Hello! This is Ben, your plucky comms director and your newly appointed Monthly-Newsletter-Bottomliner-Editorializer. Be prepared for more puns and the occasional spicy, spicy meme. If you notice sloppier sentence construction and an exponential increase in adverbs and adjectives, blame me.
Last week had the distinction of being the hottest week in the last 125,000 years. Yet, we are still haggling with the city about the importance of life saving cooling and electrification and fending off the expansion of fracked gas pipelines. It’s rough out here, and sadly, there’s no cheat codes or quick fixes. We have to build, support and join the vibrant social movements capable of building a society rooted in climate justice.
Which brings us to this month’s main event:
THE APEC COUNTER SUMMIT
Seattle is hosting a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Partnership, beginning July 30th. It’s 100% no good and we are gearing up to give this international trade conference a quintessentially Seattle welcome. For a deep dive into APEC, check out this webinar from June 13th.
350 Seattle is joining many organizations to organize the Pacific Northwest People Over Profit Counter – Summit. The Counter Summit will include gatherings, discussions, cross-movement planning and strategizing, parties, socials and resistance!
Attend the Counter Summit! Sign up here.
Artful is hosting banner and sign making parties
July 16th & 22nd (dates may change) RSVP for updates
The Federal Team is pushing for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the trade deal APEC is negotiating, to prioritize working people and climate justice.
If you can, please donate to support the PNW People Over Profit Counter Summit.
ELECTRIFY GOES TO CITY COUNCIL
Big news! After months of delay (thanks to big biz opposition), the Electrify Seattle policy is headed to City Council in August! And the Living Hotels policy is not far behind – which means that we could pass TWO major Seattle Green New Deal policies this fall.
Both Electrify Seattle and Living Hotels tackle Seattle’s fastest-growing source of climate pollution: the fossil fuels used to heat, cool and power our buildings. Electrify Seattle (aka the Building Emissions Performance Standards policy) sets timelines for existing buildings over 20K sq ft to upgrade for clean energy. Living Hotels looks forward, setting some of the strongest climate and environmental justice standards in the country for new hotel development.
Together, these policies set Seattle on track for reducing our climate pollution, creating good green jobs and bringing life-saving cooling to homes and workplaces across the city. But with big corporations actively opposed and working behind-the-scenes to weaken these proposals, our elected officials won’t champion strong climate policy unless they hear from thousands of people like YOU.
Three ways you can take action this week:
1. Tell City Council: stand up for climate and worker justice! (protip: personalize the subject line when sending this form letter to ensure it gets past Council staff inbox filters)
2. Join our climate-labor solidarity canvass this Thursday, July 13. We’ll be doorknocking with our friends at UNITE HERE Local 8, talking to neighbors about these Green New Deal policies, and asking for their support by sending the letter above to City Council. No experience required: we’ll start with a training and then everyone canvasses in pairs. Water and snacks provided, just bring comfy shoes!
Green New Deal Canvass:
Thursday, July 13, 5:00 – 7:00pm Seattle Center Armory, Meet at SW Corner
RSVP to Julia B
3. Join our Electrify Seattle volunteer-led teams, working on everything from research to organizing, and canvassing to community-building! Sign up for a 1-1 onboarding and then join our weekly all-hands call (Wednesdays 5-6PM) using this form.
ENOUGH WITH THE FIGHTER JETS ALREADY
The AntiWar X Climate team is planning an info-picket of the Blue “Angels” Fighter Planes, which will tear up the skies over Lake Washington again this summer, August 4-6. We want to let people know about the connection between the Blue Angels, US militarism, and the climate crisis.
No Military Air Shows (NoMAS):
August 4th, 5th, 6th, with planning meeting prior
Contact Mary to participate – flyers designs needed!
The team will also have a table at Seattle’s annual lantern floating peace ceremony, From Hiroshima to Hope.
From Hiroshima to Hope
Sunday, August 6th, 6:00PM at West Green Lake Drive and Stone Ave N.
https://fromhiroshimatohope.org/
AVIATION TEAM
Speaking of jets gone wrong, today is the final day to send a message to King County Council members in support of Ordinance 2023-0053. This ordinance ensures that King County International Airport is directly accountable to local communities to address the harms from the airports pollution and encroachment.
The Aviation Team as part of TWO local community coalitions opposing the health and climate impacts of airport expansions. You can also check out other western US opposition in Oakland and San Bernadino.
Contact Laura if you would also like to get involved.
Register here for our Team meeting on July 11 from 7-8 pm.
FEDERAL TEAM
The Federal Policy Team continues efforts to stop the GTN Xpress Pipeline expansion. On June 8th, the Federal Team joined with the Stop The Money Pipeline team at the federal building as part of a national day of action. They called for the President to declare a climate emergency and to ask our Senators to oppose the GTN Xpress expansion. The crowd even sang happy birthday to team member Linnea Scott’s one-year-old daughter!
As part of our work with People v Fossil Fuels, we will be collecting signatures this month on a letter to President Biden, from local representatives of the WA legislature, as well as from city and county representatives. The letter will be circulated nation-wide and asks the President to take stronger climate action ahead of the UN Climate Summit in NY this September.
If you’d like to get involved in our work, sign up to join the Federal Policy Team listserv.
STORY CIRCLE
This past month, Story Circle finalized our second zine! We are so grateful for the community effort and love that went into this project. We hosted an assembly party on July 1st to drill holes, bind, and fold 300 copies of the 2023 zine, “Homeward.”
We will be working on distributing the zine over the coming months; each person who contributed will receive five copies, and we plan to drop zines in tiny libraries across the city. We’ll also have copies available at our next Story Circle, when we’ll gather to share food and reflect on what’s next for Story Circle.
July Story Circle ~ community gathering with food and reflections
Friday, July 28, 6:30-8:00 PM
In person, location TBD
Please email Story Circle if you’d like to join
ACTION AT THE DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES
Last month, 200 hundred activists from across the northwest converged near Mt. St. Helens for the Deep Roots Action. For three days activists schemed on how to unify climate justice and forest protection movements, while learning direct action skills and camping by a lake.
After camp, 5 activists locked down inside the Department of Natural Resources, demanding Hilary Franz halt the logging of mature forests on state lands. Check out this video to see what went down.
ARTFUL ACTIVISM TEAM
Upcoming art builds and screen printing parties:
Join us mid/late July for banners and signs for PNW People Over Profit APEC resistance to the latest hugely dangerous and unjust trade deal:
RSVP for upcoming art builds. Dates & location to be decided but likely July 16th and / or 22th. If you sign up, you will get the updates.
Join the Artful Team
Sign up here to be on the list to get info on upcoming art opportunities! (Scroll all the way down that web page to sign up.) Skills welcome, and definitely not at all required. Collaborative tasks like tracing, cutting, twisting ties, painting in between the lines, etc. are always a welcoming and fun way to drop in and be a part of the powerful art at our actions.
For those who want to be more involved, we are growing both our art build team and our art in action team, where teams of volunteer leads help others participate (with art leads support) to spread the love. Maybe you’re experienced in performance arts (theater, spoken word, music, dance, and beyond), visual arts (graphic design, painting, drawing, screen printing, building props, sewing, and so much more). Or maybe you are an organized person, or you like data and want to help with the imagery or photo library behind the scenes, or people with creative strategic humor and energy who like to brainstorm. We also need people with other skill sets like DJs, snacks, setup and cleanup, de-escalation, and vibes watchers – is that you? Contact Lisa at lisamarcus@350seattle.org to get involved.
We had a great time ELECTRIFYING the crowd at the Fremont Solstice Parade! Check out the wrap up video.
Join The People’s Echo:
Stay connected to The People’s Echo for updates on community singing opportunities!
Linktree, Song Book, Soundcloud, Facebook, Instagram
For questions, email the People’s Echo at: thepeoplesecho@gmail.com
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.
WEBSITE SUPPORT
An amazing team from the UW School of Human Centered Design & Engineering Program are working with us to spruce up the website. They need a few people from our community to be guinea pigs to test new website ideas. Participants would need to budget 30-40 minutes for a Zoom interview. Your feedback will contribute to creating a user-friendly platform that empowers individuals to take action.
UW Human Centered Design & Engineering Survey
Online, Monday, July 11th – Thursday, July 20th
Please fill out survey to get started
LETS MAKE SOME NOISE FOR THE SOUND TEAM
Do you want to learn how to operate our sound equipment including PAs, a sound board, power stations, mics, and bluetooth, at events and actions? Join the Sound Team! One of the most common asks we get from community organizations and partner is to borrow our sound system – the more people we have trained, the more often we can support! Comfort with technology is a plus, but no experience is necessary. Contact Lisa to learn more.
COMMUNITY RESILIENCE OFFERINGS
We have been working on updating our community resource list to encompass the vast number of resources available in the Seattle area for 350 Seattle and the general community! Check out the new resource list here and share with others who may be interested.
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 or do you know of BIPOC businesses in our community who might want to be added to the list linked here? All skills are welcome!
Please fill out this form with your own offerings, or with other local Black, Indigenous, or People of the Global Majority (BIPGM) businesses we could be patronizing, or other entries we should add to the general resource list and we’ll get back with you.
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: Check out our updated Volunteer Opportunities List and 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, July 17, 6:00 – 7:00 PM
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!
SHOUTOUTS
The South Seattle Emerald ran a glowing feature article about us. Check it out to see some of your 350 friends getting major shoutouts.
350 Seattle, Adapting to the Ever-changing Environment of Climate Activism
And your final reminder – you live in a magnificent place and the bioluminescence is popping off! The secret is to go to a quiet beach at sundown on a hot summer day, somewhere away from light pollution, then roll up your pant legs and trundle through the surf. Best viewed under a new moon and with a full heart.
Thank you,
Ben
