Jeanne,
Earth Day… sure. It was nice while it lasted, eh?
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres knows we’re “sleepwalking to climate catastrophe”
IPCC REPORT
Here’s the world’s top diplomat on the third IPCC report, the one that says we’re failing to keep temperatures below 1.5º C:
“High‑emitting Governments and corporations are not just turning a blind eye, they are adding fuel to the flames. They are choking our planet, based on their vested interests and historic investments in fossil fuels, when cheaper, renewable solutions provide green jobs, energy security and greater price stability.”
“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But, the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.”
Maybe that’s why climate scientists are locking down at JPMorgan Chase branches and across the world.
The good news is that the IPCC report finally puts the finger on colonialism and a new chapter starts to debunk the myth of demand. Down for a deep dive? The smart people at Carbon Brief have an in-depth Q&A.
Here’s UN Secretary General Guterres again: “Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness. Such investments will soon be stranded assets—a blot on the landscape and a blight on investment portfolios.”
Which leads us to…
WALL STREET’S MOMENT OF TRUTH
Over the next six weeks, Wall Street banks and insurance companies will host their annual shareholder meetings, where a series of critical shareholder resolutions will determine: will these companies continue to financially support fossil fuel expansion?
That’s why we’re throwing down with Stop The Money Pipeline’s new campaign―Wall Street’s Moment of Truth: People or Fossil Fuels.
With the first of the votes just two weeks away, our big focus is on pushing investors to vote the right way.
To help us do that, take these two actions today:
Email Wall Street’s 3 largest investors―BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street―and urge them to vote yes for climate this shareholder season. Your email will go directly into the inboxes of twenty top executives at the three companies.
Write a personal email to Washington State Treasurer Pelliccotti and urge him to use his power to further climate action this shareholder season. Personal emails are the most powerful, so please take the time to personalize your message to and let him know that you’re a Washington resident.
Last week was also the launch of the Customers for Climate Justice campaign. Over 35,000 customers signed on to open letters to the CEOs of their banks, demanding an end to fossil fuel funding. You can amplify the campaign by retweeting this.
Dozens of customers have now met with branch managers to express their concerns, and over one hundred have lodged formal complaints about their bank’s funding of fossil fuels. Next week, we will be sending a second letter from customers―this time to the bank’s investors.
If you bank with Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo or Bank of America, you can join the campaign here.
Oh and finally, this week was also the #DefundClimateChaos Week of Arts Actions. And we don’t know who did it, but we did notice this particularly eye-catching Chase branch in north Seattle earlier this week.
FEDERAL POLICY TEAM
While the Federal Policy Team has been pushing for strong Executive action from the President, we also continue to lobby for meaningful climate legislation in Congress. It’s true that such legislation is unlikely to pass at this point (given the coal-loving, um, loyalties of Senator Joe “Planet Killer” Manchin), yet it’s critical that strong climate messaging continue to be heard in the halls of Congress. In the coming weeks we’ll be meeting with Congressional offices to lobby for Sunrise’s Green New Deal pledge, and for the 2023 Farm Bill to include agroecology climate policies.
Kudos to our team, in particular unattributed coauthors Bobby Righi and Amy Waterman, for this recently published Seattle Times op-ed on the climate and environmental perils of plastic, written jointly with Pamela Chelakalem Bond of the Snohomish Tribe, and Sara Holznecht of Oceana!
To join the Federal Policy Team, sign up here.
PNW REGIONAL CALL
Happy spring to the whole 350 climate organizing community across the PNW! We’re thrilled to announce two wonderfully special guests joining us for the April PNW Regional call.
April 350 PNW Regional Gathering
Monday, April 11, 6:00–7:30pm
Online, register here.
Kurt Russo, Executive Director of Se’Si’Le will join us to share about the upcoming Snake River to Salish Sea Spirit of the Waters Totem Pole Journey to a Solution. This is a wonderful opportunity to learn about this upcoming indigenous-led journey, and to answer the call for solidarity attending one of the special events happening across Washington and Oregon in the month of May. The removal of the Snake River dams has become an issue of tribal justice where the treaties for all tribes promise sustainable harvest of fish while their numbers continue to be decimated. Tribes from across the northwest are coming together in this united cause, and we know our members all want to support this effort in a good way, too.
Beverly Ortiz, Organizing Director of Climate Finance Action will share about her national organization’s support of local organizers working on divestment of city and state pension funds. CFA provides training, resources, research, and education in multiple states to push public and corporate officials to use their considerable shareholder and investor power to pressure the largest drivers of the climate crisis to change their business practices to align with limiting global warming to 1.5º C.
GREEN NEW DEAL FOR PARKS!
Celebrate spring with us as we gear up for a local Green New Deal campaign all about climate resilience, clean energy, and good union jobs in our parks! Join us for a preview event to learn more and get plugged in, either virtually or in person!
Campaign Preview – Online
Thursday, April 21, 7:00–8:00pm
Join us to learn more, get connected and get involved!
Online, register here.
GND Parks! In-Person Campaign Preview
Tuesday, April 26, 6:00–8:00pm
University Heights Center, 5031 University Way NE, Seattle 98105
RSVP here. (Masks required.)
The in-person event at 350 Seattle’s new community space includes food, art, and community-building! Bring your mask!
HOLDING AIRPORTS ACCOUNTABLE
Our Aviation Solutions team is working in coalition to recast the power dynamics around the King County International Airport (KCIA) to be more favorable to airport-impacted community members, and we need your help to accomplish this!
Please, tell King County to address airport health and climate impacts―send this letter in support of King County Ordinance 2022-0011. We helped draft this legislation as members of King County International Airport Community Coalition (KCIACC) last year and are working to pass it this year.
The ordinance will accomplish three primary objectives:
- Create an advisory committee to establish a community benefits agreement
- Require an assessment of the KCIA impact on environment and health
- Require KCIA to abide by County programs like the King County Strategic Climate Action Plan (SCAP)
Thank you for helping us carry this legislation across the finish line! Both Aviation Solutions and KCIACC have many projects in the works and welcome your participation resisting harmful and inequitable industries and practices. Please reach out to either of us through those web pages with any questions or to get involved.
TRANSPORTATION
The $17B, 16-year transportation package Move Ahead WA passed with more funding for transit and active transportation than new highway expansion for the first time ever! More highlights here and here. Thanks to the 1,862 of you who signed our letter last month, the package didn’t steal from toxic cleanup funds. While we didn’t stop highway expansion, we made the tension between highway expansion and climate goals a topic of debate: see recent pieces in KUOW, the Seattle Times and The Stranger.
The Transportation team has geared down after the year-long Just Transition in Transportation campaign. But here’s some quick info on what our colleagues are doing! May is Bike Everywhere Month, so please bike… everywhere! And see the Cascade Bike Club’s page for more on Bike Everywhere events. Also, June is Ride Transit Month! Our friends at Transportation Choices Coalition will be organizing events around that, so stay tuned.
Interested in making sure Seattle does better planning for transportation and land use? The City of Seattle is launching a revision of its Comprehensive Plan, see here for more information. And, SDOT is creating a new Transportation Plan that, so far, doesn’t adequately address climate emissions. The Seattle Comprehensive and Transportation plans will guide land-use laws and transportation infrastructure spending for quite some time, so, if you’re interested in learning (and possibly doing!) more about the climate aspects of all this, contact Andrew or contact Alice and we’ll help you get engaged.
THE PEOPLE’S POWER
The Yes to East King County PUD campaign is trucking along with LOTS of signature-gathering opportunities over the next two weeks! Check out the campaign’s Events page for more information.
We’re also excited to invite you to spend time with like-minded folks and help us get the word out to voters!
Work Party and Fundraiser
Thursday, April 28, 6:00–8:00pm
Super Six, 3714 South Hudson Street, Seattle 98118
In-person event! Register here.
The campaign is also in need of more social media support. If you have time to donate to help us be more digitally active, please get in touch.
Know of any businesses on the Eastside that want to stand on the side of clean electricity? We would love to reach out! Let us know your ideas and if you have any personal connections.
And we now have engineering study updates!
ECO SUMMIT
This event will bring neighbors together for interactive learning, creating a caring and action-based community around the climate crisis and environmental justice.
The keynote speaker will be Jeff Renner, former Chief Meteorologist at King-5 TV and climate activist. Other speakers include Heather Trim from Zero Waste Washington and Andrew Kidde from 350 Washington. Steering away from the paralyzing fear and anxiety we hear in the news, we’ll turn attention toward realizing actionable solutions and inspiring working together, making a difference toward equity and positive change in the climate space.
Breakout session topics include Transportation, Eco-building, Zero Waste, Neighbors helping neighbors, as well as a Youth-led session.
EcoSummit on the Ridge
Saturday, April 23, 9:00–5:00pm
Greenwood Senior Center, 525 N 85th, Seattle 98103
In-person event! More details and register here.
The cost is affordable: $20 for general admission; $5 for students; and free by request for anyone to whom the ticket price represents a hardship.
If you have any questions or wish to get more involved, contact Paul.
PLEDGE OF RESISTANCE
Sometimes, we have to use our bodies to get in the way of business as usual. This summer, we’ll be running a bigger, better Agents of Change, the direct action training series we held last year. It’ll be a kickoff in July, 3 weeks of webinars, and then a 2-day action camp towards the end of August, followed by a day of action. The focus will be on regional forest defense, which is one of the most important climate fights in the Northwest (as well as one of the most beautiful and pandemic-safe). For inspiration, check out our blog on Fairy Creek!
Sign the Pledge of Resistance to make sure you’re in the loop! More details coming later this spring.
SO, WHAT HAPPENED IN OLYMPIA?
As noted above, the ginormous transportation package passed. Fear of the midterms and a new Transportation chair in the Senate helped motivate the majority caucus to earmark a massive amount of Climate Commitment Act money for transit and active transportation. Good on them! Now if they’ll just stop adding emissions-inducing road miles…
Meanwhile, thanks to some density-phobic legislators, the much-needed middle housing bill ground to a halt, and, in a stunning failure of planning and time management, the critical Climate in the Growth Management Act failed at, literally, the eleventh hour. And of the five bills addressing building electrification, only two advanced, just when we need to kick that work up a notch.
More immediately, the concerted rollback of last year’s essential police accountability bills was so egregious that at least one legislator with integrity is not seeking reelection.
Here’s the 350 WA Civic Action Team’s 2022 legislative recap, and here’s how all the CAT-tracked bills ended up.
ANTIWAR COALITION
Last month we mapped out the two local antiwar coalitions that 350 Seattle is a member of: the Seattle Anti-War Coalition (SAWC) and Washington Against Nuclear Weapons (WANW). If you are interested in attending the monthly meetings of either of these groups, contact Mary.
This time we offer some resources that these groups rely on that inform our positions and advocacy. This list is only a beginning:
- Slides from our team presentation, The Intersection of Climate and Militarism.
- Brown University’s study, The Costs of War. You’ll find “environmental costs” under the heading of “Social and Political”.
- Washington Against Nuclear Weapons’ (WANW) website has lots of great information, visual and text.
- Seattle Anti-War Coalition holds a monthly protest outside the Federal Building in downtown Seattle, streamed online. You can see April program on that page.
- SAWC is a solidarity participant in the Black Alliance for Peace.
- Additional organizations nationally and internationally include: World Beyond War, CodePink, and Massachusetts Peace Action. They often have informative, probing events online that deepen our analysis of the links between militarism and environmental and climate destruction—and the links between water and land protection and working for peace and justice.
We stand in solidarity with peace activists globally.
CLIMATE GRIEF AND EMPOWERMENT
Does thinking about climate change mitigation leave you feeling dreadful? Feelings of climate grief can be overwhelming, especially in the face of compounding stressors, but we can move through these feelings together.
Climate Grief and Empowerment
Saturday, May 14, 10:00–11:45am
Online, register here.
Spring is the perfect time to empower each other and strive towards collective action! Join others who feel connected to the climate movement and dream of a more hopeful future at Climate Grief and Empowerment.
COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
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. The climate movement requires many skills and talents, which rarely reside in one person alone. The broader our skill sets and resources are, the stronger our chances are of success.
We need you: teachers, carpenters, gardeners, artists, personal trainers, mechanics, therapists, accountants, photographers, web designers, lawyers, nutritionists, hairdressers, herbalists, storytellers, knitters, comedians, acupuncturists, musicians, midwives, bakers, chefs, child and pet care providers, caregivers, doctors, dentists, massage therapists, dancers, healers, nutritionists, farmers, graphic designers, and MORE!
Do you have a skill or service you would like to offer to the 350 Seattle activist community? Please fill out this form or contact Hillary for more information.
STORY CIRCLE
Our community zine is almost complete! To help us with the assembly—including folding, binding, and eating fun snacks!—join us for our in-person assembly party at the end of the month! We can’t wait to build and share this incredible community-sourced artwork with you.
In-Person Assembly Party
Saturday, April 30, 1:00–4:30pm
University Heights Center, 5031 University Way NE, Seattle 98105
Bring your mask!
The building is locked to the public, so we will be letting people in at the south entrance at 1:00pm.
We will also be resuming our virtual Story Circles this month:
Story Circle
Friday, April 29, 6:00–7:30pm
Online, the final Friday of every month: register here.
All are welcome! Any questions? Email storycircle@350seattle.org.
THE PEOPLE’S ECHO
Every month The People’s Echo hosts both an online and in-person song circle. You can subscribe to our monthly newsletter here.
TPE Song Circle with Alexa Sunshine Rose
Friday, April 22, 6:30pm
Online, join with this link.
This Earth Day weekend, join The People’s Echo for an in-person song circle celebration of our beloved home, planet Earth. Bring songs to share that are Earth-centered; this includes soil, seeds, plants, water, fire, rocks, trees, mountains, etc.
Earth Songs with The People’s Echo
Sunday, April 24, 12:00–3:00pm
Shelter #3, Seward Park, 5900 Lake Washington Blvd S, Seattle 98118
In-person, more information here.
12:00–1:00pm: Invitation to arrive and connect with the land, to wander around the park, making friends with the trees, perhaps stopping to clean up any trash you find. (Bring gloves!) We welcome folks to be open to hearing the songs of the land and bring back any songs you catch along your journey.
1:00–3:00pm: We will meet at Shelter #3 (our usual spot) to sing our earth songs together!
We look forward to celebrating our connection to the earth in song with you!
ARTFUL ACTIVISM
Art makes our movement inviting, makes messaging clear and accessible, and gives people of all ages and backgrounds a way to participate in important issues. No skills needed. Please join us! Sign up here!
Building art together
Join us for a masked, outdoor, covered art build and social creative time—drop ins welcome, bring family and friends! We’ll be creating art for partner orgs including MMIP (Missing and Murdered Indigenous People), Earth-Week, and May Day—no skills needed! Bring your mask, smiling eyes, clothes for painting, snacks, and water!
In-Person Art Build
Saturday, April 16, Noon–4:00pm
Gasworks Park Play Barn, 2101 N Northlake Way, Seattle, WA 98103
Please RSVP in case of changes! Part time or drop-ins welcome!
To find us, if you don’t see us right away on the west side, pass the bathrooms and the building with the red machinery in front of it, then walk through the Play Barn building to the southeast end—we’ll be there!
Covid safety: Wearing masks is still our default. Please, if you have even mild symptoms or possible exposures, just sit this one out! If you have needs or concerns, please email Lisa.We will prioritize the concerns of the most vulnerable.
Skilled art from home. If you already have some art or sewing skills and you want to get on our short list of people who get contacted for smaller art builds, please contact Lisa.
Not skilled? No worries, join us! No skills tasks like tracing, cutting, twisting ties, painting in between the lines, etc. are always needing people in a supportive, learning, fun and connecting atmosphere with other people who care enough to show up like you are. Sign up here.
With skills? We’re looking for people with skills in performance arts, visual arts like graphic design, painting, drawing, screen printing, building props. Or are you organized, 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! Contact Lisa.
Deployment Team! Learn how to set up, position, and animate art at events, and how to recruit and guide other volunteers. Please sign up here!
INTUITIVE MOVEMENT WORKSHOPS
These workshops begin with a gentle warm-up, then a short, guided meditation, a movement session, and sharing time. Facilitated by Rhia Gowen, a Person-Centered Expressive Arts counselor and teacher with over 25 years’ experience. These workshops are places for us to restore our bodies and spirits with movement that is both relaxing and fun.
When and where: Outside, masked in-person in a park, and/or online—dates to be worked out with those who sign up here!
These will be a fun and rejuvenating way to nourish our bodies for self-care and community connection, with our earth, and each other.
PHOTOS WANTED
Did you take photos at a recent 350 Seattle event, art build, or action? Are you willing to share what you captured with our community? We invite you to submit your best images to our photo library, where they’ll be saved for future use in our organization’s storytelling, including our outreach, communications, and fundraising efforts. Here are our guidelines for submitting photos to our library editors.
Thank you for helping us tell (and show) our story!
VIDEOS
350 Seattle has been rocking and rolling for almost 9 years now. Where did we come from? Where are we going? Check out the April General meeting video to find out!
It will be on the 350 Seattle YouTube page soon, along with awesome and growing content including DIY Art how-to videos, recordings of past general meetings, webinars, and trainings.
GET INVOLVED!
Do you care about climate justice? Are you looking for a way to volunteer, and hang out with some awesome folks in the process? Come join our 350 Seattle New Volunteer Orientation Training!
New Volunteer Orientation Training
Monday, April 18th, 6:00–7:00pm
Online, register here.
Want more general information about 350 Seattle? Then check out this handy new volunteer welcome guide.
Here are some really great ways to start on that path of engagement! Check out our updated Volunteer Opportunities List. Opportunities range from low commitment to high, 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? Schedule a time to chat with Shemona either by phone or video chat.
No time? Well, never fear—you can support the work we do at 350 Seattle by becoming a monthly donor! Sign up here!
That’s it friends—this Earth Day, don’t forget: there is no Planet B.
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350 Seattle
5031 University Way NE
Seattle, WA 98105
United States