The Cascadia Stack Story: 

Before we had the Global Climate Strike, Cascadia Stack was just a spark in the heart of a Gen X social entrepreneur. As the CS founder Drew (they/them) continued their education at Portland State University, the learning continued in volunteering with Citizens Climate Lobby. It is here where Drew encountered the concept of climate resilience. This experience challenged those feelings of helplessness so that the empowerment enabled Drew to recognize that they had been stuck in the negative space of anger, panic, and grief about the climate crisis which was stagnating their ability to continue advocating, marching, and having conversations about climate action without becoming cynical and checking out,

Now, Cascadia Stack is encouraging people to acknowledge those feelings and empower themselves to adapt to the changing climate. Cascadia Stack moved through 4 iterations while going through the program at PSU:

• Ground Zero Thrive Supply (a brick and mortar preparedness retail store and meeting place)
• Cascadia Climate Evolution (an online message board and social media app for folks in the climate and environmental space to connect and showcase their ideas, products, media and volunteer opportunities. A simplified version of this became a working reality for another social entrepreneur) 
• Cascadia Community Resilience (which is a mouthful) 
• Cascadia Stack

We offer the climate concerned folx Climate Resilience Circle peer support gatherings. For others, Climate Awareness & Emergency Preparedness Workshops.

Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Policy

 Environmentalism, racism, and privilege and what it means to be an
Intersectional Environmentalist 

Justice

Acknowledging

…The harms of colonial peoples and the subsequent systemic and institutional imbalances between races and ethnicities.

...The injustices perpetrated by a patriarchal society that has been multiplied by extreme capitalism is at the threshold of the values of this organization. 

Centering

…multicultural understanding and communication wherever possible.

…environmental and climate justice and a just transition from fossil fuels to cleaner energy.

Equity

Reducing

…mental health stigmas. 

Embracing

…a "do-no-harm" mindset

Acknowledging

…the systems in place that may trigger traumas.

…the way in which we mask our feelings about the current and future impacts such as fear, loss, and our need to resist.

Diversity

 Inviting

…ideas that are not mainstream, thinking outside of the box. No matter what side of the political aisle or ideology you hang your hat, we welcome you, and will hear your message and seek to understand.

Encouraging

…people to join our movement that are uncommon and divest in the mainstream paradigm.

 …learning and humility.

…supporting those that confess to still learning.

…self-actualization and emotional maturity.

…the Golden Rule.

Inclusion

Exploring

…a just transition as we help to lay the foundation of an environmentally balanced society for people of all cultures, languages, migration statuses and abilities.

Envisioning

……a movement where people who love all people are empowered to show up as their bare and human selves. We support gay marriage and LGBTQ rights, including trans-positive, queer, nonbinary, gender queer/fluid and those unsure of their gender identity. We ask for people’s pronouns and make our apologies if we forget to ask or if we make assumptions. 

Towards the ideals listed as our JEDI Values, we strive to:

We envision a living economy.
We must hold the goal of self-determination high amongst our values as we organize ourselves to be bold, visionary, and oppositional to systems that extract resources and exploit the work of individuals.

We believe in the Principles of Environmental Justice, to lay the foundation for the next era of the changing climate, we must envision what can be possible:

• Becoming less dependent on the food supply chain in ways such as:  replacing ground transport jobs with a localize system of food growing.
• Relying less on products from outside the northwest Cascadia region, so that our carbon footprint is reduced/
• Investing in our community’s power as we collaborate with organizations that seek to divest from corporate, extractive power (2).

(2) https://www.ejnet.org/ej/principles.html 

https://climatejusticealliance.org/jemez-principles/

“Just Transition is a principle, a process and a practice.”

It 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 and waste-free. 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.

~ Just Transition Alliance