What moved us at the Groundswell Gala

At Solid Ground, we use “groundswell” to describe the energy and potential that’s unleashed when a community comes together in shared purpose to build a better future for our neighbors and ourselves.

And it’s what we saw this year on May 15 when the Solid Ground community stood together in solidarity at our Groundswell Gala, a night of celebration, hope, and commitment to the wellbeing of our communities.

“A groundswell isn’t created by one person or one organization,” Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson told more than 300 Solid Ground supporters, partners, participants, volunteers, and staff gathered at the Seattle Convention Center’s Summit building.

“It comes from people moving together, building momentum through shared purpose and collective action. And that is exactly what Solid Ground represents. Your work is rooted in community, driven by partnerships, and centered in the belief that we can create a better future when we refuse to accept the status quo.”

‘A community rising together’

While she’s still relatively new to the office of mayor – she took the oath in January – her relationship with Solid Ground stretches back much further, to her days as a “baby organizer” advocating for change on behalf of people living on low incomes.

“When I was helping to build coalitions – whether that was around winning a low-income fare or progressive revenue, or fighting for affordable housing or stronger renter protections or rental assistance – Solid Ground was always there advocating, leading, lending expertise,” said Katie, who previously served as Secretary General of the Transit Riders Union. “You don’t just respond to crisis, you build solutions from the ground up, ensuring that people have the tools, the support, and the opportunities that they need to thrive.”

Katie acknowledged that the city she leads today continues to face complex and entrenched challenges, including housing instability and great economic inequality. But she said Solid Ground has “shown what is possible when we center people, when we listen to those with lived experience, and when we commit to building a city where everyone has a chance to thrive.

“You are helping families to access stable housing, ensuring that people can get to work or school, and advocating for systemic changes that improve lives across our region. And that is what a groundswell looks like: a community rising together, pushing forward a vision of equity, stability, and dignity for all.”

‘Where people are genuinely thriving’

Solid Ground is built on the understanding that another kind of energy – human potential – is unlocked when people have the opportunity to build stability in their lives. This means secure housing, reliable access to healthy food, and transportation that’s there when you need it.

“When those needs are met, people aren’t in constant crisis,” said Carla Costa-Perales, Executive Vice President and Chief Impact Officer at BECU, the nation’s fifth largest credit union. “When our needs are met, we can breathe. We can focus on our kids, on our goals, on our lives.”

For Carla, the power – and limits – of housing aren’t theoretical. She said she has relatives who live in various kinds of affordable housing and has seen what it can look and feel like “when the goal stops at putting a roof over people’s heads and deeper needs go unmet.”

She said that’s not what she saw at Solid Ground’s Sand Point Housing, home to more than 400 adults and children working to build prosperous lives after surviving homelessness and other traumatic experiences.

“It feels calm. It feels cared for. It feels like a neighborhood where people are genuinely thriving,” she said. “You all clearly believe that regardless of where someone is in their life, we all deserve not just shelter, but comfort, safety, a place where we can feel calm, feel joy, and actually thrive.”

‘What happens when we invest’

Now a sophomore at the University of Washington, Amanuel Woldemedhen grew up in Sand Point Housing and testified that the support he received there shows what’s possible when we invest in our community’s young people. But, he said, we can and must do more.

“Solid Ground has already built the foundation,” Amanuel said. “The tutoring centers work – the programs that also give young kids community during the day while their parents are working two jobs. Those programs are real and they matter. I know because I grew up in them. But the kids in those rooms grow up, and the moment they grow up, the support needs to grow with them. Because that is the window where futures get decided.”

Amanuel said today’s young people need to be able to see themselves represented in the programs that are meant to support them. More than anything, he said, his young neighbors at Sand Point need opportunities to discover the futures available to them, as well as how the steps they take today will lead them to those futures tomorrow.

“We cannot build a future on the hope that every kid will find their own way.” Amanuel said. “What about the kid who hasn’t found that fire yet? What about the kid who has not seen anyone in their family walk across a graduation stage? What about the kid who doesn’t even know what questions to ask?”

For himself, Amanuel said several encounters made the difference: Discovering a business and marketing club for students that tapped into his competitive nature. Meeting a high school teacher who believed in him and pushed him to work toward his goals. And entering a career-awareness program that showed him what’s possible.

“The work in front of all of us is to make sure those opportunities aren’t the exception, that they aren’t reserved for the kid who just happened to find them – but the norm for every kid growing up in a similar situation to mine,” Amanuel said.

“But I don’t want to be the exception. I want to be the example of what happens when we actually invest in the youth.”

A challenge from Shalimar

Shalimar Gonzales, Solid Ground’s CEO, suggested that the time has come for our community to embrace a new purpose. In her five years running Solid Ground, Shalimar said she’s met grandfathers living in the winter without heat, families evicted from their homes with nothing but the clothes on their back, and people who wait for hours in ever-growing lines outside the city’s food banks.

“This level of poverty, in this nation of riches, should be unsettling,” Shalimar said. “When we look at household wealth, we are the richest country in the world. And yet we allow such dramatic examples of harm.”

Over the years, Shalimar said she’s asked many people in the community to become supporters of Solid Ground’s work, to become evangelicals of our shared cause. But now, she said, the time has come for us all to strive to be something more: Poverty abolitionists.

“To be a poverty abolitionist, you must see poverty as an abomination, something that we simply cannot tolerate, to see the practice of profiting from somebody else’s pain as something that corrupts us all,” she said. “As a poverty abolitionist, you can stand with Solid Ground when we demand new policies and a larger social movement and actions. And to be a poverty abolitionist, we all must divest from poverty in our consumption choices.”

Shalimar asked the people in the room to sit with an uncomfortable truth.

“You see, poverty persists because other people benefit from it,” she said. “We have all been consumers of cheap goods and services that the working poor produce.”

In order to end poverty, she said, we must acknowledge the ways some of us benefit from our unjust system. As just one example, our federal government currently spends billions of dollars on tax subsidies for people who already own a home, while setting aside a fraction of that for people struggling to make their rent.

“We’re giving the most to those that need it the least, and then we have the audacity to ask how can we possibly afford to do more,” she said. “Those are the choices that we’re making. And so now I want you to imagine a world where we choose to center those in need first – where we develop solutions with them. A world where we care for our most vulnerable first. A world where we look first to uplift those living in the margins, because we know that we all will benefit equally.

“Now is the time for action, because now we have seen that the tide has shifted in people’s thoughts – and Solid Ground is ready for what is coming next,” she said. “So tonight I am inviting you to join our movement.”