Fall 2023 Handful of Salt

Handful of Salt

Volume XLVII, Number 3 – Fall 2023

Included in this issue:

Fueling Change: The 14th Annual Peace & Justice Action Conference

PJALS is Hiring Organizing Interns!

Peace Advocacy

A New Community Organizer’s Reflection

Enacting Our Values

Community Event Calendar

Other brief updates

Fueling Change: The 14th Annual Peace & Justice Action Conference

Written by Union Carter

With immense excitement, I introduce the 14th Annual Peace & Justice Action Conference, set to take place from September 28th through the 30th. Bearing the resounding theme “Praxis: Building Beloved Community Now,” this year’s conference is aimed to push forth our collective journey toward a more just and peaceful world.

Unlike any other event in the Inland Northwest region, this conference stands as a beacon for activists, advocates, and visionaries alike, providing a space where skills are honed, perspectives are enriched, and relationships are strengthened. The essence of our mission this year is to spotlight the intersectionality of race and class and to challenge ourselves to utilize this lens of analysis in our everyday work. It’s an invitation to recognize that the concept of Beloved Community must be built and nourished by the people within our shared movement, only together will we be able to obtain the future we aspire for.

I am honored to be amongst the team that is working tirelessly to ensure that the conference reaches its full potential for both presenters and participants. The conference spans several days, starting with an insightful evening Zoom seminar on Thursday (9/28), where the focus will be on progressive approaches to addressing Anti-Semitism. Followed by a community activity on Friday (9/29) evening, planned by the PJALS Activities Committee. Then on the primary day of the conference, we will have sixteen workshops across four different tracks for attendees to choose from. This includes Organizing Education, Radical Arts & Culture, Issue Education, and Mobilization. All of these are aimed to equip the audiences with the skills and confidence to continue organizing in their community.

Let us converge with a purpose, listen with intent, and act in solidarity. I hope to see many smiling faces in a packed library come September 30th! For any questions regarding the conference, contact Union Carter ([email protected])

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PJALS is Hiring Organizing Interns!

Written by PJALS Youth Organizers

PJALS is now hiring Organizing Interns for the fall 2023 session of the Young Activist Leaders Program! Multiple six-week internships are available at $16 dollars an hour, up to three hours a week, with the option to participate through spring. This position is available for those aged 15-22. This position is perfect for those passionate about social justice, whether new to organizing or not.

For this fall session of YALP, interns will work closely with PJALS Youth Organizers to defeat ballot Measure 1, which will expand Spokane County’s carceral system at a cost of $1.7 billion to taxpayers. We also know that none of this money will go to investing in community resources, services, and programs. Organizing Interns will engage with voters via text and phone banking. They will also have the opportunity to continue participating in YALP through the spring 2024 session. The spring session will include educational workshops on the basics of social justice work. Some of the topics these workshops will cover include, but are not limited to: nonviolence and militarism, fundraising, negotiating with people in power, and identity, privilege, and oppression.

If you or someone you know is interested in this paid internship, you can learn more and apply at pjals.org/yalpfall2023. Applications are due by September 18th, 2023. We look forward to hearing from you!

(Photo: YALP Spring 2023 graduation)

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Peace Advocacy

Written by Sharon Smith

PJALS has a committee tasked with advocacy in peace initiatives.  The committee is named the Peace and Justice Action Committee (PJAC). With a connection to the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), we have a common focus to guide our interactions with our National Legislators.  This year, that ask regards the use of funds from the Military Budget, placing some of those funds into Peace Building efforts around the world.

PJAC joined with other FCNL advocacy groups from Washington State, to visit with office staff of our Senators Murray and Cantwell.  Our ask was well received.  We have been unable to reach Rep. Morris-Rogers for such conversation. No appointment has been made for her office.

This is an example of the kinds of issues that we have been advocating for:

Dear Senator Cantwell,

As we all know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If the United States invests more in building peace and preventing conflict, we can save lives, reduce human suffering, and prevent the need for costly humanitarian aid and crisis response.

With that said, we urge you to invest in peace in the Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations. Specifically, I urge you to support not less than $66 million for the Complex Crises Fund, $40 million for Reconciliation Programs, and $25 million for Atrocities Prevention in the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPs) Appropriations bill.  

I hope you will publicly support robust funding for peacebuilding programs to prevent and reduce violent conflict in the Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations.

Thank you for your efforts to prevent violence, promote peace, and save lives.

Some of our committee members have written letters to the editor of the Spokesman Review to get the attention of our legislators. In visiting with the national offices of our Senators, we have given anecdotal stories about the importance of a financial commitment to Peace Building Programs.

Our work at times seems slow and tedious. Especially when we are not allowed access to our Representative. We are committed to this new approach to conflict resolution in our International Discourse. We are grateful to have a process that is Nationally staffed and is very knowledgeable about these issues. It helps our voices resonate with consistent messaging.

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Enacting Our Values

Written by Liz Moore

How do we live out our values within our movement while we seek to transform structures, institutions, and culture outside our movement? One way PJALS answers this question is through explicitly naming our values and agreeing on how we implement them together in the day-to-day.

This is important for several reasons. Our dominant culture does not prepare us for respectful relationships and healthy organizational culture. Our work for racial equity, economic justice, human rights, and peace requires a lot of emotional intelligence. We can often experience tensions about how we go about our work and about mistakes or missteps we make as we do so. In times of tension, it’s very valuable to have shared values and expectations we can return to so that we can resolve tensions. Articulating for ourselves how we do our work is an act of culture-making. By speaking it out loud and having a conversation within our community we can call each other into these agreements, creating shared commitments together.

Photo from Peacekeeper training in May 2023

In our PJALS community, we have Community Agreements for how we communicate and work together. These agreements apply to all people in the PJALS community – staff, steering committee members, and community members. We strive to nourish an internal organizational culture reflective of these agreements and bring that same culture into any community partnerships. These Community Agreements flow from our Values and Commitment Statement and our Organizational Culture.

These Community Agreements may already be familiar to you from the Action Conference or the BOLD Academy. We’re sharing them now as a sort of “booster” for broader shared understanding across our PJALS community.

• Respect: We strive to make brave & welcoming space for all, so that we can take action together on our shared goals.
• Anti-Oppression: No oppressive statements. If oppressive behaviors or statements are made, we name, address, own, and learn.
• Support: We support each other by ‘sharing the air’ during discussions, speaking from our own experiences and perspectives, and learning from differences.
• Curiosity: We aim to be curious, challenge assumptions, and work from “sound and current data.”
• Awareness: We try to be aware of our choices and make them consciously, not reactively.
• Learning & Improving: We evaluate together so we can learn from our experiences.
• Focus: We limit distractions and sidebars in meetings or workshops to create a unified conversation.
• Clear Agreements: We make clear agreements about roles, time-frame, actions, tasks, and relationship behaviors. We also make new agreements as needed. This agreement is expanded here.

I’d love to know your thoughts about these statements and agreements! What do you think about them? What does it mean to you to live these out? Can you think of examples of when these agreements have or have not been met in PJALS space? Do you have a challenge or suggestion about these as they are written? To share your thoughts, email me at [email protected].

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Other Brief Updates

Join us on Wednesday, September 13th for the PJALS Member Gathering and Potluck!

6pm-8pm at the Finch Arboretum

Follow the Justice Not Jails campaign this fall and Vote NO on Ballot Measure 1! Learn more

Our SURJ Spokane group will be on break until January 2024 to focus on the ballot measure campaign. We encourage all SURJ participants to keep checking www.pjals.org/JusticeNotJails for ways you can get involved this fall!

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