Developing Community Power to Influence, Lead, and Govern

Collaborative governance—or “co-governance”—offers a model for shifting power to ordinary people and re-building their trust in government. Co-governance models break down the boundaries between people inside and outside government, allowing community residents and elected officials to work together to design policy and share decision-making power. Cities around the world are experimenting with new forms of co-governance, from New York City’s participatory budgeting process to Paris’s adoption of a permanent Citizen Assembly. More than a one-off transaction or call for public input, successful models of co-governance empower everyday people to participate in the political process in an ongoing way. Co-governance has the potential to revitalize civic engagement, create more responsive and equitable structures for governing, and build channels for Black, brown, rural, and tribal communities to impact policy-making.

Still, co-governance models are not without challenges. The hierarchical and ineffective nature of our current governing structure is difficult to transform. Effective collaboration between communities and politicians requires building lasting relationships that overcome deep distrust in government. So far, successful models of co-governance tend to be local and community-specific—making it critical that we share stories of success and brainstorm ways to scale.

In this series, we share stories of co-governance in practice. For this interview, New America’s Hollie Russon Gilman and Lizbeth Lucero spoke with the leadership at Puget Sound Sage, a community-based organization and policy powerhouse in Seattle, to discuss how their efforts on the economy, climate, health, and leadership are building a new wave for civic participation.

Can you tell us a bit about your work at Puget Sound Sage and how you’re elevating community voice?

Debolina Banerjee: My role at Sage is to lead our Green New Deal campaign, which includes coalition building and policy advocacy. We began environmental justice work in the early 2010s with Change to Win and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters on a nationwide campaign to eliminate toxic diesel emissions from Port trucks driving through and parking in BIPOC communities. We also partnered with a local university to conduct a first-ever emissions exposure study in the communities near the Port of Seattle. This led to partnering with local community groups advocating on climate and environmental justice issues, including the BIPOC groups disproportionately impacted by climate change.

As a result of working with labor and BIPOC communities, we came up with a community-led research project in South Seattle, Our People, Our Planet, Our Power, which was released in 2016 and explores the impacts of climate change on Environmental Justice (EJ) communities. We also helped launched Initiative 1631, a ballot initiative that offered low-income communities in the state of Washington opportunities to advance climate justice by enhancing forms of clean energy. Unfortunately, it did not pass. The fossil fuel industry spent historically high amounts of money to defeat the initiative. In 2020, we released another research report Powering the Transition to explore the impacts of energy policies on our communities and organize them for future energy justice-focused campaigns.

While the national Green New Deal campaign was gaining momentum in early 2019, we created our own local framework for achieving environmental justice with local communities and environmental activists. We worked with current and former Seattle City Council members to establish a Green New Deal ordinance that set up a community oversight board to guide the city’s environmental priorities. In 2020, we helped win, with leadership from Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, a tax on big tech companies we call Jumpstart. Of the $250 million a year from that tax, 9% goes to Green New Deal investments and comes through our oversight board. This has been one of our primary strategies to bridge the divide between those inside and outside government. In addition to serving on that board, we are bringing together environmental justice leaders and community members, which we call an EJ Kitchen, to design policy and spending priorities rooted in the community and help us along the way to get those priorities passed.

In addition to advocacy from our EJ Kitchen, we are also organizing with a Black and Indigenous-led coalition called Seattle Solidarity Budget, which launched as a result of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, to fight together for BIPOC community priorities. For the last three years, we have demanded hundreds of millions of dollars be diverted from policing to restorative justice, climate justice, and investment in Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color on the frontlines of race and economic injustice.

Eric Opoku Agyemang: I'm the Leadership Program Director at Sage. My work is guided by the belief that we need to have a say in designing the policies most impacting our communities and in order to do that, we need a seat at a table. If you're not at the table, then you're on the menu. In other words, if you're not there to speak for yourself, then someone else is going to speak for you.

As an organization, we see the need to build the capacity of community leaders and have proper and fair representation on boards and commissions in order to influence policies at the local level. This is where our Community Leadership Institute comes in.

The Community Leadership Institute is a six-month leadership program designed for BIPOC emerging leaders that offers training related to core community issues including climate change, equitable development, labor, justice, and transit. We also incorporate workshops on municipal budgets, campaigns, and more. After the training component of the leadership program, our leaders are placed on boards and commissions. Thus far, we've been able to train over 100 leaders who have successfully served on more than 100 powerful boards and commissions at the county and state levels.

We actively work to ensure people of color are on the boards making key decisions impacting communities, such as where to build more green spaces, schools, roads, and infrastructure. Yet, we recognize that it’s not enough just to train leaders, we have to continue to provide support and mentorship while they are serving on boards and commissions. We also have an alumni network where folks frequently connect and build strong advocacy networks to influence policies within the community. We’ve even had leaders elected to City Council, such as Abdi Mohamed who graduated from our program two years ago and was elected in 2021.

Abdirahman Yussuf: I am the Equitable Development Organizer at Sage. Our development work was sparked over 10 years ago when we saw skyrocketing costs of land and housing really hurting our communities. In 2016, we partnered with 20 other BIPOC-led organizations to win an initiative to protect low-income communities from being displaced, resulting in a groundbreaking City program called the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI). The initiative aims to build the capacity of BIPOC-led organizations to own and control land assets, advance economic mobility, and preserve communities and culture through equitable development—a theory of change we call Community Stewardship of Land. The Seattle EDI has granted over $75 million to 25 community organizations over the last five years and now has a budget of $25 million a year. The most important thing is that decisions about how grant money is awarded are made by a community advisory committee that I sit on and is majority BIPOC-community leaders. Over the last few years, we’ve built strategies for long-term developments including creating affordable housing, small business spaces, clinics, and childcare centers. Sage is now fighting to win a similar initiative at the county level to support organizations outside of Seattle.

As another part of our work, we helped form the Graham Street Community Action Team to envision the future of a neighborhood about to get a new light rail station and start building the capacity and infrastructure needed to make this vision a reality. This team consists of seven organizations including religious and refugee-focused organizations. A piece on the Medium covered some of our work around the new light rail station, which we championed to prevent community displacement.

As a previous fellow in the Community Leadership Institute, I developed the knowledge, skills, and voice I have now. The Community Leadership Institute is building a pipeline of emerging leaders and helping to build on strategies and tactics to move the agenda forward.

Aretha Basu: I am the recently hired Political Director at Sage. I previously worked as a legislative aide in Seattle where I learned a lot of the inside knowledge that I'm hoping to leverage coming into the work at Sage.

We are currently working with a cohort of BIPOC first-time candidates. We know running for office is a very daunting and often grueling process. Many of the candidates we’re working worked with are going through some of the hardest experiences that they will go through in their elected careers. We provide emotional support, peer-to-peer mentorship, and open dialogues with bi-weekly cohort meetings. This year, our cohort members are women of color, predominantly Black women, which has been amazing. We are providing a space for our group to vent and be themselves, at the same time, it can be challenging to hear some of the experiences they face on a daily basis.

We also have a program called the Local Elected Leadership Institute, which we're hoping to revamp. This program is designed to help elected officials in their first few years in office. We know and understand getting elected is only half the fight. We are able to bring progressive officials from around the state together to discuss a shared agenda to help build power for our local public leaders.

Some of our more senior elected officials have also provided great mentorship to those with less experience. We’ve also created an endorsement process through the political leadership committee. The committee conducts interviews, and then they vote to endorse particular leaders. In this last endorsement round, we’ve endorsed 19 candidates from across the state running in Clark & King Counties, including county commissioners, city council members, and some judicial races. We are truly excited about our endorsed candidates.

Is this model replicable in other communities, such as in more rural communities in Seattle?

Fernando Mejia Ledesma: Our model is replicable. We're beginning our strategic planning process for the next five years and are particularly thinking about how we can scale our approach and expand the organization.

A lot of our work has been grounded in the southern metropolitan area of Seattle. But now we're expanding into more rural, rural-adjacent cities such as Vancouver in Southwest Washington. As Aretha mentioned, we launched a cohort that is bringing a lot of everyday community members together who might be impacted by different issues whether it's immigration or housing policy. We are also partnering with the Southwest Washington Equity Coalition, which is comprised of community stakeholders, city council members, local foundation leaders, business leaders, and others, to advance a progressive vision for rural communities.

Not only are we strategizing and expanding our work, but people are actively reaching out to us because they see the value of replicating our model in their communities. One of the things that we have collectively learned is the power dynamics that can arise from stepping into communities as outsiders. The challenges we are aiming to address have to be solved by working collaboratively with communities to find bold, practical solutions. We also recognize that the community dynamics in Seattle are very different from other places, such as Vancouver or central Washington.

We're working to change the face of government by changing who gets to make policy decisions and transforming how governments operate. We want our governments to have risk-takers, we want them to be bold, to work on equitable development, to work on the Green New Deal, and to be drivers of change. We're changing the face of democracy to make it more democratic.

How has the faith community played a role in community engagement?

Abdirahman Yussuf: Through our Graham Street campaign work, the organizations that we work with are mostly Muslim organizations. We reach out to mosques, temples, and church leaders. Everyone has been really welcoming and committed to working with us. We’ve had listening sessions in churches and mosques. They are not just places of worship, they’re community centers where a lot of folks gather. I always tell folks a good place to start reaching out to religious groups is simply by having conservations and going to them in their communities.

In a sentence, what is a lesson or takeaway from your work at Sage?

Eric: We may have our differences, but we have to work together and organize around the issues we care about and allow people, most impacted, to decide, implement, and develop policies they’d want to see change.

Debolina: Movements are not successful because of one leader or organization. It’s successful because there are multiple organizations and community members leading together.

Aretha: Government and people need each other. There is no way that a progressive elected official is going to be successful unless there is strong community support and community organizing can’t be successful with government support.

Abdirahman: We need to prioritize the pipeline of leaders that will help our communities over the long term and build a strong, healthy ecosystem of community change-makers

Fernando: In order to make the change that we want to see in our society, we have to build power. Power is not about dominance. The essence behind the power is one of liberation. In other words, we use that power as a vehicle to achieve justice for our communities.

We would like to thank Lindsay Zafir, Mark Schmitt, Maresa Strano, Jessica Tang, and Grace Levin for their incredibly helpful comments and editing support. This would not have been possible without them.