It’s impossible to talk about Seattle’s Chinatown-International District without mentioning Ron Chew. The journalist and community organizer has been a community leader in the neighborhood for decades. He’s best known as the former director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, helping grow it from a cornerstone neighborhood entity into a nationally-recognized one-of-its-kind jewel that attracts patrons from around the world.
Chew also served as executive director of the International Community Health Services before retiring.
Chew remains a mentor to many people across the city, including for the Wing Luke Asian Museum. We wanted to sit down with him in the C-ID, as the neighborhood reels from the hate crime at the museum earlier this month.
Click “listen” above to hear the full interview and read highlights below.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
On his reaction to the vandalism at the museum, which has been classified as a hate crime.
It wasn’t a surprise to me, situations involving threats, violence, you know, anti-Asian sentiment, have been part of this neighborhood for certainly, as long as I can remember. I was angry: I was concerned about the staff at the museum.
On the police response time, which reportedly took 45 minutes.
There’s a lot of work that needs to happen on that front. During the pandemic we saw here in Chinatown-International District, and throughout Seattle, kind of this troubling…
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