[HOST] Welcome to the city of Seattle's MLK Unity Day celebration,
January 16th, 2023.
Throughout the program, the Race and Social Justice
Initiative RSJI and Seattle Office for Civil Rights.
invite you to contemplate this question
How can the City of Seattle honor the legacy of Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
As we recover from the pandemic?
Today's program will include remarks from Mayor Bruce Harrell,
Councilmember Tammy Morales, and Seattle Office
for Civil Rights Interim Director Derrick Wheeler-Smith.
Musical gifts from Miss Josephine Howe
illuminated reflections from the youth of Young Women Empowered.
Y-WE
My name is Indigo.
I'm 16, I'm black, and I was born in Atlanta
and my mother was born in the Midwest and my father was born in Texas.
One thing that I think a gift of COVID brought
was kind of having to wake up to a lot of injustice
in our world, specifically around institutions that aren't great for
people of color, specifically African-Americans.
And I think that just knowing
that a lot of black people have that gift of resilience, who
really
empowered me and I felt very uplifted during that time,
having to live in a world where people have kind of forgotten about
that resiliency, specifically non people of color and still living
with the threats that were in COVID
but non people of color.
Not taking that seriously has been really challenging. For my ask
for Seattle is for them to be more open
to non-police centered legislation
and possibly funding more money
from the police into things like education
and affordable housing.
Songstress
Josephine Howell offers healing and inspiration.
Recorded from a Seattle studio stage dressed in an elegant ivory
outfit and gold trimmed head wrap, she sings in front of a black backdrop,
expressing love and compassion with every note and every gesture.
♪ Amazing grace ♪
♪ how sweet the sound ♪
♪ That saved a wretch like me ♪
♪ I once was lost ♪
♪ but now am found ♪
♪ Was blind but now I see ♪
♪ Through many dangers, toils, and snares ♪
♪ I have already come ♪
♪ It was grace that brought me safe thus far ♪
♪ And grace will lead me home ♪
♪ When we've been there ten thousand years ♪
♪ Bright shining as the sun ♪
♪ We've no less days to sing God's praise ♪
♪ Than when we first begun. ♪♪
My name is Athena.
I'm 19 years old and I use she/they pronouns.
I'm Vietnamese and I have lived in Seattle for my entire life.
So the pandemic was the most mentally
low and isolated and lonely I've ever been.
Like as long as I've been alive.
Because before that I had been doing all kinds of things,
seeing my friends every day, seeing my mentors every day.
I was very involved with climate activism.
I've been involved since I was in fourth grade.
And so in January of 2020, I took a break.
I was like, this isn't working,
so I need to do something bigger and do something better.
And I was feeling
like 2020 was going to be the year something big was going to happen.
And then the pandemic hit and everything shut down.
And so
I went from having all this stimulation and seeing all these people
to just being like completely inside with my two family members and Zoom.
So eventually I saw I was regularly in therapy, had been before,
but eventually my therapy session started phasing out because our schedules
got extremely busy and eventually we just stopped seeing each other
and my mental health went down.
And but even then, like, even without that access to therapy,
because I couldn't get into therapy because of how hard things were.
But even then, like my friends who hadn't been on therapy before
that, were doing even worse.
We would have conversations where they would tell me
about their struggles and I would be like,
You should talk to an adult, you should talk to a therapist.
They would be like, Well, I can't get on a therapy.
Get on therapy because I'm like,
on all these waiting lists and I just can't get in.
There just wasn't access or only so many therapy places.
Take Medicaid, that sort of thing. So
my ask for the city is that
there be more widespread access to therapy and mental health resources,
especially for young queer people, disadvantaged folks
in lower income communities and specifically people of color.
Derrick Wheeler-Smith is a
tall black man with broad shoulders and a commanding presence.
He is wearing round tortoiseshell glasses and a maroon sweater
with a long sleeve gray jacket with buttons.
He is standing in a long hallway in Seattle City Hall with wooden
shelves lining the wall on his right and metal walls on his left.
Hello, my name is Derek Wheeler Smith,
and I am the interim-director for the Seattle Office for Civil Rights.
I am the grandson of Leon and Ruby Flowers by way of Transylvania, Louisiana.
I am the grandson of Arthur and Erville Wheeler by way of Mineola, Texas.
I am the son of Doug Wheeler and Barbara Smith,
a native son to the Seattle area.
I'm the husband of Stephanie and the dad of Judah, Jaden and Jaelle.
I’m not self-made.
I'm actually ancestor made I'm family
made on land made Yaweh made.
I'm community made
and I'm super delighted
to be sharing space with each of you for Martin Luther King Jr Day.
This is a wonderful opportunity really, to pause and celebrate the powerful work
that many are leading and the impact felt across our beloved city.
Undoing the legacy of racism in the most real, tangible and practical
way is equity in social justice work.
Our engagements ultimately seek to awaken,
individualize, reveal, heal,
and then inspire folks to act differently.
We should celebrate that we are undertaking
the most transformative liberatory work for ourselves.
And the citizens we’re called to serve.
And I think that deserves us just taking a moment to snap it up.
I want to take a few moments to share with you
some of my learnings over the past few years.
Firstly, we recognize the trauma and stress that we as a society
have endured because of COVID 19.
We've had the collapse of our social structure and the crippling
of the economy.
And any time that America has a proverbial cold,
the ghettos and barrios of America contract pneumonia.
And as we continue to do the work of recovery and restoration, it's
so important that we continue to grapple with our country's oldest pandemic,
COVID 1619
You see,
we're actually living in the imagination that some folks had over 400 years ago.
This idea notion of othering via racial and gender
superiority was imagined and then imagined into a structure.
And today, we are in an imagination battle,
one that demands that we create space for radical imagination
and enlist leaders who will dare to dream.
We live in this abundant world, but we've been told it's scarce.
And given these stories of scarcity, we're left to believe that
we must fight each other for resources which couldn't be further from the truth.
Scarcity says there isn't enough.
So all we see is need.
All we see is problems, deficiency and lack.
And this is what sparks competition for survival and creates
the conditions for violence.
We need the
kind of leadership that dares the staff to dream, to see what's possible,
and as a result begins to produce the kind of positive, thoughtful,
effective, productive, imaginative, vulnerable, centric, interdependent,
community minded leaders engaged in systems transformations.
Secondly, I've learned that
we have to be focused on building systems and structures of belonging
that increase agency for the persecuted and prevented groups in our city.
How do we recognize our interdependence across sectors and across domains?
We can't solve complex issues in isolation and effective solutions
to solving for these complex challenges can only happen
when we come together collectively to develop comprehensive strategies.
We have to move away from fighting each other.
This has to be about our collective humanity in a system that dehumanizes us.
I found that we do some
of the most awful dismissals and disposals of one another,
and I think we're skipping the step of decolonizing and unlearning.
So we've decided to punish
anybody who missteps, and that's become the new activism.
Our knee jerk call outs as a conflict resolution tool
where we have instant consequences with no process as transactional,
an avoidance of the real work.
And in the end, we only become a reflection of the toxicity.
We long to heal
Fact.
Guilt. Shame.
They're simply not tools of healing and restoration.
We need practices that are magnetic.
Toni Cade Bambara said we have to make the revolution irresistible,
and I don't think we arrive there by becoming a reflection of the toxicity
that we longed to heal.
We arrived there through cultivating belonging,
which is the ability to see the humanity in those that are not like us.
I don't have to be having your experience to acknowledge
that you are having an experience,
and so it's destroying the myth of us versus them,
which is such a key to creating a beloved community.
You know, this idea that we can create within ourselves
our movements and our work.
A deeper sense of connection, forcing us to lean into new possibilities.
We have an opportunity to redefine this notion and idea of who we,
the people, are.
We have an opportunity to widen the circle of human concern.
The last thing I've learned
is that it's impossible, really, to serve people,
I believe that you don't love and I feel like the last few years
this has been such a revelatory thing for me.
And so how do we then marry love and power?
I believe as essential to our success, because power without love is
reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.
Love implementing the demands of justice is true power and power
correcting everything that stands against love is justice.
This is what widens the circle of human concern
and builds beloved community.
And it's in that spirit that I would like to invite you to listen as we introduce
Seattle City Council member Tammy Morales and the mayor of Seattle, Bruce Harrell,
who have both continued to dedicate throughout their careers,
pushing forward what is possible in our great city.
Thank you for joining us today as we celebrate and remember the legacy
of the greatest American hero, Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Hi. My name's Jory.
I'm 17, I'm white, and I grew up in Hawaii
and Missouri.
In January 2020, I was admitted for a long term inpatient stay.
I turned 15 and I did online school.
I was completely blocked from the outside world.
I was discharged.
I was excited to see the new world.
Once COVID started, I was back to the same isolation, but none of the same support.
My family was living below the poverty line
and I only had a few options for outpatient support.
And over the past two years I was hospitalized three times.
COVID has caused a mental health crisis.
Teens and kids are losing a sense of belonging.
There's a lack of mental health support.
There's an overflow of need for inpatient, but not enough beds
staff therapists to help adolescents.
If you ask a teen who's been hospitalized,
you'll hear a story of someone who was sent home after days in the E.R.
because there just wasn't enough room.
My ask for Seattle is to focus on helping and supporting mental health staff
and spreading awareness on how to get the help you need.
Councilmember Morales is
a Mexican-American woman with brown skin,
shoulder length, dark brown, wavy hair, and wise brown eyes.
She delivers her remarks from the council chambers at City Hall,
dressed in a black, buttoned down blazer and yellow blouse, rows of black leather
and brown wooden seating can be seen in the background of the large room.
Hi, neighbors. I'm Tammy Morales.
I represent the CID and South Seattle on the Seattle City Council.
Thank you so much for inviting me
to the MLK Junior Unity Day and RSJI Summit.
This summit is an important reminder of the work we must strive to do
every day to create the beloved community that the
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr sought.
The principles of RSJI undoing racism, analyzing power,
learning from our history and others are similar to the principles
that guide my office as the Seattle City
Councilmember representing the city's most diverse district,
I'm guided by the principles of repairing the harm done by the city
to our black and brown communities by democratizing access
to power and resources and planning for the seventh generation.
The RSJI initiative is crucial to the work of the city.
If we can create a culture of racial equity in our city departments,
we can use that racial equity lens
to do all of our city work to best serve Seattleites.
I really appreciate the theme of this year's summit centering
racial equity in a pandemic recovery.
In 1967, the
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King described how communities of color are,
and I quote, “perishing on a lonely island of poverty
in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”
End quote.
Over 50 years later,
black and brown communities around our city are still fighting
for the same opportunities and access to care as their white counterparts.
During the past three years, many of our communities have seen
and experienced the catastrophic effects of COVID, whether it was losing income
or housing, or having inadequate access to health care.
There isn't a single aspect of our daily lives
that was not impacted by the pandemic.
My first year in office was 2020.
Every year since I've heard from hundreds of constituents in my district
about the toll that this pandemic has taken on their lives.
Families who were living paycheck to paycheck
and didn't have the space to social distance.
When one person in the house got sick.
Frontline workers
who had to keep showing up despite their risk for exposure to COVID.
And I heard from many small business owners
desperate to keep their employees on staff but who couldn't pay them
when there were no customers.
And many of these entrepreneurs don't speak English
and had a hard time accessing emergency resources.
As we work to recover from this pandemic,
we must remember that communities of color suffered first.
They suffered worse and they will suffer the longest
unless we take every step
necessary to ensure that they're not left out of the recovery models.
Two priorities for me are
building community wealth and ensuring community wellness.
The first example I have is the Comprehensive Plan update
as we move into discussions about our comprehensive plan.
We should prioritize using a racial equity lens in determining our growth strategy.
Research has concluded that the urban village growth strategy
that we've been using since the nineties has led
to massive displacement of black and brown people in this city.
Let's ditch it.
There are better ways to shape our neighborhoods
that can increase black homeownership
and ensure that everyone can afford to stay in their community.
Another example is to invest in place based community wellness.
This means increasing infrastructure, sidewalks, parks
and allowing for a mix of essential goods and services in every neighborhood.
Communities of color,
our black and brown Neighborhoods in North Seattle, in South Seattle
and West Seattle have suffered long enough from being under-resourced.
Using a racial equity lens.
We can increase community wellness by providing safe, healthy places
for people to live, work, pray, and play.
That's how we build a beloved community.
That's how we ensure that a recovery brings prosperity
that is shared by everyone.
The Race and Social Justice Initiative challenges us
as public servants to redefine the kind of city we want to be.
The type of future we want to build for our children
and the kind of communities we want to create for our elders to be safe.
For me, the answer is a just and equitable future,
and that takes each and every one of you.
That's why I've been working on an ordinance that would codify
our racial and social justice program
so that it's not just initiative, but actual city policy.
I want to thank you for your work.
I know it's not easy.
I know it can be emotionally exhausting.
And I want you to know that it is so important.
So take time to take care of yourselves and one another.
Step away when you need to.
And please know that our city will be better for the work that you're doing.
Thank you.
Hello.
My name is Sammy and I am 17 years old.
I'm Chinese-American and I'm from Manhattan, New York.
The one word that would describe my experience during
the pandemic was adaptation.
Moving across the country from Virginia was really difficult,
but I've gained a lot of new experiences,
and through that I found a community that supports me.
I've also gained insight into the world around me,
as well as finding my passion in health care and research.
My vision of a thriving city
is a place where it's clean, healthy,
safe and equitable.
Through my experience volunteering at the hospital,
I've seen patients not being able to fully recover due to insurance issues.
My ask for the city is universal health care for everyone.
City of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell
Hi, this is Mayor Bruce Harrell, and I'm standing in a conference room
in front of the city's corporate seal and the flag of the state of Washington
and the flag of the United States of America.
First happy Martin Luther King Jr Day.
And thank you so much
for joining this thoughtful discussion as we reflect on the teachings
and legacy of one of our nation's greatest leaders, the namesake of the county
we call home and recommit ourselves to his vision of justice,
opportunity, progress and fairness for all.
When I entered office one year ago, I challenged our city employees
and our entire city to embrace the concept of One Seattle, One Seattle
as a belief that we can do more when we work together, that
by aligning our shared values, our common goals,
we can inspire the best in one another and achieve the the change
we want to see it as a a vision for a city that embraces our diversity
as strength and rejects hatred and fear and distrust in all of its forms.
This belief has been embedded across everything we've done over the last year,
and I believe our city staff has set the example for our residents
by showing resilience and a commitment to moving forward in a new direction.
We in city
government must continue to do the work to operationalize equity,
to play big ball, not small ball, by removing barriers
to opportunity and driving tangible improvement in lives.
I believe so strongly in Dr.
King's empowering words that all labor
that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance
and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
So as public servants, we must be in the business of uplifting
our humanity, of leading with with love and compassion.
We must do it with purpose and a standard of excellence.
The Race and Social Justice Initiative
is a cause I've championed for years, and it's my highest priority
to help each resident reach their greatest potential.
As we realize Dr.
King's dream for an inclusive and welcoming city.
Now we know that the COVID 19
pandemic exposed and exacerbated
many inequities that were present in our society.
And as we think about our pandemic recovery as a city,
we need to look at how we can center equity across everything that we do
to build a city where everyone has the tools to succeed and thrive,
whether that means a access to a good job or education, support
for their business or city services and resources, we must be laser focused on
how we put equity into practice, not just on the paper.
This past year, the city of Seattle has made great strides
in to expand the programs and services
that are driving equitable outcomes for our communities and residents.
We came together with labor advocates to pass historic legislation
to improve equity in the cannabis industry so that communities of color
that were harmed by the war on drugs can access new opportunities.
We announced an
expansion of the city's award winning preschool program to increase access
to early learning opportunities for Seattle families ensure every child
is on a path towards a prosperous future.
We appointed our first members to the newly formed Indigenous Advisory
Council to strengthen the city's relationship with our tribal and urban
native communities and to rebuild trust and ensure their voices are heard.
Our fight against the climate crisis is focused on building community
resilience to extreme events like heat and smoke in neighborhoods most impacted.
We, as a city, received the global recognition at the C40 summit
for this work of building a community led climate movement with our Green New Deal.
And I was very pleased to accept that on the behalf of everyone in this room.
These are all amazing accomplishments, but we know that there's still more action
we can take to advance opportunity in our city and to reduce the barriers
to access and to help residents reach their full potential.
We cannot slow down in our efforts to put equity at the heart of everything
we we do. Instead, we must go further.
In 2022, I gave the first ever Equity Action
Award to the P-Patch program supervisor Kenya Fredie.
Now, Kenya has worked tirelessly to dismantle institutional racism
and provide access to community gardening for bipoc communities across the city
and she is a beacon of what we're trying to achieve with our One
Seattle vision putting equity in the action.
We know that Dr.
King's work is not complete.
We must keep striving and working towards his dream
of a just and inclusive society.
That's why the work that you all do with the Race
and Social Justice Initiative is so vitally important
as we continue to build the city that we all are proud to call home.
The issues in front of us are not easy.
They can be burdensome and taxing.
In the words of Dr.
King himself, change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability,
but comes through continuous struggle.
So I say thank you to each one of you for your willingness
to dive into this hard work and have the difficult
but necessary conversation to keep advancing equity in our city.
Together, we are building One Seattle.
Hi, my name is Soriya Moore.
I am 13 years old and I use she/her pronouns and I am asian , black and white.
COVID was a hard time for all of us not being able to see our family
and friends, technological problems and constant boredom.
My ask where the city is to host more community events
so we can engage with others.
♪ Lift every voice and sing ♪
♪ Till earth and heaven ring ♪
♪ Ring with the harmonies of liberty ♪
♪ Let our rejoicing rise High as the listening skies ♪
♪ let it resound loud as the rolling sea ♪
♪ Sing the song ♪
♪ full of the faith that the dark paths has taught us ♪
♪ Sing a song full of the hope that the present ♪
♪ has brought us ♪
♪ Facing the rising sun of our new day begun ♪
♪ Let us march on till victory is won ♪
♪ Stony the road we trod ♪
♪ Bitter the chastening rod ♪
♪ Felt in the days when hope unborn had died ♪
♪ Yet with a steady beat Have not our weary feet ♪
♪ Come to the place for which our fathers sighed ♪
♪ For we have come over a way that the tears have been watered ♪
♪ We have come treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered ♪
♪ Out of the gloomy past till now we stand at last ♪
♪ Where the bright gleams of our bright star is cast ♪
♪ God of our weary years God of our silent tears ♪
♪ Thou who has brought us thus far on our way ♪
♪ Thou who has by Thy might led us into the light ♪
♪ Keep us forever in the path we pray ♪
♪ Lest our feet stray from the places ♪
♪ our God where we met Thee ♪
♪ Lest our hearts ♪
♪ drunk with the wine of this world we forget Thee ♪
♪ Shadowed beneath Thy hand May we forever stand ♪
♪ True to our God True to our native land ♪
♪ So let us march on ♪
♪ till victory is won ♪♪
[HOST] Thank you for tuning in today
for this 2023 MLK Unity Day celebration.
You are invited to continue contemplating
how can the City of Seattle honor the legacy of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
As we recover from the pandemic.
Please join us as community on March
23rd and 24th at the RSJI Summit, where we will come together
to further dialog on how our work
can move ideas into action.
Thank you, Seattle.
Peace.
♪♪