Last month I had published an Op-Ed piece in the Seattle Times, “Where’s the Love (and $$) for Seattle’s Neighborhoods,” which focused on the tragic decline of Seattle’s Neighborhood Matching Fund. My Op-Ed instigated a series of conversations with City Council members, aids to City Council members, City department staff, neighborhood community organizers, and more. Here are some insights from…
Note: This piece originally appeared in the Seattle Times on June 25th, 2021. As a city of innovation, Seattle has given much to the world — grunge music, jumbo jets and Chuckits!, for example. But one of its most powerful innovations is both unheralded and endangered — the Neighborhood Matching Fund. The matching fund is a city grant program that…
Dare I say it, but optimism is in the air. The light is now visible at the end of the pandemic tunnel. Flowering bulbs are ushering in Spring. And a new administration has eased the daily onslaught of political chaos. We all deserve a break and a deep breath. Let’s take it. But then let’s turn our attention to the…
A few months ago I opened up the Seattle Times to see an amazing aerial photograph of “The Wallybug.” The Wallybug, a large street painting of a ladybug in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood, was my first real community organizing and placemaking project, completed right after I finished graduate school on the street where I lived. The Wallybug was also the first…
Social trust is the dark matter of our Democracy. Social trust is what allows us to get along and work towards a “greater good” with people who are different from us. It helps turn our differences and diversity into strengths. Without social trust, we become tribal and disconnected from one another, concerned only with our self-interests or the interests of…
“It was one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the City. The Steering Committee was four older white women…” “It was one of the most diverse elementary schools in the state. The people who showed up for the first community meeting were almost entirely white…” Sound familiar? With conversations about racism and diversity rising to the forefront of America’s consciousness…
COVID-19 has forced us all to change our lives. For many this has meant regrouping closer to home, family, and those closest to us, gathering around digital and real fires. At times the Covid experience feels like a reversion back to nomadic life: wandering in small groups through a dangerous world, tending our flocks. Gone are the visits to “third…