TODAY  - December 12th - Backbone celebrates 20 years! 

Out of our scrappy beginnings of freeway bannering and constructing giant puppets, today we have evolved into an organization at the forefront of progressive change. We remain dedicated to amplifying the voices of everyday people and to empowering communities to express their needs, aspirations, and demands.

While a lot has shifted over these 20 years, one thing remains constant: we wouldn’t be here today without you - and the many ways you have collaborated with us, supported, taken action, and cheered us on. Thanks to you, Backbone Campaign is the go-to for progressive causes seeking creative tools and solutionary approaches to address today’s crises.

If you are able to help keep this work going, we invite you to make an end of year contribution, sign up for a small monthly gift by joining our "Lumbar Club", or mail in a check to PO Box 278, Vashon WA 98070.

Please read on for more from the letter we recently sent in the mail - about how this work is grounded in principles of grand strategy and how your donation makes an impact.

This December, Team Backbone celebrates 20 years of artful activism, tactical innovations and strategic, solutionary organizing! And we celebrate this with you and with profound gratitude for all the ways you’ve been central to this journey. 

Out of our scrappy beginnings of freeway bannering and constructing giant puppets, today we have evolved into an organization at the forefront of progressive change. We remain dedicated to amplifying the voices of everyday people and to empowering communities to express their needs, aspirations, and demands.

While a lot has shifted over these 20 years, one thing remains constant: we wouldn’t be here today without you - and the many ways you’ve collaborated with us, supported, taken action, and cheered us on.  Thanks to you, Backbone Campaign is the go to for progressive causes seeking creative tools and solutionary approaches to address today’s crises.

Solutionary Rail - a case study for Grand Strategy:

One of the things that makes Backbone unique is our foundation in the principles of grand strategy.  If you received our letter this summer, (BackboneCampaign.org/july23), you may remember reading about grand strategy’s emphasis on engaging in struggles on the battlefield of moral conflict, expanding alliances and diffusing the opposition by making allies of our opponents, and winning without sowing the seeds for future conflict.

Solutionary Rail is Backbone Campaign’s grand strategic proof of concept. It creates common cause by offering solutions to multiple crises - from stopping salmon extinction to mitigating the climate crisis, to labor, environmental and mobility justice by harnessing railroads as a public interest asset to provide infrastructure for a more localized, just and sustainable economy of the future.

Amidst a world of divisions and conflict, Solutionary Rail offers solutions:

• Our Rosalia to Pasco Shortline Access Corridor offers a resolution to an up until now intractable conflict. It addresses the urgent need to diversify and replace transportation services on the Lower Snake, on a timeline that works for salmon, tribes, orca. We are plotting a future in which farmers and salmon thrive and communities are reconnected. As I reach out to folks along this corridor to hear their aspirations, the Solutionary Rail proposal evolves to incorporate their needs.
  
  
• Due to our deep bonds with Environmental Justice organizers and the communities they serve, railyard electrification has become a top priority for us. Overburdened communities must no longer suffer the deadly impacts of living in proximity to rail yards. The urgent electrification of railyards offers a way to ramp up locomotive manufacturing by unionized US workers and a stepping stone to broader rail electrification and mode shift. 
  
  
• In 2015 we and Railroad Workers United (RWU) co-convened two major gatherings of climate, EJ and rail labor organizations. In 2024 we plan to co-convene a national symposium on rail in the public interest with our allies, to coalesce and organize around a shared vision for a just, decarbonized and sustainable rail system that prioritizes public interests over predatory and extractive profiteering.

Backbone Campaign’s Creative Activism:

Twenty years of creative, innovative and strategic activism makes Backbone Campaign a source for skills, support and training for emergent and veteran change agents.  Whether it be on the water, in the sky or on the streets, there is no walking away from all the assets and experience we have gathered.

As I write:

• Our Builders’ Guild is sewing the final seams on a marvelous new 20-foot inflatable Chinook King Salmon.
  
  
• Our skilled Solidarity Brigade network has deployed over a dozen light projections in nearly as many cities in the last few weeks.
  
  
• Our kayaktivism crew made me so very grateful and proud on the Snake River this fall - 14 hours of driving and hard work in the rain, but only good vibes and conviviality amongst the team.
  
  
• And Backbone HQ just helped Jewish Voice for Peace deploy a newsworthy banner, safely and effectively at Seattle’s iconic Space Needle and over morning I-90 traffic.

Your generosity allows us to provide creative tools and support, to strengthen the good work of organizers across the US and beyond. 

Your contribution means we can say “YES!” to the many requests for creative activism we get from frontline collaborators around the country.  In the coming years, it will be important to hand off much of this work. Our stretch goal of $100k by the end of the year would allow us to invest directly in that process.

A small group of long time supporters has put together a matching fund for our end of year fundraising.  All contributions made by 12/31/23 will be matched - doubled - up to $30,000!  In this way, you can double your impact and help Backbone prepare for the next year.

As I share these reflections and stories with you once again, as I pour through the photos and images of people like you with whom we’ve worked, as I ponder with Amy all that has been accomplished and all that remains to be done, I feel humbled and grateful. Slowing down enables the waves of gratitude to wash over me. It is a blessing to do this work with the camaraderie of Amy and all the Team.

Solutionary Rail, in particular, is a critical and unique kind of organizing. There are no grants for this combination of analysis, creativity, and hard work. There is no other source of support for Backbone Campaign and Solutionary Rail, except people like you.

You are all we've got. And so now, I ask you to please do what you can to keep Backbone going.
I hope you truly absorb what an important part of Team Backbone you are, have been and will continue to be.

What we do together is beyond price. It is what makes this journey sacred.  As difficult as everything is sometimes, it is our capacity to connect, to imagine and plant seeds for the future we aspire for - that will allow Love to ultimately Win.

With deepest gratitude,

Bill Moyer
Executive Director
Backbone Campaign

PS: Please mail in your tax-deductible donation to Backbone Campaign, PO Box 278, Vashon WA 98070, or donate online at BackboneCampaign.org/eoy2023. We appreciate monthly donations because they provide a foundational sense of peace. End of year contributions also provide an anchor for the months ahead. Some people donate stock or from their IRA. Please reflect on this and choose a way to support that is right for you. Thank you!