By Carolyn Bick
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Mariko Lockhart (Photo from seattle.gov)
Mariko Lockhart’s identity has always informed her work. A mixed race daughter of a Black father and a Japanese mother, Lockhart said she grew up in New York City “very aware of being biracial,” because it was so unusual at the time.
“I had a lot of continual questioning of who I was, and where I was from … so racism was a regular conversation that we had in my family,” Lockhart recalled.
“That background laid the foundation for me to become interested in how to support people who were … on the receiving impact of racism and systemic oppression.”
Now, several decades removed from her younger self, the 61-year-old Lockhart has settled into and owned her mixed heritage, and calls on her experience, as well as her upbringing that centered children of all races in a nurturing and supportive environment, to help guide her decisions as the Director for the City of Seattle’s Office for Civil Rights. Mayor Jenny Durkan appointed Lockhart in January 2018, as part of the mayor’s administration staff overhaul.
Though she runs an entire office, Lockhart’s career didn’t start out with anything remotely directive in nature. She originally attended Yale University and majored in art. While there, she became involved in political activism through working in her school’s dining hall. When the dining hall workers union went on strike for better working conditions, she said, the students also went on strike to support them.
From there, she ventured down to Nicaragua, originally seeking to bring her skills as a muralist to aid the Sandinistas in rebuilding their country, following the revolution against the repressive, dictatorial government. Lockhart used murals to help spread art outside traditional institutions, such as museums that were often inaccessible to everyday people.
Lockhart acknowledges that things didn’t quite work out the way most Nicaraguans involved in the revolution had hoped, but these early, post-dictatorship years helped to shape her own career path, and she only moved back to the United States in 1987, because she was involved in a plane crash for which she couldn’t receive proper treatment in Nicaragua.
Once home, Lockhart reunited with her college boyfriend, and the pair married, living and working in New Jersey for two decades. Lockhart worked in the field of youth development, and found a landing place as Seattle’s Director of its Youth Violence Prevention Initiative in 2009, after moving to Seattle in 2007, when her husband was offered a job as the Executive Director of the Northwest Justice Project, a position he still holds today. Lockhart left that job in 2016 to serve as the National Coordinator for the Aspen Institute’s Forum for Community Solutions 100,000 Opportunities Initiative––Demonstration Cities.
Lockhart said it was during her time as a coordinator for the Aspen Institute that she reached out to then-candidate Jenny Durkan, in order to connect Durkan with communities in South Seattle.
“I thought that was an important set of community connections for her, as she was developing her policies and platforms around youth and opportunity,” Lockhart said. “Once she was elected, she offered me this position.”
Though her range and depth of experience is vast, Lockhart said that “every day is different” in the office. In addition to enforcing local and federal civil rights laws, her office is also responsible for the city’s Race and Social Justice Initiative.
The Initiative spans more than 30 citywide departments, providing race and social justice training to city employees. The office also has a policy team that provides expertise on various issues as city officials develop policies and legislation. The office also supports four different commissions, the Women’s Commission, the Human Rights Commission, the LGBTQ Commission, and the Seattle Commission for People with Disabilities.
“On any given day, there is work happening in all of those areas and all of those teams,” Lockhart said. “Race and social justice work is incredibly challenging, and incredibly important.”
Lockhart said the most challenging part of her job is that her office is at the forefront of a fairly new and ever-evolving landscape, trying to carve out a model of anti-racist leadership in a world where there isn’t really a model for it.
“It means examining, really, every decision that I make, and that we make as a department with a racial equity lens, and thinking about, ‘Is this an anti-racist way to approach this decision?’” Lockhart said. “That can be really anything from how we allocate our resources to what our internal policies are to support our staff.”
But Lockhart’s life isn’t entirely consumed with work. Because both of her children are grown and live in New York, she isn’t responsible for childcare anymore, which allows her and her husband time to enjoy various cultural events. The couple is a season ticket holder to the Seattle Repertory Theatre, and attend dance performances at the Meany Center. Lockhart also recently finished watching the newest season of Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black,” and confessed to enjoying “trashy novels,” the $1- or $2-kind one can find in the Amazon Kindle store.
“I find it really is something so completely different from work,” Lockhart said.
Carolyn can be reached at
editor@nwasianweekly.com.