Join Whose Streets? Our Streets! for a panel discussion about Transportation Equity and current BIPOC-led projects and campaigns. More info here.

People of color are often not at the table when major transportation decisions are made for communities. In this workshop, learn about Seattle’s BIPOC groups that are leading transportation work impacting communities of color.  Panelists will describe their coalition building around climate justice, mobility justice, unjust traffic enforcement and legislative advocacy to build a transportation future rooted in equity.

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Moderator: Olivia Smith

Panelists: Rebecca Rosado, Front and Centered

Ethan Campbell, Helmet Law Working Group

Renaissance the Poet

BIOS

Olivia Smith is an anti-racist organizer and community-builder in her hometown of Seattle, WA. Having seen the city change over time, Olivia was motivated to root herself in movements to undo racism and all oppressive systems that keep our people exploited and unhealthy. Olivia has organized with Youth Undoing Institutional Racism, No New Youth Jail Coalition, as well as other groups/campaigns that aim to expose injustice in the criminal legal system, tax system, and non-profit industrial complex. She now works with collectives that build Black Afrikan community power and self-determination, including the Black Power Epicenter/Nurturing Roots Farm, Cafe Avole, the Seattle People’s Party, and the George Jackson Freedom Coalition.

Rebecca Rosado leads the resource and communication development that guides the membership experience at Front and Centered. She has a background in project management with a history of community engagement. In her role as Membership Lead, Rebecca coordinates member events, oversees the annual summit and implements programs to serve the members of Front and Centered and the communities they serve. She looks forward to finding new ways to bring the conversation of Just Transition to a neighborhood near you. 

Ethan C. Campbell is a safe streets and bicycling advocate with Central Seattle Greenways, a chapter of the citywide nonprofit Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. Over the past year, he has been co-leading and contributing research for the Helmet Law Working Group, a coalition formed to address the inequitable enforcement of King County’s bicycle helmet law by race and housing status. Outside of this volunteer work, he is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington.

Renaissance the Poet is a hip-hop and spoken word artist, engaged in the struggle for Black and Brown Liberation working at the intersection of systems of oppression that marginalize and suppress people of color, worldwide. His artistic work focuses on social justice, liberty, equity, and the dissemination of facts through music, poetry, photography, and videos.His work is geared to understanding, confronting, challenging, and changing this unjust and inequitable system of power and oppression and creating the opposite in its stead. 

Organizations

Front and Centered is the largest coalition of communities of color-led groups in the Pacific Northwest, whose diverse missions and work come together at the intersection of equity, environmental and climate justice. Together, and with key partners our coalition actively works towards the vision for a Just Transition.

Whose Streets? Our Streets! (WSOS) is a majority-BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) group, convened in July 2020 by Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, dedicated to reviewing and revising laws and policies to better meet the needs and support the lives of all street users — in particular, the BIPOC community who have historically been excluded from the full and free use of this shared public space. WSOS uses a pro-equity, anti-racist framework to review laws and policies governing the use of streets and also develop a vision of, and recommendations for, how our streets can be safe, thriving places without the use of armed police.

The Helmet Law http://centralseattlegreenways.comWorking Group is a collaboration with Cascade, Real Change, and members of other transportation and equity-focused groups. Using public records requests, our research found that Seattle police have invoked King County’s bicycle helmet law to stop and ticket Black cyclists at about four times the rate of white cyclists since 2003. In December, investigative reporting by Crosscut found that over 43% of helmet citations since 2017 were issued by Seattle police to homeless people.