at least and  yeah i've been a seattle put twenty five years i love the fact that seattle is going and i love all them from the improvements that seattle's done to bring our cities to competitive cities amongst other cities and us the only concern i have this while growing we're forgetting about the small businesses the small businesses the one that got us here the one that highlights what seattle is all about at this point we're forgetting what the small businesses are doing for the people that's living here i've been coming here for a long time at this barber shop now if everybody leaves from this area this barber shop cannot survive and the city knows it we all know every writing on the wall we all know it i'll love to see city of seattle my city i've been paying taxes here for a long time  being very good citizen to support my city i love to see the city support the businesses that we come to instead of support and only one area like fifteen million for waterfront businesses and six hundred thousand businesses that's on twenty third the math just don't add up it's not just a matter of losing business this people are losing customers as well so  the five thousand each right now but are they going to survive when they're done losing all the customers so what are i would love to know what the city's going to do to support the businesses that we patronized  i hope to see that the politicians kind of wake up and see what the small businesses are doing to make sure they survive and if they don't reflect what i wrote thank you what do you think  rest of the community need to stick together and and voice everybody need to step up and let the city know but how much of a loss is this i understand we don't have but tourists coming out here to support our businesses but we support our businesses so by you taking away their business away from us with the road road whatever you have that you're doing you're affecting every one of us so i think as to the best interest of a city to our people to support one another so we can survive and the city keeps growing thank for being so honest and upfront about the problems i'm going through and i can tell you in words how it makes me feel mean i'm an immigrant i think we all understand what is happening here many of you are facing immediate issues with the construction projects in the central district but we know what this is about this is about gentrification you know what's happening this is a much larger process that is happening in seattle and it is not accidental you know this is happening to i mean everything that happens in the city you know in terms of the growth of homelessness with their rent skyrocketing businesses small businesses immigrant own businesses being dislocated all of this is a matter of policy it is not an act of god so we have to you know the buck has to stop somewhere and somebody has to take responsibility for what's happening and i just wonder what it does to you know take that sort of bird's eye view of what's happening here and it's a serious problem i completely agree with o'brian that change is inevitable i don't think anybody's fighting change which is a question of what kind of change there is it's not it's not a political issue what kind of change happens in the city is a very much a political issue because who gets to gain and who gets to lose is is hanging in the balance and i hope you all know that as far as i'm concerned i have no divided loyalties i don't take money from corporations like vulcan so they don't even come to me and ask me about what they mean they know i'm going to be a no vote so i hope you understand that you don't ever have to convince me to be on  am on your side my office is there in service to the marginalized but the question is how do we win victories that's that's the real question and i don't i don't i don't have a panacea in the sense that if i if i many hours as needed if that was all it took i mean i can tell you life would be much simpler if all it took was for me to work harder and then we would win victories it doesn't work that way it is about political power so ultimat unless small businesses low income owned businesses people of color own businesses immigrant owned businesses we build the power for ourselves really are not going to win anything because this is not a politically neutral process what is happening in are the people who are being impacted but our city government for the most part except for a few people elected officials who are genuinely on your side on the side of working people on the side of low income on business except for them those exceptions as a rule actions as a rule city government does not work for small businesses there's a lot of rhetoric about small businesses there's a lot of rhetoric about race and social justice but very little policy making i geared towards fighting for immigrant on businesses or immigrant people in general are black people i mean look how they view jail both went through you know why is it that there was you know why is it that there was only one dissenting vote on the amazon  why is it that let me give you another example the city right now has offered i believe six hundred fifty thousand dollars in mitigation money for the businesses that are affected by the new construction project and i and i think it's also important for us to analyze why we even won that in the first place even though it is nowhere close to enough i completely agree but just to put that number in perspective as you look at it you mentioned the waterfront business is gone fifteen million dollars that's one point and i just wanted to you know you know it's important to take the politics of how things work in the city government does the waterfront businesses did not get those fifteen million dollars because somehow from a construction or technical standpoint they had a better case than you or they got the money because they have the lobbying power they got that money because they are such well established businesses with millions of dollars to their name that they before the construction project even got approved they had their battery of lawyer they had their team of attorneys lined bob donnegan one of the owners of the businesses that won money at the waterfront he it's so it's so open you know it's so brazen the way this is done he said something about why i don't really need money for mitigation i'm going to use this to build a shiny or our location of my restaurant compare that to business owners who are struggling just to survive and some who have and who despite all their best efforts have had circumstances work against them in such a way that it's leading to health issues this land was sold to a big corporation a big you know real estate development corporation point i don't know if you remember if you all remember triad corp became very well nobody knew about triad you know among common people ordinary people nobody knew about tr really depressed at that time so the city sold it for about eleven million dollars and that there is out there something called a master use permit you know those of the corporation that has agreed to develop a certain public property specifically the mayor's office did not renew that permit big and that permit expired and all this came out because citizens done and done and activists filed a lawsuit against the city for this but the one of the reason i mention th its treasury because it was trying to give an easy way out to a big development corporations i want us to keep that six hundred fifty thousand dollars in the context of millions tens of millions of dollars that are given to larger businesses so m question is how do we get there how do you how did we win the six hundred fifty thousand dollars in the first place because the business is organized in reality all the credit goes to the business but the darling point came you know they were organizing and they were beaten lead to or by the mayor i don't want to set a precedent we don't you have made doesn't illustrate what it is today in other words you have taken all the rest and you have what in your heart and soul into it and not vulcan wants to capitalize on it and the only way we can stop it is for us to organize unfortunately there is no other easy solution but i don't you want organizing works because even though six hundred fifty thousand dollars is a small amount and we need to fight for bigger even that regard only because business is organized only because we for the white people also who are suffering so so i mean of the day we have to be united on the on the question of you know whether we are the ones losing out or gaining and so let's take united on that basis i just the last thing i wanted to share with you all  issues but this is one of them where i want to have small businesses come to city hall in a bigger way i mean we did it in a small way but we part of organizing is to bring that voice in a bigger way just like we've done it with fifteen dollars an hour just with we're doing it if i can afford a meal what a diaper for no need for my newborn baby because of what somebody gives me not because of my fair i have a business but because somebody is trying to project and revise my li but on this very project we're talking about i was really very disappointed to see members of my community some of them are my friends family members by the way not just friends by media members tease cousins who are very