About

Every action must grow your organization
and nourish all who participate.

Fortify! Washington is organizing without reinventing the wheel. It systematizes a process of local power- and community-building that relies upon and amplifies the work of issue-expert organizations that are already out there and know their stuff. It applies established and impactful direct action organizing theory and techniques that have have a long history and lineage (Midwest Academy), and endeavors to ensure that all who participate see a clear return on the investment of their effort. Protest fatigue is real. People’s energy and time must be respected through informed and conscientious utilization by those who ask of them.

Scott Menzies first began the Fortify! Washington process over six years ago as an attempt to add an enduring local thread of movement-building to the moment of the 2019 Climate Strike in a small city in rural far northern California. He worked to hone ways of effectively supporting other groups in targeting the local city council for issue wins and sustained movement- and power-building for over six years, with both successes and failures, but always power-building.

After relocating to the Seattle region, Scott was hired to the role of Advocacy Manger for the trailblazing multi-faith, queer-affirming Earth Ministry/Washington Interfaith Power & Light, started in the wake of the 1988 Nestucca Oil spill off Grays Harbor. He started Fortify! Washington as a multi-issue organizing project under EM/WAIPL to promote at the most local levels the platform that is the Principles of Environmental Justice. When the organization sadly ceased operations, he was given permission by the board to keep the Fortify! Washington name to continue the work as an independent (read, unpaid) organizer.

Scott, an eager blank slate who had just returned from seven years residence in Asia (starting as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal) was trained in the Midwest Academy’s manual “Organizing for Social Change” in 2004. His experience in Buddhist-based meditation and Daoist Martial Arts (studied in Taiwan and China) inform and support his work as an organizer. He has organized on various issues and in various capacities for over 20 years, doing both paid and (mostly) unpaid work. (That’s organizing for you!)

Scott is a cat person (but is happy to give scritches to all the pups with whom he crosses paths.)

Special Acknowledgement: Scott is eternally grateful to his trainer Eric Rofes, a seasoned long-haul San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ organizer, for his course Education for Action, where he trained dozens of college students and community members in strategic direct action community organizing, before passing away all too soon in 2006. His death was a tremendous blow to his community, his work, and the students who would never receive his organizing skills and wisdom. His legacy lives on at the Eric Rofes Multicultural Queer Center, Cal Poly Humboldt.

“Every action must build your organization” – Eric Rofes, PhD

ON SELF CARE: We are in very, very difficult and traumatizing times. While it shouldn’t be on us to have to, well, fortify ourselves against this onslaught, if we want to preserve our health and sanity against people who will not stop, it’s on us. Write us at info (at) fortify (dot) org if you have any questions about what Scott calls Strategic Self Care, which is informed by his Buddhist-based meditation and Daoist Martial Arts studies.

“Take care of yourself … ‘cause we need your voice.”
– Benjamin Dixon to activist Erica Garner,
two weeks before her death at 27 from a heart attack

info (at) fortifywa (dot) org

Fortify! Washington grassroots petitions ask folks to provide their emails and phone numbers because political people power is fully reliant upon the ability to follow up with those who add their names to a grassroots petition. Names without that contact information are essentially worthless to the campaign.

Organizations, both grassroots and formalized, have been doing this for decades. This is community organizing.

Fortify! Washington has its digital assets set up through the May First Technology Cooperative, which has its own servers and uses its own instances of software (like Nextcloud, WordPress, and Mailman for email lists). Hard copy petitions are digitized and shredded.

Fortify! Washington provides these resources (model resolutions and petitions) to the public so they can engage in their own organizing. We ask those local groups to send their contact information to Fortify! Washington or keep the information they collect in secure places, but we can’t control every group that utilizes our resources.

We do not sell your data.