September 21, 2008

Hearing Examiner

700 5^th Ave

Suite 4000

PO Box 94729

Seattle, WA 98124-4729

Re:          Public Testimony on the Dearborn Project—Application Number 3001242, a proposal for 1400 South Dearborn Street by Darell Vange, Ravenhurst Development

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Debbie Nguyen.  I would like to make a public statement in response to the proposed Dearborn Project.  I am currently the President for the Vietnamese Student Association of Washington (VSAWA), an umbrella organization that encompasses the many Vietnamese Student College Clubs throughout the state of Washington. The student organization is formed to help the Vietnamese community in terms of educational needs, such as finding tutors for Vietnamese youths, as well as to help the Vietnamese community when they are facing barriers such as lack of awareness for their surroundings and support.

I am also a senior student at Seattle University. Although my major at the university is nowhere near the involvement in studying the community or social aspects of life, my heart far extends out to any concerns regarding the Vietnamese community and its needs.  Being born in the United States as a Vietnamese-American provides me with much hope that I can very well help the Vietnamese people because language is not a barrier.

Upon hearing about the Dearborn Street Project and the concerns raised from the Vietnamese community, Jesse Robbins who, at the time was a part of the Vietnamese American Economic Development Association (VAEDA) asked for VSAWA’s involvement in the collection of signatures to fight against the Dearborn Street Project.  Four other students and I stayed from 4 to 7 hours at the International District Fair in April of 2007 explaining to the Asian community our concerns and the impacts of the Dearborn Street Project on the community.  Attached is one of many photos about the VSAWA engagement with the Vietnamese community in Little Saigon at that critical time for better awareness and action.

My concern is not about what stores would be placed in the present Goodwill area. I don’t care about the big stores in the Goodwill area; I can shop elsewhere to get the same stores. My concern is, however, about this Dearborn Mall size and scale that would affect the livelihood of Little Saigon.  This surrounding neighborhood with small shops would face being displaced in spite of their contribution in the area for more than twenty five years.  Little Saigon is an area of residence with its own unique life for many Vietnamese and Chinese people, especially the small merchants and Vietnamese in general.  It is the area where you can buy authentic Vietnamese food for cheaper prices; this is the area where you can get dental and medical care for a cheaper price or even on a sliding scale for low-income people.  Little Saigon is also an area where you can buy rice, (not minute-rice) that is actually from Asia, not from California, and you can also purchase CDs that aren’t in English.

These items are culturally unique to the Vietnamese culture. These items are rarely found anywhere else in Washington State but in the area we call, “Little Saigon.” That is because this is the designated area of our culture for a couple of decades.

I attended a Vietnamese summer fair (also called Hoi Cho Vui He 2008) organized in the school ground of Bailey Gatzert School in Little Saigon earlier this September.  For those of you who also attended this summer fair, you would see that close to a thousand Vietnamese people from all parts of the state attended this fair. This fair shows that the Vietnamese community does exist. Their life is here. That fair is only one example of how our culture is being alive.

Part of being in the Vietnamese Student Association of Washington (VSAWA) has taught me that when you lose culture, you lose your people.  My fear as a young child was always that one day, I would encounter another Vietnamese individual and would not be able to understand, let alone speak my own language. I hope this letter can provide you with a better understanding of the wishes of many Vietnamese individuals and families.  The businesses that lie along Jackson, that are situated in the Little Saigon-International District area are their life, their culture.  Please do not approve the proposed Dearborn Project until further investigation and thorough solutions on how to prevent the imminent threat of many Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Chinese displacements.  Please do not let the Vietnamese community lose their culture.   Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely yours,

Debbie Nguyen

Enclosure

Seattle, September 7, 2008

Hello everyone,

We have been working hard to ensure news delivered to you as well as (1) advocate for a reformed and democratic participatory processes of the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) and City Councils; and (2) strongly oppose the unofficial but bonding tie between Washington Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce (formerly as the Vietnamese American Economic Development Association) and Ravenhurst Development and TRF.

In a civil society as the United States, we need to exercise our citizenship power and advocate to protect our rights, not allowing any individual or group—from the mainstream or Vietnamese American community—to use their privilege in terms of knowledge, language, or monetary pressures to oppress and exploit our and other co-ethnic community at large. We would like to invite you all to attend a public meeting driven by a common interest as the below indicated:

Urban Development and Little Saigon Projects

2Pm on September 13, 2008

Columbia Public Library

4721 Rainier Ave. S. Seattle , WA 98118

206-386-1908

WaVA and their associates has tried to swing the public view using the media and misleading people in and beyond the Vietnamese community that “it is a done deal.” They don’t want us to know that all their meager deals made with the developers do not equate with a completion of their business transaction because of the upcoming hearing examiner on September 22, 2008. We are working to prepare relevant documents and other necessary tasks so that we could inform you about an appropriate strategy.

Below our signatures is an official invitation to the media and everyone regarding the meeting purpose. In addition, right below this paragraph are two important links. In case you could not read those news directly due to technical problems, attached are the news. We are urging you to read, understand and reflect in order to work together for both clear short- and long-term strategies to rebuild and develop our Vietnamese American community.

(1) Newspiece posted on”The Online Youth of Viet Nam News” at the below link regarding the Dearborn Mall project. There are many excerpts from the Seattle Times (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008152450_dearborn02m.html) and a photo of a unnamed Vietnamese restaurant in Seattle. Of course, the newspiece was approved by the Vietnamese Communist government as the rule of thumb for censorship.

http://www4.thanhnien.com.vn/Kieubao/2008/9/7/260644.tno

(2) The English newspiece of the PBS and the 15-minute excerpt from a documentary film about the successful case of the Vietnamese American community in the Versailles village of New Orleans. They were able to oppose New Orleans mayor’s official decision to dump the post-Katrina debris at the landfill located less than two miles from Versailles. This is a role model community and big lesson to all Vietnamese American communities in the US in general, and Seattle specifically.

Rough Cut–New Orleans: A Village Called Versailles (Abroad at Home Series/PBS Frontline World)

After tragedy, a community finds its political voice (by S. Leo Chiang) — August 28, 2008

We would appreciate your support and attendance of the meeting as well as passing these news to others from various sectors for a better understanding of important urban development issues of Little Saigon, and especially of Dearborn Supermall.

Please contact us at … for all inquiries and comments.

Best regards,

Hieu & Quynh-Tram

What next?

Meeting Agenda: Little Saigon Urban Development Meeting (Chương trình nghị sự: Hai Đề Án Thiết Kế Đô Thị khu Tiểu Sài Gòn)

Enclosures

Rough Cut

New Orleans: A Village Called Versailles

From the “Abroad at Home” Series/PBS Frontline World

After tragedy, a community finds its political voice

By S. Leo Chiang – August 28, 2008

The translated newspiece posted on ”The Online Youth of Viet Nam News” on September 6, 2008, regarding the rushed completion of the Dearborn Mall project deal.

NOTE: This news piece was only half translated from the Seattle Times article published on September 3rd, 2008. It was posted immediately on the net in Viet Nam right after WaVA secretly signed the Community Benefit Agreement. The question should be about how the news was passed so fast to Viet Nam. Yet, the Vietnamese merchants in Little Saigon and the Vietnamese Community in Seattle had not been informed at all. Furthermore, why Vietnamese Communist cadres showed interests in the investment news in Little Saigon Seattle that much???

Vietnamese Version (BẢN TIẾNG VIỆT)

Synopsis of The Vietnamese Public Comments Report on The Livable South Downtown Land Use Initiative

To:

City of Seattle Mayor: Gregory J. Nickels

City of Seattle Council Members: Sally Clark, Richard Conlin, Tim Burgess, Jan Drago, Jean Godden, Bruce Harrell, Nick Licata, Richard McIver, Tom Rasmussen

The Seattle Office for Civil Rights

The Seattle Immigrant and Refugee Advisory Board Co Chairs: Jesús Ybarra Rodríguez & Shankar Narayan

RE:

Civic Engagement and Participatory Process of the Livable South Downtown Land Use Recommendations

We are writing in regards to the Livable South Downtown Final EIS and Land Use Recommendations as they impact the Vietnamese and their co-ethnic communities. The first part of our report is its bilingual synopsis followed by a whole section for both observation of past events and detailed recommendations.

The comments below are drawn from the attached comments made by Dr. Jeff Hou (July 2008) through his works in the International District over the years with various student groups at the University of Washington. We also did extensive research, and communicated with many activists, citizens, and scholars regarding the issues of urban planning and democratic participation, as well as utilized “Notes” of events and contacts for these observations.

Synopsis of The Vietnamese Public Comments Report on The Livable South Downtown Land Use Initiative

We are disappointed by the Department of Planning and Development’s (DPD) lack of thorough and inclusive outreach and the City’s inadequate public engagement strategies, particularly as regards marginalized ethnic groups. These groups experience many predicaments due to multilayered barriers to meaningful participation at individual, structural and socio-cultural levels. Some prominent vulnerabilities include language, status, uneven access to communication technologies, and the defenselessness of local stakeholders to outsiders. At the same time, the requests to be responsive as well as to use creative methods for dealing with barriers while working with the grassroots to solicit opinions for more inclusive engagement were not taken seriously even though suggested in the public meetings.

The Livable South Downtown Land Use Initiative (LSDLUI) has not been inclusive and empowering due to its business- and technical-oriented approach conducted with largely elite group participation. For instance, the commercial tenants and residents in Little Saigon/International District have very little voice in the establishment and management of Washington State Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce [WaVA—formerly Vietnamese American Economic Development Association (VAEDA) ]. The board of directors composed of the hand-picked representatives are (1) insulated from public accountability as WaVA board members cannot be voted out of office, and (2) deliberately removed from public democratic channels of accountability. However, they provide an excellent mechanism to package, market, sell, and thus restructure Little Saigon as a cultural commodity. Furthermore, the various excluded groups in the community did not have any say or approval as to whom were the consultants with the necessary appropriate skills and cultural competence to engage with these socially excluded populations regarding studies on the economic and other critical impacts.

There is an imminent threat that urban land will be reclaimed from low-income residents by the City through an active participation in the urban real estate market, through public/private partnerships rather than the exercise of legal governing powers, by reconstructing new urban territories and repopulating them with the wealthier classes.

Summary of Recommendations

We urge that the Mayor, the City Council and the City of Seattle Department of Planning and Development:

(1) investigate the strategies and recommendations proposed by the “Community Open Space Initiatives” for the Little Saigon and Dearborn area of the University of Washington, Department of Landscape Architecture (2005) and other astounding urban collaboration projects around the country and Canada; and

(2) examine successful models of public engagement based on “structured deliberation” used in ethnically diverse regions such as Chicago or “The Vancouver Agreement” of Department of Western Diversification [of Vancouver, British Columbia] in 2000.

Regeneration or smart growth strategies need to involve image management in order to bring the Little Saigon neighborhood into the mainstream. The City should budget for management professionals for the inclusive and democratic participatory process. Proposals should not come only from professionals approved by the DPD officials. Furthermore, their expertise and advocacy should not involve the use of “pseudo-participation” approaches (i.e. informing, therapy, manipulation, placation, consultation). Reforming the current processes to ensure that affected people are adequately informed about their possible displacement, can only be a short-term policy corrective.

In the near future, policies addressing the question of displacement will need to move beyond a focus on damage control. We would like to establish an institutional reform that entails the institutional mechanisms for informing stakeholders and seeking their approval prior to any act of displacement. Furthermore, the long-term City and State policy objective must be to separate development from displacement. Any policy actions that have displacement as an outcome cannot qualify as developmental. The LSDLUI should be the creation of wealth through investing in Little Saigon’s that, in the longer term, will reduce its dependency on outside capital, helping to make its future more sustainable—not only economically but also culturally. Last but not least, a just system of urban and social planning requires a perspective which goes beyond risk management, and which does not automatically pathologize cultural differences stemming from the ethnic concentration. It is only by adopting such an attitude and philosophy that the City of Seattle can fulfill its moral and social responsibilities to all of its residents.

Vietnamese Version

Below are the excerpts and rebuttal comments on the draft of Attachment F—the Statement of Support for the Dearborn Coalition Project. Dearborn Street Coalition for a Livable Neighborhood (DSCLN) appears in hurry yet secretive to ensure the Seattle City Council approval for the necessary applications and petitions of the Dearborn Big Box Mall.

Such little “benefits” for the Vietnamese community are hardly compensated for an enormous loss of cultural space, history and pride (“Though Little Saigon isn’t a very rich area, it is a little piece of land that represents our past, present, AND future”, Tracey Wong, ID youth’s open letter on July 21, 2008, against the Dearborn Mall Project).

Our neighborhood, our house is on fire but some people try to salvage the feed in the trough!

Bài cập nhật sau khi có tin tức chính thức trên báo chí mạng chính thống: “Xẻ cái bánh vẽ”