New Climate Justice Organization Breach Collective Intends to Advance Progressive Nonprofit Workplace Model
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 10, 2020, Human Rights Day
Contact: team@breachcollective.org
New Climate Justice Organization Breach Collective Intends to Advance Progressive Nonprofit Workplace Model
After a successful unionization campaign, former Our Children’s Trust employees found first unionized worker-run climate justice nonprofit
Portland, OR - Seven former employees from Our Children’s Trust — the organization spearheading several high-profile climate cases — have founded Breach Collective (“Breach”), the first unionized worker-run climate justice nonprofit. Breach partners with communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis to advance justice through locally-driven campaigns rooted in the power of grassroots organizing, legal advocacy, and human stories.
Breach consists of a battle-tested climate justice advocacy team with expertise in grassroots organizing, strategic communications, and U.S. and international legal advocacy. Among other campaigns, the co-founders previously worked on the groundbreaking Juliana v. United States youth climate case.
Breach’s co-founders departed Our Children’s Trust after several of them led a successful unionization campaign late last year. Following their own successful unionization campaign this summer, a number of former employees of the Portland-based nonprofit Center for Sustainable Economy also joined the Breach team, including Breach’s newly-hired Climate and Energy Attorney Nick Caleb and Regional Organizer Elijah Cetas.
The Breach team has been deeply involved in successful campaigns to resist new coal, oil, and gas infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest and throughout the United States. In 2021, Breach Collective will build on previous successes and (1) continue strategic, effective advocacy against the fossil fuel industry’s harmful past and current actions; (2) continue to demand government climate action and climate policies under banners such as a Green New Deal and a just transition for the State of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest region; and (3) develop strategies to broaden the movement for climate and energy justice through deep cooperation with the resurging frontline labor movement.
Jay Monteverde, Co-Founder and Board President of Breach, said:
Breach Collective was born out of a deep desire to advance justice both in the world and in the workplace. We are enormously excited to continue the work of supporting frontline communities in the struggle for climate justice through an organization that is as internally democratic as possible under the non-profit model.
Consistent with its founders’ experience advocating for workplace democracy in the non-profit sector, Breach was founded in part to advance a progressive workplace culture and nonprofit workplace model in which workers exercise a high degree of control over the organization’s direction and significant autonomy over their work. Drawing inspiration from the best pro-worker structures and workplace practices in the for-profit and non-profit sectors, Breach has created a progressive nonprofit workplace model that limits hierarchy, avoids worker burn-out, and builds solidarity and power with the broader labor movement.
A.J. Mendoza, who serves as president of Communications Workers of America Local 7901, said:
Breach Collective could not be more well-named; as it is representative of both a meaningful break from what has become a soul sick nonprofit industrial complex where burnout is so endemic as to be a meme...and also... beautifully... a hope in the possibility of new synthesis. These workers, each one a story leading them to the intersection of the Labor Movement and the Climate Justice Movement, and along that way were changed for the better, and found profoundly deep commitment to each.
Breach believes that the effort to mitigate the worst impacts of the climate crisis depends on the movement’s ability to create an inclusive and intersectional culture that resembles the diversity of the communities disproportionately facing those worst impacts. In the coming months and years, Breach will put its principles into action.
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Breach Collective is a worker self-directed nonprofit organization that partners with communities on the front lines of the climate crisis to advance justice through locally-driven campaigns rooted in the power of grassroots organizing, legal advocacy, and human stories. www.breachcollective.org