Partner news! Awards, Acknowledgements, and Updates (August 2021)
News & Updates
Read: Nourishing a community garden with restaurant compost featuring New Economy Washington Frontline Community Fellow Restaurant 2 Garden project.
Read: Community Groups Urge Focus on Disease, Not Just Symptoms of Gun Violence featuring quotes from CHOOSE 180 Executive Director Sean Goode:
“We have to be more intentional with our dollars and begin to resource communities to grow and develop and provide them with the infrastructure necessary to live healthy and free of this disease,” Goode said.
Read: Africatown Community Land Trust and the City of Seattle announce a new partnership to open a new 125 room enhanced shelter at the former Keiro facility:
“This is an unprecedented opportunity to harness community rooted expertise with support from the City of Seattle to make the former Keiro facility a home and hub for community members experiencing houselessness due to displacement and disconnection from life sustaining and enhancing social supports and resources that are critical for one’s well being. It is well known that African American’s are disproportionately overrepresented among those experiencing houselessness due to compounding factors of systemic anti-Black racism, policies and practices. Additionally, there has also been a lack of resources directed to Black-led organizations to effectively address the root causes of these conditions from a culturally responsive approach,” said Wyking Garret, President and CEO of Africatown Community Land Trust.
Read: Reset Seattle’s economy for the shared prosperity of all by Seattle Foundation’s Civic Commons Architect Michael Brown:
The coming weeks and months present a once-in-a-generation opportunity to revisit our region’s values and priorities, to collaborate on a vision of the “normal” we want to achieve moving forward. Shared prosperity — the idea that we all do better when we all do better — must be central to the way Greater Seattle charts its path to recovery.
Read: UTOPIA Provides Resources, Cultural Empowerment for Queer & Trans Pacific Islanders in the South Seattle Emerald:
“Our work is to address both the basic safety of our community and the systems and policies and beliefs that make us unsafe,” said [Executive Director, Taffy] Johnson.
In this way, UTOPIA approaches support from a vantage point of both tangible resources and access to opportunity. But also from the angles of decolonization and community healing work that can begin to address the deep-seated biases and ideological harms at the root of unjust policies.
Read: DREAM AWAY: WASHINGTON DREAM ACT COALITION IS LED BY AND FOR UNDOCUMENTED YOUTH:
“We wanted to make sure undocumented youth were at the center and were the ones coming up with these solutions because as the campaign evolved for the State Dream Act, there were many times that allies were willing to compromise just to get a bill passed,” said Corona.
The goal was to create a statewide coalition that could advocate without compromise for undocumented youth. Padilla, Corona, and others began connecting over Facebook and organizing their shared actions through the social media platform. Through a variety of organizing tactics, they were able to work with lawmakers and present the case for DACA over the next five years. The Washington State Dream Act was finally passed in the spring of 2014.
Awards & Acknowledgements!
National Trust Awards $3 Million in Grants to 40 Sites to Help Preserve Black History - including Byrrd Barr Place and Firestation 23.
Othellobration Photo © 2018 by Danielle Elliott. All rights reserved.