How We Operate

About Us

Friends of Denny-Blaine is a stewardship group designated by the Seattle Parks Department to help maintain the park, serve as a voice for parkgoers and the community, and work to build the park up to be the best it can be.
We were founded in late 2023, and are incorporated under the Seattle Parks Foundation.

Guiding Principles

1. Denny-Blaine serves a wide variety of communities. In protecting the culture and future of the beach, we should work to ensure that we are attentive to and meeting the concerns of (in no particular order, and with significant overlap):
   • Beach regulars
   • Trans beachgoers
   • Cis queer beachgoers, gays, and lesbians
   • Naturists / nudists
   • Young adults
   • Older beachgoers
   • Parents and kids who use the beach

   We should additionally strive to ensure that all these groups are represented as much as possible in the leadership of Friends of Denny-Blaine.

   Additionally, Friends ought to keep in mind the benefit of those who organize events at the beach, such as fitness groups and kink communities; as well as neighbors, tourists, non-naked beachgoers, and appreciators of the park's history.

2. The beach is a safe space. Friends should work to ensure that the beach is welcoming and to make this clear to beachgoers, as well as to mitigate factors that could make other beachgoers feel unsafe, such as:
   • Broken glass or hazardous materials
   • Police involvement at the beach
   • Harassment of other beachgoers
   • Hate speech, discriminatory behavior, or body shaming

   However: the organization should not feel the authority to dictate how others use the beach, to create rules beyond those dictated by the law, or to involve authorities. Friends works positively to promote a healthy culture rather than seeking to police others' use of the beach.

3. We work for the benefit of a larger community. The successful effort to preserve Denny-Blaine in the face of an effort to displace the community by a private donor in late 2023 that led to the formation of Friends was only successful by a mass grassroots turnout. While the leadership of Friends should represent the diverse groups with stakes in our community, said leadership is also obliged to actively work to collect broad community input and solicit feedback on developments to the beach.
   • Disagreement within the leadership of the Friends group should ask for feedback via a vote of constituents.
   • Leadership planning meetings should be accessible to (and responsive to) the public when possible.

Want to get involved? Contact Us!

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