About Us

Joel Merkel has over 14 years of public service working in the U.S. Senate and King County Prosecutor’s Office.

He has served as Legislative Counsel for U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, carrying out oversight over multiple federal agencies. Merkel coordinated with the White House, other Congressional offices and constituent groups in carrying out this oversight, which include complex investigations into the causes and impacts of the 2008 financial market crisis and development of policy and legislative responses, including drafting and negotiating sections of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.

In the King County Prosecutor’s Office, Merkel has tried dozens of domestic violence and sexual assault cases, working with victims, many of whom come from diverse and marginalized communities and often struggle with being thrust into the criminal legal system. He served on an office-wide Equity Action Workgroup to develop internal recommendations on criminal justice reform and racial equity.

Merkel utilized his policy background from work in the U.S. Senate to spearhead and lead an effort at the state legislature to expand drug treatment sentencing alternatives to incarceration for non-violent crimes in the state legislature, helping to draft the bill, working with stakeholders, and testifying before the legislature prior to passage of the bill.

Rev. Harriett Walden has been a vocal advocate for better police-community relations in Seattle since she co-founded Mothers for Police Accountability in 1990. She has been appointed to and served on numerous task forces and commissions that involve efforts to improve and heal community-police relations and to achieve greater transparency and accountability in the criminal justice system.

As a former Seattle Assistant City Attorney, former chair of the Seattle Human Rights Commission, and most of all the cousin of a formerly-incarcerated person, I bring a passion and experience that I am confident would serve the Commission’s crucial work. City Council appointed me to the Seattle Human Rights Commission and the members of that body later elected me its chair. In that role, I led the successful effort to end Seattle’s longtime practice of conscripting prison labor to clean homeless encampments. Outside my day-job as a labor and employment attorney, I served as pro bono counsel for the caucus of state legislators of color in New York, prevailing in litigation to open police disciplinary records to public disclosure against challenge from New York police unions.