Nikkita Oliver Quotes (1986-)

“I think it’s really important that I sit down and have very important and solution-oriented conversations with the people who have been holding the city down through multiple administrations and find out first what solutions are they wanting to bring to the table. I think that’s really important not just for buy-in but for effective solution building.””

“I didn’t get into this race to grow people’s theory and intellectual prowess around equity. We got into it because we want to see that become a real thing. We want to see affordable housing actually exist, we want people to be able to move back into the city, we want people to have actual incomes and livable wages that allow them to live in the city. That is really what equity comes down to.”

“We’re not trying to create a space that’s like how the world works. I’ve just learned time after time that when you allow a young person to actually make decisions about what is best for them, oftentimes in the long run, it actually is best for them. They know a lot about their daily lives. I only see them for four to five hours a week. Who am I to tell them what to do in those four to five hours?”

“I expected the age critiques and the experience critique, because I know that people do not value activism, organizing, or coalition building when it comes to public service. Even though that might be more valuable than career politician experience in the sense that career politicians often get so isolated from actual community members, so their ability to work in coalition — we’re usually convincing them to work with us.”

“I really do believe artists, our trans community, folks who choose the pathway that actually feels best to them even if it’s maybe not the pathway their parents wanted for them, folks who break open boxes, really do set the stage for the rest of us to have opportunities to live in more liberated ways. I feel a certain sense of responsibility to keep pushing those boundaries. So that 10, 20, 30 years from now the generations that come, they can live in those more liberated spaces.”

“We’re not going to get to a place of change or transformation if we only want to engage in things that make us comfortable. As a non-binary person, very little about, I don’t know, going to buy clothes feels comfortable. Who decided that because you have X genitals that you needed to do X thing or act X way? I spent a lot of my life very uncomfortable in my body and very uncomfortable with what I was told was the expectation for me as a “woman.” When I finally came to the understanding that is actually not who or what I am and chose to move honestly, I started to feel more free, but also other people felt more uncomfortable.”

“I don’t want to end up with more of what philanthropy has done to us, where philanthropy as an industry requires that there are always cash-poor and economically disenfranchised people. The non-profit industrial complex requires that there are always cash-poor and economically disenfranchised people. It is literally built upon people who — if suddenly there were no poor folks — they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves because their entire lives have been built upon this non-profit industrial complex. So, I think that there’s an economic injustice that we’ve allowed to exist for the sake of keeping the non-profit industrial complex going, keeping certain public projects going so we’re not actually invested in ending the actual injustice.”

“no community is a monolith. Whether we’re talking about white communities or Black communities or the Asian diaspora or Native communities, there is disagreement around a lot of things – gender, age, class. Going back to Ericka Huggins, that conversation was very formative for me, because I asked her, “How do I interact with elders I disagree with?” And she said, “You know, I had elders I disagreed with. This is a tale as old as time and is not a new thing. But are you moving in a principled way? Are you moving transparently? Are you being accountable? Is it really coming from a place that is grounded in a bigger vision of community care and wellbeing? Then keep moving in that way. If you’re not causing harm and what is being built is actually transformative, that will come out in the long run.””

“We’re at a pivotal point where we’re asking that big existential question of ‘who has the right to live in Seattle?’ but also ‘who has the right to stay in Seattle?’ I’m critiqued a lot for my stance on wanting developers to have to invest more, but you’re right — it’s not about investing in buildings when we want investors to invest more, it’s about actually investing in the people of Seattle — people who have made Seattle the attractive, beautiful, cultural place that it is. It’s becoming a museum of those things, things that folks who grew up in Seattle can come visit sometimes, but those folks can’t live there. We need some people who are willing to draw some hard lines in the sand and say, ‘This is our value. We value Seattlelites getting to stay here and live here.’ I also value this growing city. But if you are not investing in the people who are going to be living in your buildings then what are you building your buildings for?”