Seattle official hired transgender stripper for homeless conference — and there's video

A Seattle-area official has been placed on administrative leave after a conference that she hosted to combat homelessness featured a transgender stripper who twerked on attendees as entertainment.

From the Seattle Times:

Performer Beyoncé Black St. James danced topless in a sheer bodysuit, gave lap dances and kissed attendees, according to a staffer at a local housing nonprofit who attended the conference in South Seattle.

The performance was in the same room as a catered lunch at All Home's annual conference, this year at South Seattle College with the theme of "Decolonizing our Collective Work."

In response, Kira Zylstra — acting director of All Home, the agency that manages the homelessness in King County, Washington — was disciplined last Thursday for hosting the perverse entertainment, the Times reported. Local journalist Erica Barnett first reported Zylstra's suspension.

A staffer who spoke with the Times told the newspaper that "no one expected" the transgender stripper to show up and that the entertainment made attendees "uncomfortable."

Former Seattle City Council candidate Christopher Rufo, now an editor at City Journal, said the incident is emblematic of systematic problems in Seattle's government.

"As the video shows, the programming has nothing to do with helping people on the streets — it's about affirming a radical ideology that puts identity politics above solving real problems," he wrote on Twitter. "For years, Seattle has claimed that it 'needs more resources' to solve homelessness, but as the video shows, they find it totally appropriate to pay for a transgender stripper to grind on members of the region's homelessness nonprofits and taxpayer-funded organizations."

Officials declined to comment further, and are investigating the incident, the Times reported.