It has been almost three weeks since our lives fundamentally changed. 350PDX has changed too, and we’ve tried to quickly adapt to this moment. Here’s our plan.
- Look after the community
The health and economic wellbeing of our volunteers, our supporters, and the wider Portland community is our number one priority. To combat the fear, uncertainty, and hardship that many are going through, we’ve been creating and sharing COVID-19 resources, mutual aid efforts, facilitating community organizing, and checking in with our volunteers and supporters. We’ve also jumped into new coalitions working on developing and passing policies like a rent / evictions / mortgage / sweeps moratorium, as we can’t have climate justice without economic and social justice (read more about the Just Transition here).
- Seize the moment
In moments of crisis, progressive policies can take an evolutionary leap forward. Ideas that were dismissed as too radical just a week ago are starting to seem like the only reasonable path to get out of this crisis and prevent future ones. An economic crisis with unprecedented unemployment is what sparked the original New Deal. Now a Green New Deal to create millions of clean energy jobs may be our best route back to economic stability, paired with other policies like Medicare For All, and a People’s Bailout to help people get through this pandemic. For 350PDX, that looks like building new coalitions and creating climate solutions that are also pandemic solutions. So we’re seizing this moment, because if we don’t, then corporations and rightwing politicians will.
We’re also seizing this online moment, by making our actions more accessible online (see our new actions page), and pivoting Earth Day to be a massive three days of digital actions (more on that very soon!).
- Prepare for the future
When the lockdowns end and in-person actions and events are allowed again, we will be ready. We are using this time to do the things that we are often too busy to do – deep strategic planning; creating and running trainings for ourselves and volunteers; growing our digital organizing capacity.
We wanted to keep you all in the loop about what we’re thinking. These plans will surely change as the situation changes, but we will try our best to be doing the most compassionate and strategic job we can.
Here’s your 350PDX weekly update. |
