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Local Environmental Action is an opportunity to join community leaders, environmental advocates and activists from across the region for an exciting day of skills training, networking, and inspiration. Whether you have been to every conference or are attending for the first time, be sure not to miss this amazing opportunity to connect and grow our grassroots movement.
The agenda below is from our 2019 conference. Stay tuned for the 2020 workshops and speakers! |
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9:00AM Registration
SignBe sure to register to enjoy a day of inspiration, learning, and celebration.
10:00AM Workshops
Digital Organizing to Recruit Your People and Build Your Power
Your group is great and your campaign has amazing actions and events. Why aren’t people showing up? Come learn how to incorporate digital recruitment into your organizing including Facebook, Action Network, texting and more. Come away with stories, skills, and resources to take your group’s digital work and recruitment to the next level. Your campaign is strategic and action-oriented. Your digital organizing should be too!
Healthy Conflict: The Key to Good Groups and Winning Campaigns!
Hate conflict? Confused about why it's hard for your group to move through the hard stuff? We know conflict is baked into our campaigns: from the heated disagreements in our community groups to sparking divisiveness in our towns and communities. This workshop will give you tools to reflect on how you approach conflict, how to recognize when it is escalating, and whether it is healthy or unhealthy. Participants will leave with more confidence and understanding in navigating conflict, which will arise whenever we work to create change.
Organizing Your Community 101
Need to fill up your toolbox or polish up your organizing skills? Come learn tried-and-true foundational skills of organizing. Whether you are trying to get your voice heard, educate the public, speak to reporters, recruit new members or get petitions signed, this workshop is for you. We will focus on telling your campaign story in the most effective way possible and doing top-notch outreach. Bring a pen and paper, and have a cause in mind. This workshop will be interactive.
The Green New Deal: How We Got Here, Where We're Going
What’s happening at the national level with the Green New Deal and what does it look like here in Massachusetts? This workshop will help you understand how the Sunrise Movement used movement building techniques to engage the grassroots and build the biggest and most equitable national conversation on climate change of our time. Learn more about how the innovative policy of the Green New Deal works for everyone, from guaranteeing green jobs to health care for all... and learn what is happening on those policies in MA!
BEYOND REFORM: BEYOND BARS AND BORDERS
Come explore the connections between climate chaos and displacement, and between mass incarceration and environmental justice. What would a world without cages and borders look like? We will explore why we must come together to unite our struggles for immigration justice, prison abolition, and climate justice. edit.
Money for the Movement: Getting Started with Grant Applications
There is an abundance of grant opportunities out there for municipalities and grassroots groups that can make your dream project a reality. If you are working on setting up an educational or advocacy event but need some funding to get started, there are grants for you. Likewise, if you are trying to get your town government to implement a local climate solution but are afraid you don’t have the money in the budget, there are grants for that too! Come learn about what grants are currently offered, where you can find them, and how to write a successful application to make your project possible.
Getting There from Here: Equitable and Sustainable Transportation
Energy and transportation are linked more closely than ever before. As we clean the electric grid and electrify our personal and public transit systems the future of transportation is bright. You’re gonna need shades.
Making Buildings Better for Everyone
Would you like to live and work in buildings that are comfortable year round, without huge heating and cooling bills? Want to save money while saving the environment? Come learn about how to fight climate change by changing the way we build buildings! Making our buildings more climate-friendly is a huge step towards getting to Net Zero, while making our homes and communities more efficient, more equitable, and more comfortable. Join policy-makers, experts, and activists to learn what specific actions you can take to make buildings better for everyone, starting with YOUR community.
Electrify Everything: The Next Wave of Climate Solutions
Solutions to climate change now have to go beyond installing more wind and solar- we have to completely change how we heat our buildings and power our transportation. In short, we need to electrify everything! Our panel of experts will explore how to take this next step in a way that is equitable and effective. Come learn why “electrification” is important and how it relates to your movement efforts!
Un-Free Market: Corporate Power in Massachusetts
For decades, corporations have been gaining power, including here in Massachusetts. Community Labor United has teamed up with our national research partners to discover who has been funding opposition to progressive legislation in Massachusetts, and what they have to gain by doing so. In this workshop, you'll learn how to talk about corporate influence in the state and why organizers need to pay attention. Join us for a briefing on the "power behind the throne" in Massachusetts, and what we can do to put power back in the hands of people.
11:30AM WELCOME & KEYNOTE
Biologist, author, and cancer survivor, Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D. writes about climate change, ecology, and the links between human health and the environment.
Steingraber’s highly acclaimed book, Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment was the first to bring together data on toxic releases with data from U.S. cancer registries and was adapted for the screen in 2010. As both book and documentary film, Living Downstream has won praise from international media.
Continuing the investigation begun in Living Downstream, Steingraber’s books, Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood and Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis, explore the intimate ecology of pregnancy and reveal the ways which environmental hazards now threaten each stage of infant and child development. Throughout, she calls parents and cancer patients alike to political action.
Called “a poet with a knife” by Sojourner magazine, Steingraber has received many honors for her work as a science writer, including, in 2011, a Heinz Award. By donating the cash prize to the anti-fracking movement, she became, in 2012, the co-founder of New Yorkers Against Fracking, a statewide coalition of more than 280 grassroots organizations.
Steingraber has been named a Woman of the Year by Ms. Magazine, a Person of the Year by Treehugger, and one of 25 “Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” by the Utne Reader. She is the recipient of the biennial Rachel Carson Leadership Award and the Jenifer Altman Foundation’s Altman Award for “the inspiring and poetic use of science to elucidate the causes of cancer.” Steingraber received a Hero Award from the Breast Cancer Fund and the Environmental Health Champion Award from Physicians for Social Responsibility, Los Angeles. She is recognized for her ability to serve as a two-way translator between scientists and activists.
Steingraber’s highly acclaimed book, Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment was the first to bring together data on toxic releases with data from U.S. cancer registries and was adapted for the screen in 2010. As both book and documentary film, Living Downstream has won praise from international media.
Continuing the investigation begun in Living Downstream, Steingraber’s books, Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood and Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis, explore the intimate ecology of pregnancy and reveal the ways which environmental hazards now threaten each stage of infant and child development. Throughout, she calls parents and cancer patients alike to political action.
Called “a poet with a knife” by Sojourner magazine, Steingraber has received many honors for her work as a science writer, including, in 2011, a Heinz Award. By donating the cash prize to the anti-fracking movement, she became, in 2012, the co-founder of New Yorkers Against Fracking, a statewide coalition of more than 280 grassroots organizations.
Steingraber has been named a Woman of the Year by Ms. Magazine, a Person of the Year by Treehugger, and one of 25 “Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” by the Utne Reader. She is the recipient of the biennial Rachel Carson Leadership Award and the Jenifer Altman Foundation’s Altman Award for “the inspiring and poetic use of science to elucidate the causes of cancer.” Steingraber received a Hero Award from the Breast Cancer Fund and the Environmental Health Champion Award from Physicians for Social Responsibility, Los Angeles. She is recognized for her ability to serve as a two-way translator between scientists and activists.
1:00PM LUNCH & WORKSHOPS
Toxics in food packaging? Why are they there and what can we do about it?
Concerned about exposure to Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)? PFAS are a class of persistent, human-made, toxic chemicals used widely in consumer products and industrial sectors. Due to their persistence and mobility, we are continuously exposed to PFAS through a range of pathways. One exposure route is through food and food packaging. PFAS coated paper and cardboard provide qualities such as grease resistance and waterproofing. Studies of food packaging have found PFAS in fast food wrappers, pizza boxes, and microwave popcorn bags, among others. This lunchtime drop-in session will feature an interactive discussion about the concerns surrounding the use of PFAS in food packaging, what we as individuals can do to avoid PFAS, as well as collective actions different cities, states, and institutions are taking to ban PFAS from food packaging. We will consider how and why PFAS use became so widespread, under-regulated, and the key role of communities and social movement organizations in addressing this growing issue.
No Eastie Substation: The Role of the Energy Facilities Siting Board in Massachusetts' Energy Future
GreenRoots is an environmental justice organization in Chelsea, MA fighting a proposal to build a high-voltage electrical substation on the Chelsea Creek -- in an area that has flooded three times in the past year and is right next to an 8 million gallon tank of jet fuel. The Energy Facilities Siting Board (EFSB), an independent state board that reviews proposed large energy facilities like the substation, power plants, pipelines, and fracked gas storage tanks, is a key player in this proposal and others across our state. Join GreenRoots for an informal discussion on the role EFSB plays and what we can do to make it work better for all of us.
Round Up Against RoundUp: Pesticide Activist Lunch
Are you interested in helping your town choose organic practices over toxic pesticides? Come eat, share, and learn from like-minded folks! Get up to speed on what local activists are making happen in Massachusetts and how you can take action in your own city or town. Open to all!
2:20PM WORKSHOPS
Building a Unified Climate Justice Movement
The world we hope for demands that we halt the rapidly escalating climate crisis. To do so requires building a massive interconnected movement of people from every background. Relationship building, overcoming divisions imposed by oppression in society, and developing alliances are essential elements in building such a movement and advancing climate and environmental justice. Join us in addressing the connections between racism, classism, genocide, patterns of domination--and our climate crisis. To accelerate our unified effort toward an equitable, sustainable future, this interactive workshop will provide concrete skills and perspectives for ending the damaging effects of oppression on our lives, communities and local action groups. We will share tools and perspectives that strengthen our connections, leadership and advance equity by healing from the effects of oppression.
This workshop is offered by Sustaining All Life/United to End Racism [SAL/UER], a grassroots organization working to halt climate change and build a unified climate justice movement within the context of ending all divisions among people.
This workshop is offered by Sustaining All Life/United to End Racism [SAL/UER], a grassroots organization working to halt climate change and build a unified climate justice movement within the context of ending all divisions among people.
"No Law, No Enforcement": Codifying Change with Att. Cynthia Jennings
This hands-on workshop covers how to get your local officials to write and pass resolutions that will further your campaign goals. Civil Rights attorney, activist, and former Hartford City Councilor Cynthia Jennings will demystify the process of drafting a resolution and explain when and how a resolution can be effective tactic for your campaign. Participants will leave with the confidence to author their own resolutions to send to City Council, Boards of Selectmen and more!
Just Transition: A Visionary-Oppositionary Model for Environmental Justice Organizing Work
It’s going to take a transformation to solve our climate crisis, achieve zero waste, and build the world we want to see. But what will that transformation look like? And how can we know that the solutions we are fighting for will be equitable and just for all? Just Transition is a set of principles, processes and practices developed by labor unions and environmental justice groups that builds economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy. In this workshop, you’ll learn about what a Just Transition could look like and what it’s not, and leave with some ideas about what local leaders are doing now that you could take back to your community.
Speaker:
Cristina Cabrera, Pocasset Pokanoket Land Trust (PPLT) (courtesy of Island Foundation)
Speaker:
Cristina Cabrera, Pocasset Pokanoket Land Trust (PPLT) (courtesy of Island Foundation)
Organizing Your Community 101
Need to fill up your toolbox or polish up your organizing skills? Come learn tried-and-true foundational skills of organizing. Whether you are trying to get your voice heard, educate the public, speak to reporters, recruit new members or get petitions signed, this workshop is for you. We will focus on telling your campaign story in the most effective way possible and doing top-notch outreach. Bring a pen and paper, and have a cause in mind. This workshop will be interactive.
The Green New Deal: How We Got Here, Where We're Going
What’s happening at the national level with the Green New Deal and what does it look like here in Massachusetts? This workshop will help you understand how the Sunrise Movement used movement building techniques to engage the grassroots and build the biggest and most equitable national conversation on climate change of our time. Learn more about how the innovative policy of the Green New Deal works for everyone, from guaranteeing green jobs to health care for all... and learn what is happening on those policies in MA!
Putting the "Action" in Climate Action Plans
What goes into an effective climate action plan and how do you make sure it’s actually implemented? Whether your town already has a plan but is stalled on action, or you have been hoping create a plan, this workshop is for you. We’ll have a robust discussion with three key movers in climate action planning: a city councilor, an activist and a town planner. You’ll leave with ideas on what to implement in your town and how to make it happen.
Megadams = Megadamage: Clean & Green? NO Dam Way!
Presentation and discussion by members of Grand Riverkeeper Labrador Inc. and Labrador Land Protectors from Eastern Canada on why large hydro is a false solution to the climate crisis.
Building Effective Relationships: Creating the Progressive Dream Team and Including Elected Officials
Building long-term relationships with your local elected and appointed officials is a huge help when it comes to getting stuff done in your community. Learn from elected officials and local activists about how you can build relationships and leverage them to make your voice heard and move from ideas to concrete action.
Approaches to Climate Policy
What should a Green New Deal look like? How can we build an economy that is sustainable and fair? If you would like to learn more, join the Center for Popular Economics for a fun, interactive conversation on the political economy of environmental policy! In this session we will use theater and small-group discussion to outline the traditional approaches to climate policy--stricter regulation, carbon taxes and cap-and-trade--and discuss recent, more radical proposals like public ownership and democratic control of energy systems. We will explore what the strengths and weaknesses of each type of proposal, and who the winners and losers are likely to be. By the end of this session, participants should have a better understanding of the moral, political and practical debates over the details of a potential Green New Deal.
4:00PM AWARDS
Join us to recognize our tremendous leaders!
4:30PM CELEBRATION
Come celebrate the wonderful work done by all of our activists!