Welcome to the Climate Justice Alliance Membership application! Please fill out the below form to apply for membership. New membership applications will be reviewed and approved twice a year by the Membership Strategic Committee and the Steering Committee. Please note that during the application consideration process, CJA prioritizes bringing base-building frontline organizations into the alliance.
What is a base-building frontline organization?
Base-buiding Frontline Groups are groups that are comprised of those currently most directly impacted by climate change. These may include EJ/CJ groups and communities group that are accountable to a significant base and have a formal and/or informal institutional framework.
Grassroots Organizing Sector has the following attributes:
- It is made up of community based organizations, their networks and alliances;
- It is rooted in, and accountable to communities of color and low income communities most directly impacted by the issues being addressed;
- It builds local power and leadership to influence the decisions that affect their communities; It is comprised of those working on environmental justice linked to broader struggles for positive social change and transformation.
Benefits of CJA Membership – As a CJA member, you:
-Influence the alliance’s work to address root causes to climate change
-Build with a diverse set of allies across the country and internationally.
-Engage in CJA national and regional programs (CJA gatherings, trainings, membership calls, etc.)
-Are eligible for stipends and resources for CJA programs (in general, priority will be given to base-building frontline grassroots groups)
-Amplify your local work nationally through CJA strategic communications, research, policy initiatives, and multi-sector relationships.
- Participate and inform the working groups of the alliance
- Have the potential to become an Our Power Community
- Attend, participate and vote at CJA National Gatherings
- Have access to research and training tools
Membership in the Climate Justice Alliance is open to organizations that meet the following criteria:
Agreement and alignment with the:
- Climate Justice Alliance Manifesto
- Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing
- CJA Just Transition Principles and
- CJA goals and strategies.
- Proven commitment to joint practice within and between organizations
- Proven commitment to support grassroots leadership
Requirements of Member Organizations
- Play an active role in the work of CJA through a standing and/or ad-hoc working group
- Participate on full membership body calls held on a monthly basis
- Reference and link the Our Power Campaign website on your organizational webpage and social media
- Pay annual dues no later than the 1st of September every year.
- Seek and build opportunities for the Alliance to grow in influence and impact other groups.
- Collectively advocate and open up opportunities to move resources to the grassroots organizing sector.
Process to Apply for Membership
Organizations fill out online membership form, indicating that they meet the membership criteria, provide information about their organization and indicate that a decision-making body of their organization has made an affirmative decision to join CJA.
The CJA membership committee will put forth recommendations to the CJA Executive Director and Steering Committee for review and approval on a quarterly basis and full membership will be informed of new members on leadership calls. New members will be fully ratified into CJA at our National Convenings. The Membership Committee will balance membership applications to ensure a sufficient majority of grassroots organizations in the membership of CJA.
Dues are determined by the organization’s annual budget. Upon becoming a CJA member, you will be responsible for paying a one time $100 joining fee. You will be responsible for contributing dues according to the following table annually no later than September 1st of every year.
1. Less than $100k Contribute yearly dues of $250
2. $100k - $499k Contribute yearly dues of $250 - $500
3. $500k - $1M Contribute yearly dues of $500 - $750
4. $1 - $2,000,000 Contribute yearly dues of $750 - $1,000
5. $2,000,000+ Contribute yearly dues of $1,000 - $1,500
Please make checks out to Movement Strategy Center with
“CJA annual membership dues” in the memo, and send to:
Climate Justice Alliance
℅ Movement Strategy Center
436 14th St, 5th floor
Oakland, CA 94612
Membership Application -- Attachments
Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) is a unique alliance of frontline community and environmental justice organizations; movement support organizations, alliances and networks at the forefront of the climate crisis. Our mission is to build local resiliency, remedy the root causes of climate change, and build a new world through a Just Transition out of the extractive energy economy. CJA provides a strategic center of gravity to coordinate and strengthen this powerful climate movement; we are developing and campaigning for non-extractive models, best practices, and policies that support a sustainable, regenerative way of working and living.
Climate Justice Alliance Goals, Strategy and Agenda
Our LONG TERM GOALS are to:
1) End the Era of the Extractive Economy
2) Implement a Just Transition to Local Living Economies
the Climate Justice Alliance seeks to shift resources from the extractive economy to the local living economies using CORE STRATEGIES of:
1) Grassroots Organizing to Build the Next Economy Now
2) Organizing to Change the Rules
3) Organizing to Move the Money
4) Organizing to Scale Down the Extractive Energy Economy
5) Organizing to Build a Movement Across Sectors and Geography
6) Organizing to Change the Story
The Climate Justice Alliance seeks a JUST TRANSITION of the following SYSTEMS to foster democracy and equity. Our goal is to create and amplify living examples of how such pathways can put people to work transforming their communities, while reducing both cost and pollution burden for present and future generations. In the process, we are identifying policy levers to scale these models up across regions and states.
Energy Democracy (Clean Community Energy)
Food Sovereignty, Water, Land
Zero Waste
Public Transportation
Efficient, Affordable, and Durable Housing
Ecosystem Restoration and Stewardship
Climate Justice Alliance Manifesto
Grassroots organizers around the world and across the United States are cultivating living visions of resilience in the rich soil of community. Urban and rural, South and North, organized acts of resistance and resilience represent the frontline struggles that are manifesting materially and culturally what we need in order to defeat the three pronged evil of ecological disruption, economic impoverishment and imperial expansion caused by resource intensive, globalized industrial production, consumption and waste...
Go to http://www.ourpowercampaign.org/resources/ to continue reading
Climate Justice Alliance Operating Principles
CJA commits to the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, created at a meeting hosted by Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice (SNEEJ) in Jemez, New Mexico in December 1996.
#1 Be Inclusive
If we hope to achieve just societies that include all people in decision-making and assure that all people have an equitable share of the wealth and the work of this world, then we must work to build that kind of inclusiveness into our own movement in order to develop alternative policies and institutions to the treaties policies under neo- liberalism.
This requires more than tokenism, it cannot be achieved without diversity at the planning table, in staffing, and in coordination. It may delay achievement of other important goals, it will require discussion, hard work, patience, and advance planning. It may involve conflict, but through this conflict, we can learn better ways of working together. It’s about building alternative institutions, movement building, and not compromising out in order to be accepted into the anti-globalization club.
#2 Emphasis on Bottom-Up Organizing
To succeed, it is important to reach out into new constituencies, and to reach within all levels of leadership and membership base of the organizations that are already involved in our networks. We must be continually building and strengthening a base which provides our credibility, our strategies, mobilizations, leadership development, and the energy for the work we must do daily.
#3 Let People Speak for Themselves
We must be sure that relevant voices of people directly affected are heard. Ways must be provided for spokespersons to represent and be responsible to the affected constituencies. It is important for organizations to clarify their roles, and who they represent, and to assure accountability within our structures.
#4 Work Together In Solidarity and Mutuality
Groups working on similar issues with compatible visions should consciously act in solidarity, mutuality and support each other’s work. In the long run, a more significant step is to incorporate the goals and values of other groups with your own work, in order to build strong relationships. For instance, in the long run, it is more important that labor unions and community economic development projects include the issue of environmental sustainability in their own strategies, rather than just lending support to the environmental organizations. So communications, strategies and resource sharing is critical, to help us see our connections and build on these.
#5 Build Just Relationships Among Ourselves
We need to treat each other with justice and respect, both on an individual and an organizational level, in this country and across borders. Defining and developing “just relationships” will be a process that won’t happen overnight. It must include clarity about decision-making, sharing strategies, and resource distribution. There are clearly many skills necessary to succeed, and we need to determine the ways for those with different skills to coordinate and be accountable to one another.
#6 Commitment to Self-Transformation
As we change societies, we must change from operating on the mode of individualism to community-centeredness. We must “walk our talk.” We must be the values that we say we’re struggling for and we must be justice, be peace, be community.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Climate Justice Alliance Organizational Structure
Governance
Full Membership Body – All CJA organizational members
Steering Committee – Currently represented by GGJ, MG, APEN, CBE, IEN, NAACP, UPROSE, Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy, and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth
Staff Members:
Executive Director – Angela Adrar
Organizer – Yuki Kidokoro
Online Organizer – Chloe Henson
CURRENT CAMPAIGNS
The Our Power Campaign (OPC) supports base-building frontline organizations and networks to build local and regional coalitions and develop models of Just Transition strategies in states, cities, tribal nations, and rural communities across the US. Please click here to review our recently approved Just Transition Principles.
Our Energy Democracy (EnDem) Platform advances the democratization of energy, so that communities rather than finance capital or energy corporations own and control the means of generation. Click to read our Platform.
Reinvest in Our Power (RiOP) is a vehicle to move capital and governance from extractive to regenerative economies, moving money into a democratically-governed cooperative of local revolving loan funds investing in Just Transition projects owned/operated by frontline communities.
Funding the Grassroots Organizing (GRO) Sector is a CJA priority. We are influencing philanthropic priorities, empowering foundations or national organizations to re-grant to smaller, grassroots groups, and building alliances to collectively demand resources for GRO groups/networks doing climate justice work. We are founding participants in the BEAI, on the Steering Committee of “ Shake the Foundations,” and participating in a number of other initiatives.
#ItTakesRoots to #GrowTheResistance for Visionary Opposition
Led by CJA and three partner organizations, #ItTakesRoots supports women of color and grassroots leaders at the forefront of an intersectional, visionary opposition movement to ensure innovative, alternative, and long-term solutions succeed while protecting and defending our land, water, air, homes, and bodies from the short-sighted, racist, misogynist, exploitative, and xenophobic policies proposed by the Trump administration. Check out the website here or click here to learn more about our actions in the first 100 Days. Click here for the final concept paper.
Working Groups and Committees
Energy Democracy Working Group
Our Power Communities (For our power community members)
Food Sovereignty Working Group
Political Education Working Group
Reinvest in Our Power Working Group
Convenings/Mobilization Planning Groups
Membership Development Committee
Climate Justice Alliance Strategy Plan
Please review the most recent version of the CJA Strategy Plan.
What is a base-building frontline organization?
Base-buiding Frontline Groups are groups that are comprised of those currently most directly impacted by climate change. These may include EJ/CJ groups and communities group that are accountable to a significant base and have a formal and/or informal institutional framework.
Grassroots Organizing Sector has the following attributes:
- It is made up of community based organizations, their networks and alliances;
- It is rooted in, and accountable to communities of color and low income communities most directly impacted by the issues being addressed;
- It builds local power and leadership to influence the decisions that affect their communities; It is comprised of those working on environmental justice linked to broader struggles for positive social change and transformation.
Benefits of CJA Membership – As a CJA member, you:
-Influence the alliance’s work to address root causes to climate change
-Build with a diverse set of allies across the country and internationally.
-Engage in CJA national and regional programs (CJA gatherings, trainings, membership calls, etc.)
-Are eligible for stipends and resources for CJA programs (in general, priority will be given to base-building frontline grassroots groups)
-Amplify your local work nationally through CJA strategic communications, research, policy initiatives, and multi-sector relationships.
- Participate and inform the working groups of the alliance
- Have the potential to become an Our Power Community
- Attend, participate and vote at CJA National Gatherings
- Have access to research and training tools
Membership in the Climate Justice Alliance is open to organizations that meet the following criteria:
Agreement and alignment with the:
- Climate Justice Alliance Manifesto
- Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing
- CJA Just Transition Principles and
- CJA goals and strategies.
- Proven commitment to joint practice within and between organizations
- Proven commitment to support grassroots leadership
Requirements of Member Organizations
- Play an active role in the work of CJA through a standing and/or ad-hoc working group
- Participate on full membership body calls held on a monthly basis
- Reference and link the Our Power Campaign website on your organizational webpage and social media
- Pay annual dues no later than the 1st of September every year.
- Seek and build opportunities for the Alliance to grow in influence and impact other groups.
- Collectively advocate and open up opportunities to move resources to the grassroots organizing sector.
Process to Apply for Membership
Organizations fill out online membership form, indicating that they meet the membership criteria, provide information about their organization and indicate that a decision-making body of their organization has made an affirmative decision to join CJA.
The CJA membership committee will put forth recommendations to the CJA Executive Director and Steering Committee for review and approval on a quarterly basis and full membership will be informed of new members on leadership calls. New members will be fully ratified into CJA at our National Convenings. The Membership Committee will balance membership applications to ensure a sufficient majority of grassroots organizations in the membership of CJA.
Dues are determined by the organization’s annual budget. Upon becoming a CJA member, you will be responsible for paying a one time $100 joining fee. You will be responsible for contributing dues according to the following table annually no later than September 1st of every year.
1. Less than $100k Contribute yearly dues of $250
2. $100k - $499k Contribute yearly dues of $250 - $500
3. $500k - $1M Contribute yearly dues of $500 - $750
4. $1 - $2,000,000 Contribute yearly dues of $750 - $1,000
5. $2,000,000+ Contribute yearly dues of $1,000 - $1,500
Please make checks out to Movement Strategy Center with
“CJA annual membership dues” in the memo, and send to:
Climate Justice Alliance
℅ Movement Strategy Center
436 14th St, 5th floor
Oakland, CA 94612
Membership Application -- Attachments
Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) is a unique alliance of frontline community and environmental justice organizations; movement support organizations, alliances and networks at the forefront of the climate crisis. Our mission is to build local resiliency, remedy the root causes of climate change, and build a new world through a Just Transition out of the extractive energy economy. CJA provides a strategic center of gravity to coordinate and strengthen this powerful climate movement; we are developing and campaigning for non-extractive models, best practices, and policies that support a sustainable, regenerative way of working and living.
Climate Justice Alliance Goals, Strategy and Agenda
Our LONG TERM GOALS are to:
1) End the Era of the Extractive Economy
2) Implement a Just Transition to Local Living Economies
the Climate Justice Alliance seeks to shift resources from the extractive economy to the local living economies using CORE STRATEGIES of:
1) Grassroots Organizing to Build the Next Economy Now
2) Organizing to Change the Rules
3) Organizing to Move the Money
4) Organizing to Scale Down the Extractive Energy Economy
5) Organizing to Build a Movement Across Sectors and Geography
6) Organizing to Change the Story
The Climate Justice Alliance seeks a JUST TRANSITION of the following SYSTEMS to foster democracy and equity. Our goal is to create and amplify living examples of how such pathways can put people to work transforming their communities, while reducing both cost and pollution burden for present and future generations. In the process, we are identifying policy levers to scale these models up across regions and states.
Energy Democracy (Clean Community Energy)
Food Sovereignty, Water, Land
Zero Waste
Public Transportation
Efficient, Affordable, and Durable Housing
Ecosystem Restoration and Stewardship
Climate Justice Alliance Manifesto
Grassroots organizers around the world and across the United States are cultivating living visions of resilience in the rich soil of community. Urban and rural, South and North, organized acts of resistance and resilience represent the frontline struggles that are manifesting materially and culturally what we need in order to defeat the three pronged evil of ecological disruption, economic impoverishment and imperial expansion caused by resource intensive, globalized industrial production, consumption and waste...
Go to http://www.ourpowercampaign.org/resources/ to continue reading
Climate Justice Alliance Operating Principles
CJA commits to the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, created at a meeting hosted by Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice (SNEEJ) in Jemez, New Mexico in December 1996.
#1 Be Inclusive
If we hope to achieve just societies that include all people in decision-making and assure that all people have an equitable share of the wealth and the work of this world, then we must work to build that kind of inclusiveness into our own movement in order to develop alternative policies and institutions to the treaties policies under neo- liberalism.
This requires more than tokenism, it cannot be achieved without diversity at the planning table, in staffing, and in coordination. It may delay achievement of other important goals, it will require discussion, hard work, patience, and advance planning. It may involve conflict, but through this conflict, we can learn better ways of working together. It’s about building alternative institutions, movement building, and not compromising out in order to be accepted into the anti-globalization club.
#2 Emphasis on Bottom-Up Organizing
To succeed, it is important to reach out into new constituencies, and to reach within all levels of leadership and membership base of the organizations that are already involved in our networks. We must be continually building and strengthening a base which provides our credibility, our strategies, mobilizations, leadership development, and the energy for the work we must do daily.
#3 Let People Speak for Themselves
We must be sure that relevant voices of people directly affected are heard. Ways must be provided for spokespersons to represent and be responsible to the affected constituencies. It is important for organizations to clarify their roles, and who they represent, and to assure accountability within our structures.
#4 Work Together In Solidarity and Mutuality
Groups working on similar issues with compatible visions should consciously act in solidarity, mutuality and support each other’s work. In the long run, a more significant step is to incorporate the goals and values of other groups with your own work, in order to build strong relationships. For instance, in the long run, it is more important that labor unions and community economic development projects include the issue of environmental sustainability in their own strategies, rather than just lending support to the environmental organizations. So communications, strategies and resource sharing is critical, to help us see our connections and build on these.
#5 Build Just Relationships Among Ourselves
We need to treat each other with justice and respect, both on an individual and an organizational level, in this country and across borders. Defining and developing “just relationships” will be a process that won’t happen overnight. It must include clarity about decision-making, sharing strategies, and resource distribution. There are clearly many skills necessary to succeed, and we need to determine the ways for those with different skills to coordinate and be accountable to one another.
#6 Commitment to Self-Transformation
As we change societies, we must change from operating on the mode of individualism to community-centeredness. We must “walk our talk.” We must be the values that we say we’re struggling for and we must be justice, be peace, be community.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Climate Justice Alliance Organizational Structure
Governance
Full Membership Body – All CJA organizational members
Steering Committee – Currently represented by GGJ, MG, APEN, CBE, IEN, NAACP, UPROSE, Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy, and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth
Staff Members:
Executive Director – Angela Adrar
Organizer – Yuki Kidokoro
Online Organizer – Chloe Henson
CURRENT CAMPAIGNS
The Our Power Campaign (OPC) supports base-building frontline organizations and networks to build local and regional coalitions and develop models of Just Transition strategies in states, cities, tribal nations, and rural communities across the US. Please click here to review our recently approved Just Transition Principles.
Our Energy Democracy (EnDem) Platform advances the democratization of energy, so that communities rather than finance capital or energy corporations own and control the means of generation. Click to read our Platform.
Reinvest in Our Power (RiOP) is a vehicle to move capital and governance from extractive to regenerative economies, moving money into a democratically-governed cooperative of local revolving loan funds investing in Just Transition projects owned/operated by frontline communities.
Funding the Grassroots Organizing (GRO) Sector is a CJA priority. We are influencing philanthropic priorities, empowering foundations or national organizations to re-grant to smaller, grassroots groups, and building alliances to collectively demand resources for GRO groups/networks doing climate justice work. We are founding participants in the BEAI, on the Steering Committee of “ Shake the Foundations,” and participating in a number of other initiatives.
#ItTakesRoots to #GrowTheResistance for Visionary Opposition
Led by CJA and three partner organizations, #ItTakesRoots supports women of color and grassroots leaders at the forefront of an intersectional, visionary opposition movement to ensure innovative, alternative, and long-term solutions succeed while protecting and defending our land, water, air, homes, and bodies from the short-sighted, racist, misogynist, exploitative, and xenophobic policies proposed by the Trump administration. Check out the website here or click here to learn more about our actions in the first 100 Days. Click here for the final concept paper.
Working Groups and Committees
Energy Democracy Working Group
Our Power Communities (For our power community members)
Food Sovereignty Working Group
Political Education Working Group
Reinvest in Our Power Working Group
Convenings/Mobilization Planning Groups
Membership Development Committee
Climate Justice Alliance Strategy Plan
Please review the most recent version of the CJA Strategy Plan.