On Wednesday, February 8, Futurewise made their way to Olympia for the For Our Future lobby day! Thank you to all our volunteers who joined us! It was exciting to be in the thick of things in Olympia, making sure our lawmakers are voting #ForOurFuture and meeting so many of you in person! It was an eventful day; here’s a recap!

Key Moments:

Many of us were present to watch our housing bill, SB 5190, be voted out of the Senate Housing committee. This is a huge victory that sets up our middle housing bill to make it past the first round of legislative cutoff and continue on. All of this was possible due to everyone who took action, signed in PRO, emailed their representative, or testified.

We also want to thank all our coalition members who joined us in person: Habitat for Humanity, 350 Washington, Sierra Club, Move Redmond, American Farmland Trust, and WA Indivisible Network! Our victories come from the collective and collaborative efforts done by all of us so thank you!

We got to meet with many of our elected officials. One of our volunteers, Lee Borgatta and Misrak Hill, met with Representative Low of the 39th Legislative District. Lee shared “I thoroughly enjoyed [lobby day], especially the opportunity to meet others, my representative, and see the government buildings.”

Misrak also shared “the experience I had with the representatives was truly a privilege and an honor. It felt remarkable to be able to directly voice my concerns and ideas to our elected leaders not only on behalf of us as people, but also college students and other underrepresented groups in our community.”

We have many more experiences and testimonies that amplify the importance of in-person lobbying, not just for us as advocates, but for our elected officials as well. Thank you as well to the elected officials who met with us.

Overall Update on Session

We are on track for all our bills to make the first round of cutoffs! What does this mean?

As a reminder, we are championing three bills. As of writing on 2/22, our GMA climate planning bill is in the House rules committee and we are waiting for a vote out of the Rules Committee to send it to the House floor for a vote. Our Middle Housing bill is in the House Appropriations committee, with a vote scheduled on Thursday 2/23. Finally, our TOD bill is in the Senate Transportation Committee with a vote scheduled on Thursday, 2/23.

Session can be confusing, so here is a simplified rundown of the different steps during a legislative session and how we secure victory on our bills! Using this outline, we are in between steps 3 and 4! This is why we keep asking you to email different committees or your representatives or to sign in PRO; there are a lot of steps but the good news is, they’re working!

Overall, our Lobby Day was a huge success. It is a reminder that if we want to win, if we want to remind our elected officials we are active in this process, if we want to secure positive changes now and for our future, we need to keep showing up. Again, thank you to everyone who has been involved in any way, to our coalition partners, and to the elected officials who met and voted with us. We’re about half way through this session, let’s keep moving forward, for our future.