Cascade Party

Seattle Election 2025

By Krist Novoselic (October 23, 2025)

In 1987, when she was a college student, future Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson was arrested while protesting a new course taught by a CIA agent at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

UCSB allowed CIA agent George A. Chritton to teach a course about the CIA in the Political Science Department. This caused an uproar with many students protesting what they considered a blatant case of CIA recruitment on campus.

The issue at the center of the campus unrest was US policy in Central America.

A November 7, 1987 article in the Los Angeles Times quoted the students’ reaction, “The reputation and intellectual integrity of the campus will be soiled,” the story said, “by having a teacher who represents what they allege to be the criminal acts of the CIA.”

These “criminal acts” describe the US funded terror campaign upon communities in Central America where insurgencies conducted communist revolutions. High profile atrocities on civilians were conducted by US trained and supported militias.

UCSB’s chancellor refused to meet with students concerned with a course resembling a CIA employment seminar. Students then protested by taking over the chancellor’s office for four hours.

Nelson was one of 38 students arrested and taken to the Santa Barbara County Jail, where she spent the night.

Nelson and her colleagues were charged in municipal court for trespassing.

Most plead no-contest. Seven, including Nelson, instead decided to go for a jury trial. These defendants were tried together and each testified. Defendants looked towards another precedent of dissent during that era.

Amy Carter, daughter of President Carter, had been arrested over her protesting nuclear power. She had plead a defense of necessity — a legal argument that a criminal act was committed to prevent a greater, imminent harm, and that no other reasonable legal alternative existed.

This necessity precedent guided the student’s defense at the two-week trial.

The students rallied and held a fundraiser to pay their attorney. Activist attorney Daniel Sheehan, known for the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Greensboro massacre and other high-profile cases, was the draw for the event.

Eventually, the trial resulted in a 9 to 3 hung jury. Nelson and her cohorts beat the rap.

According to the LA Times, the chancellor followed the recommendation of the political science faculty: The CIA man could not teach his own courses and lecture only if invited into other teachers’ classes. His course about intelligence gathering also was cut from two years to one.

Growing up

Nelson comes from a household of California Democrats, with her grandfather active in the state party. Their relationship got her interested in public affairs at an early age. She was a foreign exchange student in high school, studying for a year in France. Her plan was to be in the US foreign service.

After graduating UCSB, Political Science major Sara Nelson went to see Central America herself, even working on a state-owned / Sandinista coffee plantation in Nicaragua.

It’s luxurious for a North American college student to perform manual labor on a Nicaraguan plantation, then leave at her pleasure. Nelson returned home to eventually grow up.

US foreign policy soured Nelson on a foreign service career. Instead, she chose to pursue a doctorate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Washington; believing that the best way to change the world was through education. She taught courses in anthropology, women’s and international studies, earning her Ph.D. in 1997.

Nelson found her path in education, public service and as a business owner dealing with the reality of commerce.

Trespassing again

The United States has a history of protecting the economic exploitation conducted by foreign corporations in Central America. Formal peace accords have followed the years of war in the region. Nevertheless, corruption, weak governments and gang violence persist.

This has produced the conditions for undocumented migration to our country.

Our state’s world class businesses generate wealth, offering opportunities to the motivated. The dreamers come for the promise of a better life.

Considering her formative experiences, I can see why Sara Nelson supported Seattle temporarily funding hotel rooms in Kent for asylum-seekers in crisis. When Seattle's funding ran out, the migrants were forced back onto the streets.

In 1987, protesting college students got their school to reconsider a controversial instructor. Today, protesting seems designed for a maximum performative effect on social media feeds.

There was quite the performance in February, 2024 in Council Chambers when protesters, under the guise of supporting the asylum seekers, entered the chamber to disrupt proceedings and refused to leave. Council President Nelson had to call for their removal in order to get through the items on the agenda.

It’s ironic six protesters were arrested and charged with — trespassing!

Solution of Necessity

Seattle’s activist left, knowing nothing of her history, and willfully ignoring the values that motivate her work, disparage Nelson.

The activist left, fanning the flames of national politics through local advocacy journalism, are flexing their political muscle by attacking Nelson — despite the fact that she shares many of their values and is the kind of Democrat who built our prosperous state.

Reasonable alternatives to disrupting city council proceedings certainly exist. Let’s look at our immigration laws and propose fixes which meet today’s needs.

A good reaction to Trump is to exemplify a well functioning city and state. Don’t forget Seattle’s social dysfunction hitting rock bottom in 2023. The city faced reality and elected another round of moderate leaders, which resulted in improved livability.

Sara Nelson has lead the turn for the better.

(Image / collage: San Francisco Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice. April, 1988)

More Summit