S4 EP1: Belonging Gathering Live Event

On October 27th, 2022, Civic Commons held an event at the Gates Discovery Center to introduce the Greater Seattle Compact for Belonging to the general public.

To celebrate, we invited four guests to talk about Belonging with the audience. Listen as Priya Frank (Seattle Art Museum), Donna Moodie (Marjorie Restaurant), Rozella "Rozie" Kennedy (Camber Collective and the Brave Sis Project) and Commissioner Sam Cho (Port of Seattle) tell some of their origin stories and how Belonging fits into small businesses, the arts, government, consulting, restaurants, and nonprofits!

Both Priya and Rozie have published books recently. You can find them here if interested:

Thanks again to Bobby Choy (aka Big Phony) for letting us use his music for our intros and outros!

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Civic Commons: 10-27-22 Belonging Event Transcript

Frank Nam

So tonight we're gonna unveil the Greater Seattle Compact for Belonging, which is a lot of words and a lot of syllables, but basically it's a social contract. And I wanna thank the Gates Discovery Center for their partnership. This space is beautiful. If you had a chance to look around, who hears, who has, who's here for the first time ever? Wow, lots of people. So please come back. They have great exhibits, they have great programming, and I would be remiss if I didn't remind you of that. So please come back for more exhibits. So before I got to Seattle this trip, I realized I heard it was a huge hot, You guys had 80 degrees, 90 degrees weather. Is that true? And then you had lots of smoke and then the weather's turned right? It's freezing, it's cold. Winter is approaching Happy Diwali to those who are celebrating.


The great thing about winter and this time of year is that the winter holidays approaching, and it's amazing how many of our holidays are actually signified by lights. You think about the menorah and the lighting of the menorah in the window. You think about the red, green and black candles of Kwanza. You think about Christmas trees, fireplaces, I, I've been thinking about light a lot. The great thing about light is that it does not have a scarcity mindset, which is a weird thing to say. I know, but light doesn't forgo other light light's not like, ugh, there's more light in the room. That's terrible. How about my light? And if you're old enough like me, you remember those Christmas lights where one of those bulbs would die out and they all die and it's just a pain. But why can't we be more like that? Why can't we see ourselves more like light? We have a lot of issues in our region and I don't want to be focused on the issues and the problems, but our resources, We have a collective power, collective resources, collective intelligence, collective networks that we actually bring our lights to bear on. Whatever the issue might be. We'd actually solve a lot more problems together.


So that's what the Greater Seattle Compact is. It's basically a social contract or social idea that how do we bring our light to bear together? What are the values that we share that underlie all our beliefs? What are the practices that help build belonging? So since 2018, Civic Commons has working, has been working on this issue, we've been having conversations with folks telling stories, sharing what are the values that you believe in? What draws you to the region belong and how do you feel like you don't belong? And these are conversations. We've had many people from many different lived back backgrounds and experiences.


And what we realize is that belonging is at the root of it. And so our three values of the compact are love, justice, and belonging. And I've been having conversations with a couple folks in the room before this event started. Love and Justice are kind of intertwined. Dr. Cornell West calls justice love in public. And so if you think about any issue in the world right now, there's two solutions that we need, but we need both of them. We need policy, we need laws, we need justice, cuz that presents a barrier, presents safety. But you can't create a law that makes you humanize someone else. I can't make a law that makes you love the person that you're sitting next to, right? That's just impossible. That's why we need belonging and relationships and we need both of those things to create this bridge that really separates us in this moment in history.


So with that being said, before going into the compact, we have a treat. We have people, four people, they represent arts, commerce, government, museums, restaurants, small businesses, housing, the people coming with different lived experiences and different backgrounds. And I'm really excited to have them come in and as I introduce each guest, I would invite them to come up to the stage and sit down. First we have Donna Moody, who is the owner of Marjorie. Yeah. If you have not been to Marjorie, you need to go. Donna is also the executive director of the Capitol Hill Eco District First Choice Initiative through community roots housing. And so welcome Donna. Next we have Commissioner Sam Cho from the Port of Seattle. He was at the time of his swearing in the first Korean American and the youngest port commissioner in history. So welcome Sam.


And then Rosa, Rosie Kennedy, and Rosie's a director of impact and equity at Camber Collective. She's also the author of an upcoming book that we'll talk about a little bit later. And so we'll talk about that book actually a little bit later. We'll give you a chance. And then last but not least, if you are a lover of the arts in the region should be no stranger to the next guest, which is Priya Frank. And Priya is the director of Equity and Inclusion at Seattle Art Museum. She's also the chair of the city of Seattle's Art Commission for many years. So welcome Priya. Awesome. 

So this conversation actually stems from a podcast that we do at Civic Commons called We Belong Here. And in that podcast we usually bring in guests from different sectors on a theme. And then we have 'em answer three questions. One, who are you to, how does belonging fit into the work you do? And then three, what's something you're working on that you wanna share? Because we believe in this idea of circular connections and allowing people to talk about the stuff that they care about. So I'm gonna start with the first question, which is really a question about who they are. And since we can't be here, this is not a long form podcast, you're not here for three hours, so don't worry. I have very pointed questions for all our guests. And I'm gonna start with Donna. So I believe Marjorie is not your first restaurant, and I know you're involved in community in lots of different ways. What led you to this dual path of hospitality and community? What came first for you? Was it a love of community? Was it a lover, hospitality? Both.

Donna Moodie

So in my opinion, they both go kind of hand in hand. So it's really difficult to say which came first. I grew up in a household where there was a lot of cooking. My family immigrated from Jamaica to Chicago and just immediately my mom started hosting dinner parties, cooking, inviting strangers to dinner, which as a teenager was incredibly embarrassing, but somehow seemed to impact my future. I would grow up to do the same thing to invite people to share food around a table. And that just seemed to naturally flow into community that couple of years ago, I decided to change the kind of trajectory of being a restorator who did community work to being a blank who owned a restaurant and ended up my journey to work at Community Roots Housing and was so amazed and surprised at how well linked the two worlds were and how the restaurant space created a great environment for people to gather and talk about community building projects, ideas, have tough conversations, have really great conversations of celebration, and it just seemed like a natural part of the path of my life.

Frank Nam

Awesome, thank you so much. That's when I think about my friends that work in food and beverage, hospitality, a big part of what they do, welcoming guests, serving them, delicious food, taking care of them. And it is, it's all rooted in the community because when we think about who fed us, who took care of us as young people, as kids, it's usually our parents or our grandparents in some cases. And that feeling of connection and love is so rooted in that sharing of bread, sharing of food and taking care of each other. And so I think it's that the answer makes sense. That is both. Thank you.

Priya Frank 

Thanks.

Frank Nam

So <laugh>, when I think about you, I think about arts. They're kind of in the same vein. I think about who you are, your energy, how you love the arts, how you care about artists, how you're kind of like any place that's arts related that you kind of show up. But where did this start? Who or what piece or what event? Who was your muse that gave you such passion for the arts? And then how did that love of the arts end up you end up in the role that you have at Sam? With that being said,

Priya Frank 

Thank you. So I was born and raised in Seattle, Lake City. Hey anyone <laugh>, Go Raiders. Yeah, I went to Nathan Hill and I think being raised by community, so my grandparents are from India, My mom was born in Fiji, my dad was born in Kenya, I was born in Seattle. I'm the first born in my family, born in the US first to go to college, graduate, all the things first to work in the arts, et cetera. So I think for me that's all kind of part of the journey and it's shaped me is a number of different influences. And growing up I wanted to be a fashion designer and so I was just really into that and then kind of forgot about it. But so I grew up until high school going to a predominantly white Christian school and by Northgate Mall and being pretty much the only kid of color in my class, things like that.


And then I went to Nathan Hale and that was in the nineties and it was amazing. And it just opened up a whole world for me of different histories that I didn't know about before understanding the civil rights movement, being around other youth that were more culturally I could connect to things like that. And I mean it was so funny cuz I was always that girl that why is she always smiling as I was just so enamored to be in spaces where there were other kids of color and to be able to feel valued and cared about and to get to understand other perspectives than just the dominant one. And it was literally at Nathan Hale, that was where the seed was planted of. I wanted to create spaces and opportunities and experiences where folks me could feel like there's a place where they could belong. And I literally describe it as that.


And I have way before you asked me to be on this panel, right? Cause that sense of belonging, I wanted to create and curate that for other people where it wasn't just that they were accepted or tolerated. Tolerance was a big thing in the nineties. It wasn't just tolerance, but it was about celebrating, recognizing, being seen and recognizing the power that's in diverse experiences and how that shapes the rest of our lives. And so I was doing that at Nathan Hale from where I was on different committees. And also, it's funny, I start out some of my presentations where cuz I was a cheerleader and I put up a picture of myself in my cheer outfit at 16 or whatever. I became a cheerleader for racial equity work at that time. And it's literally cuz that those seeds were planted there for me. And I don't, didn't know how that was gonna manifest, but it did.


And I just kept doing it and kept doing it. And my undergrad was in American ethnic studies and communications at UDub. And my first entry point really to the arts was the first job I had after undergrad. And that was working at a performing arts organization at Mini Hall for the Performing Arts. It was called the UDub World Series at the time. And I was a development assistant, halftime, became full time, worked there for eight years and did all the things. It was a small organization. But that really showed me that how the arts are a tool and a mechanism and just a complete foundation for what this work of belonging and could look like. And affirming the experiences culturally of so many other folks besides the dominant perspective. And that's when I realized, whoa, this is something really powerful about that. And a connector that the arts have across diverse constituencies.


And it's like the bridge and it's the way in which we can utilize that to talk about really important essential experiences and how that binds us across difference. And so to me, me, I was like Holy mo, this is for me. This is what I wanna do. And I didn't know how that was gonna manifest or anything like that, but I just kept doing the work in different capacities and in community and it got to co-found out women of color in the arts group, which is how I met a lot of just really incredible dynamic women doing amazing work in the community. And a curated art at a lounge in the U district called Lucid. If anyone ever went there, it was open for eight years. And that place was magic. It was where anything was possible and all the things that I was bound by an institution, UDub, but we did whatever we wanted at Lucid.


And the owner, David was just so incredible in manifesting that and helping me to figure out why is this so powerful? Why do I wanna keep doing this? And so, and I realized the visual art aspect and I used to do these little exhibitions in the bathroom essentially that would ask people questions related to the art and they could respond cuz they were just hanging out in the bathroom or whatever. And that was cuz it was a small space and those were the kind of installations that got people talking. And so eventually I got to do start doing that work at Sam. They brought me in, I think because I did installations in the bathroom or from wherever you were because it wasn't about the fanciness of the space, but it was about that connection building and meeting folks where they were and how could Sam be a resource for community. So it's not just about folks coming to the museum and breaking down those barriers, but also what does it look like to show up and be a resource and how can we amplify artists in the community and that their cultures that are represented there in all of that. So that's what I get to do and it's amazing and I love it and it gives me life and it's my life's work.

Frank Nam 

Wow. <laugh>. Yeah, as an audience is listening, thinking about what brings people together, what connects thinking about food, think about hospitality, thinking about the arts. There's so many points in our life where we take what is going on in our worlds. Cuz you all probably a lot of you came from work and maybe still thinking about the meeting that you had or the meeting that you will have or the deadline or cetera. And that's normal. That's the way we have to live our world. That's how we pay the bills and put food on the table. But it's these moments of humanness whereas connections through a's food through music that we can actually be in community with one another with the similar similarities that we have and the differences that we share as well. So moving forward, I wanna now address, talk to Rosie who is not just an executive working at a consulting firm here in Seattle, but is an author, is an entrepreneur, is the creator of the Brave Cis website, which has amazing journals. Please check them out filled with stories of powerful women. And Rosie Rosie's brought a copy. I love it. So prepared. And I know in your website you honor your mother, Florence and your grandmother Alice, in your work, I would love for you to tell us how these two women impacted who you are today. Cuz I'm sure you can probably talk for years about that. But then also how are you able to pivot into your current role at a consulting company with what you do?

Rozie Kennedy 

Thank you so much. First of all, I moved to Seattle 10 days ago, so this is just

Frank Nam 

Wow, amazing. Give it up. Thank you. Welcome,

Rozie Kennedy 

Thank you. I did Frank's podcast last week. You were the best welcoming committee ever. One person, mega show, Thisis journal. And I'll talk about it a little bit, but I'll expand out to what it means about who I am and what I do and the way I live in the world and the work I'm trying to push. In 2019 I'd gone through a really difficult personal time, a real tumultuous and came out of it resiliently and said, I'm going to take accountability for my life and I'm gonna start journaling and being planning and be, especially looking in the industry. And everything was white girls in the suburbs with the unicorns. And I was like, ugh. And then the black girl ones were like, You go girl, these be really bold covers and then you look inside and they were absolutely generic, so sad.


And I was like, God, no, we gotta do better than that. I too have a background in the arts. I ran performing arts organizations. I'm married to a man in the contemporary classical music world who's relatively known. And so I'd been in spaces like that and done those things and it was like, well I'm not gonna do some generic boring thing. I'm gonna just make my own thing and I'm gonna make it mine and I'm gonna sell it to 50 friends. And boom, what up? 2020 came around and all the things that happened happened. And I did my little Kickstarter and I brought in $25,000. I was like, Oh my God, I gotta create a real business. So I created the first journal is the day, it's the only journal slash date planner that highlights black, brown, Asian, and indigenous women in US history. And when I first did it, it was like, Oh, I'm gonna include Sarah Fallen and Tony Morrison and a lot of the people I love Zo Hurston and a girlfriend of mine who is prop intellectual properly, lawyer's like Rosie, you can't do that.


Their estates are gonna come after you, which was actually not true. I learned in the end. But I got scared and I was like, okay, had the moment. The Valley of Death, they call that when you're a founder, an entrepreneur you know have several valleys of death, which are these moments where you're like, I can't do this. And one of 'em is the go to market moment. And I was like, I can't do this. And I was like, I have to do this because on Christmas morning 2019, I had this visitation experience in my room of force that said tell my story. And so I bolted out of bed and I was like, Oh, gotta tell a story. And I started researching all these women. But when my girlfriend told me that, I was like, alright, I better back off the famous people and start talking about people no one's ever heard of. And that's what catapulted this into the thing that it is today. 


So Brave Sis has been a way for me to delve into the stories of these women who were erased, who very few people know about and who deserve their flowers. And this new one, which is the 20 23 1, the subtitle is Come Get Your Flowers because I love that expression. And I wanted to create a space where women who did amazing things in little ways could have a moment of being uplifted in that it could inspire all of us to start looking for the people like that in our lives. The way that our society is set up, there's certain narratives and certain dominant frameworks about who matters, whose voice gets heard, whose story gets told, who gets celebrated, who's pretty, who's worthy of our esteem and our regard. And I was just like, I'm not down with the way this is done. I'm gonna do my own thing. And as I started to do my own thing, people really liked it. And some people don't like, I wanna be honest with you, some black women are like, Why did you include Asian indigenous and Latinx women in this book? We don't want that. And I'm like, well, you go and you go build your thing. This is the world I live in. I live in a very deeply multicultural world. I grew up in New York City, I lived in a world that was always pluralistic and it wasn't a question. And I recognize the privilege in that. I also have family members who don't live in that at all, who live in a very, very different class strata. And I recognize the difference of them. And then I have the majority of my friends who are white women who were like, For real, for real? They're real. They were not allies cuz that word didn't exist. They were like, You are in my heart, I'm in your heart. This is who we are together. So I wanted to create a space for us to come together.


And then there's some dudes too Brave bros who were like, Yeah, I'm down with this. I like this. So I was able to create that in the book and you can check it out and all sorts of fun merch, blah blah blah. This is the third edition of the journal. And I invite people to tell me about women that I don't know about. I'd love to do a global Brave Sis at some point. When you start to incorporate into your heart the story of a woman who doesn't look like you. Cause if I'm black, this Latinx woman is not me, This Asian woman whose family were, who were put in the internment camps, that's not my story.


But we sort of see what we have in common. We see these structures of how we've been erased and oppressed and persevered and pushed through. You start to see that your heart open, this is a belonging thing. Your heart opens up and you're like, I see you, I feel you. I am you and I M U. And I really strongly believe to my core, when you make that shift internally, that changes the group you're in, the organization, the company, the firm, whatever. And then collectively we can change the world. And if you don't do that part of the internal shifting and learning, it won't stick. And so I believe this to my soul. I am so thrilled that a year and two weeks ago I was hired at Camera Collective to lead the equity impact and equity work. And we're trying to build that same framework into what we're doing as a firm.


It's like we're starting with our own internal work and then we're starting to build coalitions and build it into our client work. And I swear to God, my biggest goal with this is that we shift the way people think about consultancy, the way that those I'm, I do the old, I said this earlier, it's like the Michael Jackson thriller. We're not like the other boys. I really mean that. I really, truly firmly believe that we can define a different way to be, different way to do philanthropy, humanitarianism and development. And so Frank, you put it so well when we were speaking, you said Rosie, you are living iga. Did I pronounce that right? When the Japanese thing, all the Venn diagrams, I feel very, except for the fact that my children are having a detonation in my lifes falling apart, I feel very blessed right now because I feel like what I believe in my soul and what I've been blessed to be able to do in my work are really coming together in a powerful way.


And it really is about belonging. It's about looking at someone else and saying, Oh I see you. Oh your grandmother was, your grandmother was Lakota. Oh wow, I heard about this amazing woman who built all these schools in Lakota territory. And I wanna know more about you. I wanna know you as a and not you as some sort of the stick. Check the box. Ooh, I did my diversity thing today. I got to know someone different, but really in your soul what that is. So that's kind of like where it's at for me right now. Thanks.


Frank Nam 

Last but not least, we have Sam who has previously worked in federal government. You've started your own successful export company during the Asian, even few flu crisis, I think flu crisis. I think you sent over millions of eggs to South Korea, very entrepreneurial. You worked here locally in the state with Bob Hasagawa, worked on the Asian, uh, API committee with the commission with governor. I, I'm kind of curious, were you always destined to run for office? Did you expect to be in this role that you have now when you're in high school, college? And how did you get to this space where you are now?

Sam Cho 

Yeah, so the answer to the first part of the question is absolutely not. I often joke in hindsight because this is true, but it's funny now, my mom used to growing up used to tell me there's three things in life you should never do, right? Drugs, gambling, politics, <laugh>, right? So two three's not bad, but obviously I fell into politics and you know, have to understand that for a lot of Asian, my first of all, let me just, I'll give you a little back background. My parents are immigrants as well. Like Frank from South Korea. They immigrated in the mid eighties and they came here, in fact, they actually first immigrated here through the port of Seattle. And so for them it was a very full circle moment when their son was sworn in as the commissioner of the port of Seattle. And so that was a really, really cool moment.


In fact, Frank, you may know this, but when I took my oath of office as the port commissioner, I did it in both English and Korean as kind of a tribute to my heritage. But the reason I bring that up is because a lot of Asian Americans who immigrated here in the last 30 years are actually likely to have fled some sort of political persecution and or fled a dictatorship or communism if you're Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. And so they're actually by just their own experience from their home countries are very not encouraging to their second generation children about going into politics. That's just a remnant or a byproduct of their lived experience. And so again, growing up, my parents would always say never do drugs, never gamble and doche politics. And so when I did decide to jump in the ring and become a candidate for office, my dad was actually surprisingly extremely happy about it. <laugh>,


I think there's something weird about Korean dads and being in, as you get older, there's something about them being really deeply into politics. But in my parents' mentality has always been, we came here for the American dream, we came here so you would succeed economically, why would you run for office? It's taking a pledge to poverty, right? That's not what we want for you. But I think for me, the most amazing part was when I told my parents that I was gonna do this, they didn't skip a beat and they were a hundred percent with me. It did. I mean, despite the 29 years of telling me the same thing, the second I made my decision and my heart was there, they were a hundred percent behind me. In fact I, I'm like 99.9% sure that if I had not had my parents's support, I don't know if I would've won my office.


My mom did everything literally was at every fundraiser made the food, just how every supportive mother would be. But it was I think pretty eye opening for me as an individual to see how my parents have come around despite it, it's really antithetical to the stereotype of Asian parents being tiger parents and imposing, I think at the end of the day, to be honest, they just want us to be happy. And that's no different for Asian parents. And so when I told them that this is my passion and this is what I wanted to do, it was really touching for me to see my parents go all out, really. And you talk about community, but one thing that I wanted to kind of touch is Asian communities and most immigrant communities are very interesting because there's actually a very big difference between a first generation and second generation within immigrant communities.


So basically my parents' generation where there may be first generation Americans who are, or 1.5 generation and the second generation Korean Americans like myself and Frank, who, although Frank wasn't born here but grew up here and there's always this disconnect within our community. And I think one of the biggest eye opening moments for me having known that there was this bifurcation within the Korean communities that when I read for office, everyone in the community supported me. It didn't really matter if it was first generation or second generation, just the fact that there was a Korean American, young Korean American running for office was huge. And that all goes back to the idea that because they saw an opportunity to actually have representation. And for me, you know, asked why or how I ended up in this space. And you're right, I spent many years in dc I grew up here in Seattle, went to high school here and spent many years in Washington DC I went to undergrad in dc, worked for a member of Congress, I served in the Obama administration.


And one of the things that deeply impacted me was the mentors that I had who are Asian American. And they always impressed upon me how much representation matters. And they would say, and in DC there's a saying, it's a little cruel, but the saying is, if you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu. Right? <affirmative>. Yeah. And that mentality is born out of our lived experience as Asian-American since country, whether it's the Chinese Exclusion Act or the of Japanese Americans doing War ii. And so part of what was my call to action and why I ran for office was we needed more API and younger API rep representation at those tables. And I, I didn't think that I would run at the age of 29 and when, quite frankly, which was kind of ridiculous. But in many ways everything came to our head after I was elected and became a poor commissioner during the pandemic where as you all know, there was a lot of hate towards the Asian American community.


A lot of anti-Asian hate our community felt to hear in Seattle, but it was just rampant all over the us And quite frankly, yes, I'm unelected, but I'm no member of congress and I'm no governor or whatever. So I really didn't think that the time for me to step up would've shown up so soon. But literally I was sworn in January 7th, Covid hit us January 21st and we went into lockdown in March and it was like, all right, you're up. And for the first time in my life I had always known that we needed representation, but I didn't real. But I think it was the first time that I really saw it and I saw, damn, this is what we, this what we need in this moment. And then during the pandemic and I had this moment of realization around allyship and solidarity. And it's funny that we're having this on this day cuz exactly one year ago I stood at Seattle Tacoma International Airport with Governor Insley and we announced that we would be accepting refugees from Afghanistan after the fall, Kabul.


And so we opened Theca welcome center for Afghan refugees and I stood there at the podium and I gave the speech about my family's experience as immigrants, why I support our Afghan refugees, our history of accepting refugees, whether you were Irish, you were an Irish man escaping the potato famine or a v Vietnamese person is escaping the Viet Con during the Vietnamese war. This is what makes us exceptional. This is what is part of what it means to be American. And that was my first time as an elected really stepping up in that space of allyship and solidarity. And so all this to say that life is full circle and I'm really, I feel very blessed and fortunate to be in the position that I am, even though I'm just a poor commissioner. <laugh>

Frank Nam

Just a poor commissioner.

Sam Cho 

Come on.

Frank Nam 

The great thing about Sam is that he actually answered my second question, which is how does belonging fit into your work? And I wanted him to talk about his work with the Afghan refugees and that work of how this port and our port really welcomed folks from Kabul and from that part of history. And it's been one of the great things also, if you're not aware of, there's a great organization here in the region called VITs for Afghans is the Vietnamese community was the last community thinking about warp torn refugees that came and escaped war to come to the United States. There's a community that knows what it feels like to not belong, to feel welcomed and try to fit into this American culture, which is kind of a interesting place to be. But how they welcomed a whole group of people and they rallied and they brought in resources and connections and relationships to the Afghani community, which is just really powerful to see.


And when I talk about scarcity, when I talk about lights and how that's a big problem with belonging is that if we have a mindset around scarcity is that if you feel like, oh, other people need to get more things, that means I get less. And if you think about a zero sum where it's just a singular pie that everyone has to keep splitting up, of course you're gonna feel that way. Every time we think about equity as a pie that just does not change, then we're gonna always feel this push to like, oh, how do I feel about this? Do I lose something? Do I give up something? Should I give up something with a great power of equity? And coming together, as you know, all folks from different backgrounds and life experiences and religions and cultures, is that you grow that pie immensely, right? The pie does not stay the same. And this idea of surplus thinking, the idea of creating growth for everyone is powerful. And so that's just kind of a mentality that sometimes stops us from supporting each other, caring for each other because we feel like if someone gets something then I get less. But it's totally the opposite. The bright, the light gets shinier, the warmth envelopes more people, there's more sustainability, there's more for everyone.

Sam Cho 

I actually really quickly want to share something. I told you that it's been exactly a year since we started accepting Afghan refugees last weekend we actually had a dinner and welcome back to Afghan refugees to CTAC airport at our conference center. And we had dinner. And in my remarks, and this is completely unrelated to this event or what we're talking about here, but just a crazy coincidence that we're talking about belonging. Because what I told the group is, I hope by now you realize that you're not just welcome in this country, that you belong in this country. And people, I didn't really expect a reaction to that, but people started crying and I so crazy how one word can make such a big difference. Our signs at the airport said, Welcome your refugees, but what if our signs had said, you belong here, right? I mean it's just such a different, different tone. And so I totally agree with you.

Frank Nam 

No, I appreciate that story cuz it is true. We need belonging for us to survive. We think about Maslow's Triangle and belonging is in the middle. But if you think about it, unless you have parents that care for you and that you feel like you belong, you weren't surviving this world, you need someone to feed you, take care of you, clothe you. So thinking about that idea of that first level of the hierarchy, Maslow's hierarchy food and sustenance is a big part of that. And so moving to Donna, right, thinking about this question, how does belonging fit into the work you do both in food hospitality but also in community and housing? How do you go about creating belonging in those institutions in those places?

Donna Moodie 

I think for me, the idea of belonging begins with the idea of feeling welcome when you come into a business. And I think the restaurant, while it in many ways is welcoming, it feeds people. There's a sense of, Oh, I have a reservation, we're gonna sit here and have dinner with our guests or by ourselves. Seems like the kind of typical story. But so often when people go out, they don't feel like they belong. Sometimes they feel very uncomfortable. We don't have, I think our city is growing in diversity, but it hasn't always been the story of our city. So many people don't really feel welcome in many places, not just in restaurants or commerce places. And so I think to create a space that has always felt welcoming has been a priority of mine and how I approach business and the idea of sharing that with the community I think extends the invitation to belonging.


So finding work that you can do, representing the restaurant throughout the community has always been a goal of mine. And it just kept leading to more and more work and forms of just opening up doors for where you could learn what you could use a restaurant to do. And I think for me it started with a little bit of board work at the original Marjorie in Belltown, then looking at things like, Oh, we're closed on Sunday and Monday, maybe we can have a fundraiser on those nights. Maybe we can invite people in. We'll have some snacks. People will raise money for different causes. And that would just keep developing into more and more things. Oh I'll belong to this community or committee or do this work. And the more I did it, the more I learned a lot about the need and also a desire that I had to continually be a part of making a change instead of just talking about it.


And as I moved to Capitol Hill, it was important for me to look at different things that I could do there. And probably the biggest moment for me was when the pandemic hit and restaurants were closed down, kind of scurrying quickly to figure out how to help other small businesses, how to use the restaurant to serve food to people that were suddenly cut off from receiving food. And then also just how to keep people kind of busy and engaged and connecting. So through the winter of 2020 and into 2021, we often would just meet at the restaurant, even though we could meet inside, I would just tell people we're coats, dress warm, we'll sit outside and you can meet so and so and so and you can have a drink or just talk about business or community work. And it just kept evolving. I think working at Community Roots housing just kind of taught me that there's always gonna be a need in this city for housing.


But the way we develop it and work together across organizations and across different communities of people that are in need for housing, but also that wanna create housing and wanna brainstorm together and think about alternative ideas, supporting different communities, the arts community, looking at environmental work, looking at how to keep our parks feeling safe through not so much surveillance but engagement. Thinking about different things that we can add and do to our city to make it grow. It kind of always, it might not come back to the restaurant, but we can meet at the restaurant and talk about it and grow it and share ideas. And it certainly seems like a wonderful thing to invite people to discuss topics there. So that's for me where they tie in together.

Frank Nam 

Awesome. It's one of those great places about going to a restaurant where you're really taking care of. But I also love the restaurants where the owner or the general manager starts introducing people to others. This happens a lot in Korea where it's actually kind of a dating thing. It's kind of weird, maybe it's not great, but they will actually be like, Hey, this group of table of young people, let me introduce you this group of table of young people and you guys can sit and talk or you don't have to, it's up to you. But if you did that here in the States, people would be freaked out. They'd be like, Why are you inviting strange people to sit at my table and eat my food? I don't understand this at all, but maybe we need more of that. Maybe we need more of that. Yeah, I should start that. Yeah. Oh my gosh, this is where great ideas of barn and when the audience wants join this. We're taking investors tonight.


Donna Moodie

Say that again. I was just saying that happens at Marjorie all the time. In fact, when we were closed, while I was looking for a new location, I would have a lot of the regulars call me up and say, Could you have a dinner party cuz we haven't seen so and so in so long. And we just wanna know if they're okay, what are they doing? Or people will just come in and like, Oh, I'm here to meet so and so tonight. This is where I always meet them and check in on them and can really, it is amazing. You can build a community from just that simple act of meeting and checking in on each other and meeting new people.

Frank Nam 

When we started this venture around civic commons and we belong here to explain belonging, I use an allegory that everyone probably heard of Stone soup, like the allegory stone soup. How do you actually get people to share their ingredients to build a meal together? And I think there's a reason why that allegory works because the idea of food and people, intersection of people and cultures makes so much sense. The other place where that happens a lot is, like we said before, is the arts. And so I remember thinking about the arts are a great place to practice belonging because when we enter a space for arts, we kind of take away who we are and we enter the space cuz we wanna know what the story is about, who are the characters, what's the movement, what did the painter decide? And it's less about, let me just bring myself into this, which you still do, but there's this a willingness to listen to other stories in the arts. So Priya, in your work, be at Seattle Arts, Seattle Art Museum, be it with the Arts Commission, be any of the projects that you've taken on, even the work you do with museums and trying to create more inclusivity, how does belonging fit into that work and how do you create more belonging in your work?

Priya Frank 

I think I mentioned of my experience in high school and stuff like that, for me it's a value. So when does it not include that? I think in whatever capacity that I'm doing it, it's interesting to do it in an institution, right? Because particularly in museums that there's a lot of structural inequities in the museum field representation is still predominantly white. So how do you start shifting that? And I literally was hired six years ago at Sam around community partnership work and programming around what does it mean to create a more accessible museum and start breaking down some of those barriers. And I think one of the things is that I've been able to do that really organically as a result of just being a part of this community my whole life. And so it was authentic because it's how I lived. I've lived my life.

And so I feel like that was something that they were excited about and looking for. I didn't come from the museum field, I come from more of community building and using the arts as a way of connecting. And so I guess the methods for how I did that or how I do that is maybe not so I guess traditional to that field, but it was really like, okay, well what does it look like? Just if you're dating or making friends with somebody, asking them organizations or individuals or artists, what are you doing? What are you into? What do you love? What makes your heart skip a beat? And not for like, okay, well we have this exhibition and you can fit into this peg, whatever whole square thing. But just understanding what other people are excited about and what makes them passionate about what they do.

And then, hey, here's what I'm passionate about and hey, let's stay in touch. We'd love to continue to connect, to go to your things and community to show up consistently to invite my friends or my colleagues so we can all build this ongoing relationship, not just for right now when this particular exhibition is coming to Sam, but for the long term. And so what does it look like to start break down those barriers, build those authentic relationships and recognize that whether it's something that's culturally specific or whatever, there's lots of different ways that people connect with different exhibitions that are coming are the themes around that. And I think being from here and being somebody that is a connector, I love being able to connect folks to things that they're excited about or learning about them and then being like, Well, have you heard of this organization or are you going to this event?

Why don't you go to come meet this person or whatever. And that's how it sort builds is this organic, authentic and simple. It's it's little, but it ends up being so big because who knows what can happen when that heart connection happens And that's where it matters. And that's where you build those things out over a long period of time. And that is an investment. It's an investment in who folks are, it's coming. It's the listening about storytelling and story listening. It says in the video, but it's those ways of connecting in spaces that people are comfortable with and recognizing that museums aren't always that place. And so where is it that folks might feel comfortable and how am I gonna show up too? Cause I think there can be a perception of, oh, I'm meeting with someone from Sam or whatever. And then it's like, so let's meet where you feel great and where I feel great and where we can both feel like we're thriving and full circle. So the Asian Art Museum was closed for a couple of years for renovation. So I got to do a ton of engagement work and understanding who comes to there, who doesn't, why. So meeting with a lot of friends and community colleagues, Bipo folks, where do we do that? So we literally picked Marjorie and that was one of the spaces that we would do that. And

Frank Nam 

I did not plan this by the way. I did

Priya Frank 

Not do that <laugh>. And so I just wanna call that out because I knew that I felt comfortable and safe there. And that was a space in that is a space in community where whether you plan it or not, I can swing by there and I know there's gonna be someone I know, someone that cares about me or someone that just, or by myself or with other people. And those are those kinds of staples that really inspire the work that I do and the kinds of ways that I wanna be able to create and build and foster and sustain community. And so I just wanna call that out because that is a space where I get to do that work because you have built a space of belonging. And so that connection between an institution or a restaurant, I mean we're doing those things from where we are, but how great when I get to come and do it there <laugh>.

So it's just one of those things. And because I've had amazing examples like Alicia b Johnson who is one of the co-founders of Wawa, had a space in Capital Hill that like I called Fair Gallery Cafe. I mean that work that she did there, I bought my first art piece there. I felt like I could cuz it was a space where I could come and just chill and be myself and be with my friends and hang out. And Lucid was another space. So Marjorie's another, all of these have created what my sense of belonging looks like and I strive to do that in an institutional sense, but also we're people in a museum that are passionate about this kind of work. So also breaking down the stereotypes and the barriers of who and what a museum is and represents and redefining what that looks like.

Frank Nam

There's so many stories that we've told so far that connect and intertwine. And I say this a lot of my work, one of the great enemies of belonging is time. Because time is a resource that you can't make more of. We're kind of stuck in the time that we have. And with time, I also know that this museum closes at seven 15 and we gotta get out. So thank you so much to our guests for your stories that connect. Let's give it up.


Team SoapboxBelonging Gathering, Live Event, Priya Frank, Sam Cho, Donna Moodie, Rozie Kennedy