“The movement feels stuck.”

It’s a sentiment many of us at the Climate Justice Organizing HUB have expressed in one way or another over the past year, and one we have heard repeatedly from the grassroots organizers we work with across so-called Canada.

In 2023, our team carried out a needs-assessment process with grassroots organizers across so-called Canada and found that organizers are struggling to intentionally and purposefully interweave organizing practices that can be experienced as a dichotomy between “doing” (articulating and achieving clear goals that bring about material change in the world) and “being” (forging the relationships of trust, care, and collaboration needed to achieve said change).

In August 2024, we convened for our annual team retreat to analyze movement challenges in a more intimate setting, and envision, imagine, and assess possible paths forward for supporting grassroots climate justice groups.

This short memo serves as a summary of key themes and insights that emerged during a retreat session on “building deeper and wider”. We are sharing these reflections publicly in a spirit of humble reflection and collective and continuous learning. We do so both to make transparent the thoughts, experiences, and analysis informing our programming and in the hopes that our own reflections may spur further critical discussion and action (including in areas we may have missed) to strengthen the climate justice movement.

Our collective discussion led us to the assessment that building long-term power in the climate justice movement requires developing strategic capacity across grassroots groups and cultivating practices of collective care as an integral component of our movement culture.