Handful of Salt
Volume XLVIX, Volume 4 – Winter 2025
Included in this issue:
Member to Member Matching Challenge
Connecting for Community
Welcome Gian!
50 Years of Community Power
PJALS by the Numbers
Updates from YALP!
Director’s Reflection
Honoring Our Peacekeepers
Member to Member Matching Challenge
by Shar Lichty, Development Director
PJALS Member to Member Matching Challenge
Thanks to generous and committed PJALS members, staff, and Steering Committee, all gifts by December 31 will be matched. The amount of our matching fund is continuing to grow and will be announced on December 10th.
Members like you, have sustained our PJALS community for 50 years! Together, we have continued to grow and support our long-term organizing to expose and transform systems of hate, violence, exclusion and oppression to build a just and nonviolent world and create a culture of love and belonging. With our member-to-member matching challenge, you can make sure that momentum continues into the next 50 years!
In our Peace & Justice Action League community we know everyday people can accomplish extraordinary things together. We are powered by our mission: to build a just and nonviolent world. That means exposing and transforming systems of violence and oppression, including racism, patriarchy, and militarism. That means using an intersectional racial equity analysis and commitment. That means altering the relations of power so that people impacted by decisions are in the driver’s seat to make those decisions.
That means continuing to build and nourish a cross-race, cross-class movement both within our PJALS community and beyond to face the challenges ahead. That means defunding the oligarchy and standing shoulder to shoulder in community to fight fascism. That means we can’t stop, and we won’t stop!
Gifts from members like you mean we’ll go together into the new year with the fuel for long-term work! Will you donate today to help meet our member-to-member matching challenge?
LEARN MORE
Connecting for Community:
End-of-Year Member Gathering
by Shantell Jackson, Community Organizer
Let’s end the year in community! Join us for our end-of-year gathering where we’ll reflect, celebrate, and cast visions for justice.
Our Fall 2025 YALP Cohort will share what they’ve learned, how they’ve grown, and their hopes for just futures. Enjoy food, connection,and participate in our Constellation of Dreams activity and help shape our collective north star for the work ahead.
– Thursday, December 4, 2025
– 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM PT
– Location shared upon registration
REGISTER NOW
Welcome Gian!
by Gian Mitchell, Regional Organizer
Hello PJALS community,
My name is Gian Mitchell, and I’m honored to introduce myself as the new Regional Organizer with PJALS!
Some of you I’ve had the joy of meeting through our shared work in community, whether at a peacekeeping shift, a BOLD session, or a member gathering. For those I haven’t yet met, I wanted to share a little about who I am and how I came to call PJALS my activist home.
I grew up in Spokane Valley and, aside from two years in Seattle working with the Housing Alliance, I’ve lived my whole life in Spokane County. I graduated from Whitworth University with a B.A. in Peace Studies, and my early work included supporting clients at a local law firm applying for Social Security Disability benefits. I later joined the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance as a Community Organizing Fellow, which sparked two years of statewide organizing for housing justice across multiple roles. Most recently, I served as Reentry Program Coordinator with the Washington State Department of Commerce, where I managed grants to nonprofits providing reentry services to people returning from incarceration.
My journey with PJALS began in 2017, when I signed up for the Young Activist Leaders Program (YALP) as a college sophomore looking for a way to connect what I was learning in the classroom to real work for justice. Since then, my involvement with PJALS has deepened over the years through SURJ, BOLD, Peacekeeping, an internship, and most recently through my role on the Steering Committee.
Now, I’m deeply grateful to be joining the PJALS staff full time. As Regional Organizer, I’ll be working alongside members and partners across Spokane County, especially outside the city, to build community power and strengthen our collective resistance to white Christian nationalism and other systems of oppression.
PJALS has long been my place for learning, action, and belonging. I’m so excited to continue this work together for peace, racial equity, and human rights. Thank you for welcoming me into this next chapter!
Celebrating 50 Years of Community Power
by Trévis Ray, Digital Organizer
Our 50th Anniversary Benefit Luncheon was an unforgettable celebration of the power of community. With a packed house and an atmosphere full of energy, we gathered to honor five decades of organizing for peace, justice, and human rights.
Our speakers moved the room with stories of courage, vision, and collective action—reminding us how far we’ve come and how much potential we hold together. Guests were fully engaged, leaning in, reflecting, and cheering each other on.
Our community’s generosity was on full display. Thanks to the many supporters who filled out donation cards and gave so wholeheartedly, we reached—and surpassed—our fundraising goal. Your commitment strengthens our work as we step into the next chapter of building a more just and peaceful future.
Thank you for making this milestone moment possible.
PJALS by the Numbers
by PJALS Staff
LOOK WHO SHOWED UP!
- 388 community members registered for Talk About It Tuesday, showing up to learn, share, and take action together.
- 474 people joined us for Connecting for Community events**,** building relationships and strengthening our collective power.
- 129 individual Peacekeepers stepped up between Jan and Nov—and together completed nearly 300 peacekeeping shifts to help keep our community safe, connected, and cared for.
YOUNG ACTIVIST LEADERS PROGRAM
- 60 young leaders graduated from our Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 YALP cohorts, leaving the program ready to organize, lead, and make change. With an all new group set to graduate Winter 2025.
LEARNING IN ACTION
- 71 learning opportunities created space for skills-building, political education, and community transformation.
PJALS SUPPORTERS
- 451 donors—including 100 monthly sustainers—powered our work for justice, healing, and liberation.
- And this year, we welcomed 195 new members into the PJALS community, growing our base and our collective strength.
Updates From YALP!
by YALP Staff
For this session of YALP, we gave a ‘tasting’ presentation at Gonzaga for their Civic Leadership Series. In total, 60 people registered, and 40 attended our first session.
In collaboration with Together Spokane, YALP participants phone-banked and canvassed to encourage people to vote Yes for Parks and Schools for November 4th. YALPers made 3700 calls, and 4 YALP organizers participated in community canvas. So far, YALP participants have learned how and why to vote, voter outreach skills and how ballots are collected and counted from a tour at the local elections office.
We invited YALP folks to the end of year celebration, allowing our young leaders to network and meet more members of PJALS and give them a next step to get more involved with PJALS and local issues.
In one of our sessions we had a panel with local leaders to give perspective on how activists can push through policy, and allow YALPers to build more community in Spokane, and graduation was on the 12th in the Saranac Commons.
We’re now in the planning phase of the 2026 spring session and are interested in incorporating more artistic elements to the curriculum, encouraging the youth to express themselves and their beliefs through new and exciting mediums.
People Power vs. Authoritarianism:
Meeting the Moment
by Liz Moore, Executive Director
We are fighting against a fascist takeover of the US government. Authoritarians around the world play from the same playbook: They will stoke fear and chaos to keep us off-balance. They will make threats to get people to obey in advance. They will weaponize fear, prejudice, and hatred of subgroups to keep us divided and apart.
It turns out authoritarians are fairly predictable. Our ability to apply lessons to organize with creativity is our best strategy to win.
We can look to recent history to predict the probability of stopping democratic backsliding: In research looking at 35 cases of democratic backsliding from 1991-2021, with no civil resistance movement, only 7.5% of cases stopped the authoritarian push. With a civil resistance movement, 51.7% of pro-democracy efforts succeeded.
There are no guarantees. And: we are each other’s best bet.
People power, also known as civil resistance, means waging struggle for political, economic, or social objectives without the use or threat of violence. It can include protest, sit-ins, strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, and constructive interventions…
Read the full refection here
Honoring Our Peacekeepers
by Gian Mitchell, Regional Organizer
One of the most important recurring events Peacekeepers supported this year is El Mercadito. Hosted by Latinos en Spokane, this monthly cultural market offers free, fresh, culturally significant food and connects neighbors with healthcare through CHAS Health Clinic. It is a space full of joy, connection, and community care. Our Peacekeepers have prioritized being present every month since we were invited in June because we believe everyone should feel welcome and safe while gathering to support one another.
This fall, a community partner nominated the PJALS Peacekeepers for Spokane Neighborhood Action Partners’ Partner Appreciation Awards in the Justice category. A long-time Peacekeeper who has volunteered with El Mercadito attended the ceremony to accept the nomination on behalf of the whole team. We are grateful to SNAP for honoring the work Peacekeepers contribute and for uplifting the importance of community-led safety.