In this podcast we are excited to hear from three members of our local community who all have served in combat with the United States Army. We are lucky to have Linh Thai, City Impact Manger of The Mission Continues. Linh also spent over six years working for US Congressman Adam Smith. He's joined by Jesus Carbajal, Development & Operations Manager at Seattle Foundation and Chris Franco, Supervisor at King County.

Our guests give an intimate look into their military service and expound on why they joined and what they took away. They also spend time discussing transitioning from active duty into the civilian world and their views on service, love, and sacrifice.

All three shared personal and professional projects towards the end.

Chris talks about the efforts of King County to dismantle systemic racism in local government. He also talks about the importance of participation and voting, especially as these freedoms and privileges were so hard won by the sacrifices of veterans over the course of our history.

Jesus talks about his political and grassroots organizing in the lead up to the next election and offers an invitation to support other people and their movements.

Linh talks about his work with The Mission Continues - https://missioncontinues.org/ - and how they focus on food-insecurity. Locally, they have two projects with communities from the Denny Woo Garden and Rainier Beach. He invites people to come join them for both service and to interact with the veteran community. He is also involved with New Politics Leadership Academy - https://newpoliticsacademy.org - which is a non-partisan org trying to get more veterans and national service alums engaged in running for public office.

In this podcast we are excited to launch our second episode of our four-part series with The Gates Discovery Center's "In Community We Flourish" events. Each event will highlight young people who are local changemakers in our community!

Today's podcast resolves the importance of being counted in the current census. We are grateful to be joined by Kamau Chege, Manager at the Washington Census Alliance and Susan Balbas, Executive Director of the Na’ah Illahee Fund.

Our guests share stories around immigration, historical trauma, the importance of being counted, and collective action.

Both shared personal and professional projects towards the end.

Kamau talked about how they are taking the multi-racial coalition built around the census to tackle more issues with collective power. Two examples of their efforts are securing $40 million for unrepresented community members who did not qualify for federal COVID-19 relief funds and a Black-led launch of the Washington for Black Lives campaign.

Susan talked about launching their Native Community Crisis Response Fund with support from both All in Washington and Seattle Foundation. With these funds, they’ve been mainly support domestic violence and food security programs.

The Na’ah Illahee Fund is also launching a climate justice cohort starting this month to increase skill-sharing and to explore how to stop polluting and to start regenerating with community leaders.