2023 Gift Drive! ~ Thank you donors, supporters, volunteers, CID and InterIm CDA
The Chinatown International District is one of the most impoverished communities in Seattle. InterIm CDA serves many of the neighborhood’s low-income, immigrant, refugee, Asian, and Pacific Islander residents through all our community-building programs and services. To further provide emotional and material support, InterIm initiated an end-of-the-year gift drive for our clients and community residents.
InterIm CDA and CID residents would like to thank our supporters for the many thoughtful gifts we received. We initially hoped to get 200 gifts for our gift drive; however, with our supporters’ help, we could provide 441 clients and residents with gifts. We would also like to thank the score of volunteers who helped to organize our holiday party and wrap, transport, and hand out gifts.
The gifts embraced and provided cheer for many of the recipients. We are grateful for those who participated in this effort to make the holiday season and New Year good for our community.
We want to thank the following companies and individuals for providing gifts to this project:
- Marpac Construction
- Enterprise Community
- Gates Foundation’s Gates Asians in Philanthropy Employee Resource Group
- Expedia Group Volunteers in partnership with Asian Community at Expedia
- Starbucks Pan-Asian Partner Network
- ProvidenceSwedish
- Sound Transit
- King County Metro Transit
- Walsh Construction Company
- Site Workshop
- International District Emergency Center
- Mai and Rob Ketcherside
- Elaine Ikoma Ko
- Leslie Morishita
- Teresa Woo
- Elaine Ishihara
- Family of Carl and Marie Ooka
- Mercedes Luna
- Ann Kawasaki Romero
- Liana Woo
- Vivian Chan
- Valerie Pang
- Sharon Tomiko Santos
- Ken Daffon
- Anca Boldan
- Lynette Seigafo
- Sarah Mac
- Peter Kim
- Jilian Carlo (for Jaysen and Qilian)
- Anhkhoa Lam (for Alfred)
- Gary Lee
- Erin Shigaki
- Cindy Domingo
- Erin Demmon
- Sharon Maeda
- Delight Roberts and Ethan Im
- And several anonymous folks
Caption: On December 10th and 11th, InterIm Community Development Association and volunteers delivered gifts to Chinatown International District Residents.
Register for WILD (Wilderness Inner-city Leadership Development) Program Fall 2023!
Registration is open for WILD’s Fall 2023 term! WILD (Wilderness Inner-city Leadership Development) is a youth program that empowers youth of color (ages 14-18), primarily those who come from immigrant and refugee Asian Pacific Islander families, to learn about environmental justice and civic engagement. In our programming, youth will engage in leadership development, intergenerational community in the CID, and outdoor adventures while earning their choice of a $100 stipend or 20 community service hours for participating in the 10-week program. Our fall program will run from October 18 through December 14 and will meet on Wednesdays from 3-5pm and Thursdays from 4-6pm at 310 Maynard Ave S. For more information, please reach out to skili@interimcda.org.
Department of Neighborhoods Food Equity Fund grants InterIm CDA Danny Woo Garden and WILD $100,000
Department of Neighborhoods Food Equity Fund grants InterIm CDA Danny Woo Garden and WILD $100,000
Seattle – The City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods (DON) has awarded the Danny Woo Garden in Chinatown-International District (CID) and the Wilderness Inner-City Leadership program $100,000 through the Food Equity Fund to support intergenerational learning programs and infrastructure upgrades and repairs that will support community needs in the garden. The Food Equity Fund is a DON program whose purpose is to invest in community-led work that contributes to an equitable and sustainable local food system.
Specifically, this funding will support operations in the Danny Woo Garden in the following ways:
- Provide equitable and culturally specific food sources in the Danny Woo Garden for low-income, immigrant, refugee, Asian, and Pacific Islander elders in the CID;
- Provide intergenerational information sharing and learning between elders and API youth about food systems, food justice, and food security through the garden to maintain cultural and ethnic food traditions;
- Provide funds for infrastructure repairs to maintain sustainable food systems in the garden.
The Danny Woo Garden was created through community activism in 1975 and since then has been a vital source of food security and of maintaining culturally appropriate sources of food for low-income, immigrant, refugee, Asian, and Pacific Islander elders in the CID. Currently, 66 elderly residents utilize close to 100 plots in the 1.5-acre community garden. Over the years, the Danny Woo Garden has fed hundreds of elders. It has also improved their physical and mental health by providing space to be physically and socially active.
Funding will support programs that bring elders and youth together to learn about seed-to-plate practices, culturally specific recipes based on what gardeners have grown, the physical health value of maintaining a healthy diet of ethnic produce, and more. InterIm CDA’s youth program, Wilderness Inner-city Leadership Development (WILD), engages 40-100 low-income API teens ages 14-19 in year-round programming, and the Danny Woo Garden provides a live outdoor classroom for WILD programming that supports two tenets of WILD youth programming: Building intergenerational relationships between API immigrant elders and youth; and learning the value of an organic, culturally relevant garden’s place in a low-income BIPOC community food system.
Time spent together in the garden among elders and youth creates conversations and experiential information-sharing among generations around concepts of food justice in low-income immigrant and refugee populated communities. Youth gain a holistic understanding of how critical it is for underserved, immigrant communities and individuals to grow what they eat and have access to healthy, organic, culturally relevant, sustainably grown produce.
“Our vision for food equity and sustainability is to honor what our CID community of immigrants and refugees has given up when they’ve left their home countries, usually out of necessity, by giving them space to hold onto their cultural food practices,” said Pradeepta Upadhyay, Executive Director of InterIm CDA. “We also want to ensure this knowledge is passed down to younger generations. We want these culturally unique ties to the land and growing practices to continue here in the CID. This is why we’ve created infrastructure in the garden to support a learning environment for youth.”
Funding will also support much needed infrastructure repairs and ongoing maintenance in the culturally and ethnically responsive garden including for the pig roast pit, chicken coop, one toolshed, the outdoor cookery, maintaining a seed library to offer free seeds to the CID community and garden visitors, cisterns, a boardwalk that allows access to the garden plots, flower beds, and fences and handrails necessary for safety of the elders.
“The garden gave the land back to the old folks who left it in the old country to strike it rich here. They never realized how much they missed the earth,” wrote Bob Santos in his memoir, Humbows Not Hotdogs, about seeing how the creation of the Danny Woo Garden gave back to the elders in the CID and how much they’ve used the garden. This funding helps support this legacy in the CID.
For more information on all awardees, see the DON press release.
Contact: jwasberg@interimcda.org
47th Annual Pig Roast Volunteer Recruitment
47th Annual Pig Roast: July 21 and 22
Summertime’s in the air – and in the CID! Which means the pig roast is coming up! Join us on July 21 and 22 for the 47th annual pig roast. Volunteer registration for the pig roast is now live; see shifts here. We roast the pig all night long Friday into Saturday morning will be in need of help all 24 hours. Contact volunteer@interimcda.org for more information. And come one come all for the Friday community gathering with food and drinks and enjoying the garden. We can’t wait to see you and catch up with you all!
Special thanks to Enterprise Community Housing for their support of the pig roast!
Coalition of CID partners celebrates approval of north and south stations as preferred alternative, reducing risk of community displacement
PRESS RELEASE For immediate release
Thursday, March 23, 2023
PRESS CONTACTS:
Christina Shimizu, Executive Director, Puget Sound Sage, 206-552-5508, chrissy@pugetsoundsage.org
Derek Lum, Advocacy and Policy Manager, InterImCDA, dlum@interimcda.org
Nina Wallace, CID Coalition, 360-305-0160, cidnohotel@gmail.com
Coalition of CID partners celebrates approval of north and south stations as preferred alternative, reducing risk of community displacement
WHAT: The Sound Transit board has approved the north and south stations for the West Seattle and Ballard Link Extensions (WSBLE) project that Coalition of CID partners have advocated for.
Chinatown International District, Seattle, King County –
After a long and difficult fight to choose a preferred alternative, the Chinatown International District (CID) Coalition, Puget Sound Sage and InterImCDA are celebrating a major victory for securing the future growth and development of the CID neighborhood to be equitable, affordable, and a sustainable place for immigrants and working class communities of color to live and thrive for generations to come.
The coalition’s fight for a station location is rooted in the vision to maximize opportunity for equitable transit-oriented development, provide great transit options, stop the acceleration of gentrification, and for the survival of a community that has struggled for decades from racist policies and land grabbing encroachment. This decision is a critical step in acknowledging and repairing past harms.
“We extend our sincere appreciation to the Sound Transit board and staff, including Mayor Harrell, Executive Constantine and Council President Juarez for supporting north and south. We want to especially thank Councilmember Tammy Morales, for hearing our voices and concerns and being a vocal advocate against displacement and for inclusive transit oriented development,” said Christina Shimizu, Executive Director of Puget Sound Sage. “We are grateful for their willingness to listen and recognize the importance of our long-standing history and the need for access to regionally connected transit, affordable housing, and opportunities for culturally relevant equitable transit oriented development (eTOD) that do not accelerate gentrification pressures in the neighborhood.”
The CID Coalition, InterIm CDA, and Puget Sound Sage are committed to fighting speculative corporate development and displacement, and to ensuring that communities of color are centered in decision-making around transit and land use. “Good planning means something different for different communities,” Shimizu added. “A truly equitable and inclusive urbanism, and density done right, requires policymakers to listen to communities of color and trust that we know what is best for our neighborhoods.”
“InterIm CDA has been a community based organization serving the needs of the CID for 53 years,” said InterIm CDA Executive Director Pradeepta Upadhyay. “We endorsed the north and south station locations option after weighing the significant impacts on the CID and its property owners, businesses, community organizations, and residents. Based on our values, we believe this is the best option for the community. We thank the Sound Transit board for making the right choice, and look forward to working with the community and Sound Transit to make these options the best they can be for the CID.”
While the CID Coalition, Puget Sound Sage and InterIm CDA are celebrating this victory, they are also aware that their work is not done. The coalition plans to stay engaged and organized to ensure that the community benefits the most from the station: pedestrian improvements for walking and rolling, lighting, and wayfinding among other community benefits and mitigation connected to the light rail line as well as righting past harms. They will also advocate for a platform to connect Sounder to the South of CID station, expanded greenspace and protections for City Hall park, and access to culturally relevant, community based eTOD to provide much-needed affordable housing for the neighborhood.
“This win is only one step to repairing the harm and distrust in our communities, and the destruction that previous infrastructure projects have wrought on the CID,” said Monyee Chau of the CID Coalition. “The copious amount of labor that organizers have put in to protect our neighborhood is a testament to how deeply we all care for this community, and I have so much gratitude for everyone who helped us fight for this win. May we continue to make these conversations more accessible and inclusive of all the people that they affect, and move forward with collaboration and a commitment to ensuring that the Chinatown International District community remains a vibrant and thriving part of Seattle.”
About the CID Coalition:
The Chinatown International District Coalition is a grassroots, multiracial, multiethnic and multigenerational organization that works to promote social, economic, and environmental justice for low-income communities of color in the CID and Greater Seattle. They fight against displacement, gentrification, and the erasure of community history and culture.
About Puget Sound Sage:
Puget Sound Sage charts a path to a living economy in the South Salish Sea and Duwamish River Valley (greater Seattle) regions by developing community power to influence, lead, and govern. We ground our policies in grassroots organizing & community-based research with people directly impacted by systems of oppression and organizations serving BIPOC workers, their families and communities. Through the power of grassroots organizing, policy and advocacy strategies, and leveraging the influence of coalitions centering impacted communities, we have organized for and passed some of our region’s most exciting policies that promote climate justice, good jobs and equitable development in low-wage and people of color communities. Our campaigns and theory of change are rooted in intersectional economic & racial justice, which for us means organizing historically disenfranchised people and bringing them together to build power as a vehicle for social change.
About InterIm CDA:
InterIm CDA was created in 1969 and is a nonprofit affordable housing and community development organization based in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District (CID). Since 1969 InterIm CDA (ICDA) provides multilingual, culturally competent housing and community building services to those disenfranchised due to lack of English, low acculturation and poverty. Though historically ICDA’s focus was on the API community living in the CID, they currently serve about 5,000 unduplicated low-income limited English speaking individuals from Asia, Africa and America throughout the greater Puget Sound.
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Community-driven victory in the CID
On Saturday, Oct. 15 hundreds gathered in Hing Hay Park to celebrate King County’s announcement the day before that they would not be expanding services at the Salvation Army-operated shelter in SODO.
King County and Seattle opened the shelter two years ago without a word to the community or any kind of engagement or outreach. The community then recently learned the county was planning to expand it into a 5-block, low barrier 500-person ‘mega shelter’ with an RV parking lot, tiny house village, sobering center, and acute behavioral crisis center. Again, there had been no outreach the CID neighborhood about the expansion.
This became an issue of systemic racism the Chinatown-International District has faced time and time again. From I-5 splitting the neighborhood in half, to the construction of the Kingdome to neglect regarding public safety issues (why are the lights still off in the InterIm CDA parking lot under the freeway, Seattle City Light?), this was yet another example of, as InterIm’s statement to Seattle City and Council and King County Council said, “an intentional ploy to keep the poorest people of color down, to concentrate them in one small area away from whiter more affluent areas, and to pit them against each other.”
Initial community notification was started by Tanya Woo, Gary Lee, and Julie Neilson after they learned about it in a Public Safety Council meeting. Tanya then took the lead on uniting the community to push back against the expansion. Elders in the CID joined their efforts and marched in protest and testified at City of Seattle and King County Council Meetings to make their voices and concerns heard. InterIm CDA was the first of several agencies who publicly approved of the pushback and provided financial support of their efforts.
Activists planned a protest and rally to take place in Hing Hay Park on Saturday, Oct. 15. But before they could hold it, on Friday, Oct. 14, King County Executive Dow Constantine announced the expansion project was canceled due to our united efforts. What started as a protest turned into a celebration of community activism, community pride, and a reflection of those past and present who have continued to advocate for and protect the CID.
Photos by Randy Wo-Eng
InterIm CDA statement to Seattle City Council and King County Council on SODO shelter location adjacent to Chinatown-ID
The King County Regional Homelessness Authority says it stands for racial equity and social justice, however, their planned homeless megaplex next to the CID looks like an intentional ploy to keep the poorest people of color down, to concentrate them in one small area away from whiter more affluent areas, and to pit them against each other.
Stand up for racial equity and social justice! Learn more and take action: https://www.friendsofseattlecid.com/
For InterIm CDA’s letter to the Seattle City Council: To Seattle City Council regarding the planned homeless megaplex next to the CID
For InterIm CDA’s letter to the King County Council: To King County Council regarding the planned homeless megaplex next to the CID
Photos by Eugene Tagawa.
Celebrating National Voter Registration Day!
Did you know that tomorrow is National Registration Day? National Voter Registration Day is a nonpartisan civic holiday that commemorates our democracy and was first observed in 2012. Approximately 4.7 million citizens end up registering throughout our country on this specific day.For those that are registered to vote, this is the day where you can also update your information regarding to changes in your location, name, or even updating your own voter ballot signature. You can update your address online or by mail until 8 days before an election.
Many organizations and volunteers throughout the country have end up creating awareness for this day and we are in support of this day as well. To our Washingtonians who have not yet registered, feel free to register online, by mail, by print, or in person at your nearest county elections department. Registrations online, by print, or by mail can only be done until 8 days before an election. Be #VoteReady for #NationalVoterRegistrationDay!!Register to vote now:For Washingtonians: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/register.aspxFor non-Washingtonians: https://nationalvoterregistrationday.org/register-to-vote/
Soul Healing Festival
InterIm CDA is partnering with The Future Ancient to host the first ever Soul Healing Festival in the Chinatown International District!
20+ cultural artists and groups share their music, song, story and dance, 2 fashion shows, and 2 live bands bless us with their creative talents and beautiful lineages (4-8pm). We also offer free acupuncture, massage, yoga and Qi Gong to the people (1-4pm). After sundown, a movie in the park A Different Mirror: Resilience and Community Building in Seattle’s Chinatown International District (CID), in the heart of the CID, Hing Hay Park!
1-10pm at Hing Hay Park 423 Maynard Ave S.
4pm live-stream at www.TheFutureAncient.org
@theFutureAncient
Here is also the facebook page for the event : https://www.facebook.com/events/1136883250540342
