With your help, Eastside For All will continue to build on our valuable foundational relationships and mutual successes. Together, we can make East King County the safe, strong community we all deserve.
Our History
Founded in 2019, Eastside For All is a nonprofit advocacy organization that grew out of the grassroots efforts of the Eastside Refugee and Immigrant Coalition’s (ERIC) and its nearly 20-year history.
Although the cities of Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Issaquah and Sammamish combined have more diverse populations than the city of Seattle, we have no office of immigrant and refugee affairs and no racial justice initiative. As such, we are far behind where we need to be to combat the effects of racism and xenophobia on the Eastside.
Eastside For All aims to change that. We build strong relationships with local nonprofits, immigrant community leaders and leaders of color, and key staff within local city governments and school districts to transform infrastructure and systems to promote equity.
We’re grateful to the members of ERIC, many of whom are still providing leadership in serving immigrant communities on the Eastside. We partner with them to advocate for issues impacting our immigrant and refugee neighbors.
Past accomplishments from the ERIC network included:
- Advocating for more accessible human services funding for organizations led by people of color and immigrants
- Promoting authentic community engagement in decision-making in community initiatives
- Bringing welcoming and equity best practices from other metro regions to our local elected officials with guidance on how to implement them.
- Introducing the national Welcoming Week event to the Eastside with leadership and support from Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Issaquah, and Sammamish.
- Co-sponsoring the Eastside Race and Leadership Coalition’s annual Race Summit
- Advancing intercultural competency skills for groups and organizations committed to equity.
Under Debbie Lacy's leadership, ERIC was the first East King County organization to join Welcoming America, which provided our community with a blueprint for systemic change centered on welcoming immigrants and refugees.
In September of 2016 ERIC brought Welcoming Week to East King County, coordinating events and efforts across our five Eastside cities for the annual celebration. As a result of ERIC's work with local municipalities to promote the Welcoming Framework, three more cities joined Welcoming America in less than two years. One of those cities also joined Cities for Citizenship.
In September of 2016 ERIC brought Welcoming Week to East King County, coordinating events and efforts across our five Eastside cities for the annual celebration. As a result of ERIC's work with local municipalities to promote the Welcoming Framework, three more cities joined Welcoming America in less than two years. One of those cities also joined Cities for Citizenship.
Accessibility isn’t the end goal. Belonging is.
This notion of giving voice to the voiceless – that’s, to me, very flawed. They’ve always been talking. No one’s been listening.
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
We will prevail because we have proven to the world and to ourselves that we are not ‘fringe elements’ or ‘special interest groups’ or so called ‘minorities’. Without us there is no legitimate majority. We are the mainstream.
If you give me a fish, you have fed me for a day.
If you teach me to fish, you have fed me until the river is contaminated or the shoreline seized for development.
But if you teach me to organize, then whatever the challenge, I can join together with my peers and we will fashion our own solution.
Our calling is not to cross boundaries, defy restrictions or escape compartments. It is to embrace a universe that does not admit their existence.
Power comes from below / from the hidden places where it gathers / until, discovering itself, it blazes into view, lighting the sky and reshaping the landscape / sweeping away barriers it seems would stand forever.
True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.
I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.
Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.