White Center

My name's Lauren.

I am, again, the new Development and Events Coordinator for White Center Food Bank.

I've been here for a little over three months, like barely over three months, which is crazy because time has just really flown by.

It's been a really, really amazing experience.

We'll also have a speech from our own Garcia and then some activities throughout the night as well as drinks and really good food from Tomo.

Tell us more about the theme.

Yeah, the theme is, the event's actually titled Back to Our Roots, which is really cool because we're actually coming back to the White Center Hub, which is actually where we're at today, which is also where our last food bank was.

So it's really special to be able to go back to the space that has meant so much to the food bank.

I would say over the last five years or so, I talked about businesses.

businesses that closed on the next to the University of Washington on its affectionately locally called the Ave but all the businesses that closed up and down there and crack that the Ave has had lots of crime crime like forever but it seems really bad now and then downtown has been awful and forever people remember when we were reading Mary Kay Letourneau and a lot of that even though it was in King County a lot of that happened a little bit south of Seattle and like Burien and White Center and all these now again for people who live here or know the area none of these places are very far like some of this stuff is I mean it would be like five minutes outside of Seattle proper like very very close not far away at all but When we were reading that book and the author was saying that White Center, he was making it sound like, oh, my God, it's so unsafe and the gangs and crime.

Oh, these savage negros and dark people who live out here in White Center.

And I said, man, please go to downtown Seattle and tell me how safe.

you feel just hanging out walking around having a good time kicking it a day or night go downtown seattle and tell me how safe you feel i saw this report in the news today Even though it was published yesterday, I didn't see it until today.

If you're in that boundary area, you're part of King County.

We need people who are in the city of Seattle, a few of you are in White Center, to write letters and to show up for us.

So if you're in that area and you know who you are, let's get out there and make a difference.

We keep trying to tell people this is not even about sound insulation.