SERIES | Environmental Coalition of South Seattle Elevating Community Voices for Environmental Justice

by Luna Reyna

When we think about clean water, clean energy, solid waste management, and even environmental stewardship, the projected solutions are generally proposed to the general public by government or other organization officials. The Environmental Coalition of South Seattle (ECOSS), focuses on sustainable solutions in all of these areas by bridging the gap between communities' needs and the decision-makers, with a focus on immigrant, refugee, and BIPOC communities who are often the most impacted by the effects of climate change.

Historically, top-down decision-making has caused irreparable damage to Communities of Color. We see this in city planning, which often relies heavily on road transportation and large stand-alone houses, which drastically increase our collective carbon footprint and displace predominantly low-income People of Color. The expansion of Interstate 5 through downtown that destroyed low-income housing in the Chinatown-International District is just one example.

ECOSS accomplishes their goals by consulting with community members about their needs and concerns and supporting them in any way they can. According to Kevin Duong, senior outreach manager, ECOSS staff spend upward of 80% of their time out in community businesses and gathering places to talk about projects and to better understand the needs of the community.

"It's not just about collecting the feedback, but it's also reporting back to the community so that there's accountability and it doesn't feel extractive," Duong said.

Duong stressed that building the community connection is always an ongoing process, and in order to maintain real relationships, he doesn't attend community events only for ECOSS projects. Duong frequents the cultural centers, temples, churches, and other community places, and when he is out sharing an ECOSS project, it is at a cultural hub community members are known to frequent. When the Emerald spoke with Duong he was tabling an outreach event at Danny Woo Garden in the Chinatown-International District.

It's this type of outreach that informs the community about ECOSS and the programs they offer. "We want [ECOSS] to be community driven," Duong said. "We want to empower the community with the knowledge, the education to make their own decisions that impact their living environment or family."

Duong came to ECOSS from the University of Washington. He attended a seminar on healthy nail salon design where the speaker discussed hazardous-waste management, which piqued Duong's interest. He wanted to understand the inspection process for nail salons and the chemicals that can harm the health of the workers. Duong has two aunts who work in nail salons, and he was interested in ways to reduce exposure to the chemicals.

He reached out to the speaker and was invited to be a part of a project through ECOSS and the King County Hazardous Waste Management Office. Through that project, he educated business owners about the toxic chemicals and an air-purifier ventilation system program that would help prevent exposure to them and offset the costs for business owners. Building a relationship with the owners to determine their needs was a major part of this role.

Duong estimates that around 80% of people involved in the local nail industry are Vietnamese. As a Vietnamese man, the issue alarmed him even more. When he was doing outreach along Martin Luther King Jr. Way, a pregnant nail technician told him that she knew she was breathing the chemicals, but she had to work to survive and provide for her baby on the way. She didn't speak a lot of English, and this was a job that she was able to do.

The ECOSS program informed this community about the importance of fresh air in the environment, along with tools and programs to support a healthy workplace. Duong has stayed at ECOSS ever since that first program in 2015.

Duong isn't alone in his passion for community and seemingly fortuitous arrival to ECOSS.

ECOSS Executive Director Chiyo Crawford joined around two years ago. She had been an associate director of another nonprofit, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, for five years. Before that she was working in academia, focused on environmental justice literature within a larger field of environmental humanities.

"As you can see, I have a couple of different passions that are intersecting in immigrant rights and social justice work and also environmental justice, so landing at ECOSS … I feel like I found my home," Crawford said.

For William Chen, the partnerships and belonging director, the path to ECOSS wasn't one he expected. Chen's background is in mathematics, and he expected to go into science writing.

Science writing led him to an internship at The Nature Conservancy, which led him to being connected to Environmental Professionals of Color where he met people involved in environmental justice and community building with Communities of Color and uplifting them around environmental solutions. There were a couple people from ECOSS there, including Duong, who suggested he apply for a communications role at ECOSS.

"When I did my interview with them, it just felt like the right place, and I'm really thankful I did because I learned so much, not just about environmental justice, but also about my own culture," Chen said. "It really gave me a chance to reconnect with my own racial background. My parents are Chinese immigrants, and I didn't realize how much that really centered me until I started with ECOSS."

Chen emphasized the importance of community input first rather than a top-down approach to the environment. One successful example he shared was when ECOSS partnered with King County Parks, The Wilderness Society, and King County Metro to talk to the community about outdoor access for historically marginalized communities, share their experiences, and provide solutions. Instead of agency partners sharing information, information was flowing the other way, and agencies were hearing directly from the community.

"There was a little bit of accountability," Chen said. "Now they're putting faces to names and putting faces to these agency bodies. Through our collaboration, we're still working with these partners so we can check in and be like, 'Hey, we talked about this thing a year ago.' These partnerships have helped give a little bit more of a bridge between agency and community and build that trust."

Through these partnerships, these City and State agencies are beginning to understand the importance of the relationship building that ECOSS does and have even funded relationship building.

"We've been able to have these conversations and shift that kind of framework and that's been pretty amazing," Crawford said. "We would love to see our community leaders be able to have that relationship with our big decision-makers that are pulling all the policy levers."

Crawford believes that the community has experience and a wealth of wisdom that they bring from each individual culture. The ECOSS goal is to play a part in empowering community members to lead in these important conversations, and while she understands that's not always possible for a number of reasons, she and the ECOSS staff are proud to be a part of elevating voices for environmental justice among communities that aren't always allowed in the room.

One of the major issues ECOSS is focused on now is water infrastructure. Immigrant and refugee communities are disproportionately renters and, historically, incentives for stormwater solutions have been tailored to homeowners. But the reality is that stormwater pollution is one of the biggest sources of pollution for the Puget Sound. "We are missing a lot of potential, because we're unable to work with people who are not homeowners," Chen said.

When ECOSS was doing outreach about stormwater solutions, community members were already using buckets to conserve rainwater to use in the summer. "Communities already know what they need, so for me, what's inspiring is listening to them, following their lead, and then bringing that to the right people so that we can collaborate and work towards change," Chiyo said. "A lot of the decisions around what are the next steps we need to take for environmental solutions are made by people in power who are not experiencing the worst impacts of environmental burdens right now."

Duong pointed out that a lot of the communities ECOSS serves also live in polluted spaces. "Everybody should have a chance to have clean air and water," Duong said. "I really want in my lifetime to be able to see community members feel connected. You don't have to go out too far to see nature, you can have a small, creative space to enjoy living a lifestyle where we're giving back to the earth."

Crawford believes that many of the barriers are layered and complex, and finding solutions will require taking the time to have conversations with a wide range of community members who will be impacted by these environmental solutions.

"There's these things we're tackling, and then there's the barriers to actually successfully implementing some of these solutions," Crawford said. "When we think about some of these bigger goals, for example, Washington State has a goal for decarbonization. I really don't think we can achieve those targets unless we slow down and listen to community and really hear and understand the vast array of layered barriers, and listen to them about how we can overcome them to be successful." Crawford says that funding to support their work always helps, but most importantly, she hopes to keep building their community.

"Power is in community," Crawford said. "It is such a beautiful, powerful thing."

📸 Featured Image: A cistern painted by community members at the Danny Woo Community Garden in Chinatown-International District. (Photo: Susan Fried)