We all feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of work needed on so many important fronts to change the course of our world.It’s hard to decide how to spend our precious resources of time, attention, skills, network, and funds.
We often don’t know how much change our contributions accomplish, or if the cause we chose needed more help to succeed.
That’s why I’m excited to share the news about Breathe, an organization and network that I co-founded to help build movement and momentum for a just, regenerative, thriving world. Our vision is huge but within reach, given the talents and resources in our communities.
Action Network Solution
We mobilize resources for climate resilience, environmental justice, and racial equity. Leading with engaging stories about frontline communities seeking support for their solutions, we then make it easier to respond to their calls to action in impactful ways. Our network will provide the container from which to catalyze and nourish the vital relationships that power a movement.
When you take action through Breathe’s platform, you’ll be able to:
-track and celebrate your impact
-stay up-to-date on the issues
-maintain contact with the people, communities, and organizations involved
-learn about inspiring work in the places and issue spaces you care about
-gain training and resources to organize for your solutions and projects
-swarm with other amazing humans and efforts to help stabilize our world.
Your donation today will help launch the prototype platform with all of these features and more in the first half of 2023.
San Francisco Bay Campaign
We’ve lined up an exciting strategy for the first half of 2023, amplifying the campaign to safely and comprehensively clean up the radioactive and toxic contamination left on our shores by the U.S. Navy at Hunters Point (a Superfund site) and Treasure Island. These sites have subjected lower-income communities of color to decades of toxic exposure in a long history of environmental injustice.
The city of San Francisco has red-lined, deceived, persecuted, and displaced the once predominant Black community and is now racing to hand off the land to property developers after a short-sighted, incomplete cleanup by the Navy.
Starting January 16th, MLK Jr Day, you can listen to a 3-part podcast created by an independent journalist who serves on Breathe’s board. It dives into the history of Hunters Point and interviews some of the local people who have fought for decades and won victories for racial and environmental justice.
We’re proud to announce that the first episode of Breathe’s docu-series, covering the vivid, inspiring story of the people of Hunters Point and shocking revelations from the Navy cleanup of the shipyard, will be released and screened at activation events around the SF Bay Area in early spring.
Our campaign will directly support innovative, frontline organizations, like the Hunters Point Biomonitoring Project, that have devised new ways for impacted communities to gather exposure data and organize for restoration and protection that can boost environmental justice work around the country.
Breathe co-founded and continues to develop the SF Bay Shoreline Contamination Cleanup Coalition, an expanding group of community and environmental organizations around the Bay Area dedicated to clearing toxic contaminants before rising sea levels (and resulting groundwater changes) inundate and distribute them on our shores and into homes.
Please donate today, and share!
Help Win a Major Victory, and Many More to Come
Using compelling, share-worthy content, live events, direct action, and meetings at many levels of government, Breathe and our partners are gearing up to move mountains for People’s Earth Week, 2023.
At this rally in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco to decontaminate the old shipyards and protect residents, our network will be ready to boost the voices of dedicated, insightful, frontline community members. This outreach will become a powerful momentum-builder with immediately accessible action steps and ongoing connection, communication, and engagement. We don't want to protest year after year!
After years of struggle we are seeing rare signs of progress in San Francisco’s city government. For example, the Board of Supervisors is challenging SF Mayor London Breed on this issue. We must act fast to increase public pressure on the U.S. EPA and Navy as well as state and local agencies. Once houses are built the chance to clean that land will be gone, and the Navy plans to sell all the Hunters Point Shipyard parcels for development by 2026.
We need your help, right now, to produce and promote stories that move people to act, and to launch the network that will keep them engaged. Help us make both the injustice AND the solutions happening in Hunters Point as well known as the Flint water crisis, so we can succeed with the U.S. Navy and the government of San Francisco.
Priming the Network
Next up, we’re spotlighting the fight to stop the Uranium Mill acting as an unlicensed radioactive waste dump in southern Utah, adjacent to Ute tribal land. Then we'll turn to the Black-owned farms movement, both rural and urban, in the southeastern U.S. Continuing across the country and a variety of issues, each new campaign adds mass.
We’ve been deeply fortunate to have the legendary Movement Strategy Center, an organization at the forefront of racial, gender and environmental equity, serve as our incubator and partner while we’ve been producing the content necessary to hit the ground running.
In 2023 Breathe is ready to launch our contributor program of issue specialists to keep us all informed and share calls to action. We'll continue to learn how best to increase intersectional solidarity and impact, and to serve our growing network.
Our goal for the summer of 2023 is to have raised $40,000 to launch our support network online, produce and promote content for our first campaigns, and generate major support and results for our community partners in the San Francisco Bay Area and southern Utah.
By June we will generate our first full program impact reports from these campaigns. We expect to prove that Breathe's strategy has the potential to make deep and lasting change.
Please support Breathe to nourish engaged, coordinated, intersectional movements. Donate today!
Your donation of any amount will help us share stories and generate pivotal actions in support of the positive changes we so desperately need.
Just imagine how it will feel to be part of a massive, powerful team working for a just, regenerative, thriving world for all!
