We have to hold one another
up, and we do that through love and through joy, through laughter.
He's new to the job, but not to the city.
See what a typical day is like for Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell.
As millions of Ukrainians become refugees, we revisit
a similar experience for a family that fled Syria.
We highlight the work of a remarkable woman determined to help others
as we observe Women's History Month.
These stories and more next on CityStream.
Hello, I'm Dennis Bounds, and welcome to CityStream from Seattle City Hall.
New Year, new leadership.
And that I will faithfully conduct myself .
And that I will faithfully conduct myself.
As mayor for the City of Seattle.
Congratulations. Thank you very much.
Bruce Harrell was sworn in as
Seattle's 57th mayor at the start of 2022.
And after just eleven weeks on the job, he's tackling
a growing list of challenges facing the city.
No question
his job is a pressure cooker, but it's balanced by lighter moments
when he leaves the office and interacts with the community.
That was clear when we tagged along.
Producer Randy Eng now with a day in the life
of Mayor Bruce Harrell.
Mayors here at Kraken Iceplex
to share a proclamation that today is officially Kraken Day.
Lake City, Beacon Hill, MLK and Rainier Valley.
So a proclamation gives us the opportunity
to preserve something through our city clerk system, that's an archive document,
and we can look back and talk about the measurements within the proclamation.
Our mayor, Mayor Harrell.
We all have to look at the Kraken organization, and people
are evaluating them on their win or loss record,
which to me , they've won, they put in money into our community,
small businesses, BIPOC community workers and contractors.
They said they would do these things and now they did it.
Now, therefore, the Mayor and the full
Seattle City Council honor the fans of Seattle's new NHL franchise,
the Seattle Kraken, and proclaim Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022,
to be Seattle Kraken Day.
That's why we do this proclamations are not symbolic,
they're actually substantive in nature with some symbolism.
So I enjoy doing that and I think it's the right thing to do.
$8 million geared toward small business, making just a little bit more about it.
Sure, so there's two things ...
Part of the mayor's job is to take questions from the press,
and you never know when they might show up and what questions they'll have.
Trust the ice, trust the ice.
I don't know what that means. (laughter) Thanks for coming by.
We're going to get you on the ice next time. Well,
I feel a little confidence now.
I saw my competition went to council members.
I think I can take 'em.
Exactly we get a little game going, it could be really fun. Thank you.
From here, the
mayor is going to stop by the hospital to see a friend's wife,
to just show his support and make sure she's doing OK.
Where are you?
So we're down here at the Met in the main entrance.
I got a call very late last night at 11:15pm to be here.
Being born and raised here I get these calls all the time and I try
to do what I can to let people know in a time of need that I'm there for them.
It's part of the job that no one talks about,
but it's critical for us to help each other
get through tough times.
Just having the mayor here helps
draw in the attention of, you know, news channels and things like that.
The new capital access program is an investment an $8 million,
plus $3 million in recovery, dollars of $5 million and Equitable Communities
Task Force dollars that business could start applying for now.
To know that there's possible resources out there for me is amazing. I
had a quote here that was prepared for me and I want to do it justice.
Rather than help small
businesses tread water, we need them to be thriving.
More than a life raft, we need to help them get ...
we need to help get them a speedboat to success.
And I wasn't clever enough to write that.
I wasn't even clever enough to read it perfectly.
But I'll tell you that that's what this is about.
Yes, I do think the mayor is approachable.
I feel like he's very down to earth, understands
for as a small business owner, what it's like.
Every opportunity I can let people know
what I'm going to do as leader, my energy, right?
That I quite frankly learned as a young athlete, this tenacity
to get things done.
As much as possible,
the mayor tries to get out in community, but you can't escape meetings.
There are times where he's
booked back to back to back in Teams meetings and Zoom meetings.
If you have questions on that, just see me off channel
because I know you need to talk with us what's that's going to look like?
This will be his third meeting.
So right now, he's meeting with his executive team to hear
what initiatives we're working on, what decisions he needs to make.
(Laughter)
I would say, the mayor has really set the tone
for this office. In an office that laughs together.
I think that's really an important part.
There's a sense of humor that underlies everything that the mayor does,
and that I think we all try to do too, is to do this work with some joy.
We have to hold one another up
and we do that through love and through joy, through laughter.
And so when I see people having a positive workplace,
particularly here on the seventh floor, it does my heart wonder.
We should love what we do because we're trying to help people.
There's no such thing as a typical day in the mayor's office.
After this, the Mayor is headed to the Kraken game to celebrate Kraken Day
and put an exclamation point on it.
Time to release the Kraken!!
So the Kraken lesson is,
say what you're going to do, do what you said you're going to do.
Measure it and make a better Seattle.
So you're going to be right over there.
You're going to be on stage left. People want it like this.
Like this, like this.
This Kraken organization wasn't built like this, right?
It took a vision.
It took skills.
It took investments, took hard work.
And that's what we're willing to do.
So that's what this day represents.
We are honored to have Seattle Mayor Harrell
here tonight to share the proclamation.
We've been in office only for eight weeks, but, you know,
quite frankly, this is a seven day a week job for me and I don't run away from it.
That's what's needed.
When Mayor Harrell took office at the beginning
of this year, it was actually his second time being sworn in as mayor.
You might recall he served as interim mayor of Seattle back in 2017.
He held that post for five days.
The refugee crisis in Ukraine evokes
memories of a similar predicament in Syria just five years ago.
one family's story?
as CityStream continues.
Nearly 3 million Ukrainians
have now fled their country as Russia continues its unrelenting attack.
The refugees have streamed into neighboring Poland, Hungary,
Slovakia, Romania, Moldova and other countries.
For many, the journey has been compounded by emotional separations
as Ukrainian men age 18 to 60
stay behind to fight for their country.
A similar refugee crisis played out just five years ago.
Millions of Syrians escaped the city of Aleppo,
and surrounding regions that crumbled under intense fighting.
Some of those refugees arriving Seattle's begin a new life.
Josephine Cheng spoke to a Syrian family who shared a perspective, back then,
that few Americans have experienced.
Translator
Iyad and Saffa never imagined they'd be here.
Halfway across the globe using a mobile translator.
Yes. Making textiles and sold. OK, both.
Letting their kids watch American
TV and eat American snacks.
But what do you do when your old life
literally vanishes?
This is all
the remains of thier once vibrant block in Aleppo, a city of 5 million
that was one of the most beautiful and historic
in Syria.
This is all there is to the house
they once called home.
And see the textile shop that Iyad and his father
had built from scratch to support their families.
It too, is now just dust.
Hundreds of thousands have died in the Syrian Civil War and millions have fled.
Before Iyad and Saffa left for Turkey in 2012,
life was as bad as any war movie.
We lived in
complete fear and complete shock.
There was no electric power and no water, and my daughter,
was really young at that time and she needed milk,
but all the food and other necessities were missing.
Also, like all the doctors, the ones that are very competent
in Aleppo, fled, and my wife was pregnant
with my second daughter and she needed a C-section.
So Saffa and Iyad felt they had no choice but to take bare
essentials in two suitcases and leave the country they loved.
Iyad would later learn he lost an aunt,
cousins his little brother.
Another price of war.
In six months, dead, yeah.
It was pretty shocking.
What happened in Syria.
I never imagined that the government would like shoot down,
like innocent civilians who went to the streets to protest.
It was unimaginable.
This is our interpreter Methal DAbaj,
who also fled Syria in 2012. As a software engineer
she had the good fortune to land a job at Microsoft,
and the company helped her get an H-1B visa for specially skilled workers.
As she awaited her green card she began hearing stories
of friends back home, and they touch her to the core.
For me personally because when I left Syria,
I was like, here in a safe place and my friends ...
sorry, they can't.
She feels so lucky
because so many others, like Iyad, settling temporarily in Turkey,
was scrounging for any job he could.
Gas station attendant, restaurant worker,
vegetable seller anything to support his family
while they applied for the chance to come to the U.S.
to Seattle as political refugees.
That vetting process is the toughest that any foreign national undergoes.
About two years of background checks, fingerprinting, biometrics
and interrogation by multiple federal agencies.
Finally, in 2017, they made it to Seattle.
The fact is, refugees already go through
a very strenuous, extreme process.
Joaquin Uy works
for Seattle's Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.
He notes that refugees are not immigrants coming for economic benefits.
Refugees are escaping political persecution or wars.
He says the evidence does not support fears that refugees are terrorists.
Stats show that in terms of terrorist activities
to date, no one that's done
a harmful terrorist activity has actually gone through a refugee program.
That's just, there has not been a link there.
We are Muslims and Islam means salaam, which means peace.
And it's a religion of peace.
And what's happening in Syria, we left because of because we were fearful
of the terrorism, but we are not terrorists.
Let's look at the bigger picture.
Since 2010, Washington state has taken in about 17,000 refugees.
We now rank eighth in the nation.
The biggest waves of refugees have come from East Africa,
Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, also Russia and Ukraine,
and more recently, the Middle East, Iraq, Iran and Syria.
Like Iyad and Saffa, more
refugees have settled in the Seattle area than elsewhere in the state.
Yet there are only about 30 Syrian families here.
Methal has helped all of them resettle.
They're all normal people, very loving and very caring
and very generous, and they have so much to offer
to Seattle and to the rest of the United States.
My husband wants to find a job
where he can be able to provide for our family,
and we don't want to depend on help from others or aid from others.
We want to just be independent and be part of society here.
The main thing is for my family and for my children
to grow up in a safe place.
Their dreams,
their hopes are in the end, so utterly normal.
Refugees want what anyone moving to Seattle has wanted.
To go from newcomer to local,
to earn the right to be called Seattleites.
Most recently, the city's Office of Immigrant
and Refugee Affairs has worked with its state counterpart
to offer assistance to refugees from Afghanistan.
And both officers will do the same for those arriving from Ukraine.
She now calls Seattle home,
but she knows the challenges new refugees face, and she's determined to help.
That's next on CityStream.
Our friends at the Municipal Archives
have been busy highlighting their favorite archival objects.
In this installment, Reference Archivist Jeanie Fisher explores a 1931 transcript
that reveals one group's determined effort to make money
from an unlikely source.
One of my favorite objects in the archives is this transcript
from a committee hearing that took place on August 11th, 1931.
The hearing was in response to a petition that had been submitted to the city
by a group of disabled veterans asking for official permission to salvage
"saleable waste from city garbage dumps."
This was during the Great Depression, and salvaging waste materials like paper,
metal and rags was a way to earn money for those who desperately needed it.
More and more people wanted access to the city's dumps to salvage waste,
and territorial arguments
began to break out in terms of who had permission to do it.
The city's efficiency committee got involved
and called a hearing to consider the issue.
This is a transcript from that hearing, and one of the things I love about it
is that it's almost like being in the room.
You have pages and pages of verbatim testimony from both city
officials and salvage workers discussing who had permission and why,
what the conditions were on the dump sites, how salvaging worked,
and what the city's responsibility was in the whole affair.
You can almost hear the discussion, and it gives glimpses into the lives
of people who are desperate for any income and who saw the opportunity to salvage
as a chance to support themselves and their families.
Other hearing transcripts in the archives from this time period cover
equally fascinating topics such as a police corruption case in 1924
and a vice investigation in 1935.
Like this transcript they are full of details about the city
and stories of those who lived and worked here.
You can find them all at the archives.
Just email archives@seattle.gov for more information.
March is Women's History Month,
a time to celebrate the contributions of women and honor those who make a difference.
Ming-Ming Tung-Edelman certainly fits that description.
As a refugee she arrived here with no job skills,
she could not speak the language, and she felt isolated.
But she did not give up.
She now helps others facing the same predicament she endured
by teaching them valuable skills to earn a living.
Roberto Romero explains.
Life is a tapestry.
It's threads connect us.
And protect us when change occurs.
I have been a clinical pharmacist for 22 years,
but it's always something in my heart, feels missing.
This fabric of life provides a framework that's transformative.
The Refugee Arts Initiative is to empower
refugees and immigrant women to be self-sufficient.
One sewing machine at a time.
Imagine you grew up in a refugee camp for 20 years.
You never had a formal education.
There's not a whole lot of things living in a tech town like Seattle can offer you.
For Ming-Ming Tung-Edelman, the goal of her homegrown organization
is to help refugee and immigrant women get on their feet once
they've gained a foothold in the northwest.
Because of the language difficulty she worked in a little bit of manufacturing.
But still, she spend most of her time raising four kids as a single mother.
And that's when we come in.
We are able to provide equipment,
the training, and a market for the things you make.
Rahel never made a single dime in America.
Little education, language barrier and high cost child care
was not possible for her, so she finally made her first paycheck
in our program.
So there's that pride knowing that my work is being valued,
you know, not only being exchanged with income but is being valued,
I think that's very important to the people that we work with.
The Refugee Artisan Initiative currently works
with women from Ethiopia, Bhutan and China.
They are spread around Seattle, Everett and Tukwila.
How does she communicate?
With videos that show the women how to perform intricate sewing techniques.
Next side.
We show them to the artisans
and say this is a project coming to you and this is what is expected of you,
and then we'll do the home visit and we will make ...
we'll do it together.
Imagine, I have to do it three or four times.
From Everett, Chinatown and Tukwila.
You know, I just spend my whole day training.
And lot of times you will do the training and they will forget, so having a video
tutorial has been very, very helpful. Born in Taiwan, Ming-Ming
and her family moved to Saudi Arabia when she was 14.
She came to the U.S. a few years later.
That experience left Ming-Ming with a deeper understanding of the challenges
facing newcomers to our region.
You've got to make new friends and learn a new language,
so I understand the struggle.
You know, being in different environment, you have to adapt.
So I really want to connect them.
I feel seeing them succeed is almost a reflection of myself
when I first come to America.
Ming-Ming always had a creative side.
After taking some fashion classes she noticed an opportunity.
I noticed that there was a tremendous amount of waste in the fashion industry.
So it was like a hot moment.
Why not marry the two and create jobs?
A merging of the two led to large collaborations with some big names
like Luly Yang and Eileen Fisher. There was just a natural crossover
between our interest in providing materials.
It's a very simple thing for us to do, but we've long been invested
in community work and particularly with women's empowerment,
that it was a natural and easy, yes.
They not only support us by donating their garments to us to repurpose.
And they also have gave us a grant to buy equipment.
So this will be a nice potholder.
It will be perfect, it already has the thickness.
Word of her handiwork is spreading the Chihuly Museum of Glass,
The Gates Foundation, the Wing Luke Museum, as well as
the Eileen Fisher Renew store, have either carried artisan work
or have commissioned exclusive small batch artisan creations.
Locally hand made small batch goods done by artisans,
is something that a lot of people are having trouble finding.
Here is your Seahawks scarf, isn't that fun.
She even made a small batch of jewelry out of an item from Oprah Winfrey.
She had a garage sale selling her garments
and we repurposed it into necklaces and who would not like to get Oprah's hug.
Sometimes adversity sidetracks opportunity.
Remember Sue,
the Chinese woman we first met recently, she was diagnosed with cancer,
unable to communicate with the doctor or even explain how scared she feels,
she turned to the only person she could count on for support.
Yeah, it's hard.
And having just an extra person to say, Look,
you know we're here to support you and you can get through this.
So if I can give a little more of my time, I will be more than happy to.
While Ming-Ming guides these women along a path to greater opportunity.
Her most important gift may be the comfort
she provides as they seek a better life.
Not only do we give them work, but more importantly,
we give them the dignity and self-esteem that they deserve as a human being.
So if nothing, at least this is something that they feel good
about being able to provide for their family, that they have a skill
that they can contribute in the fabric of American society.
We have an update on Sue, one
of the artisans featured in this story, who is battling cancer.
We are happy to report her cancer is in remission and she is doing well.
We'll be right back.
And that wraps up this episode of CityStream from City Hall.
If you'd like to watch more outstanding Seattle channel programs, visit
our website.
SeattleChannel.org and click on feature shows.
I'm Dennis Bounds, thanks for watching.