Seattle awards BIPOC non-profit’s leaders $1.37 million for vacations ‘to heal from multigenerational trauma’

According to a press release, 20 leaders and their organizations will receive $60,000 for three-month sabbaticals to cover salary and benefits, individual sabbatical expenses, and organizational development support. In addition, 12 applicants will receive one-month respite awards to cover salary, benefits, and individual sabbatical expenses.

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The awardees and their organizations will also receive coaching in order to plan and prepare for their time away from work.

Jodi Nishioka, co-founder and co-executive director of the BIPOC ED Coalition, said in the press release, “BIPOC leaders need rest and restoration in order to heal from multigenerational trauma and years of nonstop working on behalf of their communities to recharge for the work ahead.”

The release also said how the grantees will be spending their paid vacation/sabbatical time. Brenda Rodríguez Lopez from the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network said, “This sabbatical will support me in healing from the trauma I have endured doing this work as an undocumented, queer womxn of color during the most violent times of our generation. My vision is to show up for me as I have showed up for others.”

Another recipient is Pinar Sinopoulos-Lloyd of Queer Nature a “project characterized by environmental and nature-based education, public mysticism & scholarship, and social sculpture based in the Northwestern US and Intermountain West.” The group “dream into what queer ‘ancestral futurism’ and other alternatives to modernity could look like through mentorship in place-based skills with awareness of post-industrial/globalized/ecocidal contexts.”

Additionally, “Place-based skills include naturalist studies/interpretation, handcrafts, ‘survival skills,’ and recognition of colonial and Indigenous histories of land and are framed in a container that emphasizes listening and relationship building with ecological systems and their inhabitants.”

Jaimée Marsh, executive director at Food Empowerment Education Sustainability Team (FEEST), plans on completing “my chapter in a recipe book and podcast project that I’ve been working on for over two years” as well as staying in Mexico, taking a trip to the French Riviera, and coming back home to configure her living space.

Hamdi Abdulle, executive director of the African Community Housing & Development (ACHD), plans on going to Mecca and Dubai.

BIPOC ED is part of Byrd Barr Place. Following the riots that rocked the city in 2020, then-Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and the Seattle City Council transferred ownership of a former fire station to be a permanent home for Byrd Barr Place. Additionally, the organization has received millions of dollars in grants to renovate the property. The organization has also been the beneficiary of many other city grants totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In her attempt to pacify groups involved in the riots against the Seattle Police Department and the deadly Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), Mayor Jenny Durkan made promises of funding programs and turning over public buildings "to the community."

This led to the Seattle City Council being called out for using a loophole to circumvent the bidding process and appropriating 3 million dollars to "non-profit" organizations that were part of the CHAZ and lobbied the Council to defund the Seattle Police Department and use the money for "community programs." The money appeared to be more of a political payoff than investing in the community.

Earlier this month it was revealed that Seattle is facing an over $200 million shortfall for the coming year. Rather than cut spending on pet projects and frivolous programs, the Seattle City Council is looking to make more cuts to the city's already decimated police department permanent.