It would seem that Andrea Suarez is only emboldened by opposition to her organization and its practices, which is invariably triggered by harm done to the unhoused people she purports to be helping. Given her long-established pattern of categorically denying every single atrocity she’s ever been accused of, and retaliation against those who attempt to provide this critical feedback, we’ve dropped all pretense that she might just be misguided while still meaning well.
Oddly, while Suarez seems perfectly content to reject the contents of any and all complaints, she’s seemingly greatly concerned about the fact that complaints exist, and what people may think of her as a result. In the early days of We Heart Seattle, it was not uncommon to find her in one neighborhood forum or another, engaged in round after round of defense against a common set of allegations regarding the impact of her “cleanup” efforts, and her lack of integrity for steadfastly refusing to listen to critical feedback about it. It was not unusual to find these threads peppered with dozens of replies from her that were all posted inside of a single evening, while still somehow managing to avoid addressing any of the criticism.
Besties with the baddies
Fast forward to the present day and Suarez’s online persona is primarily dedicated to grandstanding for her org by supplying an abundance of poverty porn to We Heart Seattle followers on various social media networks, which feature photographs and videos of unhoused people in their worst moments that also often lack the capacity to provide consent. She’s made friends with other similar bottom-feeding grifters including the likes of Ari Hoffman, Jonathan Choe, Brandi Kruse and David Preston, all of whom have a substantial enough online following to fully nourish themselves on a steady diet of the conflict they incite. They frequently champion deeply right-wing political views while insisting that they are moderates or even left-leaning democrats, and they are not the slightest bit shy about expressing their grotesquely bigoted points of view, often manifesting in the form of disdain towards the impoverished. Naturally these ghouls are met with strong opposition, but pity the objector who unwittingly exposes their identity in the process because they especially love a good doxxing, and will even join forces to work as a single cohort of doxxing harassers in a coordinated attack.
Given who her teachers are, it should come with no surprise that Suarez defaults to similar tactics in the face of conflict these days, and rather than spend an evening defending herself against criticism she has no intention of addressing, she often wastes no time in calling upon her band of flying monkeys to do the dirty work for her instead.
Sorry, not sorry
Earlier this month, Suarez offered to help an unhoused Seattle resident living in his bus, to get home to California to take care of his mother who is dying from cancer. The 1300-mile journey, which he would make driving the bus he’d been living in for the last several years, would easily cost north of $1k just for gas alone. Suarez has financed enough cross-country road trips in her tenure with We Heart Seattle to be fully cognizant of what this might cost.
When the man ran out of gas a few hundred miles north of his final destination and asked Suarez for another cash infusion for the home stretch, Suarez said no, leaving him stranded in a very small town with little to offer in the way of services, and knowing full well that he lacked any other means to get home.
Hope you’re not too miffed
Word of this reached a local network of social workers and mutual aid volunteers who are active in supporting Seattle’s unhoused communities, and a social media campaign to crowd fund the rest of the man’s travel costs was launched. Suarez was simultaneously put on blast for her reprehensible behavior.
Her knee-jerk response to having been called out was to post a succession of screenshots publicly on Twitter that contained his full name where others had been careful up to that point to mask such highly sensitive data. When subsequently called out for doxxing, she claimed that anyone could have typed in his Venmo alias to find out his real name, and his Venmo alias had been shared publicly on Twitter. She then attempted to gaslight folks with a false narrative asserting that it was actually the person accusing her that was guilty of doxxing rather than herself.
Then came the flying monkeys.
Just after the gaslighting attempt, Suarez called in her band of flying monkeys and straight away, things got ugly. Ari Hoffman predictably dug up the man’s criminal history and spun it to sound much worse than it actually is, and then proceeded to equate the man’s (minor) criminal offenses to a slough of negative qualitative character judgments such as being a drug-addicted scammer who was lying about the cost of the travel home in order to make a buck off of the people who were innocently trying to help him. David Preston made a similar move, and while it’s unclear as to whether he came upon the criminal history data on his own or by way of Hoffman, the chain of custody doesn’t really matter given that both men are notorious for doxxing people in this manner and there is no question that both of them would have independently made the same effort to expose the man’s legal history.
Brandi Kruse and Jonathan Choe amplified this propaganda through their respective channels and it wasn’t long before it was a primary topic of discussion amongst several Seattle-based online communities that were founded upon their shared hatred for homeless people and desire to further persecute them.
Doxxing is illegal under Washington state law
Washington state passed anti-doxxing legislation in May of this year, and as of July 23rd, the bill became officially enacted into law and doxxing, such as what Suarez, Hoffman, Preston, Kruse and Choe did in this instance, became broadly and explicitly illegal. Should there be any additional future harm brought upon the man as a result of the shark feeding frenzy that occurred at the expense of his sense of peace and right to privacy, legal action could be taken to bar any further direct harm by guilty actors, and seek a monetary judgment that would be inclusive of punitive fines against the perpetrators as well as compensation for any financial losses suffered because of the ordeal.
Specifically of note is that the argument Suarez made to justify her actions is not valid under the law.
It is not a defense to a violation of this section that the personal identifying information at issue was voluntarily given to the publisher, has been previously publicly disclosed, or is readily discoverable through research or investigation.
Washington House Bill 1335
It appears that the bad actors in this scenario have shifted their attention to doxxing activists attending anti-war rallies, which is equally as abhorrent, but we’re hopeful that this means there will be no further incident related to the instance cited here.
How do these people sleep at night?
The things people were saying about the man despite knowing absolutely nothing about him beyond the falsifications and disparagements from Hoffman, Preston, Kruse, Choe and Suarez were truly vile. It’s only through the saving grace of having to immediately focus on his mother’s health care when he arrived home that he didn’t have the time or attention span to get sucked into the goat rodeo. Hopefully he never has to see any of it.
Equally as shocking were the unique things each of them said in disparagement of the person who outed Suarez for abandoning the man, even though their insults were relatively tame by comparison to things they’ve said about them in the past.
Sadly, it’s unlikely that any of the bad actors involved will let a pesky little legality stop their harassment campaigns and therefore the behavior will probably continue until they suffer real consequences as a result of the new law.
