All active local environmental groups, urban or rural, encounter situations where they need to turn out large numbers of people for meetings. Creating a volunteer network of people, who have agreed to get involved and specifically have agreed to show up for meetings, can mean the difference between scurrying around to find a handful of […]
– USING POLITICAL CAMPAIGN MANAGER’S TOOLS IN ENVIRONMENTAL CAMPAIGNS Read More »
Excerpted from the introduction to the newly published Pacific Northwest Timber Wars I led Kalmiopsis Audubon Society (KAS), a small volunteer environmental group headquartered in a small village on the remote Southwest Oregon coast during a period of great environmental conflict from 1989 to 2002. During this time, the environmental community brought to an end
– Pacific Northwest Timber Wars 1989-1999 Read More »
Email is a powerful tool with unique advantages over speech and other forms of writing, but can cause problems not found in those other forms of communication. Many hints and suggestions for email’s predictable yet avoidable problems including “flaming”. Getting others to read and respond to your posts. Email differs from other written communications like
– PITFALLS 101: CAUTIONS FOR ACTIVISTS WHEN WRITING OR READING EMAIL Read More »
The Trump years witnessed a continuous attack on public lands, from opening them to drilling and logging, pardoning militia types convicted for attacking land managers, awarding sweetheart leases to insiders and restricting public’s knowledge of proposed projects. If all three branches of government come under Republican control these efforts may prove to be just prelude
– Bob Marshall’s Long-Lost Arguments For Wilderness Read More »
Many of the issues we face today have been issues for human organizations for thousands of years. About 4500 years ago, Egypt’s pharaohs set up formal training classes for children of high officials expected to become their future vizers and overseers. Lessons from these classes have survived on clay tablets1 and contain much good management
– 23 KEY HISTORICAL FIGURES & BOOKS (some banned) FOR ACTIVISTS Read More »
Lessons from hundreds of grassroots campaigns. A step-by-step guide to making change. Jim Britell, environmental activist and political organizer, shares what he has learned during 30 years helping local groups to organize and run effective campaigns.Organize To Win is a series of three books that distill lessons from hundreds of grassroots campaigns to show how anyone
From Organize to Win Vol 1 by Jim Britell “… kids don’t have a little brother working in the coal mine, (or) a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized… Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management… they were fought
– In 1972 Alinsky explained why a Trump would rise in the US and how to defeat him Read More »
Most campaigns Today don’t do any of the things successful grassroots leaders of the past said you must always do, while doing all the things they said you mustn’t. In the last 125 years, American grassroots campaigns have forced legislatures to pass laws on women’s suffrage, social security, civil rights, wilderness, clean air and clean
– Why Some Grassroots Campaigns Succeed And Others Fail Read More »
Never overestimate the knowledge, intelligence, or courage of elected representatives.
– Misconceptions About Lobbying Representatives and Agencies Read More »
The 2016 election elevated Mike Pence and Betsy DeVos—major supporters of teaching creationism—to the vice presidency and leadership of the U.S. Department of Education, respectively. DeVos is a billionaire funder of efforts to pass state laws that give science teachers the right to present anti-evolution materials in science classrooms under the guise of protecting academic
– Modern Biology and Ecology: The Roots Of America’s Assertive Illiteracy Read More »