Decompiling Oppression #61
Sam McVeety
So... I don't really know what I want to say about Roe yet. I recognize the urgency of the moment, and... I'm still processing a lot of things. Suffice it to say that if reproductive justice is important to you (and I hope it is), I'd encourage you to follow the lead of organizations that center those who are most impacted by the prospective ruling, such as Surge Reproductive Justice.
The topic I did have prepared for this week (before Tuesday, anyway) still feels important, so let's get into that. For folks who aren't familiar, Seattle is looking to expand its light rail network, part of which requires significant construction and rebuilding in the downtown area. Regardless of the end state, this new construction would create an interim period of years of disruptions and necessitate the removal of local buildings. There are two main proposals, along 4th Avenue and 5th Avenue. Crucially, the latter cuts through many businesses in the Chinatown/International District (CID) area, bringing with it a legacy of displacement and violence:
We have nowhere else to go in Seattle ... We’ve always taken the least desirable land, and as soon as it becomes valuable, we get pushed out.
Yet again, history and counterstories matter. Beyond the immediate displacement this would cause, it recalls a number of harmful histories, both locally and nationally. Sometimes the violence has been nominally illegal (although condoned by public officials), like the 1882 expulsion of Chinese laborers:
In Tacoma, the city mayor led a crowd of citizens with rifles and torches to force the Chinese in the city’s Chinatown onto ships and burn down their homes. Even in Newcastle, on the Eastside, Chinese miners had built houses along Coal Creek when miners of other ethnic backgrounds, with the connivance of local officials, burned down their houses.
Other times, however, the violence of displacement has had all the force of law. In 1865, leaders of the City of Seattle passed Ordinance Number 5 to expel indigenous people from their ancestral lands ("That no Indian or Indians shall be permitted to reside, or locate their residences on any street, highway, lane, or alley or any vacant lot in the town of Seattle"). In the CID itself, many Japanese citizens were forced to abandon buildings that still stand today by Executive Order 9066 and the Court's subsequent ruling in Korematsu.
I'd be remiss not to mention redlining here, as well. Throughout the country, federal lending policy prevented people of color from buying and owning property in certain areas of Seattle (and many other cities). Redlining is doubly relevant in this context because it co-constructed economic harm in conjunction with transportation policy, which favored the creation of highways and reduced investment in inner city transportation. Even now, investments in these systems are completely lopsided, massively favoring highways.
It's not just how highways were constructed and their funding, but also where. The story of the Federal Highway Act of 1956 is one of the destruction of many communities of color (including the CID, and particularly in Black communities), where highways would cut through the heart of neighborhoods and eliminate cultural institutions, or cut between communities, creating physical barriers to reinforce social ones, and further segregating towns and cities.
As in the CID, this didn't happen without protest. Residents in Washington, D.C., protested highway construction with the slogan "no white men's roads through Black men's homes". Tellingly, though, the most effective arguments (in terms of projects diverted) came from white environmentalists and preservationists, while arguments grounded in racial equity terms were largely ignored. Seventy years later, we find ourselves facing similar questions, and it is my fervent hope that we will rise to the moment.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: What transportation infrastructure do you take for granted, and what were/are the human costs of delivering it?
Communal: What would an equitable process for projects like this look like?
Solidarity: Support InterIm CDA and their work to provide multilingual, culturally competent housing and community building services to those disenfranchised due to lack of English, low acculturation and poverty.
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