Rural communities are often dismissed as politically intractable or socially conservative, yet on the ground, a different story is unfolding. In Eastern Oregon and Southwest Washington, powerful, multiracial, multilingual organizing is reshaping what environmental health & justice looks like and not through top-down policy change, but grassroots organizing.

Join us for a funder briefing spotlighting the organizing models of Oregon Rural Action (ORA) and Firelands Workers United/Trabajadores Unidos. These frontline organizations are confronting worker- and environmental-health including the impacts of industrial farming, unhealthy housing, and polluted drinking water through deep-rooted, community-led strategies. Both groups are turning the tide by training immigrant and working-class leaders as organizers, building shared analysis across divides, languages, and cultures, and driving state-level change in regions often written off as unwinnable by national strategies.

This session will explore what it takes to find common ground to build durable, community-rooted movements in red counties of blue states—and what long-haul investment funders must make to support transformative, place-based power.

Speakers

• Kristin Anderson Ostrom, Executive Director & Zaira Sanchez, Director of Community Organizing, Oregon Rural Action

• Patty Flores, Organizer, & Siobhan Ring, Director of Development, Firelands Workers United/Trabajadores Unidos

• Moderated by Kalila Booker-Cassano, Director of Programs, HEFN & Lindsay Ryder, Director, Integrated Rural Strategies Group at Neighborhood Funders Group