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AI: Please tell me about that, because now, today we have an organization called Minority Executive Directors Coalition of King County...

TI: Yes.

AI: ...and it's well-known as an organization that's very multicultural and multiracial. But can you tell me about the time before that existed...

TI: Yeah.

AI: ...and then how it came to be organized?

TI: This (was) a time of "Reaganomics," President Reagan was cutting back on social services, so-called "Reaganomics." And I felt all our minority agencies would be suffering and that we needed to get together. So I initiated initially (bringing together) twelve minority executives together. And after discussing it thoroughly, I suggested two options -- one is we continue our to-each-his-own and cutthroat each other to get the limited resources. Or the other option is learn how to trust each other to get more resources (through coalitional efforts). Overwhelmingly they were open to this coalition effort. And in another study I was involved in, covered the United States and found the Minority Executive Directors Coalition of King County is one of the most effective coalition, minority coalition in the United States. And many of these bigger cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City have tremendous, large-sized Asian American communities. But they're handicapped in a sense they're so big, that they felt they could handle issues on their own. And as a result, these cities (did not succeed in getting financial support for Asian programs), compared to the kinds of agencies that we have in Seattle. They just couldn't compete. We were much better. These big cities were so big, whether they're Japanese community or Chinese community or any community, they just couldn't bridge that wall of differences and find a common ground that existed.

AI: What was the common ground that existed that brought people together?

TI: Well, we're all minorities. We felt powerless. We had no influence. And so we agreed that everything we'd do, we'd do it together. I mean, one of each color was always in on every negotiation. (Among other efforts), we set up a process where every quarter we met with the secretary of DSHS...

AI: Department of Social and Health Services for Washington State.

TI: ...and give the director feedback on how well the services were being done or not done. And one of the ones we raised was for the elderly. There were no real effort to involve and give food that was needed for (elderly) Asian Americans, let alone other minorities. So the director of the state office on aging was called in to explain why not. And they said the arrangement was that each region (had) a regional disbursing system. Senior Services Center was the one in this region. And meeting with that director, he felt he made efforts to involve (minority elderly) in their feeding program, they couldn't do it. So we said, "Okay. We have a solution. You set up a contract with Bush Asia Center, Langston Hughes, United Indians of All Tribes, and El Centro de la Raza, who will cover the four major minority (elderly) groups, and let them dispense, provide this food to the likings of that particular ethnic group." So they said, "Okay." Another need we saw was Variety Club at that time had no buses going to minority agencies. So the director, president agreed that there was a need. So he'll start giving one new car a year. And we told him that, that's not right. We're so far behind, you've got to give several buses every year. And as a result today, we have buses all over the place at all these minority agencies.

AI: Now, a little bit earlier, you said that you felt it was important to have one of each color...

TI: Yeah.

AI: ...the four main colors. And could you tell me a little about why that was so important and what you meant by that, one of each color?

TI: Yeah. Usually the white system pits one minority group against another. But when you have one Asian American, one African American group, one Chicano group, one Native American group all together in the same room and we're all saying the same thing together, it's harder for the system to reject it. And we found we were more successful doing it that way. And gradually, it built confidence that it's working. [Laughs] Intimidating people is great if you're united. So that's what we did. And...

AI: Well, when you were first using that approach, the united approach, what kind of reaction did you get from -- you were describing this reaction about the senior food and feeding programs.

TI: Yeah.

AI: It sounds like in the end that turned out very well.

TI: Yeah.

AI: But in the beginning of that, what kind of reaction did you get when you were facing these people?

TI: There was a common agreement among members of the coalition who were concerned about elderly needs. And I guess they believed that working together would have better results. As a result, we continued to experience the same positive experience. Whereas vocational rehab, or issues, or in the community college not being (fully) accessible (we joined) a strike or a sit-in on, in the administrative offices of Seattle Central Community College. And I remember Al Sugiyama was part of that (confrontation), and we used to have yellow sheets of paper, and just ran off a lot of them and stuck them all over the place in the office. Show some symbol, (was important). It was real, so from that came an advisory group to the chancellor, to gain access to the system. (The next issue was) Head Start access was limited to minority groups, so we protested that. So we got more money for Head Start for all the minority groups. There were plenty of targets to shoot for, and the more we did it, the more successful we became. We felt the newspaper needed to have a minority point of view. So the Seattle Times agreed that every Saturday have a column. So we had a number of us writing pretty good-sized amount of words about their concerns. And the Times' owner was supportive of that. So after a while, it ran out because there weren't enough people skilled in writing that wanted to volunteer their writing skills to the newspaper, but it worked for quite a while.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.