Organizations selected receive $15,000 a year for each of three years.
The Wind River Alliance is a community-based, Native American-led, nonprofit organization based on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, which is home to the Northern Arapahoe and Eastern Shoshone tribes. WRA works to build a grassroots movement to address environmental racism on the reservation, through community education, collective action, and leadership development. It has active leadership from members of both tribes, with broad community trust and participation in its work. Recently, both tribes decided to hold off on allowing coal bed methane development on the reservation, after WRA held extensive community meetings and education forums on the impacts of such development on the community. One of the main issues that WRA addresses is water rights. The Wind River is being de-watered as a result of non-tribal irrigation that diverts water off of the reservation. During the summer, portions of the river dry up completely, devastating not only the land and wildlife, but also the surrounding community, whose culture and economic security depend on traditional hunting, fishing, and crops. In addition, both tribes have long suffered from environmental health hazards due to polluted air and contaminated drinking water. WRA will use its Support Grant to begin community surveying and water quality testing, and also to start air quality testing near the sulfur plant. Their approach is grassroots and participatory, involving high school students and community members who will be trained to carry out the testing, while learning about environmental health issues. (2006-2008)
PCUN is a democratically organized, membership-based organization that has long been an anchor for immigrant rights organizing in our region. It is Oregon’s only union of farm, nursery and reforestation workers, and is also the state’s largest Latino organization. PCUN seeks to institutionalize better working and living conditions, to redress the power imbalance between growers and workers, and to establish respect, fairness and dignity as the bases for agricultural employment. This is a critically important time in the life of PCUN and in the history of the immigrant rights movement nationally. In response to unprecedented anti-immigrant legislation at the federal level, millions of immigrants and their allies have taken to the streets in protests across the country. PCUN will use its Support Grant to operate a low-power FM radio station. The request is extremely timely, given the historically unique moment that the immigrant-rights movement is in, and given the foundation of grassroots leadership and support that PCUN has built over the last two decades. The Prometheus radio project is planning a national conference of low-power FM (LPFM) radio advocates in Woodburn in August in support of PCUN’s campaign. Prometheus has been instrumental in the development of two other LPFM stations that the Social Justice Fund has supported – La Radio Montanesa Voz de la Gente in Laramie, Wyoming; and Thin Air Community Radio in Spokane, Washington. (2006-2008)
SYPP is a grassroots, youth-of-color-led organization working to build political power for social justice among young people in Seattle. SYPP has 600 youth members, ages 13 to 19, and is on the cutting edge of youth-led, antiracist organizing in our region. It pursues its mission and goals through popular education, leadership development, and organizing, bringing young people together to identify common issues and problems, and to create shared strategies for addressing them. They are committed to fighting oppression, and as such, incorporate anti-oppression work into their leadership development activities. SYPP is driven by, and accountable to, its youth members. Its youth leadership model moves young people up through the organization through various tiers — from general members to more active youth participants who serve as fundraising interns and potential lead youth organizers, and who undergo SYPP leadership, organizing, and anti-oppression trainings; to lead youth organizers who undergo more intensive political education and training, and who actually lead projects, facilitate meetings, lead political education workshops, etc. SYPP will launch an education campaign about the WASL this fall, and is creating curriculum on the WASL for its Project Liberation program, which develops core youth trainers to lead anti-oppression organizing workshops in schools and at SYPP’s summer Youth Organizing Institute. A Three-Year Support Grant will provide general operating funds. (2006-2008)