Three takeaways from the Social Justice Salon

Last month, Solid Ground gathered four community leaders at its annual Social Justice Salon – titled “Responding to the Moment: Social Justice, Federal Actions, and the future of Human Services” – and hosted a packed crowd for a much needed conversation about the future of social justice, safety-net organizations, and the communities we serve together.

Moderated by Naomi Ishisaka, Assistant Managing Editor for Diversity and Inclusion and Social Justice Columnist for The Seattle Times, the panel included:

Rhonda Banchero, Director of Organizational Equity and Inclusion at Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC)

Shalimar Gonzales, CEO of Solid Ground

Regina Malveaux, Chief Impact Officer at United Way of King County (UWKC)

Estela Ortega, Executive Director at El Centro de la Raza

This panel discussion came in the wake of a massive federal spending and tax bill that preserves and increases tax cuts for the wealthy by slashing food and health care programs for families and individuals who are already struggling to get by. Already, the cuts have begun to hit nonprofit organizations that serve these communities.

Takeaway #1: Hundreds of thousands of lives will be impacted, and housing is next

In March, after the current administration first attempted to block funding for food banks and other nutritional programs, Regina said United Way of King County sent a survey to neighborhood food banks across the county to better understand the impact of lost federal funding. Of the 44 responses, 36 said they relied on funding from the federal government, making up at least 60 percent of their budgets. At DESC, which provides shelter and critical services for people experiencing homelessness in King County, Rhonda said the organization has lost about $4 million in funding already. At Solid Ground, which relies less heavily on federal funding, Shalimar said the loss has been about $500,000 – with more expected to come.

A woman sitting on a dark stage speaks as two others look on.

Shalimar, left, talks about her work at Solid Ground as Rhonda, center, and Naomi look on.

“These are the drastic and kind of draconian things that our nonprofits are facing,” Regina said.

And housing services are likely next. As Rhonda pointed out, the legislative blueprint known as Project 2025 specifically targets Housing First and harm-reduction approaches to addressing homelessness and substance abuse. (Plans have since surfaced indicating that the administration plans to slash funding for permanent housing as soon as January 2026¹.)

“If we go away, or if we have major cuts, that impact is going to be felt pretty much all over the county,” Rhonda said. “We’re going to be talking about thousands of people who are currently housed in one of our DESC properties that are going to be unhoused, so what will that do to the communities and what those communities will shape into?”

As Rhonda and other panelists made clear, what’s at stake in this conversation is not just the future of critical safety-net organizations, but the wellbeing of the hundreds of thousands of people they serve — people who rely on them to get the food, housing, education, and health care they need.

“We’re talking about infants potentially starving in this country,” Shalimar said. “We’re talking about seniors and adults and families not having enough food in this country — and in a country that should have plenty of it. But yet somehow we don’t have enough to go around. Those are all policy choices.”

Takeaway #2: We need to stick to our values

The panelists all agreed, the one thing they will not do is abandon the values that guide their work.

A woman seated in a chari gestures as she speaks while another woman looks on.

Estela, left, describes the impact of El Centro’s work as Regina and others look on.

“Racial equity is embedded into our mission, into the work that we do, and we feel we cannot address economic injustices and poverty in this country without talking about the systems of oppression that created those things,” Shalimar said. “That includes talking about racism, because if we can’t talk about it, we can’t do anything about it.”

The inextricability of language and values in human services work became even more clear earlier this year when nonprofits began seeing documents² indicating which words could cause organizations to lose federal support. The lists included terms like “accessible,” “bias,” “ethnicity,” and “systemic.”

“I mean our website would have been blank,” said Rhonda. “We’re proud to help marginalized people, which applies broadly to so many people, including white folks. We’re not going to back down – we can’t back down – because if we’re not fighting for them, fighting those for those marginalized folks, and the folks who are unhoused, who is fighting for them? What’s going to happen to them?”

Not that it’s easy, or that there aren’t risks involved. Estela said El Centro recently began having conversations about whether it should remove the names of staff members from its website for their safety.

“But in terms of changing what’s on our website, and what we believe in and what we work on, no, we’re not going to do that.” she said. “That’s not who we are.”

Some organizations, however, are more vulnerable than others, and Regina said that organizations like UWKC, which rely less on federal funding, recognize they have a special responsibility to stand up in this moment.

“We essentially said, ‘If it’s not safe for us to stand in our values, then who can?’” she said. “If you have that kind of privilege, you absolute have to use that as an opportunity.”

Takeaway #3: Our community gives us hope

Despite the threats to the wellbeing of our neighbors, the panelists all saw reasons to hope – that we have the capacity and will as a community to shepherd our neighbors through this moment of crisis.

From left: Rhonda, Regina, Shalimar, Estela, and Naomi.

“The only thing we can do really is put our hope back into community… to say ‘How can we come together as one to continue to support neighbors that are in need?’” Shalimar said. “Saying, ‘These are our neighbors, and I don’t want my neighbors to starve. I don’t want my neighbors to be homeless. I don’t want my neighbor to not have health care. So I’m going to do what we need to do.’”

Regina said she’s been encouraged by how the larger King County community has already responded to the threats we face with collaboration and creativity. That, she said, will be a critical part of the path forward.

“One of the moments of hope and moments of pride I’ve seen across grantee organizations is the adaptation that many are having through partnership,” Regina said. “Not to say folks didn’t already collaborate, but there’s a new level of collaboration, recognizing, ‘Oh were going to have to figure out how to work together to stretch, to do more with less.’”

Panelists said this kind of collaboration is only the beginning of what will be required from our communities if we hope to continue to safeguard the wellbeing of our neighbors when the federal government no longer does.

The bottom line, panelists said, is this: We can only meet this moment by standing together in support of one another.

As Estela said: “My hope is that we will build a strong movement in our city and in Washington state, that we will not allow ourselves to be silenced, that we will not allow ourselves to be intimidated.”