate and rejuvenate Seattle with public parks, professional sports stadiums, and a new environmental awareness—though they famously did not succeed in securing an expansive subway system for the city.
Scott invites us to explore and analyze the history of Forward Thrust, and discuss the possibility of renewing such sweeping initiatives to ignite new positive change in our city. He brings us together for group strategy sessions to formulate positive change in a modern Forward Thrust inspired by the movement’s accomplishments and drawbacks. Join Shaun Scott and your fellow civically-conscious Seattleites to learn from the successes of the 1968 Forward Thrust and collaborate to create a new Forward Thrust initiative for Seattle.
Shaun Scott is a Seattle-based writer and historian whose reflections on race, cinema and American spectacle have appeared in The Monarch Review and New Worker Magazine. He’s a featured contributor to City Arts Magazine, where he writes the thread “Faded Signs,” a semi-weekly column about cultural life under late capitalism. He is the author of the e-book Something Better: Millennials and Late Capitalism at the Movies.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle as part of the Civics series.