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April 2025: how to influence & organize

Each month, we break down our topic into four weekly modules. Catch up on previous editions here.​

This week's module: ACT

• ✅ CONNECT | Conversation prompts on your sphere of influence​
• ✅ LEARN | The 4 R's of social transformation & other frameworks for change​
• ✅ ACT | Ways to develop your influence towards climate justice​
• 🎯 REFLECT | Art, poetry, & commitments!

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Here's what we'll learn today Reader

Happy Earth Week!

I hope your week has been full of resistance, reformation, re-imagination, re-creation, and rest.

It's been a super fun week in the global circus: climate non-profits targeted and then un-targeted and then maybe targeted again? Who knows!

All I think about, week after week, is that all we have is each other. And honestly? I kind of love that.

Today is our last module on how to organize + influence, and we'll wrap by sharing a poem that was written last week to share at Soapbox (how beautiful?!?!). I'll also link a solarpunk festival that perfectly showcases the possibility of social transformation: maybe you can reach out to the creator Adam and do it in your own neighborhood!

Your bite-sized action plan Reader

✅ Reflect on how you can incorporate your own creative expression into influencing + organizing for change.

Here's a link to the Burien Solarpunk Festival, one of the coolest projects/events/festivals I've ever heard of in my whole life. Adam Powers has ACTUALLY CREATED a solarpunk microcosm for us: pedal bikes and sunshine fuel the whole thing, art installations abound, drinking harvested rainwater is the norm for the day...

THE FUTURE WE DESERVE IS POSSIBLE!

Adam is just SOME GUY (a genius one, fine) who did a thing. You too can be some guy who did a thing.

You get to decide how your creative expression shapes the future, and I'm so honored to bring you a poem by our very own Soapbox member Drew Wilkinson, who wrote and performed a poem on courage for us last week in Seattle.

Drew, thank you for letting me publish it here, and thank you for being courageous enough to put this poem out into the world.

Imma sign off before we start the poem so you can really enjoy it; maybe brew yourself a hot drink or play some lofi and ask yourself:

• What is a creation someone else has put into the world that's inspired me? What's the smallest version of that I can create for myself?
• What do I want to do with my unique ability as a human who can access creativity, storytelling, and community?
• How does my own courage take shape?

Happy pondering.

Love,

Nivi

See you in May!

​

The Shape of Courage by Drew Wilkinson​
​
What is courage? A fire or spark?
A beacon of light or a leap in the dark?
Is it loud like a drum or soft like a sigh,
A shout from the rooftops or tears we don't cry?
​
Is it born in our bones or learned on the way,
Like a first taste of love that teaches us *stay*?
Is it muscle or magic, a whisper or shout,
A rising of voices, a casting of doubt?
​
Can you see it in marches, in signs held up high?
Can you smell it in forests, in smoke from the sky?
Does it taste like the salt of the sea growing warm,
Or the air right before a great gathering storm?
​
It feels like your pulse when you speak out alone,
Then steadies and swells when you find you're not on your own.
It's the chill in your spine when the truth becomes clear,
And the weight on your chest that says, *We must act here.*
​
It’s the child who plants trees though the world says they’re doomed,
The farmer who heals where the soil’s been consumed.
The artist who paints what the future might be,
The diver who dreams of a plastic-free sea.
​
It’s contagious, indeed, like a laugh or a sneeze—
One spark can set fire to a forest of “Please.”
And though fear often whispers, “This path is too steep,”
Courage replies, “That’s the hill we must keep.”
​
So summon it now, in this age of great test—
Not perfect, not painless, but trying our best.
For the world we inherit, and all yet to be,
We need courage like roots need the rain and the tree.

Upcoming Soapbox events

• SEATTLE on 4/29 we're connecting, learning, acting, and reflecting together on how to organize + influence this month. Here's the Seattle calendar!​
  ​
• SOLD OUT DC on 4/29 l joyful climate advocacy dinner party. Join us!​

​Our entire events calendar for ALL locations + virtual can be found here.