A Just Duwamish Future: Magdalena’s Story
Community organizer Magdalena Angel-Cano, a member of the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition (DRCC), on the shore of the Duwamish River in South Park. Photo by Chloe Collyer.
“As a little kid, I would see the river and I would think ‘wow, it’s so pretty.’ You know, we have our river for the summer, when I want to go swimming. And now it’s like, ‘do I really want to go in there?’
I think now, knowing all the things I do, I definitely get grossed out. We do have boat tours and I do lead some of those boat tours with my current job. And one of the places we see is the combined sewer system in the Duwamish River. Meaning, if there’s ever too much rain, all that overflow of the sewage comes directly to the Duwamish River.
The river clean up is something I’m looking forward to. And we’re pushing at the DRCC because we want to make sure that now that we have that river, the only river in Seattle, that our community has access to it. To a clean river.”
Community organizer Magdalena Angel-Cano, a member of the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition (DRCC), in South Park. Photo by Chloe Collyer.
Magdalena Angel-Cano (she/her) is a community organizer and communications specialist with the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition (DRCC) and a 20+ resident of South Park, a small neighborhood of Seattle.
As a daughter of two immigrant parents, Magdalena has used her Spanish skills to fill in the language gap in her community by working one-on-one with her neighbors to discuss issues and bringing them into the awareness of organizations that work with her community. As part of her work with the community, she has interned at El Centro de la Raza and Juntos si Podemos Cuidar a Nuestro Rio Duwamish, two experiences that brought her to work with a diverse background of people from different ages and different races.
Magdalena says:
”What inspired me to be part of the Shape Our Water project are my neighbors’ stories. Stories that are hidden and not talked about due to the lack of space given for storytelling.”
With the goal of encouraging people to share their stories about their connections with nature Magdalena is sharing her story with Shape Our Water.
Community Partner Spotlight: Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition (DRCC)
The Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition (DRCC) works to prompt a healthy, clean, and equitable environment for people and wildlife. DRCC promotes place-keeping and prioritizes community capacity and resilience by uplifting voices of community members.
South Seattle’s Duwamish Valley has long been a community experiencing environmental injustice—a community with disproportionately high environmental health burdens and risks and fewer positive environmental benefits than the rest of Seattle—but limited evidence has been available to date to validate or quantify this characterization. The Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition/Technical Advisory Group (DRCC/TAG) represents an alliance of community, tribal, environmental, and small business groups affected by ongoing pollution and cleanup plans for Seattle’s lower Duwamish River, a 5.5-mile-long Superfund Site. The Duwamish Valley’s riverfront neighborhoods of South Park and Georgetown are home to residents who are among those most impacted by the Superfund Site, with potential exposures from contact with contaminated sediments on neighborhood beaches, swimming or wading in the river, and from fishing.
Through efforts of continuing to bring new opportunities to the community, DRCC created a partnership with Rooted Vibrant Communities (RVC). Through their Green Pathway Fellowship DRCC was granted the opportunity to offer a local young adult (who was part of the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps) a position at DRCC. RVC Green Pathways Fellowship works toward creating pathways for future leaders of color in the environmental sector. Together in collaboration both organizations work to strive for environmental justice for vulnerable communities.
