(chilled house music) - [Woman] Coffee brings people together.

- [Man] You can have the right people around you, where it's not just a place, it's actually a good experience.

- [Woman] Like when a new music artist comes out, like in our black community that we love, we can play it here.

- [Man] When people come in they feel that sense of community and family and love.

- [Woman] We are all about lifting as we climb, as we grow, we bring those with us.

- [Man] It's a movement.

It's much bigger than just a coffee shop.

(guitar music) - I grew up in this area.

Erwin grew up in Yakima.

In school and high school, I was the only black person in every single class.

Never had a black teacher.

Never saw black businesses.

Never saw black people in positions of power, adopter, anything.

I never had representation.

And so it really affected me as I began to grow up and like, try to figure out where I was going to fit in, in this world.

- You know, I was a little apprehensive of moving to north Seattle because I was used to kind of being around a black community in Tacoma.

And so moving to north Seattle is kind of scary for me, actually.

- We bought a house, we had our kid, but our kids, once they started school, like something was wrong.

And I just started to see like him change into like this different person, our five-year-old.

And then he got called by the 'N' word at school.

In kindergarten.

My husband had to have that conversation with his son at five years old, that this is always going to happen to you.

People are always gonna look at you and see you as a threat and say these things to you.

- Like, what is going on?

I thought we moved to a great place and this and that and blah, blah, blah.

Unfortunately, that's a lot of black people's mentality is that somehow we bring this onto ourselves.

And what we found out is you're not going to escape that no matter how good you think you're going to do.

- So that's really how like the organizing started.

We were trying to save our kid from the horrors of this world and make sure that he had a chance.

- You remember our first date?

- Yeah.

- It was at a coffee shop.

- It was at a coffee shop.

(laughs) Oh my God.

That's so funny.

It really was.

- I just thought about that.

I don't know.

I'm like, wait a minute.

And we went to a movie, The Waterboy.

Like when it was playing in the theater.

And we were rolling the whole time and that's how we connected.

We connected on coffee and laughter.

It can be something as simple as like a coffee shop where you can connect.

- [Woman] We want the community, especially our black kids to feel like they can come here and be safe.

This morning Arbery says we're here working and someone came to the drive through.

They said you guys have hate message on your building.

It's very disheartening to show up to that on my building.

- [Man] And then I sort of look at it and it has these swastikas on there.

- If I could get up and never have my daughter see a swastika on the building that she takes the most pride in, I would do it right now.

And someone tried to blow the building up.

Someone tried to set it on fire and it was an arson.

What are you going to do when they try to blow up your precious community building?

Are you going to know that it's just cause of racism.

- That wouldn't have happened if we were white folks.

- People are like "call the police".

And I'm like that again people, that is an option for you, that is not an option.

We have to think about that.

- [Man] Or the other one where somebody like criticize their hair.

Like, oh, your hair is so different.

- [Woman] I would say every day, any 24 hour period that we don't have anything here that's racist is a good 24 hour period for us.

I was called the "N" word today by a man who demanded I made coffee for him still.

We wish it was just bad coffee we had to deal with.

They wish that people would just be like my temperature and my coffee was off.

I need white people to understand that it's such a disruption in our everyday life.

One would be scared, right?

Like one would run scared, but we're not going to run scared.

And so we just start rallying people together.

This space will be, we say a catalyst for change and it will be a catalyst for change.

I never want a black family to have to feel alone out here, especially in this area, in the shrine north Seattle.

You know, Lynnwood Edmonds area.

We want representation.

- [Man] We have a place here and we have a purpose and we're going to make sure we're going to remain here.