Seattle City Council member thinks ‘Jungle’ needs new name

Words are important and, with that in mind, Seattle City Council member Sally Bagshaw would like people to stop calling the illegal homeless encampment located under I-5 as the “Jungle.”

“The last number of weeks, we have been talking a lot about the greenbelt,” she said during a council meeting Tuesday. “It used to be known to us as the Jungle, but words matter and, as someone pointed out to me, there are people living under there that are not getting the kind of attention they need and deserve.”

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The council agreed on a non-binding resolution that no one should be removed from the homeless encampment before they are contacted by an outreach worker and given options for housing and care. And Bagshaw, who sponsored the resolution, left out any reference to the Jungle, referring to the area as the “I-5 East Duwamish Greenbelt.”

But KIRO Radio’s “Ron and Don” aren’t sure that new title rolls off the tongue in quite the same way.

“We do have a call into Slash from Guns N’ Roses and they’ve agreed to change the song, ‘Welcome to the Jungle’” Don O’Neil joked. “They are going to change the words to ‘Welcome to the I-5 East Duwamish Greenbelt.’”

Of course, Axl Rose and Slash might have to expedite the new tune, as they will most certainly have a different KIRO Radio host working on a new hit.

“They’ll be lucky if Dave Ross doesn’t beat them to it first,” O’Neill said. “He just came out with ’Chokelahoma.’”

No matter who gets to the song first, O’Neill said he is happy to see that Bagshaw acknowledges that choosing words carefully is important — something that wasn’t the case during the Seattle arena backlash.

“I wonder if she realized that when she was talking about us to a national publication recently?” he said. “Did she remember that words mattered then?”

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