Handful of Salt
Volume XLVIX, Volume 3 – Fall 2025
Included in this issue:
50th Anniversary Benefit Luncheon
Young Activist Leaders Program 2025
Connecting for Community
Protesting 101
Honoring Our Peacekeepers
Talk About it Tuesday
Nonviolence In Action
Director’s Reflection
Still We Rise: 50 Years of Resistance & Resilience
by Shar Lichty, Development Director
We are excited to announce registration is open for our 50th Anniversary Benefit Luncheon on Wednesday, October 15th – exactly 50 years since our doors first opened on Oct 15, 1975. Our theme this year is, Still We Rise: 50 Years of Resistance & Resilience. Our Annual Benefit is our largest fundraiser of the year, where we increase the capacity of friends and funds to sustain our work. There is no cost to attend – guests will have the opportunity to donate to PJALS.
– 50th Anniversary Benefit Luncheon
– Wednesday, October 15th
– 12-1pm (doors open at 11:30am)
For more information or to register
Young Activist Leaders Program 2025
by YALP Staff
We will soon be recruiting for the 2025 YALP Cohort! The Young Activist Leaders Program (YALP) is a paid internship program of PJALS that supports young people in making a difference for social justice causes they care about and helps them connect to the greater Spokane community. The upcoming session will be focused on voter outreach and mobilization, as well as leadership development. YALP is for young people ages 15-22 who are passionate about social justice. This is an 8-10 week paid internship. Find out more about the application process and important dates on our website. You can also reach out to [email protected].
PJALS is excited to welcome our two new Jr. Youth Organizers Wyktoria Taschler & Fenrir Close! We are looking forward to learning, youth activation and building community with you!
by Shantell Jackson, Community Organizer
Join us for an evening of connection, reflection, and shared purpose as we begin our fall Connecting for Community series with a spotlight on the Salish School of Spokane.
The Salish School is launching a capital campaign to build a new school and Cultural Recreation & Community Center along the Spokane River. This effort will create a lasting space for Salish language revitalization, cultural education, and community connection.
During this gathering, you’ll hear directly from the Salish School team about their vision and the role this new campus will play in:
- Expanding access to Salish language education
- Creating space for cultural celebration and community wellness
- Supporting children, families, and elders in learning and leading together
“We are building a home for cultural renewal, language immersion, and healing.”
Every contribution supports a future where Salish language and culture thrive—where young people grow up speaking their ancestral language, and where community continues to gather in strength and tradition.
All are welcome. Come for the conversation, stay for the community.
📅 Thursday, September 18, 2025
⏰ 5:00–7:00 PM
📍Location will be provided upon registration:
by Liz Moore, Executive Director
Mass protest is critical to show widespread resistance to and rejection of the Trump regime, eroding support and whatever legitimacy it may claim, pressuring “softliners” to limit or withdraw their support, and weakening key pillars like the business community.
More than 250 people have now completed this training to learn how to be as effective and safe as possible while showing up in strength. In just two hours, the workshop covers why and how protest can be effective, knowing your rights, safety tips and risk assessment, roles at protests, and more. Indivisible Spokane reached out to ask us to create and offer the training, and the response from participants has been overwhelmingly positive.
Participants included people who had never been to a protest before as well as many engaged activists. Several people had questions stemming from ICE violence and law enforcement escalation on June 11 at the protest at the ICE office. Others shared tips for keeping data private and communicating while leaving cell phones at home. Together we enjoyed the National Lawyer’s Guild advice for dealing with law enforcement: “Shut the %$^@ up!”
We’ve held this training in the summer and fall and we’ll continue offering it regularly going forward. As we face this fascist administration, it’s essential we know our rights and raise our voices together.
Peace in Action: Honoring our Peacekeepers
by PJALS Staff
The team here at PJALS wants to acknowledge the incredible work our Peacekeepers have been doing to assist in keeping Spokane safe. Our Peacekeeper team has had an incredibly busy summer, working upwards of 15 events since the end of June, including two Pride events! We are so grateful for our volunteers who have committed so much of their valuable time and energy to invest in giving back to our community in this way. We are moving into the fall so excited about the future of the Peacekeepers. Be sure to keep an eye out for more training opportunities and ways to get involved with this aspect of PJALS’ work going forward.
by Shantell Jackson, Community Organizer
This year’s workshop series has tackled urgent issues, from fascism’s roots and modern Trumpism, to tools for building cross-race, cross-class solidarity, to the links between militarism and the immigration system.
Each session has grounded participants with strategies for action and connection.
Coming Up!
📅 September
⏰ 5:30-7PM
📍Stay Tuned for Registration
We’ll hear from D.C. organizers resisting attacks on Black men and unhoused communities. Later this fall, we’ll dive into the Spokane’s Local Union Council within the national labor movement.
Check out our website for past recordings, stay tuned for upcoming dates—and join us via Zoom as we continue learning, reflecting, and organizing for justice together.
Peacekeeping & De-Escalation Skills for Protests & Events
by Liz Moore, Executive Director
Coming Up!
📅 Saturday, September 27
⏰ 9AM – 1PM
In this Peacekeeper Training, you can learn principles and guidelines of nonviolence in action. We’ll cover key techniques to defuse and de-escalate potentially volatile situations and plan for safety at protests and events, including dealing with potential ICE or police presence. And, you’ll learn how we organize our volunteer team of PJALS Peacekeepers. Then we’ll put those skills into action as we practice together!
After successfully completing the training, volunteers are eligible to join our Peacekeeper Team if they choose. These skills are important in our everyday lives too!
We Will Not Give Up The Fight!
by Liz Moore, Executive Director
We are seven months into the wannabe-tyrant Trump regime. Each day brings news that inspires rage, grief, and fear as billionaires line their pockets while weaponizing racism, targeting immigrants and trans people, stripping healthcare, pouring money into the military and Israel’s assault on Gaza, and massively expanding ICE’s deportation machine.
But the die is not cast. As Gandalf said:
“Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.”
In Civil Resistance: What You Need to Know, Erica Chenoweth shows that nonviolent movements succeed twice as often as violent ones, especially when they share these four traits:
- Mass Participation: Campaigns reaching just 3.5% active involvement almost always win.
- Shifting Loyalties: Regimes rely on pillars of power like police, military, business, religion, and media—many of which are already contested.
- Diverse Tactics: Beyond demonstrations, movements need noncooperation, alternative institutions, art, and culture.
- Resilience Under Repression: Crackdowns can actually fuel resistance if we’re prepared, not paralyzed.
This summer our PJALS community mobilized with new and longtime partners in planned and spontaneous ways. Peacekeeper volunteers de-escalated at 20+ events. Members joined Rapid Response and Accompaniment trainings with the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network. Staff offered workshops on protesting, fascism, and the immigration-industrial complex.
The June 11th ICE protest showed our community’s readiness—people risking arrest, lawyers offering representation, neighbors bringing water and support.
As fall begins, PJALS will continue building power:
Protesting 101, Peacekeeper Training, Talk About It Tuesday, and more.
With partners, we’re pressing for police accountability in Spokane, expanding county-wide organizing, strengthening online outreach, and launching the Young Activist Leaders Program with four Youth Organizers. And yes—we’ll keep putting our bodies in motion in solidarity and protest.
As the songs go;
“We will not give up the fight, we have only started.” “Don’t let your heart be hopeless. It’s time to organize and focus.”
Rest when you need to. Take care of yourself. Invite others in. Nurture yourself with art, nature, and joy so we can keep imagining positive futures. I need you. We need each other.
See you in the streets.