Environmental Justice Kitchen

Puget Sound Sage convenes an Environmental Justice Kitchen of Seattle-based BIPOC-led organizations to inform the Green New Deal Oversight Board about community environmental and climate justice priorities and advocate with a shared voice for those priorities. In early 2024, we engaged Environmental Justice Kitchen members directly to receive community input and recommend priority environmental projects to Seattle’s Mayor and City Council. These recommendations will inform Green New Deal spending in the 2025-2026 budget. 

Through our leadership role on Seattle’s Green New Deal Oversight Board and outside pressure from Sage’s Environmental Justice Kitchen and Seattle’s Solidarity Budget Coalition, we supported the retention of fifteen items in Seattle’s 2024 Budget that reflected core community priorities, including climate resilience hubs, Building Emissions Performance Standard Policy, the Environmental Justice Fund, and support for Indigenous-led projects.   

By forming the Environmental Justice Kitchen – the first time many leaders had come together in many years – we deepened relationships with organizations so that we can stand in solidarity to build a larger movement. While “Green New Deal” isn’t a phrase that resonates with many local organizations, working together on investing public dollars in environmental justice organizing and resilience projects is a compelling reason to form a common budget agenda. Having a space where we can plan together on how to move government, how to push mainstream environmental organizations, and center issues like abolitionism and displacement, is so important to ensuring a Just Transition includes our communities. 

Through our organizing, we are connecting with Environmental Justice Kitchen organizational partners to identify their top climate and environmental priorities to bring to Seattle’s Green New Deal Oversight Board and Solidarity Budget Coalition.  

Ten organizations regularly participate in our Environmental Justice Kitchen, including the Duwamish River Community Coalition, 350 Seattle, Got Green, Rainier Beach Action Coalition, Beacon Hill Council, Interim CDA, Climate Solutions, and MLK Labor Council. Community engagement through both the Environmental Justice Kitchen and the City have enabled us to engage several hundred people from impacted communities to learn about their biggest environmental justice priorities and inform the City of Seattle’s Green New Deal spending.