Here’s what we know: last week, at the California Museum, the feminist agenda was in the room. Not as a slogan. As a feeling — part possibility, part gratitude, part rage — that’s been sharpening itself for a long time.
We gathered as a community and made something together. A strategy session dressed in celebration, where our SPI State fellows took the stage with four bills that reach into the places power would rather not look.
Their policies are not incremental. They are interruptions. Each one carried into the legislature by our fellows who know, from their own life and community, exactly what’s at stake.
Our board member Aldita Amaru Gallardo closed the evening by naming what so many in the room already know: “When Women’s Foundation California supports you, you feel the power that feminist movements have been building here, locally, regionally, and statewide.” That power doesn’t appear from nowhere. It is resourced, deliberately, by people who understand that redistribution is a feminist act. If you’re ready to be part of that — whether that’s a transformative gift or twenty dollars that goes straight back to our folks on the ground — now is the time.
Now, we pass the torch. Applications for the next Solís Policy Institute State cohort are open, and we are looking for the next wave of women and gender-expansive leaders ready to step into their power and shape the policies that shape our lives. For over 20 years, SPI State has invested in community leaders who love their people. Together, we’ve helped pass nearly 60 bills — not because our fellows needed to be discovered, but because they needed to be funded, supported, and given room to lead.
If that’s you, or someone you know, apply today.
We are so grateful to be in this work with you.