Spanish below
Last Monday, January 18, a day in honor of the life and contributions of Rev. Martin Luther King; our much appreciated President of the board of directors of MÁS, Milvia Pacheco, as an active member of the community and directly affected mother, with all her beautiful energy, with great courage and out loud, shared the words that we share here, in the framework of the activities of the MLK march that day, and in support of Dr. Danielsen and all the workers of the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic in Seattle. Words of strength and support for the necessary, continuous and not always easy work that we all need to continue doing to crack and overcome systematic racism and anti-blackness in our city and beyond! Thank you very much Milvia!
“Good afternoon,
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to be a voice for the spirit of solidarity, respect, and love that the community feels for Dr. Danielson and for the Black, Native American, and people of color who work at the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic. I want to start by acknowledging that I am standing on the land and in the waters of the ‘Coast Salish’ people. As an uninvited guest, I am operating on the lands bordering the waters shared by all the tribes belonging to the Duwamish, Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.
I also recognize that this colonized indigenous territory has been built with the labor of black people who are now also being displaced from what is now Seattle and the surrounding area. For these peoples and their descendants, I want to acknowledge their indelible mark on the space in which we gather today, and it is our collective responsibility to critically interrogate the histories and afterlives of these events, and to honor, protect and sustain this land.
My name is Milvia Berenice Pacheco Salvatierra, I am an artist, president of the board of MÁS, Seattle Afro-Latino Movement, and mother of Akim Gael Salvatierra, an 8-year-old boy, who recently lost his primary care physician due to systemic racism in the Seattle Children’s Hospital, which forced Dr. Danielson, after more than 20 years of dedication, to choose to step down as director of the historically founded Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic, with the order to set a precedent by saying, “Enough is enough!!” His resignation is a cry for the urgent need to end the racism and anti-Blackness experienced by Black staff and families within this institution.
I know that from the first moment I opened my mouth to speak, many of you wondered where I came from. I want to clarify that I am standing here with the awareness of all the lines of systematic oppression that cross or intersect in me. And as a black woman, a working mother, an immigrant who speaks Spanish as her first language, I am here today to reaffirm my support for the demands that Dr. Danielson has placed on Seattle Children’s Hospital and reaffirms that the path forward in eliminating of institutionalized racism is to eradicate the anti-blackness that resides in the internal structures that sustain them.
When I came to Seattle 9 years ago, I arrived pregnant with my son Akim and thanks to my cousin, who knew how to navigate the public health system, I was able to get health insurance at that time. She taught me that by law, I had the right to receive prenatal care regardless of my immigration status and that I could choose the service I wanted to receive, but I quickly realized that even if I had the guidance of someone who knew the system, it was not enough. to avoid the ceiling created by institutional racism, which prevents us from receiving the medical services we deserve. From the moment I was transferred to UW Hospital after trying to have my baby in a birthing center, I had to fight to be seen and treated as the expert in my own life and the authority on my baby’s well-being. . I felt mistreated and disrespected, in the same way that many black women do during many of our births.
It wasn’t until I got to Odessa Brown that I was able to breathe the relief of finding a health center that would take full care of me and where I could feel safe, listened to, protected and cared for.
When I met Dr. Danielson I knew immediately that we had finally found a doctor who would see us and listen to us. For the first time in Seattle, I felt like I could trust that the pediatrician we had was really taking care of my son. During these 8 years, we have grown a lot in appreciation and love for the services it offers us.
Representation is a very important key in the development of our well-being, for me it has been fundamental that my son’s pediatrician is a black man, that my son has been able to see himself in him, and that we have been able to enter the Odessa clinic Brown and feel good, from the moment we enter until the moment we leave, and that has been possible because most of the people who work in that clinic look like us, the sense of otherness disappears and makes us feel that we belong.
This work that challenges racial hatred, xenophobia and sexism is not easy and it is very painful for us, we know that the system does not listen to us, that is why we must look back at the collective strength of our communities that have already been oppressed our own ability to organize and create new paths towards a better system of relationships. Seattle Children’s Hospital owes an apology to Dr. Danielson, to our children, and to us, the community he serves and represents.”
Milvia Pacheco
MORE Board President
