20 Nov Legitimate memory

Yesterday, a visiting scholar (while over beers) mentioned that Seattle doesn’t remember its occupation and civil disobedience history. I interjected that it was not true, but that we have a fantastic project coming out of the University of Washington that is a collaboration between the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, the Simpson Center for the Humanities,  and the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest together to create the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project that has culminated in a massive collection of oral histories, maps, data and all manner of information.

But what i was shocked at was my own ignorance in returning to the academy for legitimate shows of the memory of Seattle’s activist and movement histories. Washington State was the “reddest” state in the union when the Great Depression hit. Seattle had the second chapter of the Black Panthers after Oakland. Many of our important cultural centers have been garnered through occupation, including Day Break Star Cultural Center in 1970, El Centro de la Raza in 1972, and the Northwest African American Museum in 1985 (an occupation that lasted more than eight years).

Many of our community and migrant health clinics (HRSA Federally Qualified Health Centers) as well as non-profit clinics are named after activists and the ones who built them such as Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic  and Carolyn Downs Family Medical Center. Throughout the city, there are markers to the history-makers – busstops with histories of activists and murals depicting the stories. Community centers, schools, auditoriums, parks – they all abound with Seattle’s history as a site of activism. So why this invisibility?

It’s a geographical thing. Most of the markers of the activist past are tied to their own centers. The memory of the African American activists begins just past Madison (excepting the Miller Community Center, which is up near John). The memory of Asian and Asian American activism is contained in the International District. The memory of the Latino community is embedded further south, closer to Beacon Hill.

I worked and lived in the Central District and Columbia City for the majority of my time in Seattle until i started graduate school. I was asked when i first called to see the apartment on 26th and Cherry if i had “a problem with black people – because, you know, people come up here and they’re uncomfortable with all the black people.” I laughed and told the manager, “Well, i’m Mexican, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.” My introduction to Seattle was through the Central District – the heart of the activist movements for many people of color across several decades. My view of Seattle is, quite literally, colored by my own color. The historical legacy that is embedded in the landscape is supported by community narratives – by the constant reminder of the stories of those who have made change.

So how is it that i ended up calling on a University project to prove what i already knew was an historical legacy that is embedded in the landscape of the traditionally black, Asian, Latino neighborhoods of Seattle? And why had it never before occurred to me that memory (or Memory, as it were) is so very dependent on legitimacies outside of their origination?? How does memory, then, become legitimated?

My students and i read Fearless women of the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War recently. The entire book is a discourse analysis of the the women of both of these wars – their disappearance and reappearance – their ownership by others to legitimate their existence – an existence that is mediated and re-formulated through the lens of others to ensure that their legitimization sits properly.

How can we re-situate the activist histories beyond the boundaries of particular neighborhoods to take root in a trans-Seattle activist memory and pride?