Today, June 21, is Child Tax Credit Awareness Day, and more than 1.4 million WA kids are set to benefit! Improvements to the CTC this year will increase CTC payments, ensure families with the lowest incomes receive full amounts, and provide monthly payments of up to $250-$300/kid beginning in July. Make sure your family is signed up at childtaxcredit.gov!

Take Action!

There is still plenty of work to be done even after the legislative session has ended! We encourage you to take action on a few state and federal issues this week:

State: Extend the Eviction Moratorium Urge the governor to extend the eviction moratorium through September 30 – people are still in very difficult economic distress due to COVID-19 and need additional time to stabilize their situation. Some cities have already begun to extend the moratorium – sign FAN’s letter here to make sure everyone in our state has time to recover.

Federal: HR 40 Reparations Contact your House members to thank them for co-sponsoring HR 40 to establish a study commission on the effects of slavery and paying reparations to African Americans. The four Representatives who have not signed are: Newhouse (District 4), Schrier (District 8), Herrera-Beutler (District 3), and McMorris-Rodgers (District 5). Urge those who have co-sponsored to ask the Speaker to bring this up for a floor vote before the August recess. You can email your Representatives by searching for their website and going to the “contact” page. If you don’t know who your member of Congress is, see: house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative.

Healthy Free School Meals for All The Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act (CNR) process has begun in Congress, and one of the first steps is to ensure that Healthy Free School Meals for All gets included in the American Families Plan.  Use this link to email your House member and Senators Murray and Cantwell to ask for their support. June 21-25 is a national week of action for child hunger – please make this ask before this week ends.

Thanks for your advocacy!

Mourning the Victims of Boarding Schools

As Pacific Northwest communities continue to mourn the discovery of a boarding school mass grave for children near Kamloops, BC, we wanted to lift up the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition’s statement. We urge you to learn more about your faith community and the history of boarding schools in the U.S., and the specific resources offered for churches as we grapple with this legacy.

FAN convenes a meeting of the Interfaith Network for Indigenous Communities (fanwa.org/INIC) on the second Thursday of every other month that provides a place for people from faith communities to face the impact of colonization and genocide on our Indigenous neighbors. Our next meeting is Thursday, July 8, at 1pm. Please email fan@fanwa.org if you’d like the link or to be added to the mailing list.

Roadmap to Freedom

FAN has endorsed the Roadmap to Freedom resolution sponsored by Rep. Pramila Jayapal as a way forward to compassionately reform our immigration system and create a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the US. Along with our partners Congregation Beth Shalom and Jewish Coalition for Immigrant Justice NW, we invite your organization to sign on as well here.

The campaign hosted a kick-off event earlier in June – you can watch that recording on YouTube, and stay tuned for more ways to get involved.

Promote Vaccines in June

FAN is committed to promoting COVID-19 vaccine awareness and equitable distribution so that our communities can be protected and safe. One way you can help is to commit to a Vaccine Awareness Event Weekend during the month of June. This can include preaching during a service, hosting an education hour or resource table, making a vaccine breakout group for discussion on Zoom, hosting a mobile vaccine clinic or the new vaccine Care-A-Van, sharing a video, hosting a youth event, or other creative ideas you have for spreading awareness! 

We are excited to announce that Jaime Torres will be working with FAN this summer to promote vaccine awareness in Central WA, particularly in Spanish speaking communities! Thank you Jaime for doing vaccine outreach at the Tri-Cities Juneteenth celebration this past weekend!

Spring Summits Recap

We had great May and June Summits with over 150 participants! Advocates joined us virtually from across the state to talk about legislative wins and imagine our future work together in issue breakout groups. You can view a recording of the Summits on FAN’s YouTube page.

Stay tuned for opportunities to meet with your legislators this summer during the interim.