curated by Vee Hua 華婷婷
(This article is reprinted with permission from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and Reagan Jackson. Read the full “Reimagining Black History Month” series on FrontPorch.Seattle.gov. Stories and profiles will be added throughout the month.)
Victoria Santos is a cofounder of the BIPOC ED Coalition of Washington State, a multicultural, cross-sector collaborative of 200+ Black, Indigenous, and People of Color nonprofit leaders working in solidarity to promote wellness and restore resources in our region’s communities. She is also the director of the Center for Healing and Liberation, a home for transformative work, committed to the thriving of BIPOC community members and the liberation of everyone.
Continue reading Reimagining Black History Month: Victoria Santosby Reagan Jackson
(This article is reprinted with permission from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and Reagan Jackson. Read the full “Reimagining Black History Month” series on FrontPorch.Seattle.gov. Stories and profiles will be added throughout the month.)
The earliest memory I have of celebrating Black History Month was in the fourth grade. I attended a predominantly white school in Middleton, Wisconsin. One day, my mom noticed my backpack was much heavier than usual. She asked why I was taking so many books to school. I told her about the lesson from the day before where my teacher summed up Black history with one specific story, the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This was long before Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s excellent Ted Talk about the dangers of a single story, long before I’d taken any social justice classes or learned any language to label that moment for the reductive, misguided, oppressive experience it was.
Continue reading OPINION | Reimagining Black History Monthby Nacala Ayele
(This article is reprinted with permission from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and Reagan Jackson. Read the full “Reimagining Black History Month” series on FrontPorch.Seattle.gov. Stories and profiles will be added throughout the month.)
As a Joy Actualization Coach for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, I define joy as the internal sense of well-being, satisfaction, and contentment that is independent of external circumstances. For Black People, the necessity of prioritizing joy can be a hard sell. How are we supposed to be joyful in the face of viral Black death, police murders, racial, health, educational, and economic disparities that are driven by a white supremacist system, and the many other ways that the length and quality of our lives are diminished by white supremacy? During Black History Month, we do deep dives into historical trauma, tragedy, and oppression, all of which make it hard to consider joy as something that should be prioritized, much less as a tool for liberation.
Continue reading ‘Like Fine Wine, Black Joy Over Time’: The Necessity of Black Joy Narratives to Black Liberationby Ronnie Estoque
Last month, the City of Seattle awarded $2.8 million to support community-driven initiatives through the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods’ (DON) Food Equity Fund. Twenty-two community organizations received awards ranging from $75,000 to $150,000 to be used in various ways to offer opportunities to grow culturally relevant food and provide education around the importance of healthy meals. The awardees of this Tier 2 grant (a maximum of $150,000) funding are creating projects that will span from 15 to 24 months.
Continue reading Food Equity Fund Supports Intergenerational, Multicultural Food and Farm Projectsby Vee Hua 華婷婷
Home to individuals from a number of tribal nations, the Puget Sound region serves as fertile ground for conversations and movements towards Indigenous food sovereignty. While many definitions of food sovereignty exist, the Indian Education Division at the Montana Office of Public Instruction defines it as “the ability of an Indigenous nation or community to control its own food system and food-producing resources free of control or limitations put on it by an outside power (such as a settler/colonizer government).”
Continue reading Local Indigenous Food Sovereignty Efforts Uplift the Importance of Traditional Foodscurated by Emerald Staff
by Roberto Ascalon
(This article is reprinted with permission from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods Front Porch project. Read more works by Seattle poets and community members in the series “Reimagining Seattle,” at the official website.)
Content Warning: This article mentions some details about the killing of George Floyd.
Reading books to my son before bedtime taught me to cry well. For the first few years of my son’s life, I cried a lot. I mean really cried.
Those first few years I learned to cry without using all the muscles of my face. I’d get all pink-faced over his bedtime story and silently, silently, ever so silently take a single deep head-nodding sob in between words. I felt like this big-ass bald-headed Quasimoto hunching beside his crib hissing, “Don’t look at me!” And it’s not because I don’t want him to see me cry. Quite the contrary — “I’m gonna teach that boy to cry if it’s the last thing I do! Muahahahaha!” No. That’s just a joke. It’s because watching your dad work out existential issues can be trying, and I believe in trying to reduce the amount of PTSD I dole out just before bedtime as much as I can.
Continue reading My Fearless Imagination, or How Reimagining Seattle Is a Question Better Asked of Firecurated by Emerald Staff
curated by Emerald Staff
Latinos in Tech, an initiative by the Latino Community Fund that provides networking opportunities for Latino professionals and students in the technology industry, is seeking high schoolers interested in learning how to blog for their Youth Inspired Blogger Bootcamp!
From Latinos in Tech: “This project aims to share the stories of Latinx & BIPOC folks in STEM in order to make these fields more accessible to our community. This will be an opportunity for youth to network with professionals and gain experience writing for publication.”
The deadline to apply is Oct. 6 at 11:59 p.m. This is a paid position.
To apply for the Youth Inspired Blogger Bootcamp, complete the online form. For more information about the program, contact jlira@latinocommunityfund.org.
Continue reading NEWS GLEAMS: Youth Opportunities in Blogging & Maritime, Zoning Survey for RBHS
