Voices

OPINION: More Will Die From Covid Without Meaningful Change to Health Care

by Asqual Getaneh, MD

In February 2020, International Community Health Services (ICHS) was the first of the nation’s nearly 1,400 federally qualified health centers — serving 30 million people, most of them low-income immigrants and refugees — with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis.

Our staff have seen the tragic costs of a pandemic that has infected more than 100 million people worldwide and claimed more than 2 million deaths. So, when the first doses of the Moderna vaccine rolled through our doors on Dec. 23, we felt ready.

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News

Port of Seattle Grants $1 Million to South King County Cities and Organizations

by Mark Van Streefkerk

Earlier this month, the Port of Seattle Commission approved funding of more than $1 million in grants to cities and 14 organizations in South King County. The Economic Development Partnership Program allocated $930,000 to South King County cities to help boost economic recovery for communities most impacted by COVID-19, including small businesses. Through the Port of Seattle environmental grants, 14 organizations will receive up to $20,000 for almost $218,000 in total. 

The recent funding is part of the Port of Seattle’s larger commitment to invest $10 million over five years through the South King County Support Program, partly to help offset environmental impacts on near-airport communities and now to aid in COVID-19 recovery. Port programs are supported through 1.2% of tax paid by King County property owners.

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Features

OPINION: Why Local Jazz Must Survive

Story and photos by Glenn Nelson

If drummer D’Vonne Lewis isn’t the hardest working musician on the Seattle jazz scene, he is, by all accounts, in the top 1%. Typically, he played two to three gigs per day, every day of the week. Lewis was so busy he even stopped practicing because, spending all his time playing live music, he, his ear, and his body already knew the drill. 

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic and performances started cancelling. 

“Oh man, this is getting ugly,” Lewis remembers thinking.

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Voices

Reflection: Home Is a Place Called Kubota Garden

by Marcus Harrison Green

(The following is adapted from a presentation given as part of Town Hall Seattle’s Spirited Stone event. The event, which featured Shin Yu Pai, Charles Johnson, and Nathan Wirth, can be viewed here.)

As a lifelong Seattleite (a lifelong South Seattleite, actually), I was asked to share what Kubota Garden means to me. Now that’s a pretty simple question — with a very hefty answer, given my relationship with the garden that has ranged from when I was a teenager to today.

Throughout that time, Kubota Garden has epitomized the most powerful one-syllable word in the English language. 

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News

Hugo House Director Departs, but Writers of Color Alliance Says Demands Unmet

by Andrew Engelson

Responding to a strike and campaign by more than 200 writers of color and members of the community, the Seattle nonprofit writing center Hugo House announced on Friday that its Executive Director Tree Swenson is stepping down. The campaign began in July of 2020 in response to what the Writers of Color Alliance (WOCA) says is a long term, persistent pattern of structural and systemic racism, tokenism, performative statements, lack of equity in pay, and a failure to provide a welcoming space to all races. Leaders of the strike by more than 180 writing teachers at Hugo House welcomed the departure of Swenson and the announcement that the organization’s development director position would be reopened to a competitive hiring process.

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Features

Shape Our Water: Shelagh Brown, Reconnecting Communities With Nature

by Ben Adlin

Shape Our Water is a community-centered project from Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) and KVRU 105.7 FM, a hyperlocal low power FM station in South Seattle, to plan the next 50 years of Seattle’s drainage and wastewater systems. Funded by SPU, the project spotlights members of local community-based organizations and asks them to share how water shapes their lives. Our latest conversation is with Shelagh Brown, a member of the Alphabet Alliance of Color. 

Shelagh Brown won’t reveal her secret hideaway. All she’ll say is it’s a nearby lake with a lone public entrance, where the water is clean and powerboats are forbidden — a little slice of paradise. She’d like to keep it that way.

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News

The Morning Update Show — 2/19/21

The Morning Update Show — hosted by Trae Holiday and The Big O (Omari Salisbury) — is the only weekday news and information livestream that delivers culturally relevant content to the Pacific Northwest’s urban audience. Omari and Trae analyze the day’s local and national headlines as well as melanin magic in our community. Watch live every weekday at 11 a.m. on any of the following channels, hosted by Converge Media: YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Periscope, and whereweconverge.com.

We also post the Morning Update Show here on the Emerald each day after it airs, so you can catch up any time of day while you peruse our latest posts.

Morning Update Show — Friday, Feb. 19

#FeelGoodFriday | Comedian Mark Curry LIVE | J Topspin LIVE | Carlos Imani LIVE | Taste of the Caribbean | Food Fri-Yay!

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Voices

Day of Remembrance 2021: Another Time, Another Place

by Stanley N Shikuma

Executive orders have been in the news a lot lately. Did you know there have been over 15,000 executive orders signed by 46 presidents in the history of the United States? More than 3,700 were signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) alone. Yet how many of those executive orders do you remember by number? 

The only one I can think of is Executive Order (EO) 9066. 

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Amplifying the Authentic Narratives of South Seattle