A gentle man with an insistent message
Ben Cabildo invited everyone he knew to the annual meeting of Spokane’s Chamber of Commerce. It was 1997. Andrew Young, civil rights pioneer, was the speaker. For several years before this, at any community meeting Ben attended, he beat the diversity drum of include us, include us, include us.
He felt proud to be at Young’s talk. And then a video was shown about Spokane’s future. Not one face of color in that video. And then schoolchildren walked through a symbolic “Door of Opportunity.” Not one child of color walked through that door.
And in that moment, Ben – who moved to the United States from the Philippines when he was 14 – flashed back to his school days in West Seattle. Flashed back to the teasing, flashed back to the mothers who would never let their daughters date a Filipino boy, even a well-to-do boy whose own mother was buying up Seattle real estate.
Anger followed Ben’s flashback. “I had to make it a teachable moment,” Ben says now. “And the business community really took it to heart. They said, ‘Yes, we want to learn.’ And that was the beginning of relationships.”
Those beginnings led to the middle of Spokane’s diversity story, where Ben resides today. He is 57 now, executive director of AHANA, the business association with this mission: “To improve the economic status and enhance the quality of life of the African-American, Hispanic, Asian and Native American communities through the development of business and employment opportunities.”
Ben is a civic player now. The day I interviewed him, we chatted about Eastern Washington University’s new president, Rodolfo Arevalo, the first Latino to hold such a post in Washington state.
“I was part of the selection committee,” Ben told me proudly.
Ben first visited in Spokane in 1992, because his sister asked him to check up on houses she owned here. Before he arrived, he asked her: “Why did you buy houses in the backwaters of Washington?” But he discovered a city with a river running through it and people so friendly he couldn’t believe it. He decided to stay.
Soon, he went searching for his people. He looked at thrift stores because he said Filipinos are known for their thriftiness, no matter how much money they earn. And he got involved in almost every group working on diversity issues here. In 1995, he co-founded Unity in Action, a group of people concerned about human rights.
That’s when I first met Ben. Every time I saw him, he hounded me about getting more diversity stories into the newspaper. He hounded many people he met back then if he thought they could raise awareness of minority communities here. Ben was so insistent that I sometimes avoided him at gatherings, because I didn’t want to hear his include us drumbeat yet again.
One day, a black executive told Ben, “While you are fighting for equal justice, the white man is laughing all the way to the bank.” Ben and others realized that in Spokane, as in any community, money talks. He and the Rev. Lonnie Mitchell organized the first meeting to plan the business association that became AHANA.
Now, more than 400 businesses belong to AHANA. It will celebrate its seventh anniversary this year.
“Ben has helped the business community understand and improve the whole concept of valuing diversity in the workplace,” says Rich Hadley, president and CEO of the Spokane Area Regional Chamber of Commerce. “He has a gentle demeanor, but he carries a strong message with such passion.”
The other day in his office, Ben printed out for me pages of next-step plans for AHANA, including a mentorship program for minority teens. He told me about a woman from Bangladesh just hired as an AHANA consultant. “I want you to interview her,” he said in that insistent voice I remember well from a decade ago. Ben caught himself, and we both laughed.
Ben will never stop beating the include us drum. And on this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, I am finally grateful.