Last week we promoted the Cultivate Open Mic event, which featured the Trackademics program, embodied by many youth performers, some who just happen to represent White Center. Here are some photos of the event by Ramzey Staples. You can check out the rest of the photos on Facebook!

Photo: SOPI Village groundbreaking event, Sept. 2010, taken by Patrick Robinson.

We are proud to share with you the accomplishments from last year and give a preview of our 2011 work. Next up is Neighborhood Revitalization. We will report out on our Community Building work tomorrow!

Neighborhood Revitalization: Our “Place” based work (the physical neighborhood)

Our Goal:   The physical neighborhood supports families through diverse types of affordable housing, safe and walkable streets, vibrant and active businesses and improved public amenities.

In 2011, our work includes our Neighborhood business district program- focused on related strategies to market and develop local business and economic prosperity. Our Fresh Marketplace Initiative supports local produce markets and healthy eating and active living amongst diverse families. Spring Clean is a 400+volunteer, 20-project  annual community event to clean up the neighborhood. And our Affordable Housing/community development work will see the grand opening of an affordable 30-unit rental project, Strength of Place Village, in Fall 2011, as well as the feasibility of a commercial/community real estate project.  It will incorporate an affordable commercial space component, as well as the development of an equity policy agenda to underscore White Center’s changing needs.

2010 Successes:

Provided and/or connected 140 White Center businesses to technical assistance.

Healthy Food Gift Certificate program in partnership with the White Center Food Bank distributed $20,000 worth of produce at two White Center markets to clients in need.

Distributed 14 façade improvement matching grants to local businesses to improve look and safety of their business.

Facilitated business owners’ choice of “Growing a Global Village” as their business district brand.

Broke ground on a $10M new construction project, Strength of Place Village, with Capitol Hill Housing, Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association and the CDA.

Above is a screen shot from a recent The Seattle Times article about Damien Jurado, featuring a photo of him taken in White Center.  The article mentions “Beacon Hill” and “Wallingford”, songs that he wrote while in high school. His “White Center” song was released in 2005 - see this previous blog entry about it.

White Center resident and South Park business owner Kathi “George” Wheeler was seen wearing our “I Heart White Center” t-shirt on the Seattle Channel yesterday. The shirt was a giveaway at the 2010 White Center Community Summit. Watch the video here (click on Regional Development & Sustainability Committee). Our next shirt giveaway will be at this year’s White Center Spring Clean, so stay tuned!

The City of Burien is currently engaging in a community-wide effort to shape its long-term future.

All residents can help create a common and unifying vision for Burien. The goal of the visioning effort is to provide the Burien community with a sense of direction and a framework for evaluating future policy decisions. The vision that emerges will provide a critical foundation for upcoming City planning efforts including the Comprehensive Plan, Transportation Master Plan, Parks and Recreation Open Space Plan, and Drainage Master Plan.

The City has hired a planning and urban design consultant, to facilitate a planning process that will engage and involve community members in redefining Burien’s vision of the future. A volunteer Steering Committee of Burien residents and community members will guide the process through interviews with key stakeholders, Affinity Groups to identify top issues (refer to the schedule below), Community Meetings to envision our future, and City Council Work Sessions to refine the final vision.

Affinity Group Schedule:
• Education: March 2, Wed, 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.
• Arts: March 2, Wed, 7-8 p.m.
• Medical/Wellness: March 3, Thurs, 10:30 - 11:30 a.m.
• 20-Something: March 4, Fri, 7 - 8 p.m.
• Recreation: March 5, Sat, 9:30 - 10:30 a.m.
• Environment/Shoreline: March 5, Sat, 11am - 12:30pm
• Getting Around Town (Transportation): March 7, Mon, 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.
• Latino: March 9, Wed, 6 - 7 p.m.

Via Got Green:

The “Women in the Green Economy” project aims to learn from women and their families in SE Seattle about what they need and want from the green movement. The project will survey low-income women and women of color around four issues: green jobs; green home; access to healthy and fresh foods; and public transportation.

Read more about the project here!

It is the last day of filming for Director Zia Mohajerjasbi and crew at Cascade Middle School for Seattle rapper Macklemore’s song “Wings”, and the students are excited to be a part of what will be a great music video. Video gear, crew, students and staff are packed into one classroom this morning, where filming will continue in the hallway and cafeteria this afternoon. We were on the set this morning, and will make sure to post the final product here and on Facebook in the near future.

Above photos and video by White Center CDA staff, to not be used without permission of the CDA.

The song itself is a moving portrait of Macklemore’s love for Air Jordan (Michael Jordan) sneakers, and the consequences that come with it. You can listen to the song here:

More information about this year’s Spring Clean coming soon!

In White Center, the YES Foundation, along with Community Schools Collaboration, partnered up with Cascade Bicycle Club in 2009 to create the Major Taylor bike project, an “after-school cycling program for young people aged 11-18 integrating bicycle riding, healthy living, cycle maintenance, road safety awareness, and the importance of working toward individual goals” (link). The project continues to offer opportunities to youth in White Center involving bike riding that they couldn’t find anywhere else.

But who exactly is “Major Taylor”? For Black History Month, we’d like to offer a brief profile of this bicycling great.

Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor (26 November 1878 – 21 June 1932) was an American cyclist who won the world 1 mile (1.6 km) track cycling championship in 1899 after setting numerous world records and overcoming racial discrimination. Taylor was the first African-American athlete to achieve the level of world champion and only the second black man to win a world championship—after Canadian boxer George Dixon.

Taylor was the son of Gilbert Taylor, Civil War veteran and Saphronia Kelter, who had migrated from Louisville, Kentucky with their large family to a farm in rural Indiana. He was one of eight children, five girls and three boys. Taylor’s father was employed in the household of a wealthy Indiana family, the Southard’s, as a coachman, where Taylor was also raised and educated. When Taylor was a child, his father would bring him to work. The employer had a son, Dan Southard, who was the same age and the two boys became close friends. Taylor later moved in with the family and was able to live a more advantaged life than his parents could provide.

This period of living and learning at the Southard house lasted from the time he was eight until he was 12 when the Southard’s moved to Chicago and Taylor “was soon thrust into the real world.”

At age 12, Taylor received his first bicycle the Southard’s and became such an expert trick rider that a local bike shop owner, Tom Hay, hired him to stage exhibitions and perform cycling stunts outside his bicycle shop. The name of the shop was Hay and Willits. The compensation was $6 a week, plus a free bike worth $35. Taylor performed the stunts wearing a soldier’s uniform, hence the nickname “Major.”

When he was 13 in 1891, Taylor won his first race, an amateur event in Indianapolis. Two years later, in 1893 at age 15, Taylor beat the 1 mile (1.6 km) amateur track record where he was “hooted” and then barred from the track because of his color.

Although he was greatly celebrated abroad, particularly in France, Taylor’s career was still held back by racism, particularly in the Southern states where he was not permitted to compete against Caucasians. The League of American Wheelmen for a time excluded blacks from membership. Other prominent bicycle racers of the era, such as Tom Cooper and Eddie Bald, often cooperated to insure Taylor’s defeat. During his career he had ice water thrown at him during races and nails scattered in front of his wheels, and was often boxed in by other riders, preventing the sprints to the front of the pack at which he was so successful.

In his autobiography, he reports actually being tackled on the race track by another rider, who choked him into unconsciousness but received only a $50 fine as punishment. Nevertheless, he does not dwell on such events in the book; rather it is evident that he means it to serve as an inspiration to other African-Americans trying to overcome similar treatment. Taylor retired at age 32 in 1910, saying he was tired of the racism. His advice to African-American youths wishing to emulate him was that while bicycle racing was the appropriate route to success for him, he would not recommend it in general; and that individuals must find their own best talent.While Taylor was reported to have earned between $25,000 and $30,000 a week when he returned to Worcester at the end of his career, by the time of his death he had lost everything to bad investments (including self-publishing his autobiography), persistent illness, and the stock market crash. His marriage over, he died at age 53 on June 21, 1932-a pauper in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, in the charity ward of Cook County Hospital-to be buried in an unmarked grave. He was survived by his daughter.

In 1948 a group of former pro bike racers, with money donated by Schwinn Bicycle Co. (then) owner Frank W. Schwinn, organized the exhumation and relocation of Taylor’s remains to a more prominent part of Mount Glenwood Cemetery in Glenwood, Illinois, near Chicago. A monument to his memory stands in Worcester, and Indianapolis named the city’s bicycle trapock after Taylor.

Information via Wikipedia