This is the Facebook post from last year that signaled the start of my Reimagining Redmond personal project. The project grows from my effort to understand and act on the ethical implications of living in Redmond, Washington.
30 June 2020
Taking my evening walk a few days ago, I came across this bike, parked on an upper-level bike/walk trail near a big set of steps that went down to a lower-level path that crossed under the one I was on. I think I caught a glimpse of a young family with toddler heading off for a few minutes’ walk by the river below, leaving the pink bike parked above.
The scene spoke volumes to me about Redmond and privilege. The family could afford to buy a bike, helmet, and teddy bear for their child. They felt safe enough to leave them by the side of the path, confident that they would still be there when they climbed back up the stairs, even without police protection. (I have never seen Redmond police patrolling any of the bike paths.) And even if someone did help themselves to the bike, helmet, or teddy, the family felt capable of buying another one for their toddler. The protection, the sense of safety, was provided by the affluence of the community.
I can picture other neighborhoods, with no river walks, where scarce toys are more anxiously protected, and where police driving by make the neighborhood less safe, not more.
We are all paying attention to systemic racism these days. What system put the young family and me here, in this comfortable place, and not the other? I know from the outlines of my family’s history and my own how my resources accumulated, allowing us to live here now. But we are the odd ones out, the newcomer retirees. Where does most of Redmond’s wealth come from? Thousands of years ago, from fish in the river, berries on the banks, game in the woods. Then a century ago from logging and agriculture. Now Microsoft.
And where does Microsoft’s wealth come from? It’s important for me to know how a firm like Microsoft creates, distributes, and uses its affluence, in Redmond and around the world, in order to understand the responsibilities that come with where I live.
Finding My Place 