S1 EP10: Census with Susan Balbas and Kamau Chege
In this podcast we are excited to launch our second episode of our four-part series with The Gates Discovery Center's "In Community We Flourish" events. Each event will highlight young people who are local changemakers in our community!
Today's podcast resolves the importance of being counted in the current census. We are grateful to be joined by Kamau Chege, Manager at the Washington Census Alliance and Susan Balbas, Executive Director of the Na’ah Illahee Fund.
Our guests share stories around immigration, historical trauma, the importance of being counted, and collective action.
Both shared personal and professional projects towards the end.
Kamau talked about how they are taking the multi-racial coalition built around the census to tackle more issues with collective power. Two examples of their efforts are securing $40 million for unrepresented community members who did not qualify for federal COVID-19 relief funds and a Black-led launch of the Washington for Black Lives campaign.
Susan talked about launching their Native Community Crisis Response Fund with support from both All in Washington and Seattle Foundation. With these funds, they’ve been mainly support domestic violence and food security programs.
The Na’ah Illahee Fund is also launching a climate justice cohort starting this month to increase skill-sharing and to explore how to stop polluting and to start regenerating with community leaders.
0:32 - Introduction of our partnership with the Gates Discovery Center's In Community We Flourish program
1:08 - Kamau Chege introduction
1:48 - Susan Balbas introduction
3:00 - Check-in question around belonging and feeling counted
3:33 - Susan responds that she felt included by filling out the census this year because of the work they've done in this campaign
5:40 - Kamau responds how unlike Susan's history of such long lineage here, he is new and finding his place.
8:06 - Kamau talks about hearing a Kenyan rap song while walking by the Cap Hill Occupied Protest space and how that made him feel included
10:04 - Frank talks about a similar experience hearing K-Pop while taking the light rail
13:00 - Frank talks about the multi-racial movement and how the pandemic has forced us to flex our community muscles to connect more actively
13:52 - Kamau tells his story and how his family immigrated to the US in the Fall of 2001 and how they moved around
16:00 - Kamau talks about a clerical error their family faced when the Immigration Dept transitioned into the Department of Homeland Security and how that forced them to choose to be undocumented instead of uprooting their lives
18:28 - Kamau talks about how his African immigrant parents came to an understanding how the country codes them as Black and to think about race where they never really had to back in Kenya
21:45 - Susan's family came to California from Oklahoma and that's where her ancestry with the Cherokee Nation derives from
22:57 - Susan's family immigrated to the central valley of California during the Dust Bowl
23:51 - Susan talks about her mixed culture and personhood and how that was confusing between her Mexican, Indigenous, and European identities
24:55 - Matriarchical role-models taught her how important giving back is
26:27 - Need for healing due to the amount of indigenous trauma and dispossession of land and identity
28:35 - Love for the Northwest for Susan, Frank and Kamau
29:45 - Frank talks about the nuance of race when you come from a very homogenous country and how that changes quickly when you come to the United States
31:42 - Kamau talks about the book Racecraft by Karen E. Fields & Barbara J. Fields - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14451357-racecraft - What's happening is institutions are identifying you even if you haven't had that identity before you moved here. Banks, schools, offices, they all play a role here.
33:40 - During the 2008 election, Kamau's mother was very evangelical and was a big Mike Huckabee fan because he spoke the language of the religious faith
34:40 - But since then, his mother is now a big Bernie Sanders supporter after the years of racialiazed experiences and the immigrant experience
35:35 - Immigrants find out very quickly which instituions and parties are creating space for them and we saw that recently with the citizenship question that almost appeared in this year's census
37:02 - The common denominator for all the communities represented in the Washington Census Alliance was the idea of being counted and being visible
39:13 - Frank asks people what they are working on
39:40 - Kamau talks about how to take the multi-racial coalition they built into action to create communities, economies, and democracies that work for them
40:40 - The coalition recently secured $40 million for unrepresented community members for COVID-19 relief since they did not receive the government stimulus that others got in the Spring
40:57 - Black-led members just launched https://www.washingtonforblacklives.org
43:00 - Susan talks about launching their Native Community Crisis Response Fund - https://connect.clickandpledge.com/w/Form/7f56d0ff-7067-4274-9763-ed14d654b99e - (thanks to Seattle Foundation and AllinWA funds)
43:40 - Started to resource domestic violence programs, many who were out of crisis response funds and also donated to food security programs
44:15 - Susan talks about their Indigenous Food bundles - food, masks, protective gear, kids' activities. Distributed them all over the state and beyond. Very successful.
45:38 - Started including Container Gardens and then started building gardens for folks. Developing a long-term native food system for the future that provides security and sovreignty
46:40 - Launching a climate justice cohort which will start in September. Since it's online, they can invite more people than they originally thought they could. Will do skill-sharing and explore how to stop polluting and start regenerating with community leaders.
48:30 - Go to the website https://www.naahillahee.org/ for information on all of these projects and how to support!
49:03 - Susan closes by talking about all the tensions happening now but that she's hopeful because of the need to work with so many other communities and in discovering commonalities. We still have abundance on our planet!
51:00 - Frank talks about how scarcity causes inequity by setting people against each other
51:27 - Kamau talks about regenerative economic models and hope for the future. We are starting to build a multi-racial democracy but the demographics of our legislature still do not represent Black and Indigenous communities.
53:42 -Kamau talks about how big the economy of Washington state is bigger than Denmark but we don't have the type of care they do.
54:29 - Spotify is in Switzerland with high business taxes but they aren't leaving for another country with less taxes. We deserve wellbeing resources and can keep our economy running at the same time.
55:08 - Frank ends with talking about the power of the collective possessive pronoun of WE.
Special thanks to Big Phony for providing music for the We Belong Here podcast.