Month: March 2020

Dear Sage Community,

In the midst of our rapid response to COVID-19, the Puget Sound Sage team took a moment to step back and reflect on what we stand for.

During this crucial time, we are inspired by our communities’ response to care for each other and protect the health of the most vulnerable.

We also know the brunt of the economic impact of these public health measures are being borne by those with the least capacity to weather layoffs, business closures and loss of childcare. These are the folks who have been surviving in an economy rigged against them, long before COVID-19 arrived – Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC), immigrant and refugee communities, workers and low-income people, LGBTQ communities and people with disabilities.

The networks of mutual support that these communities are standing up in the face of another economic onslaught is a sign of their incredible strength. Together, they are knitting together systems of community resilience; these are the systems that will enable our communities to survive this crisis and are the systems that government and philanthropy must invest in, in order to emerge with a more regenerative, people-centered economy where our communities can thrive.

While we advocate for immediate safety nets to be put in place, we also have an eye on what comes next. In that context, Puget Sound Sage will insist on an economic recovery that shifts assets and power into the hands of Black, Brown and Indigenous communities, women, trans folks and workers. A transformative response to this pandemic will result in a transformed economy and society that benefits everyone.

In the short term we must:

• Follow the lead of BIPOC, immigrant and refugee communities, workers and low-income people, LGBTQ communities, and people with disabilities. Directly resource organizations led by and for these communities since they know how to best meet the needs of our communities. As a first step, Sage is spending time with all our community-based partners, leveraging our relationships to move funding in their direction.
• Government and funders must continue to meet immediate needs as defined by those most impacted – including changing policy, providing services, and directing financial resources. This starts with preserving medical benefits, halting evictions, preventing utility shut-offs and providing emergency income assistance.
• Prioritize the voice and rights of all workers, especially those deemed “essential” who require additional protections on the job, and workers in sectors devastated by layoffs and business closures. Seek guidance from unions, worker centers and organizations serving low-income Black, Brown and Indigenous workers, and workers with disabilities to identify priorities and solutions.

While we pivot our work to support the worst impacted communities, we invite everyone to strategize with us about the medium-term and long-term transformations we need.

This crisis has once again shown the vulnerabilities of our economy and the society that pit public health and well-being for all against individual wealth and security for the few. The unfolding economic impact of the public health response will exacerbate existing racial and economic inequalities. Individuals, businesses and corporations with power and money will have the tools for recovery and BIPOC, low-income, and people with disabilities will not.

We must start working today on policy and collective action that will lead to a true social safety net and move us towards a regenerative, people-centered economy. BIPOC, low-income, and people with disabilities must be at the center of these recovery and resiliency strategies.

The following priorities reflect the issues Puget Sound Sage has been working on for over a decade, but are by no means complete.

Working in partnership with government, community and philanthropy, we must:

• Invest in community organizing and power building. Radically transforming our economy requires broad and deep people power.
• Move land into community control and permanent affordability, in order to ensure housing is a human right, allow small businesses to thrive, and keep cultural institutions rooted in place.
• Transition to publicly-owned and accountable utilities which provide affordable, renewable energy for low-income households and ensure energy efficiency retrofits benefit all communities.
• Dramatically expand public transportation to connect our communities to work, health care, education, and each other while also reducing carbon emissions.
• Prioritize workplace democracy as central to a regenerative economy that creates resilience and prosperity for everyone.
• Resource community driven emergency preparedness and mutual-aid networks so that when other crises arise, we can respond immediately and care for our communities.
• Make large-scale new investments in public infrastructure that promote carbon emissions reduction, support good, family wage jobs, and provide a direct benefit to Black, Indigenous, people of color, low-income households, and people with disabilities.
• Approve new bold progressive revenue sources that fix Washington’s upside down tax code.
• Protect and strengthen existing policy and resources we have won – like the City of Seattle’s Equitable Development Initiative – funds that move us toward a regenerative economy, since these may appear to be the easiest to dismantle to fund emergency response.

This crisis is a moment to live our values.

It’s time to leave behind an economy that works for the few and step towards one that works for all of us. Our communities have the strength and wisdom to lead us out of this crisis. By investing in strategies of community resilience, we begin building that future.

We encourage you to join us in our mission.

In solidarity,

The Puget Sound Sage Team

Today, we celebrate nineteen Black-, Indigenous-, and people-of-color led community-based organizations.

They have gathered for the last nine months to listen and learn from each other about land stewardship – the practice of putting land and housing into community control. Puget Sound Sage had the privilege to facilitate and help lead this amazing group, the Community Real Estate Stewardship Team (CREST), through an innovative “learning circle” process, funded by King County’s Communities of Opportunity program.  

We celebrate the knowledge we gained from each other, including lessons learned from organizations who have been advancing community-led development in Seattle and throughout the U.S. 

We celebrate the deep connections people made between our communities and the sharing of our challenges and aspirations.   

We celebrate the leadership of CREST organizations who are trying new ways to create and hold community wealth through collectively owned land, housing, and infrastructure.   

We celebrate this work, especially in times of crisis. The COVID–19 pandemic threatens to set us back even more in our fights for Indigenous sovereignty, Black liberation, immigrant and refugee rights, LGBTQ rights, disability rights, and anti-displacement. This pandemic reminds us that our current economy has not been supporting the well-being of communities and individuals. Black, Indigenous people and people of color have long known that the current economic practices won’t meet our needs, which is why we’re creating alternative systems and investing in mutual-aid in the interim. Community stewardship of land is one of these alternative models that CREST is working towards.  

What is community stewardship of land?  Commonly practiced before colonization and western imperialism, community stewardship centers shared value and rights in the holding and use of land.  In the context of our current economic system, it calls for taking land out of the speculative market to be put permanently in service of community needs.  

This strategy starts by questioning the premise of our current land and housing markets. Private property laws, and the economic systems that reinforce them,A were created to establish and maintain systems of racial and economic subordination of Black and Indigenous people. In our current age, land ownership equals power, and community stewardship of land can be seen as an antidote to the legacy of the historic harms done to communities of color through colonization, chattel slavery, flat out bans on property ownership, and other systemic barriers to land ownership and self-determination. History has shown us that community stewardship of land is the only true solution to the unending displacement of our communities.  

Community stewardship of land rests on five principles. We have borrowed these principles from community organizers and movement leaders who have been in the housing justice movement over many decades (thanks to Right to the City Network and Urban Habitat, among many others, for their ideas!).   

1. Values Driven: guided by values of Inclusion and Racial Justice, Affordability, and Accountability to Community over profit.    
2. Collective Ownership and Self-Determination: Community, rather than individuals, together owns or controls land.  
3. Democratic Decision Making and Governance: Residents and the community are the primary decision makers over land and housing and work together cooperatively and democratically.    
4. Permanent or Long-Term Use:  A legally binding contract or agreement specifies the purpose and governance of maintaining the land in perpetuity.    
5. Building Community Power: Residents are trained and organized to effectively participate in aspects of their housing, broader community development, and policy that governs land and housing.  

Over the past nine months, our CREST cohort, comprised of Black-, Indigenous- and people of color-led groups in King and Pierce counties:

• Developed a shared understanding and definition of Community Stewardship of Land and why it’s important
• Deepened their understanding of current models of land use and development and explored alternative models that could lead to increased community control of land and housing 
• Further developed their vision for creating community stewardship projects; and  
• Increased their skills in community organizing, base building, accountability, successful partnerships, and conflict management.

Sage will be soon hosting the bulk of the curriculum on this website, for everyone to share! 

 In a world that too often values profit over community, the CREST cohort has been flipping the narrative. The cohort has modeled the collaboration, collective visioning, and community care that we all need, particularly in moments of crisis.  

 Congratulations to the CREST cohort! We can’t wait to see and support your vision for community stewardship of land.   

The CREST Cohort includes leaders from:  Africatown, Cham Refugees Community, Colectiva Legal del Pueblo, Debre Mihret Kidus Church, Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition,  East African Community Services, Estelita’s Library, Global to Local, Got Green, Hilltop Urban Gardens, Ingersoll Gender Center, Lake City Collective, Multicultural Community Coalition, Na’ah Illahee Fund, Rainier Beach Action Coalition, Seattle Indian Services Coalition, Skyway Solutions CDA, WA State Coalition of African Community Leaders, White Center CDA  

An introduction from our Interim Executive Director, Esther Handy

Dear Sage Supporters,

I write to introduce myself as Puget Sound Sage’s Interim Executive Director. What a moment to step into leadership.

First, a bit about how our team is responding in the COVID-19 moment:

• • Our team is now set up virtually, mastering video-conferencing technology.

• • We’ve postponed community gatherings, including the graduation of our first Community Real Estate Stewardship Training (CREST) cohort who spent the last year deepening their understanding on community control of land and development.

• • Our Community Leadership Institute continues to gather virtually, preparing for roles on public boards and commissions, recognizing that these are the leaders that we need now more than ever.

• • We are connecting with our Graham Street Community Action Team and SouthCORE partners to understand how we can best support them in meeting their communities’ immediate needs. These small community-based networks create resiliency in times of crisis and must be resourced to respond.

• • We are advocating for swift government action to preserve medical benefits, halt evictions, prevent utility shut-offs and provide emergency income assistance.

• • We’re sending our love to the incredible grocery workers, bus drivers, healthcare workers and many more who are on the front-lines of this response and recognize their unions helping to keep these workers safe while serving all of us.

During this crucial time, we are inspired by our communities’ response to care for each other and protect the health of the most vulnerable.

We also know the brunt of the economic impact of these public health measures are being borne by those with the least capacity to weather layoffs, business closures and loss of childcare. These are the folks who have been surviving in an economy rigged against them.

While we advocate for immediate safety nets to be put in place, we also have an eye on what comes next:

How will we weather a recession and insist on an economic recovery that shifts assets and power into the hands of Black, Brown and Indigenous communities, women, trans folks and workers?

It is in this context that I join the Puget Sound Sage team. Ever since I was a kid, I have known that community working in partnership with government can improve lives. I grew up in Olympia, the daughter of public servants. My mom was the second woman elected as a Superior Court Judge in our county, winning by a few hundred votes after a summer of grassroots doorbelling with four-year-old-me tagging along.

Over her thirty years of service, I watched her fight to establish a new local court focused on the experiences of families and kids, advocating for mediation systems as an alternative to the courtroom. I watched her listen to and respond to community interest, seeing that it was possible for government to respond to community needs.

Me (back, right) with Sage’s Equitable Development Policy Analyst Giulia Pasciuto (front, center) participating in Social Justice Fund’s Housing Justice Giving Project.

When I launched my own public sector career, I knew that community leadership and power was the key to making change.

I have been proud to work alongside Puget Sound Sage in that capacity – first, as staff to Seattle City Councilmember Mike O’Brien, where I collaborated with Sage on winning community campaigns for Priority Hire, $15 Minimum Wage, and the Equitable Development policy. More recently, I advocated for funding for this growing organization as the Deputy Director at Progress Alliance.

As my own analysis about how we make change deepened through these roles, racial justice continues to move to the center. Ten years of community organizing with the Coalition of Anti-Racists Whites (CARW) shaped my understanding of my role as a white woman working with other white people to undo the structural racism that pits our communities against each other to dismantle the whiteness that upholds it and instead find our place in a multi-racial movement for collective liberation. In the past two years, raising my mixed-race Indian-American daughter in the Central District has further anchored me in the fight for a just future – for her, and our family.

My role at Puget Sound Sage is as a steward leader: to clarify our strategic focus, solidify our organizational structure and prepare this women-of-color led organization for permanent leadership in 2021. It is an incredible honor to be here, working alongside some of the best organizers and policy analysts in our region.

Leadership is about achieving purpose in moments of uncertainty. I look forward to working with you, our allies and supporters, to respond to this moment and set the stage for a more just future.

Sincerely,

Esther Handy
Interim Executive Director
Puget Sound Sage