Washblog

Noemie
What started you out on this campaign?  What inspired you to run?

Claudia Kauffman
Well, you've heard me talk about my background, how I was raised in an environment where community service was just a given.  People in my community helped each other as a way of life.  This was so much a part of my life, that I didn't know what volunteerism was.   I didn't think it was anything different or special.  I just saw it as the way people lived, what everyone did.  You feed the hungry, you care for and honor the elderly, you honor the veterans in your community.  

So I think of public service, elected office, as a natural extension of that way of life.   As I became involved in the school system and the foster care system as a mother and a foster mother, I became aware that there are certain things that happen or don't happen because of policy.  For example, in the foster care system, the kind of training that is available to parents - both the birth parents and the adoptive parents - that's determined by policy and it has a big effect on the lives of many families and children.  

Noemie
How many children have you provided foster care to?

Claudia Kauffman
(Counts on her fingers and laughs) Ten.  I'm pretty sure it was ten.

Noemie
So you have been through many experiences in the foster care system.

Claudia Kauffman
As I went through training as a foster parent I realized that I had a lot to offer.  I saw small things, how valuable it is to pay attention to the details.  You asked me before if I was going to be ok with your cat.  That's a simple thing, but imagine placing a highly allergic child in a household with pets.  There are so many things that affect a child and a home and some of them are small like this.  But many of them are so much bigger.

A couple of years ago there was a settlement between Washington state and 13 adults who had been in the foster care system as children.   Some of these children had been in dozens of homes throughout their lives, some of them were abused by their foster parents.  Part of the settlement was to put funds into better training for foster parents.  It made big news at the time.  And I remember reading about it and thinking, shouldn't there also be more money for training and support for the biological parents?  Don't we want to keep these children out of the foster care system?  It seemed like a big oversight to me.  It still does. Although I don't know all of the details of the settlement, and maybe there will be training for parents, but that's not what made the news.  I was concerned.

Noemie
In your time as a foster parent, did you get a sense about the underlying causes for parents losing their children?  I mean, did you develop some ideas as to the things that would work the best, to keep birth families together?

Claudia Kauffman
There isn't a lot of detail shared with foster parents on the families of their children.  So, not so much from that.   But my experience with the system is that most of the services are for the foster family and children.  There's a case manager who oversees the placements.   There's a Guardian ad litem, who looks out for the child.  There were times when everyone was in court  and there were advocates for everyone but the biological parents and I felt that it was almost adversarial to the birth parents, that they had no one to help them.  I wondered if there was any support for them.  The court will order parents to go through counseling or to take anger management classes or get treatment for drug and alcohol abuse.  And then the parents have to run out and find all this stuff.

Part of what I learned, because I took teenagers, is that a lot of times their parents were quite young when they had them.  It was like something went wrong in the lives of their parents in the transition from childhood to teen years.  Maybe things didn't quite progress in their lives they way they hoped.  They met problems and they didn't have the community or support to help them find their direction.

I have complete respect for foster parents and the sacrifices that they make, the contributions they make, and the love they provide.

Noemie
As you describe this, these children in foster care because maybe their parents were adrift, I think of your descriptions of the community you grew up in, where there was support.  Where did you grow up?  And was your community primarily the Native American community - or also community at large?

Claudia Kauffman
I grew up in Beacon Hill.  And I was part of both communities - that neighborhood and the schools and my neighbors, and the Native American community.  I have been very fortunate to have this support through my life.  As a child, I didn't know that people could be so alone.  But in my adult years, I've gotten to know people whose families just didn't help them.  I don't know how a person could survive like that.  I would feel so alone.  In my community, people are not taken for granted.  People are honored.

Noemie
You told a story in one of your speeches that has become for me a kind of a movie, almost.  I've forgotten most of the details but I remember the feeling and a few of the images.  It was a story about American Indian women here in Seattle who would meet families coming into town on trains and buses and help them settle in and find their way.  The story has come to help shape my idea of the Native American community in this area, even though I just heard it a little while ago.

Claudia Kauffman
This was in the 1950s.  The U.S. government passed the Native American Relocation Act.  Indians were moved off the reservations into major metropolitan areas.  There were designated cities and Seattle wasn't one of them.  But many of the families came here anyway.  

They would just show up, an entire family, with their luggage and enough money to get along for a month or so.  And they wouldn't know anyone or know the city.  And they'd have to figure out where to live and how to make a living.  

Noemie
That's so bizarre!  It sounds like a movie you see about a prisoner being set free with a few dollars to find their way.

Claudia Kauffman
Yes, but these were entire families, mothers, fathers, children, just showing up in a city they didn't know.

There was an established Indian community here in Seattle at the time.  During the war in the 1940s, a lot of Indians worked at Boeing.  Both of my parents did.  And there was a woman named Pearl Warren.  She organized her girlfriends to help these families who were showing up in Seattle.  These women would wait at the Greyhound station or the train station.  They'd meet the families as they arrived and they'd show them around town.  They'd tell them about the resources that were available.  They'd tell them who was hiring, if there was a job at the laundry or something.

Noemie
Did this have a lasting effect in Seattle's Indian community?  Has it helped to shape the relationships and the way people interact?

Claudia Kauffman
Yes, it did.  It generated more unity.  As a result of that, in the 1960s, there were other ways people carried on this work together.  The Native American women said, well there are a lot of Indians who do pottery and beadwork and carving.  And there's no place to sell it.   So they opened up a store in Seattle above a church.  They bought display cases, and they provided a store to sell this work.  If someone said, I'm sick of Seattle, I want to go back home, they could bring in a piece they made and sell it and finance their trip.

Noemie
Plus non-Indians got to buy their beautiful work.

Claudia Kauffman
Yes.  Another thing the women did.  They opened a clothing bank.  People brought in the clothes they didn't need any more and exchanged them for clothes they did need. It was a place to be social, to meet and talk.

Then the women asked, what else do we need?  And they realized that it was healthcare.  If you didn't live on a reservation, and you didn't have insurance through a job, you were out of luck.  These women went to the local hospital and asked for help.  They found two doctors who said they'd provide medical care for free if there was a space to do it.  Then the hospital provided that space for free in the basement.

I remember as a child going to the Marine hospital to get checked out.  It was in the building where Amazon.com is now.   All the appointments were at night, after the doctors had finished their daytime work.   There was also dental care there.  The Indian women would run out to the pharmacies and get surplus samples of medication.  And they'd stock the clinic with that.

Noemie
This could not happen today.  There would be some kind of regulation that would make this illegal!

Claudia Kauffman
No. This could not happen today.

Noemie
This is a complaint of the American political Right - how everything is so regulated.  And to some degree I have sympathy with that.  But it's a balance that's hard to get right.  So how many people were these doctors caring for?  How many Native Americans were living in Seattle at the time?

Claudia Kauffman
Oh, maybe 10,000 people.  Not all of them were uninsured.

Noemie
And what happened with all of these groups and services?  Did they evolve into other things?

Claudia Kauffman
The hospital service turned into the Seattle Indian Health Board, which has the largest urban Indian health clinic in the nation.  The clothing bank grew into the Seattle Indian Center which now offers employment training and has a food bank and other services.

Noemie
This story reminds me of how Seattle Midwifery School was founded.  A group of women, on their own in the 1970s, asked a couple of doctors to train them how to deliver babies.  And then they began to deliver at home births. And then, working with the Washington state legislature and the Department of Licensing, they set up the Seattle Midwifery School, which is still going strong.    I'm also thinking here of a recent conversation I had with Rose Ehart.  She and her family and friends pooled their resources and started The Bread Basket, a foodbank and service center in University Place.  Were men involved in any of this volunteer work?

Claudia Kauffman
Yes, men were involved in it.  The women started it.

Noemie
It seems to me there has been a change in our society from a more spontaneous, community-based volunteerism and activism to a trend where things are more institutionalized.

Claudia Kauffman
About ten years ago, I got a call from a major organization.  They wanted to know, 'Why can't we get any Indians to volunteer?' (laughs)  They had these slots.  You'd go in and give your time for two hours.  

Don't get me wrong.  I fully appreciate what these organizations do.  They accomplish amazing things and we need them.  But there was this mismatch in understanding.  They were asking me why Indians didn't volunteer.  But that's all we ever did in my community.  We might not call it volunteerism, but that's what it was.  In some way, the thought of giving your time in two-hour slots just didn't seem like community service.  Maybe it's just me, the way I was raised.

Noemie
You are an expert fundraiser.  You've done it professionally for years.  And your campaign has done a great job at raising money.  One of the things our legislators do is to bring money and resources into a community.  It's one of the things I expect you'll really excel at.

Claudia Kauffman
I worked for a number of years in development in non-profits.  People would say, "lack of, lack of, lack of."  They'd say, we can't do this.  Or we can't do that.  We lack the money.  I went to a training once where they talked about this.  They told us we should not be saying we can't do things, that there's no money.  We shouldn't be focusing on the lack.  We should be creating and thinking, how can we do this?   I love to go out and research opportunities.  I love doing that kind of work.  I love researching where the money is.  I love the challenge.  I've met a lot of the grantmakers and I've made a lot of connections.  These lead to other connections.  

Part of the way I look at this is that I never seek more than I need.  Funders appreciate that.  I have focused on being honest and sincere and following through on programs and accountability.

Noemie
I know this happens - that money is sometimes granted and then the program doesn't quite do everything or accounting is not made.  

Claudia Kauffman
That happens, yes.  The reports and budgets don't get filed.  It's sad.  For me, a lot of this is about cultivation of relationships. The point isn't getting money.  You are identifying needs.  And then you are finding ways that the community can help meet them. And you are building relationships so that you can go back later and match up more needs and resources.  I will call grantmakers even when I don't have any reports due or grants outstanding.   Just to let them know what we're up to, just to keep in touch.  And I don't keep going back to the same funders every time, either.  You want to demonstrate that you can go out and broaden your view and therefore broaden your opportunities.  That's the part I love.

There's a way to go about this that's like the tail wagging the dog.  The state comes up with a program, for example, and then you try to figure out how you can get some of those funds.  You're chasing the funds.   You're chasing the money.  You're just trying to get as many grants as you can.  That's not my way.

I believe that you chase the need not the funds.  You identify what the community needs.  You make the best match between the need and the resources.  

Noemie
This is a very focused approach that sounds like it can be applied almost like a philosophy to many different areas.   I'm thinking of what you said about foster care, and now some of the issues you brought up appear to me in that light.  That maybe we could do a better job matching the needs of families and children and the larger society - and the resources that are available.  

Claudia Kauffman
I do think that DSHS is such a large agency that there is the ability to do some reform there that could make a difference.  I want to help parents more.  

Noemie
So much in this world runs on relationship.  So many things happen because of the connections between people.  It seems to me that this is an area where you excel.

Claudia Kauffman
I remember working for Bernie White Bear.  He knew so many people.  He knew their names.  He could tell the story of the last time he met anyone.  I learned a lot from him.  Simple things, like how important it is to remember things about people.  

The first time he took me to Olympia was in the 1980s.  He was going to do some lobbying and had set up appointments.  But his administrative staff couldn't go with him, so he called me.  I'd known him since I was tiny.  At this time, I was in my early 20s.  He said, I'll pick you up at your office.  So went to Olympia and I was just following him around.  We went into a Senator's office and he said: "Here's a need in my community.  Here's how I believe we can fix it.  Here's how much it's going to cost.  Here are the reasons we should fund it."   Then we went to the next office and he said the same thing.  Then the next.

Finally, we got to an office and he said to the legislator:  "Here's Claudia Kauffman.  She has something to tell you!"  Then he just turned to me and I had to speak! (laughs)

In the end we walked out and I hit him on his arm. But he said, "See.  It was easy.  We are people.  They are people.  We are having a conversation.  There is no need to be intimidated."

Noemie
Bernie White Bear has almost the status of a legend.  He's revered, isn't he?  He's a major figure in the civil rights movement here in Seattle, which was really notable for how people of many different ethnic backgrounds worked together.  What was it like to work with  him?

Claudia Kauffman
He founded educations programs for youth.  He was the founder of The United Indians of All Tribes Foundation.  He was a leader in the movement that took over Fort Lawton.  

Noemie
What happened there?

Claudia Kauffman
There were hundred acres that had been declared surplus by the US government.  Bernie got the Indian community to go to the federal government and ask them to give it to Indians.  He worked with the Indian, Black, Latino, and Filipino communities.  They had a big parade across town.  They went onto the grounds of the fort and set up their Teepees.  They were arrested again and again.  It gained national attention. Jane Fonda came out and joined the protest. President Nixon's daughter came out and jointed the protest when there was resolution.   My family was part of this demonstration.  But they didn't let me go.  I was too young.

Eventually, it was settled.  The City of Seattle had first rights to this land.  The Federal government ordered the city to negotiate with the Indians.  In the settlement that was reached, the Native American community got the right to lease 20 acres out of the 100 for something like a dollar a year.  This is where the Daybreak Star Center is now, in  Magnolia.

Noemie
Was this area a place where, historically, Native Americans had lived?  And what tribes would have lived there?

Claudia Kauffman
Yes, it was.  There were the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes, the Tulalips, a lot of them.  Bernie White Bear brought out photos of the fort during WWII.  He brought out these big photos from the times when Indians would gather there, before the fort was built.  

Noemie
This event reminds me of how the school in Beacon Hill, where El Centro de la Raza is, how that school became a community center.  They were going to tear it down and the community held a sit in there for weeks until finally the city - or whoever owned it - settled with the community and leased the building to them.  I read a great article in Real Change about some of the civil rights leaders in Seattle at that time.  Larry Gossett was one of the people interviewed.  Let's change tracks here and talk about healthcare.

Claudia Kauffman
Healthcare is terribly important to address.  On a personal note, I pay close to $800 per month.  That's a lot of money.  This has gone on too long.  And I'm working! Just think if you're not working.  Personally, I am motivated to get involved in helping to address this.   I want to know more about what is generating these costs.  Physicians say it's the insurance.  Insurance blames the patients.  People blame the doctors and the insurers.  There's a lot of finger pointing going on.  

Noemie
What do you think of a universal, single-payer, federally-funded insurance system?

Claudia Kauffman
I truly believe there has to be universal care from the federal level. On the local and state level, there's a lot we can do.  Ron Sims just came out with his proposal in his Annual Report.  This is a great start for King County, to cover children 100%.  We need this nationally.  At least we need to cover zero through 18.  Our children are our future.

So what is the role of state government in this, I would need to look at the landscape when I got into office.

Noemie
Howard Dean was known as a fiscal conservative.  And yet he put a very functional health insurance/health care system into place in Vermont.  He prioritized health care over almost everything else.

Claudia Kauffman
We can be looking at that experience in Vermont as one of our models.  

Noemie
What are some of the other things you would like to focus on?

Claudia Kauffman
I'm a small business owner.  I know that even just getting established in business there are so many challenges.  The tax structure is so complex and there's so much to comply with.  There was a federal program called Jump Start that I thought was based on a good idea.  It helped new businesses cover some of these bases.  How do you comply with all the laws on all the different levels?  How do you do a web page?  There have been various incubators on a local level, too.  Services to help businesses.

Noemie
It reminds me of your account of the Indian women meeting the families at the bus stop in Seattle, showing them around.  It also reminds me of what Roz Jenkins said about one of the "lost children of Sudan" who came to the United States without knowing anyone.   And now he has set up a non-profit that walks new immigrants through many of the initial hurdles.  We're talking about the business realm.  But there are social parallels.

Claudia Kauffman
Business people need that.  My sisters and I have contemplated setting up a wind turbine.  We own 100 acres together in Idaho and it sits up high on a prairie.  Farmers rent this land from us.  We were thinking, so much is going on with renewable energy.  Maybe we should take a look at wind!  One of my sisters works in construction and she put up a wind tower somewhere else.  But then we think about all the steps we have to go through and it seems like, wow, that's so much.  How can we do all that!  I think this happens a lot.  That there are many good things that can be done but they take longer or they don't happen because there are so many steps to go through.

Noemie
Have you heard about Our Wind Coop?  It helps property owners in the Northwest put up wind turbines on their property.  

Claudia Kauffman
No!  I'd like that information!  

Noemie
Wouldn't that be fun, if a wind turbine got born out of this conversation!  Is there anything else on your mind?

Claudia Kauffman
I'm really excited abut this campaign.  I enjoy the challenge.  I enjoy the hard work.  I enjoy the fundraising.  It's all been a learning experience.  I am learning more than I ever thought I would abut politics, community, and fundraising.  

Noemie
What are some of the things that strike you the most, things you didn't expect to learn?

Claudia Kauffman
The first thing I would say is that I have learned how important it s to have people who know more than you do around you and to keep them around you.

I also learned that I know more than I thought I did.  When I reflect on the experiences of the past few months, I think of what my husband says to me sometimes.  He tells me that I know what to do, that I have the answers that I need, that other people have a lot to teach me, but I know best what to do with that information.  There have been times when I felt cautious, when I wanted someone to advise me.  And I think I have learned through this experience something new about taking control of what I know, putting it to work.