The music community is flexing its political muscles at the Mirabeau Room in Lower Queen Anne. Organized as "Stop Your Sobbing" in response to a collective case of clinical depression for local Democrats following the latest presidential election, the organization has been holding political fundraisers at the Mirabeau, said Dave Meinert, part owner of the bar and a founding member of the group.
The latest fundraiser, this past week, was for Dwight Pelz, a King County Council member who is running for a seat on the Seattle City Council. But the Mirabeau Room has also hosted fundraisers for city council members Nick Licata, Richard Conlin and Jan Drago, as well as one for King County Council member Dow Constantine, Meinert said.
Stop Your Sobbing has two goals. One is to have the music community help elect "progressive candidates," he said of those who support social justice, education and health care, for example.
The other is to help progressive candidates who are pro-music, Meinert said.
But the political activism in a group not generally known for it goes back to the 1990s, when the music community organized to fight the poster ban, along with battling against the teen dance ordinance and the noise ordinance, Meinert said.
"And the music community ultimately won on all that," he added.
There were other battles as well. "We definitely wanted to get [Margaret] Pageler out because she was so incredibly anti-youth and anti-music," Meinert said of the defeated former city council member.
The music community also fought hard to get Greg Nickels elected as mayor instead of Mark Sidran, Meinert said. "That was a big win for us because Sidran was very anti-music." Nickels won the election by only 3,000 or so votes, said Meinert, who believes support from the music community helped swing the election.
Pelz agrees that the music community has the power to change things on the political front. "It's a vital industry and a viable constituency," he said, adding that those in the music scene have the ability to get voters out to the polls.
Pelz also said Seattle is trying to figure out what kind of city it wants to be. But displaying the political chops that makes him popular with Stop Your Sobbing, he worries that Seattle wants to "sanitize itself" by cracking down on the music scene.
Whether that's true or not, Meinert brought up an important point about political activism when he was interviewed for this story. "It's easy to get people motivated to fight [against] something," he noted. Getting people to fight for something is a different matter.
Meinert is hopeful the latter won't be a problem. He noted that the music community was able to marshal its members in an effort to get John Kerry elected as president, and the Mirabeau Room had a big party on election night. "It was packed, you know," he said of a crowd that included not only people from the music industry, but also many Democratic politicians.
"We lost the nationally," Meinert conceded. "But there's this great energy in the music community to be involved in politics like never before." The energy will come in handy because Seattle still has a ways to go to be both a business- and music-friendly city, he said.
"Getting a permit for a music festival is incredibly difficult," said Meinert, who added that getting liquor licenses for bars like the Mirabeau is also a major hassle.
Part of that has to do with growing pains, he believes.
"We're promoting urban density, which I'm all for," he said, "but we need to balance the interests of the residents and the business community."
The growth often brings conflict when, for example, 20 people move into a downtown neighborhood and complain about club noise because they want to go to bed at 9 o'clock at night, Meinert said.
"If people want to live in neighborhoods without businesses, they shouldn't move downtown," he groused.
"I think we're dangerously close to driving out bars and clubs in Seattle," Meinert said. That's probably a bit of a stretch, but he believes a politically active business and music community can help make sure that doesn't happen.
"We need these places," he said of bars like the Mecca Café across the street from the Mirabeau Room. "If the Mecca goes away, you lose a neighborhood meeting place."
Staff reporter Russ Zabel can be reached at rzabel@nwlink.com or 461-1309.
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