From Phone Book to Leadership: Liz Moore’s Journey with Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane
News Story by Nina Culver | FāVS News
The phone book led Liz Moore to the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane decades ago when she was a teenager, and she’s now celebrating her 15th year as the executive director of the community organization.
Moore is the fifth generation of her family to grow up on the family farm in Deer Park. When she was a senior in high school, the Iraq War was brewing. She said it was disconcerting how little her peers seemed to care about the prospect of war.
“I was taking the question of going to war seriously,” she said. “It was being treated like a Riverside vs. Deer Park football game.”
In the pre-Google era, she pulled out the phone book and looked for the word “peace,” which led her to the Spokane Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane. She called the organization and spoke with Rusty Nelson, who led PJALS with his wife, Nancy, for many years. Moore soon started volunteering.
“I just found this oasis of being encouraged to ask questions, being encouraged to use critical thinking skills,” she said.
Always dedicated to peace and justice for all, PJALS focuses on issues such as racism, the criminal justice system and war. There have been marches, protests, vigils, advocacy and educational workshops.
After high school, Moore got a degree in environmental studies from Oberlin College in Ohio, minoring in women’s studies and history. She describes college as a great time spent spreading her wings and trying things out to see what worked for her. Inspired by her time at PJALS, she decided she wanted to help her community.
Her Environmental and Non-Discrimination Work
“I didn’t have the language of community organizing then,” she said. “That’s what I wanted to do. I thought I would focus on environmental work.”
She was recruited to attend training at the Labor Community Strategy Center in California, where she worked with the Bus Riders Union. She examined the impact buses had on air pollution and how that air pollution impacted the people who depended on buses for transportation as part of her role. After six months there, she came back to Spokane.
Moore still wanted to help her community, but also needed to pay bills. She worked part-time as a cook while also working part-time for various non-profit organizations. She also worked as the development director of an organization dedicated to the clean-up of the Newmont uranium mine on the Spokane Indian Reservation and also as a canvas manager for the Lands Council. She also spent time as a part-time volunteer coordinator with PJALS.
In 1997 she joined the effort to create a non-discrimination ordinance in the City of Spokane that included protection against discrimination based on homosexuality. Moore worked on the “No on Discrimination” campaign to convince voters to support the ordinance.
“We ran a campaign and we talked to voters and we won,” she said.
Moore moved to Las Vegas, where she worked with a statewide program alliance for four years, helping alliance members host events and other activities. In 2003 she went back to California, where she worked in the education department for the Healthcare Workers Union.
“We taught organizing skills to staff and members,” she said.
Returning to PJALS
She came back to Spokane, what she calls her political birthplace, in 2009 to take over the leadership of PJALS.
“Our mission is to engage everyday people to build a just world,” she said. “We are a multi-issue organization”
She added that the organization’s priorities shift based on the priorities of PJALS members.
Recently, however, PJALS has been focusing on four key areas: countering American imperialism and militarism; continuing to work to end mass incarceration in Spokane County; countering white nationalism and fascism; and running a grassroots leadership development program.
Moore said right under the surface, the conflicts are all about race and class. In 2017 PJALS worked to defeat an anti-immigrant profiling initiative in Spokane that would have allowed city employees, particularly police officers, to help enforce immigration laws.
“We stopped that here,” she said. “The group that was pushing that was planning to try a statewide initiative.”
The work PJALS does is important, Moore said.
“We’re having an effect,” she said. “This is contested territory. We are in a struggle about who belongs, who is dangerous.”
Changing of the Guard
Rusty Nelson and his wife expressed pleasure the steering committee selected Moore to replace them. The committee had initially favored someone else, but that fell through, Nelson said.
“Somebody suggested we contact Liz,” he said. “We hadn’t thought of her at all because we thought she was off doing her thing in L.A. She was willing to come back to Spokane.”
When the Nelsons ran PJALS, Nancy was the behind-the-scenes organizer and Rusty was the public face of the organization, often giving media interviews. They liked that Moore could do both parts of the job.
“She had always had a particular poise in dealing with issues and talking to people about things that they didn’t really want to talk about,” he said. “She was an organizer and that’s what we thought was really necessary.”
Nancy Nelson also liked that Moore was a supporter of LBGTQ issues.
“We were very pleased to know ahead of time that it was something that was important to Liz,” she said.
Moore said she’s happy to continue to lead PJALS and also happy that other like-minded organizations have taken root in recent years.
“The landscape of Spokane has changed in the last 15 years,” she said. “I have a really deep love for this organization. I feel like we have so many possibilities about what we can do here for the community. It’s really rewarding.”
