It’ukdi wigwa! Qngi mait’a? (Good day. How are you?)
Voting puts our hopes, values, and needs into action. This basic right was not so basic for Native people like me nor was it for the generations before me.
In 1924, Native peoples were granted citizenship, but in many states — including Washington and Oregon — keeping Native people from voting persisted, including: unreachable polling places, and registrars unwilling to accept voter registration of Native peoples. In Washington, the phrase “Indians not taxed,” in Article 1 of the Constitution, justified the exclusion of Native peoples from voting until the Supreme Court ruled that all Native people could vote, in 1948.
I tell you this because this is a year of action, and one way we act is by voting.
This fundamental right has never felt so important. When we vote, we look forward and my own 2022 cancer diagnosis threw my future into doubt.
Today, I reflect from a place of respite, of awe, of healing, and now of joy as I am in remission. I am savoring this new time in my life.
I often think of young people as I sit on my special beach. This place that I love is so much bigger than me: It was here long before me, and will persist long after me. It is my privilege to work to make sure that it will not only persist, but thrive for future generations.
One way to do this is to listen to our young people. We must also teach them to use their voice and their power. That’s why we’ve added two young people to our board of directors.
Every action matters. Every contribution matters. Both the environment and democracy are on the ballot this year. Take action to protect them. Vote.
My favorite place is the beach that runs along the east side of the Lummi Nation reservation. It faces Komo Kulshan (Mt. Baker) and I love to walk along the beach, to hunt for sea glass or to watch the qualuxcin (eagles) soaring above.
Alyssa Macy (she/her) CEO, Washington Conservation Action
Tribal Citizenship: Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon
Photo by Alyssa Macy, taken from the shores of the Lummi Nation reservation
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Washington Conservation Action
Ilays Aden, Co-founder of Nour Village/Eat With Muslims
Christina Billingsley, Senior Program Manager, Environmental Engagement
Justin Camarata, Treasurer, Civic Leader and Startup Manager
Sharon Chen, Citizen Activist and Engineer
Josh Friedmann Lawyer, Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson, P.S.
Jovan Johnson Hall Conservator of wild land and historic buildings; Philanthropist; Hotelier
Kellen Hoard, Student, Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University
Dr. Vernon Damani Johnson, Former Faculty, Department of Political Science, Western Washington University
Ken Lederman, Board Chair, McCullough Hill Leary
Joel Moffett, Director of Environmental & Special Projects, Native Americans in Philanthropy
Paulo Palugod, Senior Associate Attorney, Northwest Office, EarthJustice
Sarah Reyneveld, Managing Assistant Attorney General, Washington State Attorney General’s Office
Paul Tabayoyon Executive Director, Yakima Chapter, Asian Pacific Islander Coalition (APIC-Yakima)
Preeti Shridhar, Deputy Public Affairs Administrator, City of Renton
Margie Van Cleve
Oskar Zambrano Méndez, Secretary, Founder, Somos Más
Washington Conservation Action Education Fund
Gabe Aeschliman, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Christina Billingsley, Vice Chair, Senior Program Manager, Environmental Engagement
Ginny Broadhurst, Salish Sea Institute, Western Washington University
Karen Cunningham, Senior Program Officer, INATAI Foundation
Yolanda Frazier, Health Equity Director, President of local Vancouver NAACP
Josh Friedmann, Lawyer, Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson, P.S.
Hector Hinojosa, Founder, Community Roots Collaborative
Eliseo (EJ) Juárez, Director of Equity and Environmental Justice, Washington State Department of Natural Resources
Ken Lederman, Board Chair, McCullough Hill Leary
Jaime Martin, Executive Director of Governmental Affairs & Special Projects, Snoqualmie Tribe
Rosalyn Minh, Student, Washington State University
Jameson Morrell, Director of Sustainability, PACCAR
Justin Parker, Executive Director, NW Indian Fisheries Commission
Sarah Reyneveld, Managing Assistant Attorney General, Washington State Attorney General’s Office
Katie Ross, Director, Carbon Reduction Strategy & Market Development, Microsoft
Maverick Ryan, Pyramid Communications; and Cowlitz Indian Tribal Council Member
Mel Schutten, Locus Innovations, LLC
Amy Scott, Associate Director, Planned Giving at University of Washington
April Sims, President, Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO
Tina Montgomery, Business Relations & Events Director
Ellie Morgan, WCA Education Fund Administrative Associate
Mariah Morr, Salesforce Admin & Data Senior Manager
Darcy Nonemacher, Government Affairs Director
Jody Olney, Tribal Nations Director
Bryan Pelach, State Forestlands Program Manager
Sean Pender, Vice President of Administration
Adriana Perrusquia, Executive Assistant and Board Liaison
Mallori Pryse Visual Communications Manager
Zachary Pullin, Communications Director
Mindy Roberts, Puget Sound Program Director
Griffin Smith, Development Director
Karina Solorio Yakima Community Organizer
Joy Stanford, Political & Democracy Director
Ava Stone, Climate Smart Wood Senior Manager
Lauren Tamboer, Foundation Relations Senior Manager
Kady Titus Native Vote Washington Senior Organizer
Rico Vinh, Forests & Fish Program Senior Manager
Christina Wong, Vice President of Programs
Halleli Zacher, Events & Outreach Coordinator
UPTHEGROVE WILL TRANSFORM DNR “FOR ALL THE PEOPLE”
Washington’s Commissioner of Public Lands (CPL) is one of only six statewide natural resource positions in the country. The CPL, who runs the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has a profound influence on how we manage nearly 12 million acres of public and private lands in our state. We believe the next CPL will have an incredible opportunity to innovate and to reimagine how to serve the public and how to manage forests and aquatic lands to benefit all the people of Washington. In April, we endorsed King County Council Chair Dave Upthegrove for CPL. Upthegrove has decades of experience in natural resources and environmental policymaking. He has a demonstrated knowledge of the history and of the need transformational change at DNR, prioritizing racial justice, environmental justice, and Tribal sovereignty. He is best positioned to win this important statewide position, but first he must advance from a competitive primary. In May, Upthegrove sat down to answer a few questions:
What’s your favorite way to get out in nature?
I spent my summers in high school and college teaching environmental science to young people on Hood Canal and leading week-long backpacking treks through the North Cascades. To this day, I love mountain hiking, especially longer backpacking treks. I rely on my friends to join me on day hikes or the rare backpacking trek.
Healthy forests provide many benefits like storing carbon, filtering or cooling water, and providing timber. How do you envision the Department of Natural Resources contributing to our state’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals and managing public state lands to benefit everyone in Washington?
We can end the destruction of our mature legacy forests while still supporting rural economies, creating jobs and funding public services. I know these kinds of big changes are possible because I have led similar changes in King County. For instance, I helped establish a forest carbon program as part of our King County Land Conservation Initiative and
have led successful efforts to stop the destruction of carbon-dense mature legacy forests in King County, including the proposed Wishbone timber sale. Mechanization, market forces and new corporate structures have changed forestry in ways that decrease jobs and create uncertainty for rural economies. How would you reconcile the different priorities of industry and communities?
Relying solely on simply cutting down more forests isn’t a long-term sustainable economic strategy for rural communities. I envision a strong healthy forest practices industry in this state for years to come, but also believe we can change how we harvest and where we harvest in order to better protect our clean air, clean water and habitat.
About 70% of our wood products come from private timberlands, which are not owned by the DNR. When those lands face a risk of conversion from forestry to other uses, I think the state can bring them into our trust holdings and keep them in forestry.
We also have opportunities for public investments, as well as private contracted work, on state forestlands that would create good jobs and economic activity in rural areas without the same degree of environmental impact. For example, we can, and should, be investing much more in forest health work such as targeted thinning that not only provides wildfire resilience but also improves the health of the forests.
People in Washington hold very different views about how we should use our forests, and how we should balance needs. How will you bring more community and Tribal voices into the center of the conversation while also engaging with the timber industry?
I think the key is robust communication and early consultation. We need to be engaging more in genuinely joint planning efforts. One early priority will be to work with Tribes on a long-term strategic plan for use of public lands for clean energy development. We shouldn’t be pitting clean energy against Tribal sovereignty. We can do better. Finally, I will ask the Legislature to expand the Board of Natural Resources membership to add a community representative as well as Tribal representation. Environmental damage and degradation disproportionally affect those least responsible for the problems: rural communities, Tribes, and communities of color. How will you lead DNR to create more equitable outcomes in areas such as wildfire, air quality, logging, urban forestry, and Treaty rights?
I came out of the closet the year I first ran for office. My mentor at the time said she loved me, but that I couldn’t run for office. This was more than 20 years ago, and the thought of a gay legislator deep in the working-class suburbs of South King County was unheard of at the time. But I ran and won and made history as the first out LGBT state legislator outside the city of Seattle in the history of our state. What drove me then still drives me today: a passion for justice. This means not just LGBT equality, but racial equality, gender equality, fighting for Tribal Treaty rights and labor rights. I’m the son of a father with disabilities and the brother of someone who has overcome addiction and criminal justice involvement. My commitment to justice is personal.
My mission will be to incorporate equity & social justice into all of our operations and programs.
I’ll hire the most diverse staff in the history of the agency, lead the charge for structural changes at the Board of Natural Resources to make it more inclusive, and will honor Tribal Treaty rights and strengthen the co-management role of Tribes. Most people are surprised to hear that DNR has an important role managing “aquatic lands,” navigable lakes, rivers, streams, and marine waters. DNR stewards more than 2.6 million acres of state-owned aquatic lands in Puget Sound alone. What opportunities do you see to strengthen protection and restoration of aquatic lands for future generations?
There is an aquatic lands restoration team within the Department of Natural Resources that does nothing but work on restoring aquatic lands—doing things like getting rid of nasty creosote pilings, doing eelgrass planting, and removing derelict fishing gear. I want to ask the Legislature to expand their work, with a focus on supporting forage fish populations.
If you were to write a note to future generations about your work on the environment, what would it say?
To the future generations, my true legacy lies in the promise I make to you: that I will never waver in my dedication to leaving behind a world that is cleaner, healthier, and more resilient than the one I inherited. We’ve built a future where the beauty of nature thrives, where every living being can flourish, and where our planet is cherished and protected for generations to come.
With hope and determination, Dave
Photos courtesy Dave Upthegrove.
Polls consistently show that a large majority in Washington supports environmental progress: a transition to clean energy, clean seas and streams that can support salmon and orca, sustainably managed forests and more.
So why do we face a ballot initiative this fall that would repeal the Climate Commitment Act, the nation’s strongest carbon law, legislation that has already generated more than $2 billion for projects that clean up or protect the environment in every corner of our state?
Here’s the quick answer: Because a selfish rich guy thinks he can buy elections to overturn state laws that he doesn’t support. The arrogance of it really is stupendous, galactic even.
Repealing a law that makes carbon polluters pay for the damage they’re causing is not the only bad idea this guy has paid to put before the state Legislature and voters. He has laid out a veritable smorgasbord of wrongheaded policy: eliminating the capital gains tax because why should rich people pay their fair share, or allowing people to opt out of a longterm care payroll tax because why would we want to prepare for the slow-motion elder care crisis. Those on the right would have you believe that these initiatives are the result of a groundswell of popular support, backlash against government overreach. In reality, there is no public upwelling. The so-called “grassroots” groups supporting this effort are just fronts for conservative interests.
Here’s the background: Brian Heywood is the driving force behind “Let’s Go Washington,” the group that he formed in the 2022-23 election cycle to push 11 initiatives, all of which failed.
Heywood, 57, is a Harvard University grad whose company, Taiyo Pacific Partners, manages a hedge fund with billions in Japanese holdings. He has publicly declared that he moved to Washington from
California because he didn’t like paying higher taxes down south. For 10 years or so, he mostly kept to himself: using a little utility vehicle to zip about Willowcrest Stables, his 40-acre estate and horse farm in Redmond, looking in on his barns, tending to his bees and his company’s portfolio, quietly making more than $2.4 million in donations to conservative causes since 2010.
Then, in 2023 after failing to get a single initiative on the ballot, Heywood decided to enter the fray in a big way: He spent $6 million of his own money to hire people to gather signatures for six ballot initiatives that would roll back years of legislative progress. Each of these initiatives was sponsored in the 2024 Washington Legislature by Representative and newly-elected State Republican Party Chair Jim Walsh.
In March, the Legislature passed three of Heywood’s culture wars initiatives into law: One would supposedly ban state and local personal income taxes, another would roll back limits on police pursuits, and another would allow parents to look over teachers’ shoulders, reviewing educational materials and blocking their kids from taking sex ed. But these initiatives were so badly written that they will do little to change state law. And lawmakers have vowed to revisit them if turns out that they are actually doing harm.
The remaining three initiatives will be on the ballot in November.
For the environmental community, the worst of these bad ideas is Initiative 2117, which would repeal the Climate Commitment Act (CCA). Not only that, but it would also ban any future carbon pricing laws. This initiative is deceptive and misleading. While its proponents would have you believe that I-2117 will eliminate a “hidden gas tax,” it cannot do that because the CCA has nothing to do with gas taxes. The gas tax is separate, and in the state Constitution.
The CCA requires our state’s biggest polluters to pay for their carbon emissions. It then uses the money generated from those sales to fund clean energy projects. Those funds help people afford energy upgrades like heat pumps. They help communities already struggling with the effects of continuing to burn dirty fossil fuels, such as rising sea levels and wildfires. They help make public transit free for kids under 18. They buy zero-emission school buses, charging stations, electric trucks and so much more.
Without the CCA, our state will not have adequate resources to meet its climate goals of net zero emissions by 2050. Without the CCA, billions of dollars will disappear from the state budget. That means drastically less money to support transit, clean energy, clean air, safe and affordable heating and cooling systems, and community support.
Worst of all, repealing the CCA will hurt the most vulnerable among us. The CCA funds efforts to track and address air pollution. Statewide, air pollution contributes to asthma, heart disease and other health problems. These issues disproportionately affect people of color, those with less money such as children and older adults, outdoor workers, and other vulnerable populations. Without the CCA, these communities will lose funding for air quality improvements. Many will suffer the health consequences. That’s just not right.
Not only is I-2117 bad policy, but it is also anti-democratic.
In the early 20th century, several U.S. states adopted “initiatives,” also called referendums or propositions depending on the place. They borrowed this idea from Switzerland, which pretty much copied the U.S. Constitution wholesale in the late 19th century but added referendums so that people might vote on a course correction if they felt their representatives were veering too wildly off course.
Notice the word “people” there. Initiatives were meant to amplify the voice of people with a capital “P,” not one person. One person, or even a few people, should not be able to distort our laws and our elections by writing a personal check.
Those of us who worked to pass CCA have been on the side fighting for people with a capital P, for their families, for their futures, for public health, and for the land, water and air that sustains us all.
Heywood is fighting for himself, to get out of paying taxes and to help his rich friends stay rich.
MAGA-Republican Rep. Walsh is fighting for himself, trying to legislate using the initiative process because his out-of-touch party can’t win elections in our state. For these reasons, and so many more, vote no on I-2117. And while you’re at it, vote no Heywood’s other bad ideas, I-2109, and I-2124! (See pp. 12 for more information on these initiatives.)
Washington Conservation Action has launched an ambitious campaign, “Call 4 Climate Action.” Our goal: Get 50,000 new or infrequent Washington voters to commit to casting a ballot in November. But we’ll need your help!
Join one of our Call 4 Climate Action phone banks, held the third Thursday of every month, now through the November election.
When more people vote, more voices are heard. As a result, our lawmakers and our officials better represent our diverse communities. That leads to results that are better for people and nature.
That’s not pie-in-the-sky dream talk. It happened in a big way just three years ago, in 2021. That’s when the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) became state law. Polls overwhelmingly show that a majority in our state support a transition to clean energy and many other policies that are good for the people and the planet.
Help us defend climate progress! www.call4climateaction.org
Photo courtesy WCA.
Photo by Mallori Pryse.
ACTION DRIVES EVERYTHING: PLANETS, ECOSYSTEMS, POLITICS, YOU
Written by
Heather
Millar (she/her),
Senior Manager
We live with the illusion that we can be still, at rest. We tell ourselves that mountains are immovable, that the planet is solid, that our bodies are in one piece. But really, everything around us, and in us, is moving and acting, combining and separating, creating and destroying, in each and every moment. The universe is like a great Spirograph™, spinning out endless patterns and intersections through a constant push and pull, whether in a nanosecond or over incomprehensible eons.
Action is the foundation of, well, everything. If something is not acting, that is, if it is not reacting, changing, or moving, it probably is not alive. Even things that western culture does not consider living—rocks and water, the gravity wells of planets and stars—also create action.
At Washington Conservation Action, we believe passionately in the importance of acting, of doing, of building. We are grateful for action, in awe of its power, dazzled by all the ways that action works in ourselves, in our communities, in our politics and culture, and in the world and the universe around us.
We humans have pondered these ideas for thousands of years. Many, many origin narratives begin with dramatic action: A creator comes down from the sky to a world that is all water and begins to pile up big handfuls of mud from the shallows to make land (Yakama); A Star Child transforms the world, making salmon go up and down rivers, creating deer and useful plants, creating fire and many other things (Snoqualmie); Pan Gu, a giant, emerges from chaos and begins to sort the world into pairs of opposites like earth and sky, dark and light (China); A god descends from heaven via a gold chain to make dry land and create humans out of clay. (Yoruba, Nigeria).
Scientific understanding is likewise full of action: What researchers apprehend as reality is billions upon billions of galaxies that both spin around their centers and rush away from each other. It all got started, as far as we can tell, with one giant action, the Big Bang: Unbelievably compressed matter and energy burst forth in a creative explosion that brought us the simplest and lightest elements, like hydrogen and helium.
Before these elements ever became part of larger things, they were already acting upon each other: electrons, protons, and neutrons push-pulling around their centers, their nuclei. These atoms coalesced into molecules that also acted, each upon the other. All molecules constantly interact and vibrate. Recent studies have shown that this constant activity actually has a sound, light molecules of hydrogen or nitrogen with high pitch, heavier molecules like lead oxide resonating at a lower pitch. You might call these the foundational tones of action. Eventually, these really small things came together
to make really big things like stars. The action of nuclear fusion in those stars created light and burned new elements into being: things like oxygen and carbon, which is formed when three helium atoms fuse together in super-high temperatures. At the end of their cycles, the largest stars compressed and then exploded in their own mini big bangs, supernovas, shooting out energy and ever more complex elements like iron, mercury, and gold into interstellar space. These explosions of dying stars resulted in great clouds or nebulae of cosmic dust that, in turn, resulted in new stars, in asteroid belts and gas giants like Jupiter and in rocky planets like Earth, in cedar trees and sword ferns, in orca and salmon, in us.
As you sit in your chair or at your desk reading this, the Earth beneath you may feel stable. But of course, tectonic plates are constantly shifting and moving the planet’s crust around, on top of a mantle layer of compressed metals and minerals that is also swirling in its own pattern, ever so slowly. The Juan de Fuca plate dives under the North American plate along the Washington coast, shrinking the Pacific Ocean by a few centimeters each year and pushing up the volcanic peaks and mountain ranges we all treasure.
“All molecules constantly interact and vibrate...the activity actually has a sound. You might call these the foundational tones of action.”
Life on Earth would not have been possible without all this geologic action. It seems that the volcanoes that form along the seams of tectonic plates, like those we see throughout the Cascades, created the conditions necessary for peptides to link together. Recent experiments have shown that a volcanic gas can provide the chemistry necessary to get peptides to hook up.
Why is this a big deal? Peptides form amino acids. And in turn, hundreds and thousands of amino acids link together in different patterns and combinations to form the proteins that make up every tissue in your body, and all life as we know it. The exact process is still being debated: Some think the reaction may have occurred in undersea volcanic vents. Others point to lightning created by volcanic eruptions reacting with elements in just the right way. For billions of years, those peptides only linked to create microscopic life: single-celled archaea, bacteria, viruses and the like. More complicated life forms probably emerged, according to evolutionary biologists, in the service of action. Living things
“Meteor and the Milky Way over the Olympic Mountains from Obstruction Point, Olympic National Park” by Diana Robinson. License: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
sought to do, rather than just being swept around by currents or by winds. They needed to move from the shade to the sun, from danger to safety. It worked out better to actively search for good food, rather than waiting to bump into it.
Since then, a dizzying profusion of life has existed, disappeared, reemerged in new forms. In some cases, what happened to earth happened to life on earth. Life’s trajectory changed because of big events beyond control: giant asteroids falling from space, or volcanic eruptions so large they changed the climate. But much of evolution has unfolded simply from the way life has acted in the world. Each creature and plant and fungus results from countless actions over countless generations of development. We each are adapted to our environment because of how we act and react to the forces around us.
Thus, you are a miracle walking. And yes, walking depends upon equal and opposite actions and reactions, the push of your foot and toes, the resistance of the ground. You also are a miracle sitting, or digging, or stretching, or sweeping.
Consider what a marvel it is to be able to act. Simply reaching for a coffee cup is an amazing thing. It requires desire, and then the coordination of sight, of touch, of sensing where you are in space, and where the cup is in space. All that creates a blossom of chemical reactions in your brain.
The brain then communicates with the rest of your body through neurons. Each neuron, thousands upon millions of them, must reach an “action potential” to fire and thus pass on the brain’s orders. Those neural impulses connect to muscle. Messages from skin and muscle send back information to the brain: How hot is the cup? How heavy? Is the surface wet or slippery? This neural conversation moderates how your hand works to pull the cup toward your mouth with just the right amount of force, speed, and balance.
If you can, take a sip as you read this. Savor how astonishing that everyday action is.
Biologists often discuss “natural agents.” In this scientific context, a natural agent is said to alter, in a direction it finds favorable, the evolution of the world. By taking that sip of coffee, you changed the world to hydrate yourself, to savor the drink’s bittersweet warmth, and to take advantage of caffeine’s chemical jolt of ambition and clarity.
Each of us is a natural agent. What we do can be as simple as taking a sip of coffee or as ambitious as reimagining the world’s politics and economy so that nature and people can thrive. What we have in this moment is the privilege of acting, of creating the world that we want to see.
Acting may feel overwhelming in this historical moment. It may seem like there are just too many challenges, too much discord, too much uncertainty,
too much economic stress. Of course, plenty of bad actors would be perfectly happy to have us all shut down in the face of polarized politics, ever widening economic inequality, climate change, pollution from tidal waves of plastic, toxic runoff and all the rest. When you feel that way, remember that there was never a time when there weren’t challenges and discord and uncertainty. Generation after generation has faced injustice and seemingly insurmountable problems and chosen to act. Many, many great movements, many steps toward justice have begun with just one modest action, just one person, or a few people, believing that things must change and then doing something to make that change happen. Here are just a few examples:
In early 1964, Indigenous residents of Frank’s Landing near Olympia had had enough: Off-shore commercial fishing and other development dominated by white interests had caused salmon and steelhead runs to plummet. A series of contradictory federal and state court rulings had emphasized assimilation rather than respect for Native culture, extended law enforcement jurisdiction onto reservations and ignored treaty rights that gave Tribes the right to fish, hunt and gather in “all usual and accustomed places.”
With both their heritage and their livelihoods at stake, young activists like Billy Frank Jr. and Al and Maiselle Bridges organized a series of “fish-ins,” refusing to stop fishing when ordered to do so by state Fish & Game officers, getting arrested, attracting both media attention and the support of the Tacoma NAACP and celebrities like actor Marlon Brando. Little did they know, as they put their nets in the water, that they would start something that eventually would result in the landmark Boldt decision, a ruling that would be affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1979, profoundly strengthening Treaty Rights for Tribes nationwide.
In 1971, Denis Hayes, then a young Harvard graduate student, landed a 15-minute courtesy meeting with a United States senator who’d been talking up the idea of a national environmental teach-in. What was supposed to be a brief talk ended up lasting two hours. A couple days later, the senator’s chief of staff called. Might Hayes consider quitting school and organizing a national Earth Day?
“At the time, there wasn’t much activism centered on ‘the environment.’ There were hundreds of focused groups: bird groups, people in Santa Barbara protesting offshore oil drilling, river groups, people against freeways. But they didn’t work together. We thought maybe we could change that,” says Hayes, now in his 80s and the outgoing CEO of the Bullitt Foundation (See stories, pp. 29-30.) “Earth Day. I never
“Many, many great movements, many steps toward justice have begun with just one modest action.”
dreamed it would be held again. It was just supposed to be a one-off.”
We all know how that turned out.
Greta Thunberg learned about climate change when she was only eight. By the time she was 10 or 11 she sometimes got so depressed about it that she did not eat or speak. In 2018, at age 15, she started sitting, all alone, outside the Danish parliament building in Copenhagen with a hand painted sign saying, “School Strike for Climate.” Despite little encouragement, she kept sitting there, persisting in quiet action.
We all know how that small, lonely beginning turned out as well.
None of these people—not Billy Frank Jr., not Al and Maiselle Bridges, not Denis Hayes, not Greta Thunberg, not the hundreds and thousands of others who have taken action to make the world a better place—none of them knew when they began if their actions would succeed. They took that first step anyway. They acted. They took the chance. They kept the goal in sight, held onto hope. They kept working and struggling.
In this election year, it’s the privilege of every one of us to be part of this universal symphony of action. We each have a note to play as we push and pull toward a world in which people and nature are one. They will build a crescendo to victory in November. And in the brief silence afterward, we just might be able to perceive the foundational tones of the cosmos in action.
A family participating in Youth Climate Lobby Day walking toward the state capitol. Photo by Mallori Pryse.
WHO WE ELECT MATTERS OUR 2024 ENDORSEMENTS
We back these candidates in 20 key races
STATEWIDE
Governor Bob Ferguson
Commissioner of Public Lands | Dave Upthegrove
Superintendent of Public Instruction | Chris Reykdal
COUNTY
Pierce County Executive | Ryan Mello
Pierce County Council, Pos. 6 | Jani Hitchen
Clark County Council, District 3 | Will Fuentes
Spokane County Commission, District 5 | Molly Marshall
"I’m
STATE SENATE
Leg. District 5 | Bill Ramos
Leg. District 10 | Janet St. Clair
Leg. District 14 | Maria Beltran
STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Leg. District 5 | Victoria Hunt
Leg. District 10 | Dave Paul
Leg. District 14 | Chelsea Dimas
Leg. District 18 | John Zingale
Leg. District 24 | Nate Tyler
Leg. District 26 | Adison Richards
Leg. District 42 | Joe Timmons
honored to receive the endorsement from Washington Conservation Action, the leading legislative and political voice in Washington state’s environmental community."
Bob Ferguson, WCA endorsed candidate for governor
PRIMARY ELECTIONS
July August 19 29 6
August Primary Election 18-day voting period begins.
Ballots are mailed out and Accessible Voting Units (AVUs) are available at voting centers.
Last day to register, update, or change voter information online for the August Primary Election.
Mail registrations must be received by this date.
PUBLIC UTILITY DISTRICTS
Okanogan County PUD | Lauren McCloy
Franklin County PUD | Pedro Torres Jr.
Kitsap County PUD | Heather Pauley
STATEWIDE INITIATIVES
I-2117 | Vote NO
Last day to register to vote in person for Primary by 8 p.m.
Primary Election day: Last day to deposit ballot in a dropbox by 8 p.m.
Map of
Would repeal the Climate Commitment Act, our state’s cap-and-invest carbon law. Would bar the state from passing similar laws in the future.
I-2109 | Vote NO
Would repeal the state’s capital gains tax, which makes the rich pay their fair share.
I-2124 | Vote NO
Would allow workers to opt out of wage deductions for the Long Term Care Coverage Act.
Full list of endorsements at our website, waconservationaction.org/endorsements
"Washington Conservation Action’s endorsement helped to lend credibility to my campaign, especially as I was facing an establishment candidate."
GENERAL ELECTIONS
October
November 18 5 28
November General Election 18-day voting period begins.
Last day to register, update, or change voter information online for the November General Election.
Mail registrations must be received by this date.
Last day to register to vote in person by 8 p.m.
General Election day: Last day to deposit ballot in a dropbox by 8 p.m.
Jamika Scott, WCA endorsed candidate elected in Nov. 2023
Photo courtesy Bob Ferguson.
Photo courtesy Jamika Scott.
VOTING IS GOOD MEDICINE
Because of historical exclusion, Native peoples have long been skeptical of U.S. elections. Now, they’re flexing their political muscles.
It’s noon on an April Tuesday, and Washington Conservation Action’s Native Vote Washington (NVW) staffers are on Zoom, waiting for their screens to fill with people’s faces. Organizers from around the west have signed up for this second session of “Voting is Good Medicine,” a 9-part series aimed at building relationships and organizing strength.
This webinar will cover “Field and Digital: Making it Work Together.”
“Our goal is to bring together Native Vote organizers from different states, not just from Washington, but from Native Vote New Mexico, from Native Vote Montana, from Native Vote Arizona and so on,” explains Kady Titus, senior organizer for NVW, which is now a program of Washington Conservation Action. “We want people from different Tribal nations to get pumped up, to learn from each other and to really make a difference in this election cycle.”
In the 2020 election, the Native vote in Arizona helped to flip that state for President Biden. And that election was decided by just 84,000 votes in four states.
“The Native vote is key in 2024,” says WCA CEO Alyssa Macy, an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon, who first had the idea for the webinar series. “Because of history, because Native Treaties and rights were ignored for so long, many of our people remain skeptical of U.S. elections. We vote in our Tribal elections, but a lot of us don’t vote in U.S. elections. Nearly a third of us are not registered to vote. That’s 1.2 million people nationwide. That has the potential to make a huge difference Washington and in swing states like Arizona and Nevada.”
“A lot of my job is explaining to people that representation matters,” says Titus. “For instance, 10 years ago there was no task force for Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW) in Washington. Now our state has an MMIW Task Force with two employees. That wouldn’t have happened without the work of state representatives like Debra Lekanoff (D-40, Tlingit).”
As the webinar opens, Titus shares tips for successful field events, tabling at powwows or festivals or other gatherings. “Being in person matters! … Don’t be afraid to ask…Be patient. Remember people have good reasons to be suspicious of voter registration…A tablet device is a good tool…Don’t forget pledge cards…”
NVW Digital Field Organizer Mikayla Flores follows with some tech tips, “Check out collaboration software like Asana…Before you go to an event, make sure you know if there’s wi-fi…”
Then WCA Tribal Nations Program Director Jody Olney gives a brief history lesson. “Remember that Indigenous peoples did not automatically have the right to vote, even after the Indian Citizenship Act of June 2, 1924, many states barred Tribal citizens from the voting booth. The right to vote came in 1948, only after lawsuits.”
Even after the right to vote was granted, it remained difficult. In Washington, barriers included culture tests, inaccessible polling places, registrars who would not accept the voter registration of Native peoples. In places like Arizona where only 10 to 20% of Indigenous people could then write proficiently in English, English literacy tests severely hampered Native access to the ballot until the early 1970s.
The several dozen attendees then sort into breakout rooms to talk, to build relationships, and talk strategy. People talk about pushing a registration drive on June 2, the centenary of the Indian Citizenship Act.
“In our next webinar, we’re going to talk about issues in different regions,” Titus says. “For instance, in New Mexico and Arizona, there are border issues. Here in Washington, it’s environmental issues: dams and salmon. Everywhere we’re dealing with missing and murdered people. Just as in the rest of the country, Tribes are coping with homelessness and the fentanyl crisis.
“All those things are touched by local, state, and federal policy. That’s why we need to have an influence on local, state, and federal elections. That’s why we need to vote.”
Five “Voting is Good Medicine” sessions remain:
July 24, Digital Organizing for a New Generation
August 28, Learning from Each Other
September 25, Get Out the Vote (GOTV)
October 23, Election Protection
November 27, Election Recap and Sustaining the Movement in 2025
“The Native vote is key in 2024...[it] has the potential to make a huge difference in Washington and in swing states like Arizona and Nevada.”
WCA staff Kady Titus and Mikayla Flores attend ATNI, pictured with NVW Advisory Committee NVW Advisory committee members Theresa Sheldon and Joel Moffett. Photo courtesy WCA.
In December 2023, the Biden administration formally acknowledged that urgent action is needed to restore salmon in the Pacific Northwest. Half a billion dollars were pledged in previously unannounced federal investments to restore wild salmon, to expand clean energy production and to support both Tribal treaty rights and a robust regional economy.
This marks a major turning point in a decades-long effort, a first step on a path to breach the four dams along the lower Snake River. If this momentum is maintained, and the dams are removed, that would make possible the largest salmon and river restoration in history.
These actions include, for the first time, direct federal support for projects to replace the services of the lower Snake River dams. Federal agencies, in close partnership with efforts spearheaded by Washington state, will provide funding and expertise to replace the energy, transportation, irrigation and recreation services provided by the dams. This, in turn, prepares the way for a decision to breach these barriers that make it so difficult for salmon to thrive.
The “United States Government Commitments” were a response to a groundbreaking regional proposal from the “Six Sovereigns,” the four Lower Columbia River Treaty Tribes (the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Spring Reservation, and the Nez Perce Tribe) and the states of Washington and Oregon. The Six Sovereigns acted together to draft the “Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative” (CBRI).
The Administration’s support of the CBRI will also put on hold long-running litigation led by a coalition of fishing and conservation groups. That pause will provide a period of certainty to the region as the actions begin to be implemented.
“I hold dear the generations of Native Nations that have fought for their cultures, for their Treaties
“A first step on a path to breach the four dams along the lower Snake River.”
and for abundant salmon runs. We applaud the leadership of President Biden and his administration for announcing an historic path forward for salmon and steelhead recovery in Nch’i-Wana, or the “Big River,” known in English as the Columbia/ Snake River basins,” says Alyssa Macy, CEO of WCA and citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon.
“This decision fosters a resilient Pacific Northwest in the face of climate change. It supports communities that center salmon in their culture and their economy. It is a step toward saving orcas that depend upon salmon. It upholds the federal trust and treaty obligations made by the federal government. There is no time to waste.”
The Snake River Basin represents 50% of the cold-water habitat on the West Coast and, milefor-mile, contains the coldest, most undisturbed stream habitats in the continental United States. But climate change is heating up rivers everywhere, and along the lower Snake, the four dams create reservoirs with hot, slow-moving water that proves lethal to salmon. Today, the number of mature fish that return to spawn in this watershed number just 1% of historic runs.
In recent years, poor salmon and steelhead returns have resulted in unprecedented fishing closures and rule changes on the Columbia and Snake Rivers and their tributaries. These closures have threatened many businesses and Tribal communities. Restoring a free-flowing lower Snake River would create opportunities for ecological, cultural, and economic revitalization.
We can replace the energy generated by the four lower Snake River dams with affordable, clean, and reliable alternatives. The Administration will facilitate the build-out of projects that would provide at least one to three gigawatts of Tribally-sponsored renewable energy production. The agreement also keeps energy affordable by avoiding potentially significant utility rate increases.
We can also pivot to different transit options. In the mid-20th century, the federal government built the four dams to turn Lewiston, Idaho into a seaport. That hasn’t worked very well over the last several decades as barging has declined steeply. For example, the number of loaded barges passing through Lower Granite Dam (from the Ports of Lewiston, Clarkston, and Wilma) has declined from 1,233 loaded barges in 1994 to 314 loaded barges in 2018, a drop of 75%.
Barges once shipped paper, pulp, lumber, dry peas, lentils, garbanzo beans in containers from the Port of Lewiston. They no longer ship these by container and shipping of paper, pulp, lumber and pulse has now disappeared from the river. Only 17% of the wheat exported at the Columbia River ocean ports—Kalama, Longview, Vancouver—is barged on the lower Snake River."
While the Administration’s commitments are a significant first step, much work remains. The federal Department of the Interior will do an analysis of how the dams have affected Tribal treaty rights, and how the dams have negatively impacted every aspect of these Tribes’ way of life. By fall 2024, federal agencies will determine whether and how to revise the Trump-era environmental compliance documents that include operation of the lower Snake River dams. By 2026, they will finalize any new decision and supporting documents such as the supplemental environmental impact statement.
As these processes go forward, we’ll be in touch with updates and ways that you can contact your members of Congress to let them know that you support a free-flowing lower Snake River. Ultimately, the decision to breach the dams will have to be decided by Congress. We’ll have to keep up the political pressure to make sure legislators don’t put this on the back burner. Your actions will help us restore this struggling ecosystem.
Photo by Brian, Adobe Standard License.
“If we want a planet where people and nature can thrive, we must fight for it.”
WHY INACTION IS NOT AN OPTION, A PERSONAL STORY
Written by Aida Amirul (she/they), WCA Digital Communications Coordinator
No doubt: The work we do to protect people and nature is difficult. Perhaps the greatest challenge is overcoming inertia, maintaining hope, maintaining the strength to act. A million things keep us from acting: fatigue, overwhelm, uncertainty, fear, grief, discomfort, privilege.
I get it. I feel a lot of those things too. But for me, inaction simply has never been an option.
I grew up in Southeast Asia. It was always just the four of us: my mother, my two younger brothers, and me. Where I come from, it remains uncommon for women to become family breadwinners. My home country is an aggressively patriarchal nation, the result of both ancient traditions and the legacy of oppressive structures imposed during British colonial rule. For instance, you need a man to co-sign certain loans and to access basic services like housing, welfare benefits, and more.
My native culture has not had the resources to heal from this overt misogyny. Single mother households are neither common nor encouraged. No one I knew had a family like mine. I learned early that the institutions around us–schools, workplaces, banks, neighborhoods–were not set up to support my unique family dynamic.
I watched my mother struggle: raising and supporting us was far from easy. In addition to all the household labor my mother did, she worked multiple jobs that she hated, just to keep things afloat. She worked harder because in my home country, wages for women are deliberately kept lower than those for men.
Mom had a goal in mind–providing for her children–and this gave her the strength to push through the hard things: workplaces hostile to women, the lack of free time and adult companionship, constant worry. Likewise, as environmental champions, we need to keep the goal in mind: a society and an economy that protects people and nature.
Now that I’m working and juggling all the demands of adult life, I marvel when I remember how Mom continued to show up, worked just as hard even though she knew she was being underpaid and exploited. Because not showing up, not acting meant our family would starve and suffer. An unjust system trapped my mother, and empowered those who used her, just as unjust systems harm people and nature around the world.
As I grew older, I worried–no, I knew–that I was next. The systemic misogyny in my country would treat me no better. My mother wanted more freedom and opportunity for me. She often talked to me about going abroad to study. She made sure that was a possibility for me.
Despite everything, Mom always had hope, always acted, always moved forward. This also has been the approach of most successful environmental justice and social justice movements.
Six years ago, acting on hope like my mother’s, I took action despite fear and the unknown: I left my home, my family, and the only life I had ever known to move to the United States to attend university. I left a warm, tropical paradise rich with multicultural food, art, and festivities. I left to break free from the barriers in my home country. I knew that as a woman and a queer person, I would never have equal and fair access to opportunity and a flourishing life.
Here, I am grateful to have a degree, legal employment, housing and a level of second language fluency that makes telling this story possible. But still, I navigate a different set of barriers that demand near constant action. As an immigrant and a person of color navigating predominantly white institutions, I must jump seemingly never-ending hurdles to meet basic needs. I deal with the racial and gender profiling that all women of color endure here. I am constrained in my ability to travel, legally work, earn money, and access vital social services, despite paying the same taxes that citizens do. It’s a tough, constant fight that I wage, with the goal of a respected and dignified life.
When WCA ran our 2023 membership survey to better understand our community, anxiousness and doom came up as notable themes. This perspective is not unique to our members, but a rising trend.
Doom scrolling and feelings of paralysis are widespread, especially among young people like me.
I fight those feelings. For every shared struggle in history, for every personal struggle, remaining
idle never made things better. Had my mother given up, I wouldn’t be here. Had I given up, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I keep going because I have no choice. Every little win–graduating college, getting a job, backpacking for the first time–reclaims a bit of my power. But I also keep going because I know progress is worth the fight.
As a movement, we also have kept going, step by step. Keep in mind that it’s because of our collective power that we have made Washington one of this nation’s environmental leaders. In the late 1960s, when WCA was founded, Washington cities and towns dumped raw sewage into Puget Sound, state agencies oversaw clearcuts in state parks, more than 10,000 toxic sites dotted our state and there was no coordinated plan to clean them up, few people even talked about environmental justice, Indigenous people were being arrested for fishing on their ancestral lands. Because we acted together, none of those things are true today.
Because of our movement, we passed laws like the HEAL Act, which requires state agencies to consider environmental justice, and the Climate Commitment Act, our state’s carbon pollution law, the nation’s strongest. Because of these laws, and many others passed in the last 50 years, people here live healthier and safer lives. All that progress happened because people chose to act.
A lot is at stake this November. Just as my family has had to persevere, just as I have, we as environmentalists can’t give up. We can’t just sit this one out. It might seem that getting involved is an option. But is it, really? Do we really have a choice? The right-wing wants to roll back climate action nationwide, to lift limits on many kinds of pollution, to open up federal lands to a logging, mining and drilling free-for-all, to expand fossil fuel infrastructure, to slow or abandon the transition to a clean energy economy. Environmental justice? Economic justice? Those are not in our opponents’ vocabulary. If we want a planet where people and nature can thrive, we must fight for it. We have four months to strategize, organize, and win. We know what to do and we’ve done it before. Let’s get to work. Just ask my Mom: The only way forward is through.
Photos courtesy Aida Amirul.
This year, democracy and the environment are on the ballot. We need everyone to act. That means voting in the Primary Election and the General Election. If you can, volunteer and donate as well. Every action matters. Every contribution helps.
During the last decade, Washington Conservation Action has come to understand that economic injustice and racial injustice result from the same systems and assumptions that poison our air and pollute our water and threaten our climate and our communities.
This realization led us to create broader coalitions with organizations led by people of color, with labor, with business, with Tribes and more. We did this because it is right. We also found that this approach yields results. With the help of these wider groups of advocates, we passed the Clean Fuels Standard, 100% Clean Energy legislation, and of course, the Climate Commitment Act (CCA), our state’s historic carbon legislation that makes polluters pay for the damage they cause and to reduce pollution.
Working with Tribes and local communities, we are working toward a just transition to clean energy, one that considers the needs of fossil fuel workers, of those who suffer from fossil fuel pollution, and of communities that will be affected by clean energy projects. We’re working with local officials to conserve mature forests. And we’re working to make sure that under-treated sewage does not get dumped into Puget Sound to avoid harm to our health, salmon, and orcas.
OUR ORGANIZERS: A DAY IN THE LIFE
Youth lobby for climate in Olympia
As always, we’re identifying and supporting local leaders who have the potential to become environmental champions in elected office. With our Call 4 Climate Action campaign, we’re working to get 50,000 new and infrequent voters to commit to casting a ballot this year. And, with a broad statewide coalition, we’re “all hands on deck” for the No-on-2117 campaign, to block I-2117 from repealing the CCA.
Special interests and selfish members of the wealthy elite are trying to take us backward this year. We need your help to make sure that we keep moving forward.
For nearly six decades, people power has always been critical to our successes. Your contribution today ensures that we have the resources we need at this pivotal time. Thanks for all that you do!
If you want to donate by mail, use the remit envelope in this issue of Convene and send it back to us! Or use the QR code below. We thank you for your support.
Just before 8 a.m. on a blustery January Tuesday, Field Director Kat Holmes bursts through the door of a church basement just off the capitol campus in Olympia. Though it’s early, and she’s driven 90 minutes from Seattle, Holmes radiates warmth and energy. She’s laden with a big Yeti cup of herbal tea and lots of supplies: signup sheets and buttons, banners and a backup sound system, art supplies and photo booth props, stickers and first aid kits, and more. Within minutes, she’s sorted a welcome table for young people who soon will be arriving from all over the state to learn about issues and how to show elected officials that they care about the problems created by burning dirty fossil fuels.
Youth Climate Lobby Day, an annual event organized with partners from Our Climate, Climate Action Families, Climate Solutions and Sierra Club, hasn’t been held in person since before the pandemic. As organizers, youth and chaperones trickle in, the meeting room hums with the energy of a reunion. “So great to see you!” “Have we actually met IRL (“in real life”)?”
Before long, several dozen young activists from as young as 8 years old to college age are sitting around tables learning how to take action. They’re hearing about lobbying and about the bills they’re likely to discuss that day: proposed laws that could help electrify school buses statewide, consumer protections to prevent oil companies from price gouging, ensure statewide access to recycling, and expand the kinds of pollutants the state regulates. As they do role plays of meeting with legislators, the organizers give them tips to handle nervousness. “You don’t need to be an expert. Your story is your power!”
Gov. Jay Inslee drops by mid-morning. He talks about the importance of the younger generation and of his commitment to keeping forests green, and salmon streams healthy. He talks about job opportunities in clean energy. He talks a lot about the Climate Commitment Act (CCA), Washington’s cap-and-invest law, the strongest carbon pollution
Photo by Brian Walsh.
legislation in the county. He says he’s committed to fighting the November ballot initiative that seeks to repeal the CCA.
“How do we get involved in the effort to defend the CCA?” a high school student asks the governor.
“You can talk to me!” Holmes pipes up.
Gov. Inslee answers a few more questions, then poses for pictures with the kids and organizers. As he’s leaving, Inslee says, “Thank you for your advocacy. Let’s go get ‘em!”
Just a few minutes later, Holmes gets a message that a slot has opened up in a state senator’s calendar. Quickly, about half the youth have organized with chaperones and are walking across the capitol campus toward State Sen. Rebecca Saldaña’s (D-37) office. Sen. Saldaña, taking a break from a caucus meeting, invites the group into her office, and a couple dozen people crowd in around her desk and bookcases. Nervously, a couple of the older students share their prepared statements about recycling and about pollutants.
“This is how we best learn, by talking to people,” Saldaña says as everyone poses for a picture. “Remember, this is your capitol!”
Starting small in Cowlitz County
Sometimes movements begin with one modest gathering.
Heidi Cody, Washington Conservation Action’s organizer for southwest Washington, has that in mind as she sets up a Saturday morning Zoom meeting made necessary by a winter ice storm. This will be WCA’s first official meeting with environmental advocates in Cowlitz County.
“We’re trying to expand our work locally,” Cody explains to the nine people who sign on. “We’re looking for ways to make change.”
The locals in the meeting all seem on board. People want to act, but they’re not exactly sure how to start. “The politics here are terrible, especially in terms of the environment,” says a retired attorney. “But there’s certainly plenty of opportunity for improvement in Cowlitz County,” says a master gardener and former school board member.
Cody has arranged for guest speakers, Don and Alona Steinke, who with WCA and many partners, were part of a years-long campaign to prevent an oil
Connecting One Vote at a Time
Native peoples consistently vote in Tribal elections. Yet, because of the centuries in which the American government ignored its own laws and did not uphold Tribal treaties, the value of voting in U.S. elections does not seem as important, says Kady Titus, senior organizer for Native Vote Washington (NVW), a program of Washington Conservation Action. “It’s my job to explain why the Native vote matters,” says Titus.
Titus is in a large hallway of the Hyatt Regency hotel at the convention center in Portland, Oregon. She and Mikayla Flores, NVW’s digital field organizer have stacks of NVW postcards at the ready to hand out to those attending the annual meeting of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI).
In the hallway just after Macy’s speech, people crowd around Julie Johnson, a revered leader who’s a member of the Lummi Nation and the NVW advisory board, as well as co-chair of the ATNI Native Vote committee. Titus and Flores work the crowd waiting to speak to Johnson. Macy had pointed out the organizer team while speaking, so people recognize their signs and the NVW logo.
“Hey! How are you doing? So good to see you! Would you like a Native Vote postcard?” Titus says to everyone she meets.
Meanwhile, Flores snaps pictures and videos, and takes down quotes to use later in social media posts.
terminal in Vancouver, just south of Cowlitz County. The Steinkes share how the concerns of a few individuals and organizations grew into a campaign that drew supporters from across Clark County.
“We didn’t give up,” Don Steinke says. “We kept pushing. We asked every city council member in Vancouver to have coffee with us. One thing I didn’t realize in the beginning was the power of petitions. I thought they were just for elections. But they can be a way to connect with people who really care about your issues. Petitions can be an organizing tool.”
This idea inspires discussion among the Cowlitz attendees, who agree that what they need is to build power, to identify allies in the community and, eventually, to work toward electing new leadership in their county.
“I like the idea of beginning with a low bar petition,” one says. “We can just ask people if they support a statement like, ‘We need connect to place, to share, to help the land, to help each other.’”
The other heads in the Zoom tiles nod. Some suggest various places that they might collect signatures, such as upcoming food festivals and Earth Day gatherings.
“What I really like about your idea is that it has to do with sustainability, with community help. It’s not divisive. And especially, I like that it came from you. We at WCA don’t want to come in with an agenda. My job is to follow your lead, and help as I can,” Cody says as the 90-minute meeting wraps up.
“Let’s talk about next steps. Change is going to come; we just have to figure out how to guide it. Another meeting in a month or so? I’ll be in touch!”
Alyssa Macy, CEO of WCA has just finished a speech about the Native vote, outlining why Indigenous political action will be key in 2024. “The last presidential election was decided by 84,000 votes in four states,” Macy says. “Nationally, 34% of Natives are not registered. That’s 1.2 million votes…Turnout in Native communities is generally 10 percent lower than the national average…We know that the Native vote will be key in swing states like Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin…It will be key in local and Congressional races here in the Northwest…Our rights are at stake…Our vote matters.”
To get people to act, you have to get to know them first, Titus says. “Native Vote Washington has been around since 2008, but it was seen as an urban Seattle thing. This is our second year as a sponsored program of WCA and we’re growing our recognition around the state. This year, more people are recognizing us here at ATNI. When I’m out in my community in eastern Washington, people recognize me as the Native Vote organizer. That’s a huge first step. Our job this year is to turn that recognition into voter turnout.”
“Hey! How are you doing? So good to see you! Would you like a Native Vote postcard?”
Participants in Youth Climate Lobby Day head to their meeting with state Rep. Rebecca Saldaña (D-37). Photo by Mallori Pryse.
Native Vote Washington Senior Organizer Kady Titus and WCA CEO Alyssa Macy, board members, and members of Native Vote Washington Advisory Committee, including Julie Johnson and Asa Wahines, attend ATNI. Photo courtesy WCA.
Volunteers who attended 4th hybrid Cowlitz County Community Organizing meeting. Photo courtesy WCA.
It’s all connected: racism, economic injustice, environmental damage
People often ask why we have become so intentional about linking our work to racial equity, to environmental justice and to economic justice. Behind these queries are other questions such as, “Aren’t you an environmental organization? Are you now a civil rights, democracy, and social justice group? Do you need to get involved in economic, industrial, and labor issues?”
The answer to all these questions that lurk in the background is, “Yes.” Why?
Because it’s all connected: There are deep economic, political, social, and historical systems that pollute our air and water, kill wildlife, degrade our natural networks, exhaust our soil, dump so much plastic and toxics into our world that you carry that load in your body, toxics and microplastics in your organs, your blood, even breast milk. These systems place toxic, polluting industries in rural areas, in communities of color, in places where people have less money, access and agency. Not only are these systems unjust, but they are also tipping our planet into climate crisis.
What else do these systems do besides despoiling the Earth?
They oppress people. Think: Banking systems that fund fossil fuel companies and that also limit access to capital for women, people of color and for many countries that once were colonies.
They harm communities. Think: Corporations that lobby lawmakers so they can build polluting facilities, and then do so next to neighborhoods and schools.
They skew priorities so that profit too often trumps public benefit and sustainable economies.
Think: The vastness of the dirty fossil fuel industry and the resulting national and international inability to adequately address the compounding problems of continuing to burn things to power our societies.
They hoard power and wealth for the few rather than an economy that supports all. Think: The massive concentration of economic power over the last four decades; CEOs who make an average of 344 times as much as a typical worker; industries like food that, in the United States, are dominated by half a dozen corporations; poverty as a driver of environmental problems such as deforestation and extinction.
Although we don’t talk about it much in this country, so many of these systems that harm people and nature are rooted in imperialism and the capitalism that grew out of those empires. And alas, imperialism and capitalism have their roots in racism: European colonizers first had to convince themselves that the cultures and nations they encountered in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia were inferior, deserving of domination and exploitation.
And then, as empires organized and mechanized as capitalist networks, slavery and colonial oppression fueled vast economic growth, in Europe and
North America at least. Cotton, sugar, tobacco, tea— the boom crops and commodities of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, as important then as tech and energy are today—could not have been grown on an industrial scale without slavery and without colonies.
We now live in a national and international system that evolved out of those empires. And so, many of our structures and ways of thinking carry a legacy of racism. Racism undergirds many of the polluting, oppressive structures, assumptions, and systems, not just in this country, but around the world. How could they not? It’s just baked in.
Racism and capitalism are inextricably linked to climate change and environmental damage because they dictate who benefits from activities that emit planet-warming gases and other pollution, who benefits from the overharvest of resources, from waste, from thoughtless development and all the rest. Racism dictates who suffers the consequences. Ecological problems disproportionately harm communities of color, Tribal nations, and rural populations.
As an organization, we have come to these conclusions slowly, over the last 10 years. We have struggled with these issues, made mistakes, come back to the effort, started again, and then again.
A decade ago, few organizations were doing the work of addressing environmental racism. We began by exploring ideas of equity and doing internal reflection. We attended trainings. We talked. We questioned. We read. We developed a 1-year racial equity plan, and then, periodically, more racial equity plans.
After this modest beginning, we started to reach out to groups that hadn’t routinely been our partners: labor unions, business groups, Tribes, BIPOC organizations. At first, we just focused on learning, on building relationships.
Over time, this outreach resulted new partnerships, new ways of thinking and working. We started
“We believed it was the right thing to do. Even better, we were thrilled when we realized that bringing environmental justice and economic justice into our thinking and our action also achieved better progress.”
to see how addressing racial and economic inequity would also lead to environmental healing. Rather than developing policy and then taking it to communities, as had been our process, we started to do the opposite. We began to first seek out the insights of those most affected by climate change and other problems: Tribes, communities of color, workers. Then we developed strategies based on that input. As we earned credibility with our new partners, we built ties with a much wider swathe of society. We stuck with this effort because we believed that it was the right thing to do. Even better, we were thrilled when we realized that bringing environmental and economic justice into our thinking and our actions also achieved better progress. Only by organizing broad coalitions that reached beyond the traditional “green” sector did we push successfully for transformational laws like the Climate Commitment Act, our state’s cap-and-invest carbon legislation. We remain committed to a future in which anti-racism and equity are the norm in our organization, in our movement, and in our communities. We believe that when all people thrive, we’re all better off. That means, for instance, that the transition to clean energy must be a just transition. We need to consider the needs of those now working in the fossil fuel industry. When we’re building clean energy projects, we need to make sure that we don’t trample on the rights and needs of local communities and Tribes. When we work toward equitable and just ways of doing things, we also create systems and policies that are better for the planet. You can read more details about this journey in our Racial Equity Report, available on our website.
Learn more about key dates on the next page.
Photo by Cord Pryse.
HERE ARE SOME KEY DATES IN OUR RACIAL EQUITY EVOLUTION:
2014
WCA leadership begins equity training.
2015
Front and Centered, a new nonprofit bringing together communities of color and environmental justice groups, forms.
WEC/WCV, with partners, begins to try to create a “larger tent” for climate action. Climate Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy eventually brings together 170 groups, including environmental nonprofits, unions, health groups like the American Lung Association, and others to push for both a just economy and action on climate change.
2016
Carbon Washington begins push for climate law, ballot Initiative 732. After consulting with frontline communities, WEC/WCV makes the bold decision not to support I-732 because it did not adequately address environmental justice and other issues. I-732 fails in the November election.
2017
In March, WEC/WCV adopts a one-year racial equity plan.
WEC/WCV becomes involved in intersectional efforts such as the Washington Voting Justice Coalition.
Within historically white-led groups such as the Environmental Priorities Coalition, WEC/WCV begins to use a racial justice lens and to highlight voices long ignored.
WEC/WCV sets a goal to develop authentic relationships with Tribes and starts staff education on key issues such as Tribal sovereignty and Treaty Rights.
WEC/WCV begins to work with a wider group of partners such as OneAmerica, Front and Centered and various labor groups.
2018
WEC/WCV adopts the 2018-2020 Racial Equity Action Plan. This plan incorporates the goals of the 2017 one-year plan, addressing organizational culture, partnerships/coalitions and member education. It also adds new goals, such as identifying whiteness and its impact personally, in our work and in our community. The plan also includes goals to restructure human resources and to make hiring and other processes more inclusive and transparent.
2019
Joan Crooks decides to step down as CEO of WEC/WCV, saying, “The future is a more diverse organization, racially, in terms of board and staff and approach to the work. I feel the organization needs new thinking.”
2020
Alyssa Macy, who had worked on Indigenous issues in various roles for the United Nations and who most recently had been chief operating officer of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs in Oregon, starts as the new CEO of WEC/WCV.
WEC/WCV stands in solidarity with the national Black Lives Matter movement and with Washington for Black Lives.
2021
WEC/WCV faces another challenge over a climate bill. Front and Centered, an important partner on environmental justice, opposes the Climate Commitment Act (CCA). After conferring with Tribes and groups like Washington Build Back Black, WEC/WCV decides to support the CCA. The groundbreaking cap and invest law passes later that year.
WEC/WCV incorporates racial equity into its strategic vision document for 2021.
31% of WEC/WCV staff self-identify as BIPOC.
The WCV political team improves the endorsement process by including racial equity and Tribal sovereignty questions as well as updating the process to be more inclusive of Black and brown candidates.
In September, WEC and WCV voluntarily recognizes the Evergreen Workers Union (EWU), a staff union organized through the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 7800.
2022
WEC/WCV hires its first Black political director.
New Tribal government liaison begins laying groundwork for the Tribal Nations Program.
WEC/WCV supports and partners with Native Vote Washington.
39% of WEC/WCV staff self-identify as BIPOC.
52% of WEC/WCV board members self-identify as BIPOC.
WEC/WCV and Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, enter in a memorandum of understanding in support of the Tribal Government Liaison role and to support closer collaboration between the organizations.
WEC/WCV add environmental justice and Tribal sovereignty to our annual State of our Forests and Public Lands report to address racial equity in our reporting.
WEC/WCV participate in the national Green 2.0 2022 NGO & Foundation Transparency Report Card, becoming the first state organization of the Conversation Voters Movement, as well as the first Washington-based organization, to do so.
2023
WEC/WCV join under one brand, Washington Conservation Action.
Staff begins a year-long training with Center for Diversity and the Environment. This effort will inform the drafting of a new, 3-year racial equity plan.
Tribal Nations Program formally launches.
WEC/WCV participates in the national Green 2.0 NGO & Foundation Transparency Report Card.
WCA/WCAEF adds two youth positions (18-25) to the board and begins recruiting young people to serve in these roles.
A new vice president for programs begins. As an Asian American, she becomes the second person of color to join the executive team.
WCA and EWU/CWA finalize the organization’s first collective bargaining agreement, believed to be the first union contract in the nation that recognizes Tribal sovereignty and Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) for Native people who are citizens of Tribal nations.
2024
WCA signs the Pay Equity Pledge, part of Green 2.0, a campaign to increase pay equity for people of color (particularly women of color) in environmental organizations.
Both Boards of Directors—Washington Conservation Action and Washington Conservation Action Education Fund—now at 60% people of color.
Kady Titus, Native Vote Washington senior organizer, and Zachary Pullin, WCA communications director, attend Seafair Indian Days Powwow. Photo courtesy WCA.
FOR JOINING US AT THANK YOU
We feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude as we reflect on the incredible, fired-up energy in May at our sold-out annual event, Spark! It was amazing to see hundreds of new and familiar faces at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle. We heard from our endorsed candidate for governor, Attorney General Bob Ferguson as well as from outgoing Gov. Jay Inslee. We learned about exciting work that Caty Padilla, executive director of Nuestra Casa, is doing to support immigrant families in Yakima and advancing democracy in her region. We cheered our 2024 Legislator of the Year, state Rep. Beth Doglio (D-22), who, among many accomplishments this year, made sure that Climate Commitment Act funds got out into communities and sponsored a bill that will spur the state’s largest gas utility, and biggest polluter, to begin the transition to clean energy.
Our board and staff extend deep thanks to everyone who made it such a special
above: Get your party clothes on! Puget Sound Senior Campaign Manager Rein Attemann and Field Director Kat Holmes arriving.
above: Caty Padilla, executive director of Nuestra Casa in Yakima County with WCA Political and Democracy Director Joy Stanford.
right: CEO Alyssa Macy with board members and friends. below: WCA CEO Alyssa Macy with Gov. Jay Inslee.
Photography by Michael Montoya.
above: Attorney General Bob Ferguson, our endorsed candidate for governor, making remarks.
above: WCA board members and guests attending Spark in May 2024.
left: Guests and board members vamp for the camera.
below: Former state Sen. Christine Rolfes, our 2023 legislator of the year, hands the baton to state Rep. Beth Doglio (D-22), our 2024 honoree.
Much of the work of Washington Conservation Action Education Fund (WCAEF) depends upon the support of foundations. Foundations occupy a unique, and crucial, niche in society: They leverage assets to take chances.
As Denis Hayes, CEO of the Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation likes to say, “We can take the risks that nonprofits can’t afford, and that private industry won’t accept.”
Hayes announced in 2019 that the foundation, a longtime supporter of WCAEF, would spend down its endowment and stop making grants at the end of 2024. It will retain management of its 6-story headquarters in Seattle, often called the “greenest office building in the world.” WCAEF will take over management of its prestigious $100,000 Bullitt Prize, awarded to emerging environmental leaders. (See sidebar.)
While Hayes, the national organizer of the first Earth Day, has appeared in lists of Seattle’s “most influential” people, the foundation he has run for more than 30 years generally does not seek the limelight.
Hayes may be reluctant to say so, but it is not hyperbole to say that since its founding more than 70 years ago, the Bullitt Foundation has been crucial to pushing and supporting environmental progress in the Pacific Northwest.
Bullitt was the first foundation to make environmental grants in Washington. It backed the lawsuits that used the Endangered Species Act as a tool to preserve
old growth forests. It funded the difficult work of building environmental coalitions in this region. It supported groundbreaking work to reduce pollution in Puget Sound, to support clean energy, to oppose the construction of new dirty fossil fuel terminals, to back advocacy for legislation that eventually resulted in the Climate Commitment Act, the nation’s strongest climate law, among many other accomplishments.
The list of issues the Bullitt Foundation has touched across the region is too long to share completely here, but includes green building, environmental justice, toxics, transportation, urban ecology and design, the safe disposal of nuclear waste, wide-ranging policy research and more. The foundation has given nearly $200 million for environmental projects.
“Bullitt touched... green building, environmental justice, toxics, transportation, urban ecology, policy research... and more.”
Bullitt has supported WCAEF for decades, in ways both small and profound. Our organization is grateful for Bullitt’s 43 grants totaling nearly $3 million over the years.
“The combination of policy and advocacy makes Washington Conservation Action the most effective environmental organization in the state,” Hayes says. “On issue after issue, WCAEF has played a leadership role. Other groups are more narrowly focused. If you are looking for broad political support, WCAEF must be at the table. It’s essential.”
“We are so grateful for the long-term, enduring and trusting support of the Bullitt Foundation,” says Alyssa Macy, WCAEF’s CEO.
Dorothy Bullitt’s father, C.D. Stimson, once owned the city’s largest timber mill, built the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, and lived in what is now the landmark Stimson-Green Mansion just east of downtown. Dorothy Stimson married Scott Bullitt, who died young of cancer. Dorothy turned out to have a knack for business, expanding into real estate, timberland investment, television, radio, and magazines.
In 1990, the daughters of Dorothy and Scott Bullitt sold KING Broadcasting and poured most of the sale proceeds into the Bullitt Foundation endowment. Dorothy Bullitt’s last surviving daughter, Harriet Bullitt—a singular figure who was a zoology researcher, a competitive fencer, a scuba diver, a flamenco dancer, a tugboat captain, and the proprietor of a resort outside of Leavenworth—died in 2022 at the age of 97.
Bullitt Foundation support helped WCAEF at many crucial
points in our history. Here are just a few examples: Bullitt in 2007 helped to underwrite the consolidation of the boards of our two precursor organizations, Washington Environmental Council and Washington Conservation Voters. When the nonprofit People for Puget Sound (PPS) was winding down operations in 2012, Bullitt helped WCAEF to take over PPS’ policy, lobbying and education work. They supported the Power Past Coal and Stand Up To Oil campaigns. They funded racial equity efforts.
Bullitt was willing to underwrite the difficult work of building partnerships like the Environmental Priorities Coalition, unusual in the philanthropy world. A similar investment in forestry collaboration has resulted in relationships and teamwork over more than a decade that has resulted in our current 5-year Climate Smart Wood Project to help build a more sustainable timber economy in Pierce County. And in Bullitt’s pattern of supporting innovation, their final grant to WCAEF was a substantial contribution to our new Tribal Nations Program.
“Bullitt let us be strategic,” says Joan Crooks, executive director of WEC from 1995-2014 and CEO of WEC/WCV from 2014 to 2020. “They supported us if we had to adjust as necessary. That kind of flexibility and collaboration was, and largely still is, unprecedented for a foundation.”
WCA TO MANAGE BULLITT PRIZE
$100,000 TO SPARK CHANGE
Over the past decade, Washington Conservation Action (WCA) has evolved to prioritize environmental justice. The systems that oppress people also pollute our communities, foul our air and water, and threaten our climate.
That’s why we’re honored to announce that WCA will manage and award the coveted Bullitt Prize in perpetuity. Since 2007, this $100,000 prize has been awarded to 17 people who have demonstrated the ability to become social and environmental leaders.
WCA’s commitment to environmental justice and our record of leading state-wide efforts to protect Washington’s environment is why we’ve received funding from groups like the Bullitt Foundation for many years.
“Washington Conservation Action has led state-wide efforts to protect Washington’s environment for the last fifty-odd years,” said Denis Hayes, CEO of the Bullitt Foundation and national organizer of the first Earth Day. “No group is better equipped to identify the next generation of leaders for conservation and environmental justice. We’re proud to pass the Bullitt Prize to such a superb organization.”
In the past, recipients have all been researchers pursuing a graduate degree. WCA has broadened the eligibility for the award, making it accessible not only to researchers but also to professionals, grassroots leaders, and others.
“When Washington Conservation Action was approached by the Bullitt Foundation to steward the Bullitt Prize into perpetuity, it’s because they trusted our conservation and environmental justice leadership in Washington,” said Alyssa Macy, CEO of WCA and citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon.
Solar panels sit atop the Bullitt Center, often called the “greenest building in the world,” in Seattle, WA
Photo by Brad Khan. License: CC BY-NC 2.0
Progress often begets backlash. As we defend the Climate Commitment Act today, remember that we’ve successfully defeated similar challenges.
This fall, we face the necessity of defeating an initiative campaign that would repeal the Climate Commitment Act (CCA), Washington’s historic carbon law, which caps pollution and provides funds to help those most harmed by climate change. The CCA requires polluters to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions and has already generated more than $2 billion to transition to clean energy and to address the problems created by a warming planet.
It’s good to remember that progress is often followed by backlash. We’ve been here before. And we’ve won.
Over the course of 1990 and 1991, Washington passed laws addressing urban sprawl, requiring the state’s fastest growing cities and counties to adopt regulations and to create plans to manage their growth and to protect the environment. Called the Growth Management Act (GMA), these state standards resulted in myriad local regulations. Timber companies, developers and landowners who had operated for years with few restrictions now found themselves having to comply with increasing rules designed to protect habitat and neighbors from the effects of their activities.
While a few states adopted modest property rights laws in the early 1990s, Democratic majorities in the legislature blocked them in the Evergreen State. Then, the “Contract with America” backlash against President Bill Clinton’s agenda swept Republicans to power nationally in 1994. In Washington, the GOP took control of the House and came within one vote of controlling the Senate. Part of the “Contract with America/Washington” platform was “protecting property rights,” i.e. fighting land use regulations like the GMA.
In the summer of 1994, a Hoquiam property rights advocate, Dan Wood, began an effort to collect signatures to present a land use initiative to the state Legislature. This initiative would require that governments do a full economic analysis of any land use regulation. It also would require that any land protected for environmental reasons would be considered a “taking” for which landowners should be paid. But as the deadline for submitting the signatures drew near, they did not have enough. The
real estate, building and timber industries stepped in, donating $200,000 to collect the necessary signatures professionally. The newly conservative Legislature in Olympia passed the initiative into law.
WCA and many other environmental and public interest groups opposed the law. It would have made it nearly impossible for local governments to plan growth, or to influence development. Not only that, but the law was so short and vaguely worded that it would have immediately stirred up a maelstrom of lawsuits. Some estimated that compensating landowners for “takings” under the initiative could cost as much as $11 billion.
Opponents like us had just 90 days to collect 90,843 signatures to put the question to the voters in a referendum on the November ballot to decide whether the law would stand or be repealed. The signature drive, organized by a coalition of groups including WCA, relied almost entirely on volunteers. It became the most successful in the state to that point, doubling the number ever collected for a referendum. In July 1995, our coalition presented 231,000 signatures to the Secretary of State, securing a spot for what was now called Referendum 48 on the November ballot.
Business interests poured nearly $1 million into the resulting campaign, nearly twice as much as the coalition we helped to organize for “No-on-48.” We leveraged 14 groups with 220,000 members, about 10 percent of the total electorate at the time. Using new digital techniques to analyze voter files, we made our voter education more efficient, resulting in 13% higher voter turnout.
In the end, Referendum 48 was defeated, 59.4% to 40%. Because the GMA was defended, we have limited sprawl and have preserved farmland and open space.
We’ll summon the same spirit this year to push back a ballot initiative that would take us backward. Initiative 2117 seeks to overturn our state climate law. As we did 30 years ago, we are pulling out all the stops for the No-on-2117 campaign and our Call 4 Climate Action effort, which seeks to get 50,000 new and infrequent voters to pledge to vote. May our past be prelude to victory in November!
Aerial view of Spokane, a fast-growing region of Washington. Photo by Ryan Miller on Unsplash
LEGISLATURE ACTS TO ALLOCATE CLIMATE FUNDS: PROJECTS AFFECT EVERY COUNTY IN THE STATE
The 2024 short legislative session concluded after state lawmakers funded an estimated $1.2 billion for climate action and healthy communities generated by the Climate Commitment Act (CCA). The new budget includes funding to reduce dangerous pollution; to improve air quality in schools; to tap into the carbon reducing benefits in forests, natural areas, and agricultural lands; and to help affordable multifamily housing transition from heating with fossil fuels to heating with clean, efficient electric appliances. This builds on roughly $2 billion in funding that the CCA made possible in the 2023 legislative session.
With dollars starting to reach communities across the state, positive change is already benefiting communities today and will continue to grow. If you want to explore how CCA funding is being put to work, visit www.climate.wa.gov. Also, be on the lookout for emails from WCA. We’ll be sharing stories about CCA projects and information about new online tools to help navigate CCA programs.
The CCA funded many projects and programs that directly help people and nature statewide. A few examples include: $45 million to improve air quality and decarbonize schools, $50 million for community-based development of climate solutions, $55 million to help multi-family affordable housing decarbonize, $25 million for the Salmon Recovery Funding Board, $15 million to store and sequester carbon in forests, and much more.
Lawmakers also approved a bill to help schoolchildren breathe cleaner air on the way to class. 100% Clean School Buses (HB 1368) strengthens an existing grant program that funds the purchase of zero-emission school buses and provides increased funding via the CCA for the purchase of buses and charging infrastructure.
And finally, after five years of advocacy, the legislature passed Buy Clean, Buy Fair legislation, (HB 1282). The effort was a collaboration between labor and environmental groups, with the leadership of the Blue Green Alliance. Now, the state will collect data and improve transparency on the carbon footprint and labor conditions behind specified building materials. Moving forward, this tool will help the state reward manufacturers of climate smart building materials while also supporting workers.
We were successful getting another round of CCA funds ($15 million) for conserving mature forests on DNR trust lands. This money is used to buy private acres to be managed for continued timber harvest and beneficiary revenue, adding them to state trust lands as replacement for the carbon-dense forestlands that will be set aside and conserved.
Last year’s CCA appropriation of $83 million for mature forests have been put to work. DNR purchased more than 9,000 acres of private working timberland in Wahkiakum County so that 2,000 acres of existing mature forest on state lands in Snohomish, Whatcom, King, Jefferson, and Clallam counties could be set aside for conservation.
We also helped to secure $5.78 million in the state budget for the Community Forest Grant Program. This will help expand this community-driven model of forest management. The Hoquiam Community Forest would provide a unique opportunity for the city of Hoquiam to gain local ownership of its forest resources and then to invest those resources in community needs and flood resilience. The Lagoon Point Community Forest on Whidbey Island would provide a model for working forests in island environments that could be used across the Puget Sound region
The Legislature passed HB 1589, a bill that will spur the state’s largest gas utility – and biggest climate polluter – to start taking significant steps forward on the path to clean energy. This includes robust planning, electrification programs, and new regulatory tools to support clean energy development. HB 1589 is a step in the right direction but is now under threat by an industry-led initiative repeal effort.
As we build momentum and accomplish more environmental progress in Olympia, some lawmakers are seeking to roll back climate laws at the ballot box. Initiative 2117, which would repeal the CCA, will go before the voters this fall. Right wing forces also have filed initiatives to roll back clean energy and decarbonization policies.
We cannot let our hard-won progress be pushed back. This year is a critical point when these victories are beginning to have profound, on-the-ground impact. The successes we’ve had so far, and those that we will accomplish in the future, simply cannot happen without you. Everything that you do—emailing, making phone calls, commenting on policies and proposed legislation, joining lobby days makes a difference. So keep doing all the things! Talk to your neighbors about why voting NO on 2117 is the right call. And urge your friends to not sign any petitions seeking to roll back climate progress. Make sure you are on the WCA email list. We’ll make sure you get the latest updates on these hostile ballot measures and let you know how to help.
Photo by Mallori Pryse.
WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING AT WASHINGTON CONSERVATION ACTION
In March, the WCA Forest Team traveled to Clackamas, Oregon to attend “Tree School,” a mini college program organized by the Oregon State University Extension Service. The event offers a broad range of classes, field sessions, demonstrations, and other resources to address the goals and challenges of local forest landowners.
A large group of staffers traveled to Atlanta, Georgia to attend the League of Conservation Voters conference, held in May. They presented on our Native Vote work, as well as Evergreen Future, our 4-year effort to hold leaders accountable for their environmental commitments. They also reported on our internal efforts to make WCA more inclusive for trans and non-binary staff.
The No on 2117 campaign launched in April. WCA joins a coalition of more than 200 other organizations, including leading companies, environmental groups, small businesses, Tribal nations, transportation advocates and community organizations to fight Initiative 2117, which would repeal the Climate Commitment Act, our state’s historic cap-and-invest carbon law.
In March, with partners, WCA co-hosted the official launch of the USDA Climate Smart Wood project. Working with Pierce Conservation District, our part of this 5-year, federally funded project will be to build the framework of a sustainable wood economy in Pierce County, working with Tribes, community forests, mills, and the building industry. We will be exploring ways to encourage longer rotations between harvest, thinning, selective logging, preservation of endangered or culturally important species, and other management techniques that help both people and nature.
In May, WCA and coalition partners convened The Pushpum Forum in Goldendale. Experts, including Simone Anter from the Columbia River Keepers and Bronsco Jim, Ka-milt-pah Band of the Yakama Nation, discussed a proposed energy storage project along the Columbia River nearby. WCA supports the Yakama Nation in opposing this project, which would irreparably damage lands sacred to the Yakama people.
On April 5, a Thurston County Superior Court judge affirmed that DNR has the constitutional and statutory authority to lease forests for carbon credits rather than logging them. This is historic. The judge’s decision clears the path for DNR to proceed with the first carbon credit project on forested state trust lands in Washington!
In March, WCA joined national organizations and Green 2.0 to announce being a part of the Pay Equity Pledge. This is a campaign to increase pay equity for people of color—particularly women of color—in environmental organizations.
In April, we launched our new Ambassador program which cultivates a virtual community focused on building advocacy skills to advance environmental, social, and political progress in Washington state. Ambassadors meet monthly to share wisdom, build community and work to protect people and nature as one. If you’re interested in joining this group, check out waconservationaction.org/ ambassador-program/
In April, WCA, in partnership with the Suquamish Indian Tribe and the Squaxin Island Tribe, filed an amicus, or “friend of the court,” brief with the State Supreme Court. The brief supports the state’s decision to require the modernization of plants that discharge sewage into Puget Sound. It responds to a state Court of Appeals ruling that makes a sweeping determination that a letter from the Department of Ecology constitutes an unlawful rule, thus making unlawful both individual and general sewage permits, which seek to control sewage pollution in Puget Sound. Our brief contends that this is judicial overreach, which will make it more difficult to clean up the sound, thus harming salmon, Tribes, and everyone in this region.
Field director Kat Holmes at LCV conference.
WCA and volunteers at We’re Coming Out, a beach clean-up with Patagonia.
Pushpum Forum in Goldendale.
Kady Titus speaks to Native youth at NATIVE Project’s annual Spring leadership camp in Spokane.
WCA staff visit lawmakers and leaders in Washington, D.C.
Forest team at Tree School.
Staff at Climate Smart Wood launch in Portland, Oregon. WCA staff and intern at Big River book launch.
Karina Solorio, WCA’s Yakima organizer, with a volunteer at Yakima Pride.
WCA’s Rein Attemann attends an Earth Day panel, organized by former WCA interns, at North Seattle College.
WELCOME TO THE TEAM NEW BOARD MEMBERS INCLUDING FIRST TWO YOUTH MEMBERS
Grace is a lifelong Washingtonian and climate justice activist, starting at age 14 as a youth volunteer at Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. She has since been involved in climate and ocean organizing work at a state, national and international level. She has a bachelor’s in environmental public policy with a minor in social justice from Oregon State University. She has extensive experience with program development and engaging young people in the climate movement. Grace is incredibly passionate about bringing art and storytelling into policy advocacy. When she is not working, she enjoys music, hiking, reading, collaging, and spending time with her three cats Stevie, Pebbles and Bam Bam.
Meryl Ellingson (she/her) Annual Giving Manager
Adriana Perrusquia (she/her)
Executive Assistant and Board Liaison
Adriana is Mexican and Yup’ik, Alaska Native from the Yukon-Kuskokwim delta. She grew up in the Seattle area. She holds a bachelor’s in business administration with a focus in marketing from the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. She previously worked at Microsoft as a Program Manager, and before that at Eighth Generation as a Project Manager. Outside of work, Adriana loves to read, dance, and bead. She also enjoys spending time with her dog Buddy and attending concerts with her loved ones. Adriana loves to travel, and, so far, her favorite destinations have been Seoul, Cancun, and the Bahamas.
WASHINGTON CONSERVATION ACTION
Meryl brings experience in strategic communications, political fundraising, and non-profit operations to the development team. Prior to joining WCA, she worked for two California-based organizations in the gender equity space – a cause she believes intersects deeply with environmental justice and conservation. In her free time, she’s most likely running the trails in Bellingham or skiing and hiking in the Cascades with her husky, but sometimes sits still long enough to watch Premier League or NWSL soccer games with her partner on the weekends. She holds a bachelor’s in international political economy from Colorado College and, originally a Wisconsinite, strong opinions about cheese curds.
Zara Stevens (she/her)
Native Vote Washington Field Director
Zara is an enrolled member of the A’aniiih (Gros Ventre) and Nakoda (Assiniboine) Tribal nations of Fort Belknap, Montana. Born in Spokane, she grew up at solar observatories around the world as her Dad served as an U.S. Air Force solar meteorologist. (Western Australia was her favorite.) Zara graduated from Eastern Washington University in 2003 with a bachelor’s in English literature. She found her passion and began her career as a professional organizer, cutting her teeth on higher education labor campaigns and the AFL-CIO portion of the Hillary ’16 campaign in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Later, she worked as an organizer with the ACLU of Washington. In her spare time, she plugs away at one of the two novels she is writing in perpetuity, explores the PNW with her partner, Kurt, and spends regular time at her local hot yoga studio.
Kellen Hoard (he/him) is a student in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He is from Kirkland and has long been a civic advocate in Washington State, especially on youth issues. He has served in various capacities with the Washington State Legislative Youth Advisory Council, the Washington State Leadership Board, the Washington State PTA, and several political campaigns. He is also an advocate for student journalist free expression in state legislatures across the country. Outside of advocacy, Kellen is a passionate numismatist (coin collector), and serves as a Representative of the General Public on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee. His enthusiasm for the Oxford comma is limitless.
Jovan Johnson Hall (she/her) is a conservator of wild places and historic Buildings, a philanthropist, an entrepreneur and a hotelier. Jovan calls Bellingham home, but divides her time between the Big Island of Hawaii and the Chiliwist Valley in Okanogan County. In Hawaii, she is passionate in her work to preserve culturally and ecologically sensitive reefs; to advocate for solutions to wastewater pollution and to build community. In the Okanogan, Jovan is active in the preservation of land that provides key, migratory pathways for native wildlife. Jovan and her husband own and operate two historic hotels and a suite of historically significant buildings. She is dedicated to her work as a catalyst for change in her communities near and far.
Paul Tabayoyon (he/him) is the executive director of the Yakima Chapter of the Asian Pacific Islander Coalition (APIC-Yakima). He has always claimed Yakima Washington as home. After 20 years of travel in the United States and western hemisphere, working a career in engineering services, he decided to continue his education, always a central goal. In 2019, he graduated from Central Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in integrated energy management, He has worked as an energy manager and systems analyst, following previous education at Perry Technical and Yakima Valley College.
Margie Van Cleve (she/her) is a retired chemical engineer whose interest in salmon restoration began when she moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1989. She has been involved with river protection, salmon recovery, and other public land and water issues in Washington State for the Sierra Club since 1990. Margie served as Chapter Chair for the Washington Chapter Sierra Club and is currently Chair of the Washington State Chapter’s Conservation Committee. Margie also serves on the Snake/ Columbia River Salmon Campaign steering committee for Sierra Club.
As a whitewater kayaker, Margie was often going down rivers while the salmon were coming upstream to spawn. Margie began volunteering for Save Our Wild Salmon in the mid-1990s. She and her husband live in a straw bale house they built in Selah, WA, close to Yakima.
WASHINGTON CONSERVATION ACTION
EDUCATION FUND
Gabe Aeschliman (he/him) is a relationship manager for signers of the Giving Pledge at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Previously, he was a philanthropy officer with The Wilderness Society and the senior philanthropic advisor with Seattle Foundation advising individuals, families,and groups on effective philanthropic strategies, and leading the environmental grantmaking work. He received a bachelor’s in History from California State University, Sacramento. With strong ties to California, he often finds himself hiking and climbing at destinations along the West Coast.
Ginny Broadhurst (she/her) has more than 25 years of experience promoting stewardship, protection, and restoration of the Salish Sea. She started as the founding director of the Salish Sea Institute at Western Washington University in June 2017. In her role as director, she led the development of the State of the Salish Sea report published in 2021 and was instrumental in the development of a minor in Salish Sea Studies at WWU and led the successful administration of several international Salish Sea Ecosystem Conferences. Previously, she spent 10 years as the executive director of the Northwest Straits Commission and held staff positions at NWSC and the Puget Sound Action Team in Olympia, WA. She is on the Board of Bellingham SeaFeast and serves on the US/CAN Statement of Cooperation Workgroup.
As a senior program officer at INATAI Foundation, Karen Cunningham (she/her) develops and nurtures relationships with community members and organizations across Washington state, connecting those doing important work in their communities to the foundation’s resources. She is a citizen of the Yakama Nation and has previously served as its economic development director. In her role, she helped reinstate transit services to the reservation and developed business opportunities
that preserved history, reinforced cultural values, and sought to improve overall quality of life. An avid maker, Karen stays connected to her culture through beadwork and her also expresses her creativity through sewing and crochet. She’s grateful most of all for the continued support and love of her husband and two daughters.
Yolanda Frazier (she/her) is a daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, sister, friend, and community leader. She’s a health equity director for a major health organization helps ensure that whole health is accessible for everyone. She also spends a great amount of time with family, loves to go crabbing and wine tasting, and explores new workout and dance routines for better overall health. She is serving her second year as the local NAACP president for Vancouver, Washington. She thrives when connecting with others to bring about better outcomes.
Hector Hinojosa (he/him) has a long history of community involvement and social activism in Clark County, Washington and beyond. He is the founder of Community Roots Collaborative, with the mission of building low barrier cottage home neighborhoods for the unhoused. He founded, and directs, Stone Soup Community Meal. He is a past president of the Southwest Washington League of United Latin American Citizens Council 47013 (SW WA LULAC), and is a 16-year member of the Vancouver Farmers’ Market and past board director there. Most recently, he joined the board of the Mt. St. Helen’s Institute and founded the Vancouver Metro LULAC Council, the second council in Clark County. Hector is also 2023-2024 Chair of the WA ST Democratic Latino Caucus.
Minnesota-born, Rosalyn Minh (she/her) came to the PNW in 2018 and is currently pursuing a dual degree in ecosystems and environmental science, and biology at Washington State University. She interned with Washington Conservation Action in 2023. Rosalyn is passionate about the outdoors, often found hiking the diverse landscapes of Washington. Her adventures in nature fuel her dedication to her studies and conservation efforts, blending personal passion with professional ambition. Rosalyn is eager to apply her education and experiences towards making a positive impact on environmental protection and sustainability.
Sarah Reyneveld (she/her) is a managing assistant attorney general with the Environmental Protection Division of the Washington State Attorney General’s Office (AGO) in Seattle. In that capacity, Sarah works to protect Washingtonians and our environment by bringing affirmative civil litigation on behalf of the people of Washington State. Prior to serving in the Environmental Protection Division, Sarah served for nine years as an assistant attorney general in the Labor and Industries Division of the AGO. She previously served as a research assistant in the Office of Governor Chris Gregoire, a legislative assistant in the Washington State Senate, and a deputy finance director on the 2004 Chris Gregoire for Governor campaign. Sarah was previously a member of the Washington Conservation Voters’ Statewide Endorsement Advisory Committee and former King County Conservation Voters’ Board.
Maverick Ryan (he/him) is the senior project strategist at Pyramid Communications. Born and raised on the Kitsap Peninsula, Maverick stays committed to the region through board leadership, including serving as a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribal Council and the Board of the Port Orchard Historic Theater Foundation. In his role on the Cowlitz Indian Tribal Council, Maverick negotiates and communicates with federal, state, and local governments, as well as consults those government bodies involved in the welfare of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe. Maverick got his start in public engagement work with Rural Investment to Protect the Environment, a nonprofit working with farmers to develop climate change policies that also protect rural economies.
WCA, UNION SIGN AGREEMENT
Washington Conservation Action (WCA) and Evergreen Workers Union (EWU) finalized contract negotiations and signed a two-year agreement. EWU workers successfully voted to unionize in August 2021. WCA leadership voluntarily recognized the union and began work with Evergreen Workers Union, represented by Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 7800, on its first Collective Bargaining Agreement. The agreement was ratified October 11, 2023.
“Our contract recognizes the important work that our valued WCA staff members do every day to conserve and protect healthy air, water, land, and forests and a thriving democracy for all people who call Washington their home,” says Alyssa Macy, CEO of WCA. “WCA is also proud to be the first unionized organization to offer an article that upholds Tribal sovereignty and consultation in the contract.”
In a statement, the union says, “EWU members are pleased that the agreement includes improved benefits and compensation for all union-represented staff in addition to measures related to upholding tribal sovereignty, reproductive and gender care, supporting staff who are immigrants, and the annual holiday schedule.”
Washington Conservation Action , in partnership with Washington Conservation Action Education Fund, is committed to environmental justice by advancing bold progress for people and the environment for more than 50 years. We celebrate the policy and political success we have accomplished together with people like you.
Washington Conservation Action 1402 Third Ave, Suite 1400 Seattle, WA 98101
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CARBON FRIENDLY FORESTRY
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Bringing together diverse thinkers, landowners, foresters, scientists and others to learn about and discuss innovative strategies and opportunities for sustainable forest management that can create a stronger economy and healthier communities in a changing climate.
