Appearances can be deceiving. What might seem to TriMet as - TopicsExpress

Appearances can be deceiving. What might seem to TriMet as opportunities for meaningful public participation are most often meaningless and tokenizing. If the TriMet Board of Directors is so out of touch with its own position of power versus the public that they are offended by 30 minutes of foreign language testimony, then how can they ever truly represent us? This is Associate Director Vivian Satterfield’s testimony translated from Mandarin Chinese: “Good morning members of the Board. My name is Shi Yi Cen and I’m here with my friends from Bus Riders Unite. We are here speaking to you in our mother tongues, in foreign languages, in order to convey our own experiences. If you cannot understand, if you cannot comprehend what we are saying, it’s a representation of the way you do not understand the experiences of transit riders. We are here to say one sentence: “We speak for ourselves”. We say this one sentence in our mother tongues, and I am here speaking to you in Mandarin Chinese, in order to convey experiences of transit riders, which you do not comprehend because you do not represent us. You listen, but you do not take our words to heart. “We speak for ourselves”: a single sentence calling for reform of this Board of Directors.”