Washington as a result of the internal audit findings, but the school was swept by broader currents in public higher education following the financial crisis of 2008, losing half of its funding as the state turned to austerity. In 2010, the center moved from Evergreen State to the South Seattle College.

There the campaign to close the school was renewed, this time by the Freedom Foundation, another wealthy nonprofit with ties to the Walton Family Foundation and the laissez-faire American Legislative Exchange Council. In 2014, the group filed two complaints against Laslett as the program’s director. One alleged illegal lobbying; the other that the center “us[ed] public resources for political campaigns” in violation of a public ethics statute. The latter charge referred to the participation of some 150 attendeesof a summer program hosted by the school in a union drive at Sea-Tac Airport. The union drive failed, but as summer turned to fall, the local workers center, Working Washington, in conjunction with a number of area unions and funding from the SEIU, put a $15 minimum wage on the local ballot. The law passed, spurring the movement for similar laws that has rolled through city and state governments in the past three years. In the wake of the victory, the Freedom Foundation accused the school of electioneering for the minimum wage increase, rather than picketing an employer to accept collective bargaining.

Rallying for union recognition is not a “political campaign.” In September 2016, the school was cleared of any wrongdoing. Yet the legal attack on the Seattle