Operation of the Sound Transit light rail system has created a parking demand along Rainier Beach residential streets which was a foreseeable result of operating the rail line. Permits were granted for construction of the light rail stations with no provisions for park and ride lots to accommodate commuters driving to the train stations or mitigations for the subsequent parking impacts.

In the summer of 2009, the City of Seattle’s Department of Transportation established a Residential Parking Zone (RPZ 31) around the Henderson Light Rail Station with no request from or consultation with area residents, in violation of the Department’s own policies which required that residents request the installation of a RPZ. Resident request is needed because there is a fee assessed on every household within the RPZ for the resident parking stickers that allow for extended street parking. The City Council subsequently passed an ordinance that retroactively allowed the City to establish the RPZ’s along the light rail line without resident’s consent or even notification.

The cost of the RPZ’s around rail stations is clearly a Sound Transit operating cost. When rail service started two years ago, existing residents received parking stickers from the City paid for by Sound Transit. The City now sends parking enforcement officers to ticket low-income residents without stickers who are parked in front of their own homes. The City of Seattle has sent notification to households within the RPZ’s about plans to begin charging each household in the Residential Parking Zone 65 dollars for a resident parking sticker and 30 dollars for a guest parking pass, beginning in July 2011.

The bill for the costs of Sound Transit’s Light Rail parking impacts should be paid for by Sound Transit and not the current residents of Rainier Beach. According to recent census data, Rainier Beach has a large API community (over 30%) and a high prevalence of low or very low income levels (about 52%); not to mention a significant retired and senior citizen population. If the City of Seattle allows Sound Transit to send us the bill, its our community that will bear the cost. Please contact the City Council and the Mayor urging them to reverse their decision and make Sound Transit responsible for the cost of operating Light Rail.

Mayor Mike McGinn (206) 684-2489
Tim Burgess: (206) 684-8806
Jean Godden: (206) 684-8807
Tom Rasmussen: (206) 684-8808
Seattle City Council (206) 684-8888

Paul Lee
Rainier Beach Resident
Member of Rainier Beach
Stewardship Council

The Stewardship Council is dedicated to giving residents of Rainier Beach a voice in the community and meets monthly. The Stewardship Council’s monthly meetings are the fourth Wednesday of every month. The next one is coming up on June 22 from 6:30 -8 p.m. at Rainier Beach High School. For more information please contact us at (206) 322-3304 or e-mail rbstewards@gmail.com.

You are probably aware that with the firing of Ann Chan, who was head of human resources, there are no Asians or Pacific Islanders in the Central Administration. This is unacceptable because it does not reflect the diversity of Seattle where Asians and Pacific Islanders are the largest minority population as well as in the Seattle Public Schools.

It appears that Susan Enfield is not aware of Seattle’s diversity and such was the case of her predecessor until she hired Ann Chan. The Seattle Public Schools will be better served to open the position of Superintendent to recruit and hire someone who is aware of Seattle’s diversity and the needs of its immigrant and refugee communities. And with the Families and Education Levy on the ballot, the Asian and Pacific Islanders communities want to be assured that the educational needs of our children will be addressed by a Superintendent and a Board who are aware of our existence.

Frank Irigon

The IE welcomes all comments. Send your inquiry or Letter to the Editor to editor@iexaminer.org.

In International Examiner Volume 37, No. 11 (June 2, 2010) issue, in Michael Yee’s column, “What’s in a Name?”, he refers to Nihonmachi or Japantown as one of the names used for Seattle’s Asian ethnic neighborhood. Who refers to this district as if it exists today?

There was a Japantown prior to Dec, 7, 1941. Japanese shops and business saturated the area door-to-door from 1st Ave. to 14th Ave. between King St. to Yesler Way. This is clearly indicated in K. Ito’s “Issei” and the photos on file at the State Archives or the Central Library.

The incarceration of Japanese Americans on Feb.19, 1942, led to the demise of Japantown, not only in Seattle, but elsewhere. The current existence of Japanese restaurants, plus Uwajimaya and Kobo at Higos are a poor description of a Japantown. International District or Chinatown? Yes.

Yukio Tazuma

We watched with repulsion the return of the “Bodies” exhibit to Seattle this fall. We are offended and disgusted at the disingenuous attempt to disguise the commercial displaying of human bodies as “education.” There are ways to educate the general public about the human body and disease without mining dead bodies for their shock value.

As Chinese Americans we have a millennia-old culture of showing respect to our dead. We are particularly sickened by the display of questionably acquired human remains displayed in seemingly “normal” activities. We live in an era where museum curators and educators are becoming more aware of the need to be respectful of other cultures, for example, in how we treat the bones and the burial sites of their ancestors. This sensitivity and respect should extend to the individuals whose bodies are being desecrated after their death by crass entrepreneurs who seek to gain financially by their demise.

We hope that before the public spends money on this disgraceful exhibit, they will ponder on these comments and ask themselves whether they would wish this fate on their family members or even their worst enemies.

Ron Chew
David Djang, MD
Eleanor Djang, MD
Lily Jung, MD
Brian Lock
Debbie Louie
Serena Louie
Connie So
Pei Pei Sung
Shin Ping Tu, MD
Dean Wong
Tina Young

We are dismayed that the organizers of the “Bodies: The Exhibition” have chosen to bring their exhibit back to Seattle. There are ways to educate the general public about the human body and disease without resorting to the mining of dead bodies from overseas for their prurient shock value. We are offended at the disingenuous attempt to profit commercially from human remains.

As Chinese Americans, we have a millennia-old culture of showing respect to our dead, a culture of respect that has been violated by “plastination,” and “staging” of these bodies for sensational display. This is desecration, pure and simple. We encourage others to think twice before choosing to spend their money to support this kind of sordid money-making enterprise.

Ron Chew

Lily Jung, MD

Debbie Louie

-Mark Lee

This is both racist and simplistic (“perhaps the man thought his slaves could process even more cotton”). The teacher (and Li, by extension) is making a generalization based on skin color: No white person could possibly be motivated by anything but greed and callousness. It’s like asking, “What Asian would do anything that didn’t fatten his wallet?”

In the post-racial Obama era, this kind of barely concealed racism—hate speech—is exactly what progressive newspapers and educators should be fighting against!

Sincerely,

Chiu Zhongliang

The letter written by Hieu Nguyen and Quynh-Tram Nguyen about the plan of the Vietnamese American community (Letter to the Editor, Sept. 2 – Sept. 15, 2009, Vol. 36, No. 17) to take a lead in American civics soon is one I have heard expressed only much more discretely in the past, and it was a fulfilling experience to read these gentlemen.

The prospect of the complicated, fierce, devoted, interesting, sometimes wild, occassionally treacherous Vietnamese community of Seattle’s Little Saigon getting intensely involved in politics, particularly locally is stirring and very exciting. They are an uplifting spirit.

What I would like to see is for the Vietnamese to cut out an identity for themselves, among the identity politics of minorities, that establishes an embrace of comprehensive, multiple partnerships, a leadership knowledgable not only about how they interact with other groups but how other groups interact with each other, a partnership identity with cultural integrity that avoids the special pleading note which dogs most grievance-centered constituencies, without misunderstanding those grievances, which are often legitimate.

Seeing the difficulty of assimilation has caused me heartbreak and grief. This has been an isolated, banished, doom feeling. When I heard that Mayor Nickels had only visited just this once, it infuriated me – pointing, I feel, to a disturbance of mind that often keeps me away from politics when possible due to the agonies of fury. After all those years of protests and leaflets, I have yet to see one of those awful kids from Capitol HIll make it a point of pride to get involved in Little Saigon. How that hurts me. I don’t mind telling you that I am still hostile, if non-violently so, about what Johnson and Nixon did. I am not amused by reconciliation speeches by American Nam Veterans, as though what we did by aborting their crazy, misconstrued war, was to hurt them and betray them, rather than bring them home and as many of you with them as we could bring.

I was thirteen years old as I watched the hell of the helicopter evacuations and every step of the way I saw it coming and knew it was the only outcome we were inviting, as all those moral loafers in the Pentagon knew. Both Johnson and Nixon simply prayed it could fall to the next guy as they lied through the teeth.

I am of course also terribly aware of what befell Vietnam in the guerrilla aftermath. I can understand some of them hating me. The iron box of madness left no way out and once so confined life doesn’t afford a lot of redemption.

It would relieve me of some of my lifelong pain and the ravages of tears and poetry I have shed over the crucible of Vietnam to see your spirits rise with the healing of rainforest vibrancy, because what the Vietnamese offer at their best comes from deep, deep inside. That is why writing poetry always comes so much more easily for me in Little Saigon than anywhere else in the world.

Vietnamese people, many of them, have lived pained, shell-shocked lives, but for a people who seldom make it their boast or their rallying cry, out of humility, they certainly do indeed know what love is. In my hopes to see Little Saigon become the Capitol of Seattle, I can only add that I also know what love isn’t. Resilience will work better than meanness, and because America has given every conflicted reason under the sun to the Vietnamese to hate us, it is an issue that needs to come out in the open. I have seen it myself walking alone with a placard in Little Saigon protesting the Iraq War. Some of the anger directed at me is a feeling that keeps me personally begging out of politics because I feel it, too.

Lead by what is best in you and you will not be defeated. Lead by the medium of enemies and you will be. You will take us all down, too.

Mac Crary

International District Resident

(Re: “Little Saigon Takes a Walk with the Mayor” (Aug. 5 – 18, 2009, Vol. 36, No. 15) by Quang Nguyen.

“People in media can help facilitate democracy or participate in its betrayal.”

—B.J. Bullert

On July 27th, something happened in Seattle’s Little Saigon that didn’t surprise anyone in the Vietnamese community. On that hot July day, Little Saigon received its ever first official visit by the Mayor of Seattle after two terms—a long eight-year in office. Election year politics played out in this “historic” visit. He was desperately looking for votes. Of course, his Vietnamese associates curried his favors by showing him around to get photo-ops and jockeying positions as “leaders” playing roles of “representatives” of the Vietnamese community. Desperate time brings desperate measures, none more evident than his showing in the primary results.

The Mayor down-your-throat push for gentrification of South Seattle, the International District, and specifically boxing Little Saigon into a corner had alienated and angered many. The failed Dearborn/Goodwill project is the focal point of contest between the Mayor, City Council of Seattle, Department of Planning and Development, and the Vietnamese at-large in Seattle and vicinities. Many unconcerned Vietnamese residents of Seattle and vicinities woke up alerting to the fact that their cultural and public space in Little Saigon was under threat of being overwhelmed by the out-of-scale, out-of-character urban regional mall to be built at the Goodwill site. This event has further enhanced the political awareness and involvement of the Vietnamese American community in the greater Seattle Area.

In the 30-plus years since Vietnamese refugees first settled in this area, politics and political involvement in this community have always been about exile, ethnic identity, human-rights, and anti-oppression (anti-Communism included). Communism as a political system is dead, in the trash bin of history since the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Communism became a relic banner, an empty shell for oppressive and dictatorship regimes exist in Vietnam and China. The corrupted, oppressive, mafia-liked Communist party of Vietnam ruled and exploited its people and resources for the benefits of their own gang. Vietnamese refugees have been and will continue to fight for freedom and democracy of their motherland, and simultaneously, they will fight for social justices and equality in a civil society at their local level.

It started in the year 2000 with small business owners along the Rainier Valley’s MLK Jr. Way organizing to voice their concerns about the impacts of the light rail construction on their livelihoods. That effort was key in sparking the creation of the $50 million Rainier Valley Community Development Fund. Where did the money go? Who benefits? The cronies of the Mayor or the real people who were impacted by this construction?

The community began to mobilize once again around the issue of the Goodwill/Dearborn Street development in 2005, but eventually was hijacked and co-opted by WaVA (Washington Vietnamese-American Chamber of Commerce)—previously named as VEADA (Vietnamese-American Economic and Development Association) when involved in the light rail construction project. This campaign was waged behind the back of the Vietnamese community without inputs, without transparency, without accountability, and worse, with disrespect toward the spirit of the community at-large.

WaVA tacitly “represented” the Vietnamese voice in a coalition of groups and organizations outside the Vietnamese-American community. The combined effort of this coalition resulted in a Community Benefits Agreement in secret meetings. This agreement favors the developer, the unions, the so-called “progressive” work that Sage labeled as “affordable” housing guarantees. It provided little tangible benefits to support Little Saigon’s business district and the political identity of the community at large.

On June 24th, 2009, the developer officially cancelled The Dearborn Street development partially due to the current recession, and partially due to many deficiencies in their rezone request and the EIS (Environment Impact Study) Design Review which might not be accepted by the city council. The possibility for this super regional mall to be approved by the council members was therefore slim chance.

At the same time, a series of meeting from the opposing groups (who did not agree with the Community Benefits Agreement, did not go along with the token representatives, and/or were pro-environmental concerns) with all City Council Members (except Jan Drago) before the Street Vacation Process added more political pressure to fail this big box mall project. In other words, the awareness of Vietnamese community regarding political intricacies and maneuvers on this project inevitably constituted a solid platform for more engagement by the Vietnamese-American community in the future. Just like the Vietnamese community in the city of New Orleans or San Jose.

Without doubt, there are instilled cultural characteristics strongly grounded in Vietnamese history for its people rallied together to fight injustice and oppression. This character stretches back more than a thousand years with the Vietnamese fighting against the Chinese dynasties (Han, Jin, Tang, Zhou, Song, Ming, Qing) to retain their sovereignty; and it manifested in the 19th and early 20th century, in fighting for independence against the French Colonialists.

As the political discourse within the Vietnamese-American community always tangled with anti-Communism in the US context and anywhere outside of Vietnam, this multiplied and complicated voice has played and will play an important movement in motivating people participate in the political process. For the first time, issues of cooptation and implication in the Seattle Vietnamese community are exposed due to the Dearborn/Goodwill Mall project. Disappointingly, the traction phenomenon, which happens in any engaging community, was used to make excuse and cover up for inequitable land-use and development process. Together with the discourse of “refugee”—equating with they will achieve American dream, won’t speak up, and survive no matter what–this traction signal was schemed to perpetuate non-engagement from the City for real economic development policies with and for all Vietnamese merchants in Little Saigon and South Seattle.

This traction became intense when social service and other non-profit agencies also acted as if they were neutral, and refused to participate in community meetings when receiving activists’ invitation. In addition to suppressing the alert of what causing gentrification–a new form of racism, the commercial ethnic news and mainstream media undeniably engaged in silencing and pathologizing this complicated voice.

There is little doubt that the Vietnamese American community will become more involved in local, state, and national politics in the near future. The biggest challenge is to charter a participatory and shared leadership instead of the worn-out from-the-top, elitist, neo-liberal, neo-conservative, and internalized colonialist leadership.

Mayor Nickels’ visit is like drinking a political kool-aid, artificially sweet with no substance. Little Saigon has asked and will continue to ask the Mayor to walk the talk. Little Saigon asks the Mayor to implement citizen commission recommendations in many of their studies, strategic plans, visions (2010, 2020, 2030) drafted in the last 10 plus years for the International District, South Downtown, rather than pretentiously asking for inputs and putting them on the shelves for posterity.

—Hieu Nguyen & Quynh-Tram Nguyen

Northwest Neighborhood Activists for Democracy & Social Justice