Film

Project Lead (Executive Producer) on Inye Wokoma’s documentary film: A Central Vision, City of Seattle, February 2018

Opening remarks at the film’s premiere at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, Seattle, February 7, 2018:

My name is Vinita Goyal and I work for the City of Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development. Today is about lifting up the voices of this neighborhood.

So I want to start with this quote from MM, a Central Area resident. It’s from a recent exhibit at the Seattle Central Library about the risk of displacement residents are experiencing:

MM: “…As the economy gets better, it’s actually pretty good. It’s fun. It’s…when you’re a people person, it’s good to meet lots of new, different, diverse, people…It’s been really exciting seeing the change. It’s been sad, in some senses, in seeing some of the people pushed out, and some of the businesses that are struggling to make it. But it’s also encouraging to see the future in the Central Area…I just hope we don’t lose the diversity, we don’t lose the history, we don’t lose what the Central Area was built on.”

I came to the city and the City (with a Capital C) a year and a half ago to work on the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, popularly known as HALA. To advance our efforts on recommendations from HALA, we are involved in a variety of study and analyses. The city is growing and our plans to accommodate future growth are supported by analyses about how our plans will benefit and/or impact communities. While we can get many tangible conclusions that can guide our policy decisions, there are often serious limitations.

There are less tangible phenomenon and changes, for instance that several neighborhoods in the city are currently experiencing that we know from stories such as MM’s. These are not easy always to quantify and are a serious problem confronting cities such as Seattle. In the absence of measurable indicators to analyze the displacement challenge, there remains a serious lack of a shared understanding of the magnitude of the problem. Communities such as the Central Area and the Chinatown/ International District who are most vulnerable to harmful impacts of business as usual development patterns, experience further isolation and alienation in the process; while privileged residents remain ignorant of the crisis and the needed urgency to addressing it. That inevitably leads to a lack of commitment and support for evidence based solutions that can make a difference.

The Central Vision employs storytelling in making a visceral connection of the displacement challenge with the audience—those who are hurting and those who are ignorant of the hurt.

We are proud of this partnership project with Inye Wokoma that builds on his previous documentation of the displacement experiences of Central Area residents and businesses including his own family. Through stories and their intersection with policy solutions, the film recognizes the enormity of the challenge and raises some difficult questions (and I would argue also attempts to answer) that have emerged in the Central Area: Will residents and businesses who left the Central Area, will they come back? Can we assure residents who don’t want to “surrender”? Do such claims as “if we are truly listening, they will come” hold merit?