Western States Center Inc

At Western States Center we aim for social, economic and racial justice by building strong communities, shifting cultural norms to support all communities, and increase political power of those too often left at the margins.

Our Uniting Communities project supports racial justice and immigrant rights organizations to proactively engage and include their members and constituencies who are LGBTQ people of color. We start by shifting the organizational culture to support inclusivity and then help groups to take a public stand on LGBTQ equality.

Uniting Communities has led to several concrete successes. Here some examples of the impact we have made.

• Supported Indigenous Ways of Knowing to publish the groundbreaking Tribal Equity Toolkit: Tribal Resolutions and Codes to Support Two Spirit and LGBT Justice in Indian Country. This first-of-its-kind toolkit will give Tribal leaders tools to develop laws involving family, employment, education, health care and more that support Two Spirit and LGBTQ Native people.
• Led Why Marriage Matters Washington campaign in pounding the pavement to win hearts and minds. We engaged voters who are people of color by connecting to cultural similarities and focusing on core values which led to the passage of marriage equality in Washington!
• Brought together Urban League of Portland and Portland Black Chapter PFLAG to produce Lift Every Voice, a report to draw attention to challenges facing Black LGBTQ Oregonians and make a case for the need to address disparities in Black LGBTQ communities.
• Partner with the Applied Research Center and Southerners on New Ground in Better Together, a project model similar to Uniting Communities, that will work with organizations in the South to support and strengthen LGBTQ rights and racial justice. 

Join us in building a progressive movement that includes all of our communities and Give Out today!