Luzviminda Uzuri Carpenter (pronounced Loose-b-min-dah ooh-zir-e car-pen-ter) aka Lulu, is a cultural worker and producer that has resided in Seattle, WA for over (12) years and has made a commitment to the 206 being her home base. She has shown that commitment through space-making and place-making projects locally that develop art and artists locally and nationally focused on marginalized communities, voices, images, and visibility, such as Washington Hall and youth mentorship within organizations such as the Service Board (tSB) and YouthSpeaks, to name a few. Currently, she works at Seattle Girls’ School for the past two and a half years, as the 5th-8th Performance Studies and Production teacher. Lulu is the creator, Producer, and Host of “#LuluNation + Crew with Mr. B” on Hollow Earth Radio, a Talk Show on air at KHUH LP 104.9 FM in the Central District and online at www.hollowearthradio.org.  She works with Seattle Women Who Rock Community who focuses on an annual (Un)Conference & Film Festival and grassroots archiving of community artists stories and is the former Co-Chair of the City of Seattle LGBTQ Commission. In 2018, she started a policy project called Alphabet Alliance of Color which focuses on the story gathering and grassroots archiving of Queer and Trans People of Color in Seattle and King County in order to envision a different future based on the documentation of our collective resilience and started her first LIVE STUDIO AUDIENCE QUARTERLY SHOW at the Northwest Film Forum called “Seat @ the Table with #LuluNation + Mr. B.”

Chef Tarik’s cuisine is inspired by the tastes and flavors of his childhood, growing up in a Muslim family and broader community where ethnic foods were the norm. His culinary creations honor traditions from North Africa and the Mediterranean.

#feedthepeople #midnightmecca #whoshungry

“You might recognize Chef Tarik Abdullah from ABC’s “The Taste,” a competitive cooking show on which he spent six episodes winning Anthony Bourdain’s favor earlier this year. He has earned a reputation as an artist and innovator, and his pop-up brunches in South Seattle have a cult-like following. Abdullah, a Seattle native, has been juxtaposing cooking and entertainment for as long as he can remember. He launched the pop-ups after leaving his cooking post at Serafina.”– Seattle Weekly

“I bake for smiles, the aroma, and for a little decadence in our lives. As a self-taught pastry cook, I enjoy bringing community together around food and utilizing our taste buds to express culture. My family immigrated from the Philippines to the US when I was a young child. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I found baking with tropical flavors and incorporating them into popular American desserts was not only an homage to my Filipino American identity, but made for a memorable sweet experience.”

Hood Famous Bakeshop in Seattle specializes in unique, handcrafted Filipino modern and traditional desserts.

Hood Famous grew out of a Filipino pop-up dinner series – Food & Sh*t – that featured co-founder Chera Amlag’s unique desserts, which introduced Filipino flavors to familiar American classics. The response was overwhelming – many shared the excitement of eating desserts they had never had before. When Chera’s ube (purple yam) cheesecake debuted in October 2013, the creamy purple cake quickly became the most demanded, most memorable, and most Instagrammed item on the menu. The word had spread within and outside of their neighborhood, but when a friend asked for the purple cake at a pop-up dinner, coining it as “that ‘hood famous cheesecake,” their name was born.

In Nov 2014, Hood Famous Bakeshop was launched with Ube Cheesecake as its flagship item. Shortly after, Chera quit her well-loved job as an educator to run the business full time. The small bakeshop has since grown to wholesale to local grocery stores, restaurants and most recently its own production kitchen and sweets-to-go retail counter in Ballard, WA.

Check out where to find them.

Ari is the owner/operator of Kamayan Farm. As a queer, mixed filipina land worker, she is inspired by the ways that growing food can be an act of resistance. Ari’s work with Kamayan Farm is deeply informed by the injustices and resilience that she witnessed during a decade of working alongside low-income communities and communities of color. Building Kamayan Farm is an experiment. It is driven by a vision to (re)connect communities with land and to collaboratively share cultural stories through food and medicine.

Photo credit: Audra Mulkern

Allison Masangkay (DJ Phenohype) is a queer Filipinx American artist, student, and social justice advocate. Her work is influenced by and dedicated to her childhood in northern New Jersey, survival in Sequim, Washington, ancestral memory, and diaspora feels. Her sets include a range of genres, especially Jersey club, soul, hip hop, and house.

Hodan Hassan is a community organizer, writer and actor living in Seattle, WA. She has a degree in Political Science from the University of Washington and is now working with the people of color-led climate justice organization, Got Green. In her lifetime she hopes to have an impact on the fight for Black and collective liberation. When she is not working, especially during the fall, she’s watching a ton of TV shows.

Isyss identifies as Fa’afafine (Samoan gender identity translated as “in the manner of a woman”), and is a trans woman from Samoa. She is the Community Engagement Coordinator for TRANSform Washington, and also works as a Finance Associate for Pride Foundation. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting with plans to become a CPA and start a firm run by QTPIs – Queer and Trans Pacific Islanders. She serves as the Co-Chair for UTOPIA Seattle after having served 5 years as part of the organization’s Executive Leadership. She is a co-facilitator for [trans]ACTION, a monthly support group for former and current PI Trans & Gender Non-Conforming sex workers. Isyss advocates for API trans and gender non-conforming sex workers affected by inequities in access to healthcare, education, employment, housing, etc. She is passionate about decolonizing anti-Black racism, transphobia, and sexism within Samoan culture, language, and traditions.

Jordan Green is a researcher and designer from San Francisco, CA.

By the time he had graduated high school he had worked for organizations like Community United Against Violence and Lavender Youth Recreation Information Center (LYRIC). He had also served on LYRIC’s Board of Directors for five years, serving as co-chair of the board for four of those years. After LYRIC, Jordan worked at the ACLU as the Outreach Coordinator, where he designed statewide promotional materials and conducted educational workshops for teachers and students.

He graduated from Portland State University with a Bachelors of Science in Community Health Education where he focused on epidemiology and the social determinants of health. While in college, he founded, designed, and executed the first and second Queer Students of Color Conference (QSOCC) as the school’s first ever Queer Students of Color Resource Coordinator. QSOCC was the first ever regional conference focused specifically on Queer Students of Color needs, attracting international attendees its first and second years.

After college, he went on to work with the Oregon Health Authority, Multnomah County, Cascade AIDS Project, and Portland Community College. At Portland Community College, he worked as the Program Assistant to the Multicultural Center where one of his primary responsibilities was coordinating the PCC WACIPI Winter Powwow.

Jordan works at the University of Washington as a Research Coordinator for a Mobile Health App. Before working at University of Washington, Jordan worked at Gay City: Seattle’s LGBTQ Center as their Communications Designer and HIV Tester.

He currently lives in Seattle with his partner and two cats.

(they/them pronouns) Laurie Rocello Torres’ work with social justice began when they moved to Seattle in 2013 for a yearlong service fellowship with Puget Sound Sage, after graduating with a Bachelors in Organizational Communications from Bradley University. They are passionate about community resilience, supporting people in having healthy and politicized relationships, and creating the conditions for people to be truly liberated. They have done work around environmental, economic, gender, racial, and transformative justice in the community. In their free time, Laurie loves to sing, dance, and teach a community self-defense and wellness class for queer and trans people of color called Building Autonomy and Safety for Everybody (BASE).  They also currently serve as the Deputy Secretary General of GABRIELA Seattle, a collective of Pin@ys who do cultural and political education work around labor issues impacting Filipino migrant workers, and are a consultant for Carolyn Peruth, a QTPOC owned and operated consulting and coaching practice. They are also a member of Got Green’s Young Workers in the Green Movement.