In December, our church held an important conversation on what pressing issues the Spokane Alliance should confront in 2025, a year of major change and political upheaval. Your concerns were conveyed to a discernment assembly on January 14, where more than 150 people met to decide the Spokane Alliance’s next community organizing efforts.

Five UUCS members attended this vibrant meeting. UUCS-Spokane Alliance delegates Barb Stuebing and Karen Dorn Steele voted with other Spokane Alliance delegates from labor, progressive churches, education organizations and other nonprofit groups to form four new research action teams. They are as follows:

Team	Task	First Meeting Date	First Meeting Time
Housing and Homelessness	Work on concrete, specific and winnable proposals.	January 30, 2025	5:30 p.m.–7:00 p.m.
Youth and Education	Build power to make concrete changes in our local education system.	February 6, 2025	5:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m.
Inclusive Economic Justice	Look at policies to create more inclusive access and stability in our local economy from the perspective of refugees, immigrants, labor and disability.	February 3, 2025	6:00 p.m.–7:30 p.m.
Early Learning Team	Dive into child care and early learning, including (but not limited to) child care cost and availability for working families, pressures on child care workers, and language access in early learning.	January 31, 2025	6:30 p.m.–8:00 p.m.

To sign up for these teams, please contact the Spokane Alliance.
Take me to the signup website.

Each research team will analyze the current landscape on their topic, conduct research on winnable solutions and report at the next delegate council on April 24, 2025.

More questions about this work? Please contact Karen Dorn Steele at steele.karend@gmail.com or Barb Stuebing at barbstuebing@gmail.com.