Social Justice Salon: Untangling the Safety Net

Derrick Belgarde

Derrick Belgarde is Executive Director of the Chief Seattle Club and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians of Oregon and the Chippewa-Cree from Rocky Boy Montana. He serves on the board of Community Roots Housing, Downtown Emergency Service Center, Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, and the Housing Development Consortium.

Derrick completed his undergraduate degree in Public Affairs Magna Cum Laude and went on to complete his Master’s degree in Public Administration, both at Seattle University. He’s a proud father of three and is married to the wonderful Lua Belgarde.

Marcy Bowers

Marcy serves as the director of the Statewide Poverty Action Network, a community-driven advocacy organization that works to advance equitable policy solutions for people with low incomes in Washington state. Since joining the Poverty Action team in 2015, she’s played virtually every role in the organization, from communications, policy work, and fundraising to leading and staffing local electoral and national community engagement campaigns. In her current role, she oversees day-to-day operations and leads a stellar staff and talented board in their work to implement their vision of an economically and socially just state.

Marcy serves on the boards of the Washington Asset Building Coalition and the Washington State Oral Health Coalition, and is a member of Solid Ground’s Leadership Team. Marcy has deep organizing and policy experience, having worked for social justice in Seattle, Texas, and Central America. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Women’s Studies from the University of Washington.

Tiffany Brownlee

Tiffany Brownlee is a survivor of domestic violence and homelessness, a tireless mother of five, and a self-taught navigator of our broken social net. After being told once that she was not a high enough priority for emergency housing assistance despite being eight months pregnant and living in a hotel room with her four kids, Tiffany instead created her own housing assistance program by securing enough funding from three organizations to put down a deposit on an apartment for her family just weeks before giving birth.

Since then, Tiffany has used her experience and skill at navigating social services to help other people experiencing homelessness and other challenges, first at Mary’s Place and more recently at Key Recovery and Life Skills Center. Her story of perseverance and strength was featured in the Netflix documentary Lead Me Home.

Erin Bryant-Thomas

Erin is the Director of Equity and Justice at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. She’s also a proud wife of 12 years, mother of three brilliant Black boys, native of San Francisco and a 13-year resident of the Seattle/King County area. She’s an anti-racist community organizer, grounded in the People’s Institute for Survival & Beyond’s principles, and focuses much of her time on addressing racism in systems and institutions as well as the manifestations of internalized racial oppression within herself. She’s committed to the liberation of Black people and does that work through Black Star Line, The Village of Hope, and Holgate Street Church of Christ, where she has served as an Events Coordinator, Program Coordinator, and Para Educator, as well as many other roles.

Erin is committed to building a community where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. Her work is informed by 15 years of strategic and relational leadership experience in the community, grassroots, nonprofit, and government sectors. She helped to start the very first Black Student Union at Auburn High School, and is currently studying Education and Business/Entrepreneurship at Evergreen State College-Tacoma. Her focus is on community healing and building, principled anti-racist organizing, and helping to develop multi-cultural and multi-generational relationships so all communities thrive.

Kirk McClain

Kirk McClain is a Residential Case Manager at Solid Ground’s Sand Point Housing, where he works one-on-one with individuals who have experienced the trauma of homelessness. He’s also a former member of the Lived Experience Coalition and served on the Governance Board for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority until April of this year. His work is informed by his own five-year experience with homelessness, which included a period when he was sleeping on the campus of Highline College at night and attending classes there during the day to earn his paralegal certification in 2012.

Before his experience with homelessness, Kirk earned a BA from Western Washington University with an Interdisciplinary Pre-Law Concentration. He went on to work for the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, then as a Junior Paralegal at Amgen, an international pharmaceutical company. Kirk’s compassion for disadvantaged and marginalized people eventually led him to volunteer with local neighborhood legal clinics, the Statewide Poverty Action Network, and the Washington Low-Income Housing Alliance, which honored him as the “Advocate of the Year” in 2016. In 2017, Kirk was appointed to serve on the Governor’s State Advisory Council on Homelessness. He is the owner of HeadPointe.com, a website for African-American hikers, backpackers, and rock climbers in the Pacific Northwest.

Neal Simpson

Neal joined the Communications team at Solid Ground after working as a reporter and editor at newspapers in the Boston area for more than a decade. At Solid Ground, he works to highlight the strength and resilience of people experiencing poverty and homelessness, amplify the voices of marginalized communities, and expose the systems and barriers that work to rob people of their agency. He has also served as Communications Chair for the Seattle/King County NAACP.