Now is the time for local collective action.
“What’s the point of sitting in this meeting (or making my kid brush his teeth, or getting out of bed) when the world is on fire?”
If you’ve had thoughts like this in the past few weeks, you’re not alone.
Knowing the massive stakes of inaction is part of what can make taking action so hard. Those who’ve been working in the environmental and climate justice movements for years have plenty of experience grappling with big hairy problems. On top of climate and environmental crises, we’re now faced with another grave challenge — the Trump-Musk administration’s blitz to dismantle the federal government, bury science, muzzle dissent and persecute marginalized communities, notably immigrants and trans people.
While Elon Musk and his team attack the federal government’s funding, staffing, and facilities infrastructure, the president is signing executive orders and making proclamations that are scattered, sensational and cruel. Call it a “shock & awe” campaign or “flooding the zone” — it’s a deliberate effort to fracture Americans’ focus and drive any resistance movement to resignation and despair in the administration’s early days.
This blitz has been staggering, and it’s important to acknowledge that even orders that will eventually be thrown out as unconstitutional are causing real harm and endangering people in the meantime. At the same time, we have to remember that we have collective power and the outcomes Trump asserts are far from set in stone.
For RE Sources, this offensive affirms that we’re right where we need to be. We are resolute in our belief that collective, local climate action is the most important way we can make a difference as individuals and as a community to address our most daunting challenges. Climate resilience is community resilience.
As this administration scrubs climate change research and information from its websites, and targets subjects like climate change, environmental justice, intersectionality, gender ideology, and diversity, equity and inclusion, it tells on itself. It views these words and concepts as dangerous because a deep understanding of science and history undermines their narrative that the biggest threats facing our nation are trans people, immigrants, fair hiring practices, and an imaginary domestic energy crisis. This narrative of fear, division and scarcity is essential cover for oligarchs and corporate interests hijacking the government to further enrich themselves and consolidate power.
Like most nonprofits, RE Sources and our partners spent hours in the past two weeks assessing the implications of the OMB’s federal grant funding freeze memo (followed by a legal injunction, followed by the memo’s pseudo-rescission). As a regional organization, we aren’t as reliant on direct federal funding as national and international nonprofits, though there are often knock-on effects related to state and municipal funding that will likely impact us.
Local support from grassroots donations, community foundations, and regional public agencies affords us resilience in the face of the hostile takeover of the federal government we’re witnessing. We thank you for investing in RE Sources so that we can mobilize against these attacks, while still advancing local environmental protections in arenas like the Washington state legislative session and the comprehensive plan update processes ramping up in Whatcom and Skagit Counties. Local support is more crucial now than ever before.
Together through collective regional and statewide action, we’ve already secured protections for our environment and for our public health in this year. We banned harmful open water net pens from our waters and successfully urged Washington DNR to place a pause on its mature timber sales. We’re currently mobilizing folks to advance state-level environmental protections ranging from recycling reform to better tracking of sewage overflows that pollute waters where we swim and fish. And we’re creating spaces for neighbors to clean up beaches together and for high schoolers grappling with climate anxiety to find hope through collective action. These actions may feel small in the scope of our global and national crises, but rest assured they make a difference here in our communities and they light the way for broader change.
Attacks as distraction
We at RE Sources affirm our solidarity with trans people and their families in Northwest Washington. Right now trans folks fear for their safety, their basic rights, and access to critical healthcare. These are our friends, colleagues and neighbors who just want to do their jobs, take care of their families, and help make their communities better. Attacks on trans folks are a cover for maintaining the patriarchal social order. We all deserve the right to be ourselves and make decisions about our own healthcare. Denying that freedom for trans folks will ultimately result in sacrificing healthcare, safety and privacy of all people.
People in environmental and progressive movements know the damage caused when we force the miraculous complexity of life into rigid binaries — people or nature, jobs or the environment, dystopia or utopia, male or female. Yet we’re not nearly loud enough in defending trans folks from this administration’s attacks. We need to come together on this. Get involved by supporting Whatcom Youth Pride, or by plugging in and supporting local LGBTQIA+ businesses.
We also know that immigrants in Northwest Washington are living with the fear of ICE raids at their homes, workplaces, schools, and places of worship that could result in families being torn apart. Many immigrants, particularly farmworkers, are already on the front lines of climate impacts like flooding, extreme heat or wildfire smoke. These are our neighbors and their communities make essential contributions to our region without the benefits of fair labor protections or access to government services. We must continue to work in solidarity to advance protections for workers and oppose this administration’s brazen attacks on immigrants.
Let’s be clear about why these attacks are happening. The richest one percent are scapegoating minority groups to distract from their actions.
Sustaining your activism
RE Sources’ mission is to mobilize people in Northwest Washington to build just and thriving communities and to protect the land, water and climate on which we all depend. We know these aims are inextricably linked and that a sustained, informed mobilization of everyday people is the key.
With that in mind, we offer some tips for regaining your footing and pushing forward in community:
- Set aside your grievances. Last year’s political landscape in the run-up to the election was fractured and toxic. The urge to say, “I told you so” is understandable, but it won’t do us much good now. Our communities and environment are in real danger. As this administration’s policies cut people’s medical care, their kids’ school funding, and spike costs, more people will grow disillusioned. Forgive what you can and let’s rebuild, coalesce and grow our movements.
- Log off more often. This administration wants you isolated, afraid and dissociating from reality. Social media platforms can be helpful in sharing information, but their algorithms are geared toward capturing your data, holding your attention, serving up ads, and amplifying your biases in the process. They are no replacement for in-person connection or quiet contemplation. Seek spaces of worship and reflection. Get outside.
- Find in-person gatherings. Attend volunteer events, happy hours, shows, tours, performances, monthly meetings, riding clubs, activist meetings, rallies — whatever it takes to get out of the house and face-to-face or arm-in-arm with your neighbors.
- Connect with people across ages and backgrounds. Peer groups have their place, but so do groups that expand the richness and depth of your experience. Each generation and community in this region has unique gifts and perspectives to offer. Be wary of sticking too close to your comfortable spaces in times like these.
- Reuse, restore and create. With a world of products at our fingertips, it’s tempting to try and buy our way out of stress, busy-ness and isolation. But more often than not, we’re just left with guilt about our individual impacts on the planet. Try instead to channel your energy into acts of restoration, reuse and recreation. Plant a tree, clean a beach, tend a garden, repurpose old materials into something new. Make art. These are generative, restorative acts, and they remind us of what we’re fighting to preserve in the first place.
- Protect the vulnerable. You will be called up to sacrifice your comfort to defend someone else’s safety. Do it. Be humble and curious about what others are experiencing around you as our rules, norms and laws come under attack.
- Stay grounded with sustained action. Take online actions. Call your elected officials. Write a letter to the editor. Testify at a public hearing. Contribute your unique skills and talents. Remember there’s no such thing as a perfect activist. The actions you take may feel insufficient compared to the enormity of our plight. Know that it’s worthwhile to be a small part of a solution to a massive problem. Small actions have inherent value and they contribute something positive to this world.
- Seek collective over individual action. Our society’s obsession with individualism sets us up for failure when it comes to addressing large problems. Nonprofits play into this too, despite our best intentions, when we say, “YOU alone can fix this.” That’s simply not the case for big, collective problems. You are important and your actions matter, but you’re also part of something much bigger. RE Sources is a collective of more than 12,500 Northwest Washingtonians who care about protecting our region’s land, waters, climate and communities. We can and do accomplish so much together.
These are dark times, but they need not be lonely or hopeless. Let’s regain our footing and put our energy into actions that build power from the grassroots up. We have a lot to lose — but let’s consider all we stand to gain from advancing solutions that center people and planet over profit.