Climate Justice Union Fundraiser 2023

Help grow a broad, diverse and powerful movement for climate justice!

“I can still feel the buzz in the air. The chants ringing in my ears: 'No more coal, gas or oil… KEEP YOUR CARBON IN THE SOIL!' . Tens of thousands of voices, young and old alike, echoing out across closed roads. It felt like anything was possible.” - Luke, Secretary of CJU & Lead Marshall at Boorloo Climate Strike Sep 2019.

It was into this momentum we launched Climate Justice Union. 

Decision makers at every level had just received a real wake-up call. Climate emergency declarations started happening. Net-zero plans and increased ambition hit the mainstream.

But even as droughts, floods, fires, and heatwaves rage, decision makers still are not acting fast enough...

We each have a memory when we hear those words. Maybe it's sweat building up on every part of your body on the sixth 40C+ day in a row. Maybe it's the endless dry; the caking and cracking of soil in places that ought to be damp. Or maybe for you it was trying to stay dry during seemingly endless rain and floods.

What ever your experience, it's clear we need to stabilise our climate before things get out of our control.

As decision makers delay and dance around the problem, ordinary people are too often finding themselves left with nothing but the shirt on their back. 

Only a big, diverse, committed movement of collectively organised people can turn this around now. That's where you come in!

We need your help to keep growing this big diverse movement for climate justice!

Climate Justice Union members - there are about 400 of us now - are involved in nearly every part of the climate movement in Western Australia.

Members of CJU have spent many years and endless hours building relationships, skills, and resources for the local climate movement.

We work hard at making sure climate is a core issue right across civil society; bringing in, training and collaborating with all sorts of people. Young people, Aboriginal Elders and community leaders, farmers, health workers, religious community members, people with disabilities, trade unionists, environmentalists and so many more. 

Members are involved in everything from grassroots campaigning, to decision making positions in business or government, to trade unions, not-for-profit organisations, political parties, schools, universities and so much more.

Which means we are well positioned to pull off big coalition building work.

• When the Health Department didn’t mention climate in forward planning documents for the “Sustainable Health Review”; CJU members were there, pressuring and supporting Government to conduct and release the Climate & Health WA Inquiry. In fact CJU members continue to play a key role in the climate and health space, including organising and facilitating the WA State Government backed Climate and Health Community of Practice.
  
  
• When young climate organisers and school strikers needed the kind of support, training, mentorship, and resources necessary to organise mass mobilisations; CJU members were there. We knew where to get what they needed. We had the contacts, the relationships, the prior experience, the know-how and the willingness to help.
  
  
• When Beyond Zero Emissions were starting a project aimed at accelerating the transition to 100% renewables in Western Australia; we were their best contact. We knew who to approach and were able to build the relationships necessary to make sure "Collie at the Crossroads" was a project which made a difference. More on that below.
  

There are too many pieces of work to mention them all here, so we will share some stories at the bottom of this fundraiser to demonstrate how our particular brand of long-term movement building works.

But first, let's hear from some members and supporters first hand!

Kassel - Founding member of CJU, former coordinator of 350 Perth and our most consistent yearly donor: he gives $10000 per year!!

Kylie - A long term community organiser and CJU member. Kylie is undertaking a PhD research project with CJU as a partner, including a focus on collective care and how we can take care of each other and country (Boodja) in ways that will sustain us, be nourishing, regenerative and enable all living things to thrive.

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We need to raise approximately $184,258 in order to maintain and grow CJU throughout 2023.

Since launching in 2019 our member base and income from memberships has grown year on year, and we expect to bring in at least $59,000 from membership this year. While this excellent growth puts us on the path to eventual self-sustainability, it is insufficient to cover our expenses in the short term.

So what will your contributions be spent on?? 

Below is an outline of our planned budget for 2023.

• Staff Member - Senior Organiser (0.6FTE) - $74,100
• Staff Member - Organiser (0.8FTE) - $76,440
• Staff Member - Bookkeeper - $4050
• Branding and merchandise for members - $15,000 
• Campaigning costs - $15,000
• Accounting, admin and insurance costs - $14,023
• Comms and content creation - $11,300
• Events & training opportunities for members - $8000
• Research & partnership related costs - $6000
• Aboriginal lived experience participation support and Elder fees - $6000
• Other lived experience participation support and fees - $3000
• Mental health support for staff and members - $3000
• Other costs - $7307

Total core operational budget = $243,220

Your contributions will fund 75.75% of our core operational budget for 2023.

Stretch target and what it could add to our plans

Our ultimate stretch target is $315,117. 

Extra funding from this stretch goal could enable the following: 

• $72,244 toward establishing a comms team, including a comms officer 
• $31,616 toward employing a junior organiser 
• $10,000 toward additional campaigning activities and events
• $8,000 towards advertising and sponsorship of community groups
• $5,000 additional funding to resource Aboriginal Elders and people with lived experience to participate in activities, events and decision making processes

More stories and quotes from our work! 

We will keep adding stories and quotes to the bottom of this fundraiser as it goes on, but to started with, here's a couple of little stories and quotes from our work to date.

A Just Transition for Collie

Climate Justice Union has officially been working with partners in Collie since our launch in 2019; although it’s worth acknowledging that some CJU members have been involved in the community for much longer.

There are two pieces of work in Collie that we wish to highlight for you.

But before we do that, it's important to acknowledge the many years of work to get to this point, the vast majority of which was before our involvement; and credit for which belongs’ to the excellent people of Collie, the coal workers themselves and their Trade Unions.

Collie at the Crossroads (2019)

“This transition is a bit like a bus. We’re all headed to the same destination…  So we need to make sure everybody gets onboard and nobody is left behind.”

Those were the words of a Collie coal worker which hung thick in the air at the Collie Coal Workers Club. We there for the launch of the “Collie at the Crossroads” report with Beyond Zero Emissions and a host of local partners. 

Aboriginal elders and community members, coal workers and Union representatives, community non-profit representatives, councillors, state government representatives and climate justice activists had gathered together, to hear about one vision for a fair, just and sustainable future for workers and community members in the town of Collie.

It was a powerful moment, and a clear turning point in the transition toward achieving 100% renewables here in Western Australia.

And we're still working in Collie today.

Recently, we've been collaborating with our Collie community partners and a research team from Edith Cowan University, to bring together community members to share and understand the needs, concerns and hopes for the transition.

Connecting The Dots - Disability and Climate Change

The intention of this project is to develop an advocacy agenda that prioritises Disability Rights in climate action, and supports people and organisations to incorporate these priorities in to their existing work.

^ Image credit: Sarah Davies

"I found our Connecting the Dots meetings to be so nourishing in that there was a level of inclusivity already established because of CJUs’ understanding of inclusivity in general, the mechanisms of colonialism, of how power functions, the way structural ableism (and the other isms) work.

I’ve done some more work with CJU over the last few months, and that understanding really does permeate every part of CJU’s organisational and interpersonal practice - which was a deliberate effort on their part." - Sarah, Connecting The Dots Steering Committee Member and proud member of CJU. 

Climate and health

Heallth workers have a really powerful voice to prosecute the need for fair and just climate action in Western Australia.  

CJU members are working to ensure the climate and health movement is connected and engaging across silos in their shared advocacy work.  

^ Image credit: Sarah Davies