Social Justice Fund Basic Grants Announced

Social Justice Fund is pleased to announce almost $200,000 in Basic Grant awards for grassroots organizations across our region working on a side variety of social justice issues. With 19 awards of $10,000 each in four states, we’re supporting groups that range from start-ups to established players. We’ve produced a strong docket with the potential to accomplish great things over the next year.

“This is what a movement looks like,” says grants program director Scot Nakagawa. “We have groups working on similar issues, but taking on different pieces of those issues while drawing people from different communities together -- and there are some excellent collaborations. Even though some of the groups are in very hostile environments, they’re positioning themselves well to create change and winning victories.”

In Montana, we’re funding two organizations: Montana People’s Action (a statewide groups that is the home base for Indian People’s Action), and Working for Economic Empowerment and Liberation (WEEL). Montana People’s Action is playing an important role in advocating for full funding and implementation of Indian Education For All along with their economic justice work. WEEL is receiving support to organize Indian women to address violence against women and economic justice issues.

The “Montana miracle” – the election of a Democratic governor and then a democratic senator – has received notice across the country, but Montana remains a difficult environment for Native Americans, who make up the majority of people of color in Montana. These two statewide organizations will be taking on deeply embedded prejudices as they fight for racial justice.

In Idaho, we’re awarding grants to United Vision for Idaho, the Idaho Women’s Network, and the Women of Color Alliance. United Vision for Idaho is a past recipient of a three-year grant for their work bringing together many different progressive voices in Idaho.

Idaho is one of the most conservative states in the country, and a hostile environment for most any progressive social change. As the most visible and influential liberal coalition in the state, United Vision for Idaho is leading the way on immigration issues in that state. Meanwhile, Idaho Women’s Network will be visiting pharmacies and emergency rooms to see if emergency contraception is truly available to Idaho women. The Women of Color Alliance (a statewide, multi-racial women’s organization) is continuing to wage their “S- word” campaign. The campaign addresses the use of a racist and sexist term (a pejorative for native women) in public place names and fighting to change the definition of the word in the Webster’s dictionary.

Oregon’s eight awards include three Portland groups and five groups outside Portland. In Portland, we’re funding Voz Workers Rights Education Project, African Women’s Coalition, and the Center for Intercultural Organizing. Outside Portland, we’re making grants to the Rural Organizing Project, Latinos Unidos Siempre, Disabled United In Direct Empowerment (DUDE), Community Alliance of Lane County, and Unete: Center for Farmworker Advocacy. Seven of the eight Oregon grantees are active in the movement for humane immigrant rights.

Oregon, like a number of states across the country, is seeing immigration quickly shift its demographics, accompanied by a rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment that the right-wing is eager to use to advance racist policies. But in Oregon, these new immigrant communities are organizing themselves quickly, in part because collaboration among groups is high in the state.

“The Center for Intercultural Organizing and the new African Women’s Coalition have been very effective, working together to improve access to human services for immigrants within the city.” reports Scot Nakagawa. “With a friendly mayor, we’re seeing the opportunity for immigrant communities to move from tokenism to real political inclusion.”

Finally, in Washington, our six basic grantees include Chaya, Comité Pro-Amnistía General y Justicia Social, the Community Coalition for Environmental Justice, Justice Works!, Refugee Justice Project (formerly RAFT), and Stonewall Youth.

Washington-based groups are heavily involved in immigration rights work, taking on different pieces of the work to address this difficult but promising issue. Comité Pro-Amnistía General y Justicia Social’s work to involve churches as potential places of sanctuary is being countered on the national level by efforts to block communities from taking just such stands in support of immigrants. Meanwhile, Stonewall Youth’s work in Olympia and surrounding communities is also combating prejudice, reaching out to public schools in and around Olympia with their members’ stories of pride and empowerment – to shift thinking about the GLBT community.

Social Justice Fund’s grantees are a varied and powerful network of groups taking on many distinct issues, but all share an important quality: a desire to involve people directly affected by injustice as a key ingredient for change. We’ll be sharing more stories of grantees over the course of this year so you can see their impacts on our communities and our region. After all, this is what a movement looks like.