Oct 22: Sustainability Salon on Movement-Building (Part I: Workshop (zoom))

A lot of folks are asking "How can I be the most effective?"  "What impact can I have on climate change?" and "How can I contribute to bringing about social justice?"

For the 141st and 142nd Sustainability Salons (on Zoom, Oct 22 and Nov 12), we'll explore these ideas in depth to figure out how to use our passion to create long-term campaigns.  Documents and links associated with this series (including a video of this workshop) are provided here.

On the macro level, what makes a successful social movement?  How do they develop, from the ground up?  How can groups collaborate most efficiently?  How best to target our efforts?  What skills are needed?  On the personal level: what do you care about?  What are you good at?  What do you love doing?  What do you know?  Who do you know?  We can use the answers to all these questions to plan, create, and sustain effective campaigns -- not just a protest march here, a banner-drop there.   

Penn Garvin began her activist work with the original Poor People's Campaign in 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King.  She has worked on issues like human rights, women's health care, homelessness, Central America, peace, and the environment -- and has led workshops on organizing and non-violent civil resistance.  She presently works with Pennsylvania Action On Climate (PAC), and others from PAC will join the conversation.

Kidest Gebre is campaigns and communications manager for the Black Appalachian Coalition (and previously Virginia Interfaith Power & Light).  She has also trained with the Center for Story-Based Strategy, and will share some of that training as well as her own organizing experience.  

Next month (November 12), we'll look at some of the long-term campaigns that are active in our region, brainstorm ways to improve them, and find ways to connect more folks with this important work.  We hope that a lot of local leaders, activists, and would-be activists will be able to join us for both events!  If you can't make the first one but want to join in the discussion, I'll try to get the video online soon after the event -- that'll help get us all onto the same page, laying the groundwork for later discussions with particular regional campaigns.   

There are also a whole lot of other important events happening in our region;  check out the list below!

With autumn closing in, we'll be on Zoom for the next several months.  Zoom salons (and the Zoom side for hybrid events), start around 4 p.m., when presentations begin, and usually wind down sometime around 7 or 8 (informal discussion may continue after that -- join us for whatever time works for you!).   If you're not already on my Eventbrite list, please email me (maren dot cooke at gmail dot com) with "salon" in the Subject line to be added -- and let me know how you heard about salons!  If you RSVP via Eventbrite, you'll receive the Zoom registration link right away. Along about Saturday night/Sunday morning, I'll send it out again, with other information, to all who have RSVP'd.  If you're new to Zoom, you may find my Zoom Reference Guide helpful. 

Other events and whatnot:

•  Oct 10:  Air Quality Town :Hall on the results of the ACHD's consent agreement with US Steel over Clairton Cokeworks violations -- where has the money gone?  More info and registration here.

•  Oct 11:  The Center for Coalfield Justice and the Donora Smog Museum are hosting a webinar to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Donora Smog in 1948, the worst air pollution disaster in U.S. history -- and which led to the creation of the Clean Air Act of 1963.  Details and registration here;  more Donora-related events here.

•  Oct 11-15:  Calling all gardeners -- free soil testing event!  Learn more and register to drop off your samples here.  

•  Oct 12:  Did you miss our salon with Kristina Marusic?  She'll be talking with folks from the Moms Clean Air Force -- more information here.

•  Oct 16:  Another question people ask me often is how to get started with composting.  A great way to start:  attend a PRC composting workshop.

•  Oct 18:  Concerned Health Professionals of NY releases the 9th Edition of the Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking and Associated Gas & Oil Infrastructure.  Register for the noon briefing or the evening webinar.

•  Oct 18:  Women for a Healthy Environment hosts a screening of Children of the Vine, an exposé of the lethal dangers of RoundUp, and the corporate shenanigans that have enabled it to maintain its dominance in agriculture and home landscaping for almost half a century.  

•  Oct 21:  Enjoy an evening on the water with Three Rivers Waterkeeper (and help support this excellent watchdog organization!)

•  Oct 27:  LaRoche University hosts the Global Problems/Global Solutions conference on environmental justice.

•  Nov 5:  Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light's annual conference: No Faith in Fossil Fuels.  In-person (at Duquesne University and other locations around the state) and virtual options.  More information and reservations here.

•  Nov 8-9:  Community response to the MetCoke Summit, at Bigelow Square downtown.  More details to come!

•  Nov 9:  FracTracker Alliance's 9th annual Community Sentinel Awards.

•  Nov 9:  Women for a Healthy Environment hosts an evening with Carey Gillam, investigative journalist and author of The Monsanto Papers.

•  PA is considering legislation to (a) greatly increase the renewables portion of our electricity generation, and (b) enable community solar!!  The Pennsylvania Solar Center has made it easy to speak out to support this action! 

•  This spring we learned a great deal about agriculture and the Farm Bill.  You can use your voice to advocate for more-sustainable practices being supported at this link. 

•  We know that only a tiny fraction of plastic has ever been recycled.  And yet, NPR has been airing sponsorship messages for the American Recycling Council, which is continuing to perpetrate the "recycling" hoax.  Does that make your blood boil?  The national group Beyond Plastics has a petition/sign-on letter to get them to stop -- please sign, for yourself or for an organization you represent!

•  It's been more than a year now!  You can support striking Post-Gazette workers here (and consider signing up for the alternative online publication, the Pittsburgh Union Progress -- and maybe even cancel your P-G subscription until they start treating workers fairly!).  This strike has garnered national attention;  one recent picket even made it into Teen Vogue.

•  And speaking of solidarity, the Cop City controversy is still raging in Atlanta.  More information and a support fund are here.  There's also talk of a similar facility in the works for Pittsburgh.

•  Another forest that needs protecting is Sherwood Forest, in Mason Co., WA -- at risk of clear-cutting by a company headquartered here in Pittsburgh.  You can learn more (and donate to the legal fund if you can) here. 

•  PRC continues to hold online workshops about composting, rainwater harvesting, and waste reduction.  

•  The Rachel Carson EcoVillage is still looking for a few more members, so they can start construction!  Curious?  Check out this introductory video -- or even better, sign up for an introduction session or sign up as an “inquirer” to have more information sent to you.

•  Did you see the film The Story of Plastic, or the PBS doc Plastic Wars?  (and/or join us for Plastic Paradise at a winter film salon six years ago?)  ...What if you could bring up imagery of the toxic impacts of plastic production, and commentary by the people and communities living with them, over the world?  You can do all that with the interactive Toxic Tours tool.  Check it out!  

•  Mask update:  Breathe99 masks (featured in a 2020 salon on Pandemics and Air (video), and one of TIME's 100 Best Inventions of 2020) are now being distributed by Our Children Our Earth, a local purveyor of alternatives to disposables (as well as classy wooden toys).  Contact Dianne via OCOE's Facebook page, or call (412) 772-1638 to coordinate a curbside pickup (or you can still order online).

For the uninitiated, a Sustainability Salon is an educational forum;  it's a mini-conference;  it's a venue for discussion and debate about important environmental issues (and often health, and justice, and politics);  it's a house party (if there weren't a pandemic) with an environmental theme.  Each month we have featured speakers on various aspects of a particular topic, interspersed with stimulating conversation, lively debate, and (when in person) delectable potluck food and drink and music-making through the evening.   Originally a potluck mini-conference, the event has been mostly on Zoom since March 2020, except for some outdoor summer (and now hybrid!) salons.  

Past topics have included abandoned oil and gas wells, hope (finding it, creating it, using it), addressing environmental causes of cancer, a development proposal for Frick Park, single-use plastic legislation, home energy efficiency (and legislation to help fund improvements), the UN's COP process for climate negotiations, alternatives to single-use packaging, our region's air (part I and part II), activist art and America's Energy Gamble, advocacy opportunities, social justice games, fixing Pennsylvania state government, climate action, forest restoration, the history of American consumerism, regional air quality, preserving Pittsburgh's forests, climate modeling, approaches to pipelines, pipeline hazards, the legacy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the judiciary and fair elections, consumption, pandemics and air,  election law and activism, air quality and environmental justice, social investment,  local economies, the economics of energy, mutual aid networks, ocean health, the rise of the radical right, the back end of consumption, approaches to activism on fracking & climate, air quality, technology, and citizen science, single-use plastics, election activism, election law, whether to preserve existing nuclear power plants, advanced nuclear technologies, passenger and freight trains, consumption, plastics, and pollution, air quality, solar power, youth activism, greening business, greenwashing, the petrochemical buildout in our region, climate/nature/people, fracking, health, & action, globalization, ecological ethics, community inclusion, air quality monitoring, informal gatherings that turn out to have lots of speakers, getting STEM into Congress, keeping Pittsburgh's water public, Shell's planned petrochemical plant, visualizing air quality, the City of Pittsburgh's sustainability initiatives, fossil energy infrastructure, getting money out of politics, community solar power and the Solarize Allegheny program, the Paris climate negotiations (before, during, and after), air quality (again, with news on the autism connection), reuse (of things and substances), neighborhood-scale food systems, other forms of green community revitalization, solar power, climate change, environmental art, environmental education (Part I & Part II), community mapping projects, environmental journalism, grassroots action, Marcellus shale development and community rights, green building, air quality, health care, more solar power, trees and park stewardship, alternative energy and climate policy, regional watershed issues, fantastic film screenings and discussions (often led by filmmakers) over the winter with films on Food Systems, Climate Adaptation and Mitigation, Plastic Paradise, Rachel Carson and the Power Of One Voice, Triple Divide on fracking, You've Been Trumped and A Dangerous Game, A Fierce Green Fire, Sustainability Pioneers, films on consumption, Living Downstream, Bidder 70, YERT, Gas Rush Stories, and food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, and more food (a recurrent theme;  with California running out of water, we'd better gear up to produce a lot more of our own!).