Mission | 3-Year Strategic Vision | Shared Values
Mission
350 Seattle works toward climate justice by organizing people to make deep system change: resisting fossil fuels; building momentum for healthy alternatives; and fostering resilient, just, and welcoming communities.
Our 3-Year Strategic Vision
- Becoming a Multi-Cultural / Climate Justice Org. Fulfilling the deeper intention of our Mission to working toward climate justice, we are making the deep systemic change ourselves.
- Green New Deal campaigns. For our big campaigns, we’ll be focusing on GND efforts that can build the level of cross-movement power needed for transformative systems change.
- Invest in Staff and Org Sustainability. Wisely using our resources and empowering staff to lead our collective work into long term sustainability and organizational stability.
Shared Values
To understand more about our values, and how they interact with our mission, it might be useful to look at our statement on what we think are false, complicated, and not-ready-for-prime-time solutions.
Principle 1: Climate change is a profound and urgent threat to all life on the planet–but most especially and most immediately to those in the Global South.
Climate change is already wreaking havoc in the Global South, and in vulnerable communities everywhere: those that are low-income, indigenous, and/or communities of color. We will take guidance from those on the frontlines of extreme weather and sea-level rise, as well as those on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction, and support their fight for immediate and aggressive action on climate.
Principle 2: Our economic system and its dependence on cheap fossil fuels have caused the devastation of communities and ecosystems; as US residents, we’ve been complicit in this, and we’ve benefited from it; we therefore have a responsibility to act.
Privilege allows many of us to take legal and political risks that would be life-threatening in many countries, and we have greater ability to change the systems causing the devastation. We feel morally compelled to do all we can–including utilizing peaceful civil disobedience when necessary–and believe that building a people’s movement is the most powerful way to catalyze ambitious and just climate policies.
Principle 3: We believe in a just transition.
Fossil fuel industry workers have labored in dangerous and unhealthful conditions for decades. We support their demands for accessible family-wage jobs in the transition to clean renewables, and we will collaborate with them whenever possible, except where this collaboration would be in direct conflict with Principle 1. We also recognize the long history of environmental injustices perpetrated on communities of color and low-income communities, and will accept no “solutions” that fail to protect these communities.
Principle 4: We believe in our collective power.
Climate change is not a problem of human nature; it’s a problem of very specific systems that we can choose to change, and a problem created by the companies that lied to us for decades about the risks. The Pacific Northwest has been extraordinarily powerful in defeating proposed fossil fuel projects; it took all of us, working at every level. Some people find it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of fossil fuel dependence, but with your help, we can change that, remind people of their power, and help show the world what the fight for climate justice looks like. We need you.