Merrill Weyerhaeuser lives in Portland, Oregon. She is a dedicated psychotherapist with her own practice, a mother of two young children, and a progressive thinker. When I called Merrill to talk with her about her involvement in The Social Justice Fund, we ambled through the social graces—how’s your day? How’s the weather? (which was reported delightfully summery) but it was while talking with Merrill about The Social Justice Fund that her voice was audibly comfortable and warm.

The Salem-Keizer Coalition for Equality began its work in 1999 when parents, students, and teachers decided that they could no longer tolerate the racial and class-based disparities in the Salem-Keizer School District in Oregon. While Black students represented just one percent of the overall student population, they experienced a 49 percent suspension rate. For Latino students, who represented 10 percent of the student population, the suspension rate was 43 percent.

A cursory glance at the Northwest and Northern Rockies might beg the question: Why invest in racial justice here? Unlike the Midwest and East Coast, the Social Justice Fund’s five-state region is not known for having large cities with substantial people of color populations. Washington, the most diverse of our five states, is 81 percent white. Idaho and Wyoming are both over 92 percent white. Yet dig a bit deeper and the racial disparities in education, employment, health, and civic participation here become apparent