Audience: African Americans

How did the alliance behind the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) move a visionary idea from concept to groundbreaking reality? In this webinar, the Climate Advocacy Lab was joined in conversation with members of the PCEF Steering Committee for an “under the hood” look at the campaign’s insights, challenges, and lessons learned –– also captured in a new, interview-based report that captures the “anatomy” of the campaign. This campaign secured a landslide ballot measure victory in Portland in November 2018, establishing a multi-million dollar municipal fund that will address climate, economic, and racial justice by providing funding for renewable energy projects, job training and apprenticeship programs, and regenerative agriculture.

Just Transition is a vision-led, unifying, and place-based set of principles, processes and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy. This means approaching production and consumption cycles holistically. The transition itself must be just and equitable, redressing past harms and creating new relationships of power for the future through reparations. If the process of transition is not just, the outcome will never be. Just Transition describes both where we are going and how we get there. 

Starting in 2014, the nation’s broadest climate coalition came together to take bold action on climate. In 2018, this coalition of labor unions, communities of color, environmental advocates, tribal nations, health professionals, faith communities, and businesses coalesced around Initiative 1631 to advance an equitable transition to clean energy and climate resilience. Momentum from Initiative 1631, a stronger legislative climate majority, and a base of mobilized partners and volunteers fed a stronger push for climate progress in the 2019 legislative session and, with momentum on their side, the coalition was able to pass multiple major climate policies with a greater focus on equity and good jobs provisions.
The first five years of building the Alliance (2014-2019), developing and running a ballot campaign, and working in multiple legislative sessions, transformed climate advocacy in Washington State in ways that provide an important example for others working to build power in the climate movement. This assessment was created with a value for an open dialogue with the coalition’s partners in the climate movement, and hope that sharing their story and lessons learned can be useful to others on similar journeys toward a healthy and equitable future.  

From September 2018 to June 2019, the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) conducted message testing to develop valuable analysis about how to most effectively mobilize environmental justice communities to increase long-term, persistent engagement on climate issues and potentially inform their programmatic work.