Letter to Supporters of April 4, 2009 Dialogue: “Where Strengths and Truths of Little Saigon Seattle Come From?”

April 4th, 2009 Dialogue - Little Saigon Seattle

Tue, 05 May 2009

To:

Panelists of April 4, 2009 Dialogue: “Where Strengths and Truths of Little Saigon Seattle Come From?”

Vietnamese Americans of Seattle and vicinities

Supporters of Northwest Neighborhood Activists for Democracy & Social Justice

Hi all,

First of all, on behalf of the Little Saigon activists, we deeply appreciate your continuous support and action. As promised, here are the latest info about Little Saigon Seattle in the International District.

The huge-scaled and out-of-charactered Dearborn Mall Project (at Goodwill site) were CANCELLED officially last Friday, April 24th, 2009, resulting after the three-day intense discussions with many City Council members from April 21st to 23rd. Below is the Seattle Times article.

These discussions with City Council were initiated by the Neighborhood Activist for Democracy & Social Justice – Northwest Region together with CARD – Community Alliance for Responsible Development [right after the April 4th grassroots dialogue conducted with the Vietnamese community at Columbia Library, and its news & video have been posted on You-Tube and many internet links].

To be exact, our discussions with the City Council were about:

(1) our firm commitment to preserve the cultural characteristics and political identity of Little Saigon;

(2) our concerns of the lack of civic participation of Vietnamese merchants and the majority during the planning process; and

(3) our critical feedback on urban development issues which were related to Sage and WaVA (Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce) non-transparent conducts.

This project failure proved the community strength–when we collectively believe in unity and integrity AND not allowing any paralysis due to indifference, ignorance and fear.

Again, thank you very much for your effort!

Best,

quynh-tram & hieu nguyen

Note:

(1) As mentioned in previous correspondences, the mantra that “this project was a done deal” was the attempt to mislead the intelligent mass! Also, the news (in Vietnamese) and some You-Tube videos regarding the April 4 grassroots dialogue have been posted at the below–among so many Internet links:

http://seattlels.blogspot.com/

http://www.vietnamexodus.org/vne0508/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2432

ALL the video segments of the April 4 Dialogue are at the below link:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=Bia+Miệng,+Little+Saigon+Seattle&aq=f

(2) In the last paragraph of the below Seattle Times article, “another group of opponents” was addressed without mentioning names. As you already knew, the two well-known groups who secretively signed the deal with the developers are Sage and WaVA. Although their attempt to mislead/misrepresent the community without consent was failed, the two groups still insisted that they created “a groundbreaking model for making development accountable to community stakeholders”! What kind of “accountability” would you think in this case?

$300M project at Seattle Goodwill site canceled

By Emily Heffter – Seattle Times staff reporter

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009116421_webgoodwill24.html”