Putting Down Roots: Maren's List
Information bringing people together...
Maren's list of environmental, cultural, and
social justice events in and around Pittsburgh.
Local food resources
MarensList is Experiencing Technical Difficulties
Due to a change in how this platform works, it has become very difficult to make new postings for future events. I hope to find a solution soon, but in the meantime my apologies for a rather thin slate of events! There really is a lot going on...
Feb 28: Sustainable, Successful Political Campaigns
Feb 27: Sustainability Salon on Fukushima and the Future
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Sunset for nuclear power? (photo: Pexels/Pixabay, under Creative Commons) |
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International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors at Fukushima Daiichi in 2013 (photo: IAEA) |
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If you haven't been here before, you may enjoy checking out our roof garden and solar installation (and now apiary!) as well as the many other green and interesting things around our place. If interested folks are online and everything is working smoothly by around 3:30, perhaps I can conduct a virtual tour.
And if you like to make music or listen to homemade music, think back to our evening sings -- we typically ran the gamut from Irish fiddle tunes to protest songs to the Beatles, and a fun time was had by all. Folks would bring instruments, and/or pick up one of ours. Conversations would continue through the evening, as well. With a virtual event this is less likely to happen, but we can share music by turns, reminisce, chat online, and look forward to the post-COVID era!
Feb 25: Black Women, Green Future
The Keynote Speaker is Jacqui Patterson, Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program.
Featured Panelists are:
· Pennsylvania State Representative Summer Lee of Pittsburgh;
· Nourbese Flint, Policy Director at Black Women for Wellness in Los Angeles; and
· Kerene Tayloe, Esq., Director of Federal Legislative Affairs at WE ACT for Environmental Justice based in New York and Washington, DC.
7-9 p.m. EST; free and open to the public. More information and registration are here.
Jan 24-Feb 6: film and discussion on housing equity
I hope many of you could participate in and be energized by this year’s Racial Justice Summit. Summit organizers and volunteers worked hard to make this year’s online version of the event meaningful, even as we missed the intensity of the powerful human interactions that usually make up this annual event.
Human Rights City Alliance Steering Committee members and partner organizations pulled together a great panel for this year's Racial Justice Summit, Building Movements for Health, human Rights & Racial Justice, and four breakout sessions (on policing, housing, environmental justice & health, and human rights budgeting) generated some ideas about how we can work to bring our movements together to amplify our power and make meaningful changes that will improve our communities. Please mark your calendars for Sat. Feb. 6, 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. There will be an online meeting that will summarize some of the ideas generated from the Racial Justice and link them to some of the work groups around our community are doing. They aim to bring together some working teams to take advantage of some new political openings and to respond to pressing human rights needs of residents of our region. To get involved, please email pghrights@riseup.net.
Encore Film Screening & Housing Activist Dialogue:
Housing is Healthcare! Let's Demand the Human Right to Housing!
Push Film screening and online discussions: Global finance is profiting handsomely from the pandemic while growing numbers are facing housing insecurity, threats of eviction, and houselessness. Join us in watching the documentary film, Push, which tells the story of how global banks and investment firms are turning our communities into sources of private profit, taking control of residential housing around the world and pushing out low-income residents. The film tells another story too: residents and city officials are coming together to demand that housing be protected as a human right.
Watch the film: January 24-February 6. Watch the film online. Sign up to receive a link to view Push (Pitt students and faculty/staff can view the film via the University Library System).
Monday Feb. 1st, 7 p.m.: Join our multi-city conversation with organizers from Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and New York. Penn Plaza Support and Action Coalition will be joined by activists from Atlanta’s Housing Justice League and New York City. Register to attend Feb. 1 cross-city dialogue. More details at Facebook Event link
Jan 30: Sustainability Salon on Justice, Judges, and Gerrymandering
We've seen in the recent past the importance of the judiciary to health and the environment. We'll take a look at the judicial system in Pennsylvania, and an effort by the state House to ram through a constitutional amendment allocating appeals court judges to specific districts -- while legislative redistricting reform keeps being blocked. Doug Webster of Fair Districts PA will return to the (virtual) Salon stage to bring us up to speed on this ill-conceived amendment -- and how we can put the brakes on before a referendum materializes in May. (you didn't think our work was done, did you?)
Also returning will be attorney Lisa Middleman, now a candidate for judge on the Court of Common Pleas. Lisa has spent over thirty years fighting for equity and fairness in and out of the courtroom -- as a criminal defense attorney, public defender, informal educator, and union organizer. Most recently, she led a coalition of attorneys providing pro bono legal services to peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors who were wrongfully charged. Lisa sees the connections between environmental justice and the law, and aims to change the Court for the better.
Shifting our focus to election law, as we did once before -- since we can't have a clean, safe, and stable environment without better policies, and we can't have those without electing more thoughtful, informed, and compassionate policymakers -- there have been some improvements in the past few years, such as the mail-in voting which was a gamechanger in a pandemic year. However, things still aren't working the way they should. How many voters tried to reach the elections division and couldn't get through? How many people signed up to be poll workers and didn't hear back? How many people received the wrong ballot? We cannot declare an election a success simply because poll workers and voters overcame barriers put in their way. We should celebrate their perseverance with indignation at conditions that made it necessary, and with determination to redesign the systems that create these barriers. Allegheny County has chronic problems with election administration that need to be addressed. Fair elections advocate Juliet Zavon will share the just-released Report of the Elections Task Force, detailing both flaws in the process (like poll worker recruitment and training) and recommendations for how to rectify the system.
And did I mention that our work isn't done? We're in a very different place than we were just a month or two ago (in so many ways!), but still have lots of work to do on civil rights, racial equity, criminal justice, health care, immigration, guns, election law, and not least the environment. Debra Fyock leads Grassroots Pittsburgh, a local affiliate of the national Indivisible and Swing Left organizations. For several years, she's been connecting people with opportunities to get active (no matter how much or how little time they have to spare) with monthly meetings and a weekly newsletter.
Most years, wintertime Sustainability Salons feature film screenings (and often talks by filmmakers, or activists working on the issues in the films); in large part due to our space being darker and more cinematic when sunset is earlier. However, this year there are so many other virtual film screenings and panel discussions that folks don't need even more screen time. In lieu of our own Winter Film Series, here are a couple of other opportunities to get your popcorn popping: Promote PT presents The Story Of Plastic with the film's director and local activists on February 13th. On the 19th, Interfaith Power and Light will share the short film Unbreathable, about air quality and environmental justice, followed by a panel discussion. Other upcoming events: this coming week, the annual PASA conference on sustainable agriculture -- it's virtual this year, so you can check it out from home! February 11th, an Environmental Town Hall with State Senator Katie Muth. Apropos of our topic this month, PASUP's next community meeting will be about greening election campaigns, date TBA. And a mask update: I have received my second bulk order (read: substantial discount!) of the Breathe99 masks that we featured at November's salon on Pandemics and Air (one of TIME's 100 Best Inventions of last year). Please email me with mask in the Subject line if you're interested!
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If you haven't been here before, you may enjoy checking out our roof garden and solar installation (and now apiary!) as well as the many other green and interesting things around our place. If interested folks are online and everything is working smoothly by around 3:30, perhaps I can conduct a virtual tour.
And if you like to make music or listen to homemade music, think back to our evening sings -- we typically ran the gamut from Irish fiddle tunes to protest songs to the Beatles, and a fun time was had by all. Folks would bring instruments, and/or pick up one of ours. Conversations would continue through the evening, as well. With a virtual event this is less likely to happen, but we can share music by turns, reminisce, chat online, and look forward to the post-COVID era!