This month, as we feel spring on the breeze, we are seeing many of the seeds we’ve planted starting to sprout. We have exciting news and wins to share with you! And many opportunities to get involved in our growing movement.
ELECTRIFY SEATTLE
We’re partnering with UNITE HERE Local 8 and taking to the streets this Earth Day (Saturday, 4/22) to fight for real climate action from Seattle city leaders and to take on the big corporations that stand in our way! Will you be there with us?
Pledge to take action this Earth Day!
There are so many people like you who want to see a rapid and just transition from fossil fuels to a thriving green economy that cares for people and planet. With our Electrify Seattle campaign to upgrade Seattle’s big buildings for clean energy, we’re taking on a key part of this local transition. But we are up against big business interests who are beholden to shareholder profits, no matter the social or environmental cost.
Social movements can and do change the world — but you’ve got to show up, get involved, and be persistent in the fight for your future and your community if we’re going to have the collective power we need to win!
Join us tonight for a community call to learn more about the Earth Day action, our Electrify Seattle campaign demands, and how you can build power with us leading up to Earth Day and beyond.
Earth Day Mass Call
Sunday, April 9, 5:30–6:30pm
Online, RSVP here.
Earth Day Rally
Saturday, April 22, 12:00pm
City Hall, 600 4th Ave, Seattle, 98104
RSVP here.
Want to help make the Earth Day Action a success, but can’t make it tonight? Fill out this short campaign onboarding form, and a member of our Electrify Seattle campaign team will be in touch!
EARTH DAY ART
If you’ve joined us for an action before, you know art is a powerful way to get our message out, and a way we love to have fun together in the streets.
This Earth Day, get ready for giant puppets, big banners, interactive street theater, a flash dance mob, song, block-printing and more! We have some really amazing artful ideas in the works — but to make the magic happen, we need your help.
Sign up here to help with key tasks, like day-of art deployment, and to take on fun roles, like being part of our flash dance mob or helping with block-printing.
Theater and Dance Rehearsals; Finalize Earth Day Art
Saturday, April 15, 1:00–5:00pm
Fremont
RSVP for address and updates.
WELCOME TO OUR NEW DIGITAL & COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, BEN JONES!
Hello! My name is Ben Jones (he/his), and I am thrilled to be joining the Staff Collective as the Digital & Communications Director. I am excited to connect with you all, to build out our community’s storytelling capacity, and to be joining an organization working for climate justice.
I grew up in Kitsap and have been involved in climate and direct action organizing since 2009. I began working with 350 Seattle as the jail support coordinator during ShellNo. I have had the privilege of working with numerous communities across the country on campaigns fighting the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure. Most recently, I was working for the Suquamish as the Tribe’s volunteer coordinator.
I am so excited to get to know this amazing organization and looking forward to working with all of you.
350 WA CIVIC ACTION TEAM
The legislative session ends on April 24! With our 350 WA Civic Action Team campaign, we made climate issues impossible to ignore in Olympia, and we mobilized a record-breaking number of collective advocacy actions through this campaign — 32,615 and counting. You can still sign up to take action with the 350 WA Civic Action Team for the remaining two weeks of the Washington State legislative session.
Then, join us on May 8 for an evening of reviewing the climate wins and losses of the 2023 Washington State legislative session and looking ahead to next year. Let’s celebrate our hard-working volunteers and all of our amazing advocates!
350 WA Civic Action Team: End of Session Celebration
Monday, May 8, 6:00–7:00pm
Online, register here.
FEDERAL TEAM
The Federal Policy Team has been busy with recent meetings with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, and with our two senators. We also recently met with a staffer for newly elected Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Topics have been varied but have included the Farm Bill, the president’s need to declare a climate emergency, and stopping the proposed GTN XPress expansion — a project proposed by TC Energy, the same company behind the Keystone Pipeline.
So what about that GTN XPress pipeline expansion now being considered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission? This project would drastically increase the volume of gas flowing through an aging pipeline and add more than 3.47 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. And given TC Energy’s safety record, the project raises major safety concerns.
So we need our two senators to speak out publicly against this project. Can you help make that happen by calling Senators Murray and Cantwell? Even if you’ve already done so, please call again. Recent meetings with their staffers have led us to believe that with a bit more pressure from people like you, the senators might finally decide to speak out about this project. Call script and phone numbers are here.
Want to help with more federal climate issues? Join us for future meetings by signing up for our Listserv here!
AVIATION TEAM
As you may have heard, aircraft emissions and noise endanger the health of residents who live under flight paths. The Aviation Team is now part of two community coalitions to address this injustice. Contact Laura if you would like to get involved.
Aviation Team Meeting
April 11, 7:00–8:00pm
Online, register here.
ARTFUL ACTIVISM TEAM
Join the Artful Team
We’re doing lots of community art builds, this month and next, for Electrify Seattle, Stop the Money Pipeline, May Day, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People. Skills welcome, not required — we’ll teach you as you go! Collaborative team tasks, like tracing, cutting, twisting ties, and painting in between the lines, are always a welcoming and fun way to drop in and be a part of the powerful art at our actions. Sign up here or contact Lisa to learn more!
Community Art Builds and Rehearsals
Join us in community for a fun time making powerful art. In addition to art-making, help with music, snacks, setup, and cleanup are also available. Bring smiling eyes, masks, clothes to get messy in, snacks, and water.
Theater and Dance Rehearsals; Finalize Earth Day Art
Saturday, April 15, 1:00–5:00pm
Fremont
RSVP for address and updates.
Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women and People
Sunday, April 16, 12:00–4:00pm
Cal Anderson Park, 1635 11th Ave., Seattle, 98122
RSVP for updates.
Join the Art Deployment Team
The Art Deployment Team brings collaborative, powerful, and beautiful art to events for our campaigns and partner orgs who ask for our support. Learn how to do critical day-of action roles, like transport, setup, positioning, and animating art at events, and how to recruit and guide other volunteers to do the same. A trajectory of actions are coming right up, and we’re excited to add theater options and launch our deployment team with community trainings before the actions. Sign up here to get involved in theater and deployment options!
THE PEOPLE’S ECHO
Chirp chirp, songbirds! The quickening of life is all around us, and it seems near impossible to ignore the songs of spring! Driven by this love for life, we are excited to invite you to sing in the streets with us for the big Earth Day mobilization for Electrify Seattle, labor, and more.
350 Seattle’s Earth Day Action!
Saturday, April 22, 12:00pm
Meet at City Hall, 600 4th Ave, Seattle, WA 98104, and then proceed on a march through downtown.
Email Lux for more information and to RSVP.
Stay connected to The People’s Echo for updates on community singing opportunities!
For questions, email the team.
STORY CIRCLE: LAST CALL FOR ZINE SUBMISSIONS!
It’s not too late to submit to the 2023 zine (our deadline is April 15)!
The theme is home, and we’d like to approach this topic broadly and inclusively. We welcome essays, drawings, photographs, imaginings of a future Seattle where people are safely housed — anything you can dream up! Email us at storycircle@350seattle.org if you have any questions or would like some support with your submission! And join us for our next meeting:
Final Friday Story Circle
Friday, April 28, 6:00–7:30pm
Online, register here.
PHOTOS WANTED FOR OUR PHOTO LIBRARY
We want your photos! Did you take photos at a recent 350 Seattle event, art build, or action? Are you willing to share any great shots that you captured with our community? Submit your best images to our Photo Library to share them with our community for use in our organization’s storytelling, including our outreach, communications, and fundraising efforts. Here are our guidelines and the email address for submitting photos to our library editors.
VIDEOS!
Check out the 350 Seattle YouTube page for event recaps, DIY art videos, webinars, and trainings.
CLIMATE GRIEF AND EMPOWERMENT
So many of us long to take effective action on climate crisis and injustice, but become paralyzed with fear and grief with the vast scope of these challenges. Finding tools to face, feel, and transform this overwhelm can be relieving, empowering, and transformative. Coming together in community practice can strengthen us and give us the energy to make change and be truly present to our families and world. You are invited to feel, digest, and move through grief together at the next Climate Grief and Empowerment gathering.
Monthly Climate Grief and Empowerment Gathering
Saturday, May 13, 10:00–11:45am
Online, register here.
COMMUNITY RESILIENCE OFFERINGS
Do you have a skill or service you would like to offer at very reduced or no charge to the 350 Seattle activist community as a way to take part in and support the work we do? The climate movement requires many skills and talents. You don’t have to be an organizer, protest-goer, phone-banker, or someone who’s ready for civil disobedience to get involved in climate justice. We need you: teachers, gardeners, lawyers, accountants, storytellers, caregivers, artists, and more!
Or, do you know of any businesses in our community who might want to be added to this list of BIPOC businesses?
Fill out this form with your own offerings, or with other local BIPOC businesses we could be patronizing, and we’ll get back with you! Thanks!
SHOUTOUTS AND APPRECIATIONS
Thank-you, Kaylee Kobashigawa, for tirelessly posting to social media on behalf of the Federal Policy Team. You respond quickly and helpfully every time I make a request! —Selden Prentice
SOLIDARITY & EDUCATION
TAKE FOREST ACTION WITH CONSERVATION NW
Here’s a great advocacy opportunity from our friends at Conservation NW.
Friends and supporters, we are making big progress in Olympia!
Our campaign scored a huge victory for climate and older forests this week. You sent in thousands of emails asking our State Senators to reject amendments that would have stripped away all the funding for older forests that we’ve been fighting for. And it worked: our State Senate passed a preliminary budget that includes funding to protect 2,000 acres of older forests along with other provisions to increase sequestration on lands that DNR acquires. The entire package is $83 million.
Now, we need your help to get the House on board.
Every two years, each chamber of our state government proposes their own budget, and then they negotiate between the two. Since the House’s budget included just a fraction of the funding that the Senate put in, we need to push our House members to go with the Senate version.
These older state forests are among the most carbon-dense in the world. If we manage to defend this funding in the next few weeks, we will protect invaluable older public forests and take a big step forward on climate.
If we fail, our state will release half a million tons of CO2 that will stay in the atmosphere for over 100 years. Thank you for taking action.
GET INVOLVED
Do you care about climate justice? Want more general information about 350 Seattle? Then check out this handy Welcome Guide for new volunteers.
Here are some really great ways to start on that path of engagement! Check out our updated Volunteer Opportunities Listand our event calendar. Opportunities range from low commitment to high, from introductory to skilled. All you have to do is find something you’re excited about and reach out! Unless otherwise noted, all opportunities can be done from home.
Unsure what you want to do? Still have questions about who we are and what we do? Come hang out with us at our monthly virtual orientation and get connected with real people!
Monthly Intro to 350 Seattle Call
Monday, April 17, 6:00pm
Online, register here.
No time for all that? Well, never fear — you can support the work we do at 350 Seattle by becoming a monthly donor! Sign up here!
