Endangered
The National Trust for Historic Preservation named Seattle’s Chinatown-International District (CID) to its list of “Most Endangered Historic Places” in 2023 even as residents and advocates fight to preserve the CID in the face of “disaster gentrification.”
The CID is one of two Chinatowns that made the 11-member list this year; the other is in Philadelphia.
The place on the list does not come with additional resources or protections for the neighborhood, but it does shine a light on the continued pressures that advocates say threaten the fabric of the place. Chinatowns across the country are dying out, and Seattle’s has been on the receiving end of institutional destruction in the past such as the creation of the freeways that destroyed homes, businesses and churches.
Katherine Malone-France, chief preservation officer at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, joined Jöel Barraquiel Tan, executive director of the Wing Luke Museum, Betty Lau of Transit Equity for All and Huy Pham, preservation programs director for the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, to announce the ignominious designation on May 9.
Chief among their concerns was the ongoing debate over where to put a new light rail station. Sound Transit, the agency that owns and operates the light rail line, is weighing two options. One would put a station on Fourth Avenue, which is easier for elders who live in the CID to access, and the other — which was proposed relatively late in the process without study — would involve two stations situated to the north and south of the neighborhood.
Transit Equity for All got behind the Fourth Avenue option, particularly because a now-discarded proposal would have placed the station on Fifth Avenue, which would have resulted in demolitions of many businesses on those blocks.
Barraquiel Tan demanded that Sound Transit meaningfully invest in the CID and work with residents, asking: What legacy would we leave our children if we let another Chinatown die?
Just in time for Pride
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) adjusted its blood donation rules to allow gay and bisexual men in monogamous relationships to give blood rather than requiring them to abstain from sex altogether.
According to the Associated Press, the FDA announced the change in January, but blood banks can now move forward under the new guidelines.
Restrictions on blood donation for men who have sex with men were meant to protect the blood supply from HIV but ultimately discriminated against gay and bisexual men. Now, all donors will be screened using a questionnaire, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation.
Donors who report having anal sex with a new partner in the past three months will still be barred from giving blood.
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Ashley Archibald is the editor of Real Change News.
Read more of the May 17-23, 2023 issue.