Track Lead: Sandra Steingraber

Collective Inquiry: Environmental Health & Justice Roundtable

Session A: 11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. (Room 101)

What are the key challenges we're facing to environmental health and justice in the Northeast today? What are the best practices in addressing them? What are our key next steps?

Facilitator: Teresa Jones, Greenfield Community College, Energy-Efficiency & Renewable Energy Program Faculty

Resource Person: Sandra Steingraber, Author, Activist, & Ecologist

Real Lessons from Crowd-Funding & Individual Donor Campaigns

Session A: 11:00am - 12:15pm (Room 102)

In this interactive workshop, Ethany Uttech, from the nonprofit crowdfunding platform ioby (in our back yards), will join us via Skype to share how you can use crowdfunding effectively to raise cash and engage community in your sustainability work. She'll cover proven crowdfunding tips, based directly on the hundreds of grassroots projects ioby has supported nationwide. Shaina Kasper will add additional strategies for finding and engaging donors from your community to support your effort(s). 

Facilitator: Bart Westdjik, New England Grassroots Environment Fund

Presenters: Ethany Uttech, IOBY; Shaina Kasper, Toxics Action Center

Community Organizing & Running Effective Campaigns

Session B: 1:15 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. (Room 102)

Most of us would say that we want an environmental movement that has people from every community and background and yet the environmental space remains predominantly white and middle class. This workshop will focus on the core values and approaches needed to do effective organizing across race and culture and the key pitfalls that prevent us from building the kind of powerful multiracial, multiclass movement that we desire. All are welcome to this space, but it will be mostly oriented to beginning organizers or organizational leaders who are trying to start conversations about multiracial or multiclass outreach within their organization.

Presenter: Reverend Mariama White-Hammond, Bethel AME Church

Stop the Gas Leaks!

Session B: 1:15 p.m. - 2.30 p.m. (Room 101)

For decades the aging infrastructure of Massachusetts cities and towns has lead to massive amounts of methane gas leaking into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming, wasted resources, and economic burden for families. Learn why this is happening, and what activists in both Eastern and Western Massachusetts are doing to stop it. 

Presenters: Jesse Lederman, ARISE for Social Justice; Joel Wool, Clean Water Action

Divestment, Reinvestment, & Next Steps for the 5-Colleges

Session C: 2:45 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. (Room 101)

Divestment is a powerful political tool for removing fossil fuel companies’ social license to operate, and Reinvestment is a powerful tool to help colleges shift those fossil fuel investments towards local energy solutions. In this workshop, Student from Divest Smith College, Divest UMass, and other three colleges will share their experiences in the student divestment movement of the past four years, and insights on how to move forward with a growing national student movement.

Presenters: Eleanor Adachi, Eliana Gevelber, Emily Hitchcock, Divest Smith College; Kelly Weisbartd Missett, Brian Beaty, Divest Amherst College; MHC Climate Justice Coalition Reps

Using the National Historic Preservation Act To Identify & Protect Indigenous Religious & Cultural Sites 

Session C: 2:45 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. (Room 102)

In this session, participants will learn about the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires developers of federally funded or permitted projects to consult with indigenous tribes and evaluate the impact of the potential projects on historic and sacred sites. Doug Harris of the Narragansett Indian Tribal Historic Preservation Office will share his work with the United South and Eastern Tribes in their implementation of the National Historic Preservation Act on federal undertakings. Participants will learn what ceremonial stones are as defined by the United South and Eastern Tribes and how they can be allies in helping tribes protect them.

Presenter: Doug Harris, Narragansett Indian Tribal Historic Preservation Office