Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit: 11 Years and Counting!

Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit (GLBD) organizers Gloria Rivera and Paula Cathcart (pictured above), who are both from the order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, were recently featured in a short video related to Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’.

GLBD will present its 11th conference this year. In addition to the yearly conference, GLBD has become a year-round presence in Detroit since fall of 2009. GLBD coordinator, Gloria Rivera IHM is an active participant in various networking collaboratives including: Zero Waste Detroit (recycling education, closing the local incinerator), People’s Water Board (water affordability for all Detroiters), People’s Platform (issues determined by the community), Equitable Detroit (working on a Community Benefits Ordinance), Community Radio Station (providing a voice for Detroiters), Environmental Justice, Food Justice, Place-based Education, and Uprooting Racism, Planting Justice.

Learn more about the work of Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit featured in Radio Series XIV: Shapeshifting Detroit: Overcoming Drive-By Economics with Malik Kenyatta Yakini, Lottie Spady, and Sister Gloria Rivera.

Central Coast Bioneers: From Keynote Video to Community Victory

By Stacey Hunt, Central Coast Bioneers 

Bioneers was the stone in the slingshot in a recent David and Goliath scenario in San Luis Obispo County, home of Central Coast Bioneers.

Activists Charlie and Tamara Kleemann and their organization Margarita Proud were spearheading a community fight to stop approval of a mega sand and gravel quarry that was proposed along the Salinas River in the tiny town of Santa Margarita in rural San Luis Obispo County.  The quarry would have destroyed the local viewshed, annoyed neighbors with constant noise and explosions, and filled the small two-lane scenic Highway 58 with hundreds of trucks every day.  The project proponents were local heavyweights, who bullied and intimidated residents to stop any opposition to the project.

Charlie Kleemann was trying to find a way to demonstrate the physical impacts of the quarry in a way people could grasp.  The two-dimensional maps and drawings that had been submitted by the proponents did not really illustrate what the destruction of the mountain would look like from the ground.  When we visited the Kleemanns one evening in January 2013, Charlie showed us the small scale model of the project he was trying to build with wood.   We had shown Rebecca Moore’s talk at Bioneers in October 2012 about Google Earth Engine at our conference and were blown away by her success at using Google’s mapping and 3D overlay technology to defeat a huge logging project proposed near her home in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  I offered to loan Charlie the DVD of Rebecca’s presentation to perhaps give him another tool to use in his fight against the quarry.

A few days later, Tamara Kleemann called me to say Charlie stayed up for 24 hours straight after he watched the DVD teaching himself how to use the Google program.  Using the technology, he had been able to show what the maps and drawings had not – the actual impact of the proposed mining operation on the mountain itself.  Charlie was able to diagram the resulting views from each of his neighbors’ porches of what would happen if the quarry were approved.  He now had a potent weapon to use with County planning staff and at the public hearings.

Rebecca Moore Pic Central Coast Conference 2012When we heard what Charlie was doing, we asked if he would speak at the 2013 Central Coast Bioneers Conference and we invited Rebecca Moore to come and co-present with him.   They both agreed, and their presentation was one of the most well-attended and well-received local talks given that year.   The Kleemanns and Margarita Proud were able to defeat the quarry project at the Planning Commission level.  The project proponents appealed the decision to the Board of Supervisors, and again, the community came out in droves to voice their opposition.  The appeal was denied.

We are eternally grateful to Bioneers and Rebecca Moore for bringing this valuable technology to our attention so that we could pass the information on to local residents who put it to good use in a real-life battle to save a small town.  Rebecca took a personal interest in the outcome, and has since invited Charlie to attend Google’s Geo for Good workshop in the fall of 2015 so that he can hone his new-found skills.

Ecologistics, Inc. has been a member of the Bioneers Network since 2010 and puts on the annual Central Coast Bioneers Conference.  As a result of networking that occurs at the conference, we have had a number of important outcomes resulting from our engagement, including:

  • Creation of the Dreaming the Salinas initiative (inspired by Bioneers Dreaming New Mexico project) to promote restoration of the Salinas River and to establish a river center on the Upper Salinas;
  • Fundraising and additional support for Cal Poly Professor Pete Schwartz’s Appropriate Technology “Guateca” project in San Pablo, Guatemala;
  • Creation of a new minor at Cal Poly in Indigenous Studies in Natural Resources and the Environment;
  •  Catalyst for the possible adoption of Community Choice Aggregation in San Luis Obispo County by bringing in experts in the field to speak at the Central Coast Bioneers Conference and uniting them with local leaders;
  • Creation of the Blue C Community Garden in Los Osos;
  • Establishment of a year-round series of Critical Conversations, bringing interesting speakers and films on environmental and social justice topics to San Luis Obispo.

A future project includes the creation of a network of Community Cafés, where the food insecure would be able to get a meal on a sliding scale any day of the week.  Ecologistics also acts as the fiscal sponsor for several local nonprofits including:

  • Carrizo Colloquium – an organization that puts on an semi-annual colloquium on preservation of endangered species on the Carrizo Plain;
  • Connoisseur Creations, Inc. – a company that educates women on financial independence through its Economics of Being a Woman programs;
  •  Four Elements Organics – a local farm that wants to establish a permaculture, wildland restoration and stream restoration learning center for families and youth;
  • SLO Clean Water Action – a community action organization dedicated to the passage of a rights-based ordinance in the county that ensures protection of citizens’ right to clean water, with the ultimate goal of banning fracking in the county;
  • Protect Scenic 101 – an organization attempting to remove all billboards along the Highway 101 corridor through part of San Luis Obispo County.

Through the work of these dedicated organizations, we can broaden our positive impact on the County.  Ecologistics looks forward to future collaboration with Bioneers to extend its work throughout the country and the world.

Must-See at Bioneers 2015: Community Resilience

It’s no accident that natural systems are built around community – and, similarly, human communities are the bedrock building block of society. How we imagine, build and live in our communities may well be some of the most important decisions we make as a society.

At Bioneers 2015, we invite you to explore our Resilient Communities programming in keynotes and afternoon panels and workshops, as well as a landmark one-day pre-conference intensive. We will cover a kaleidoscopic palette of solutions, issues and themes including California’s Game-Changing Climate Leadership Model, The Nature of Cities, Culture & Community, Resilient Food Systems, Eco-Governance Models, Democratizing Technology, and more.

[blockquote align=”center”]”The basis of our biology is community.” —Paul Stamets[/blockquote]

Eco-Governance Models: Climate Leadership Across Scales

As the world looks towards the COP 21 Paris Climate Conference in December 2015, the question on everyone’s mind is whether the world’s nation states will be able to cobble together a climate deal after years of gridlock and missed chances. Regardless of the outcome, real, viable and encouraging action continues to swell across multiple scales below the nation state level. States, regions, cities, and citizen groups are rapidly developing collaborative networks and frameworks to take significant policy action on climate change.

Join us on Thursday, October 15, for a deep dive one-day forum on California’s Game-Changing Climate Leadership Model, which puts Environmental Justice policies front and center. This landmark gathering will feature visionary players in this hopeful new wave of global climate politics including former State Senator Tom Hayden, Vien Truong of the Greenlining Institute, Holland’s acclaimed water expert Henk Ovink and many others. Tom Hayden will keynote the full conference on Friday October 16th on this topic.

The Nature of Cities

We’re now a decade-and-a-half into the first century in history with a majority of the human population living in urban environments. At Bioneers 2015, we’ll be diving into the nature of cities, literally. Joining us will be two of the world’s most innovative urban thinkers and doers, both global leaders in re-designing cities at scale using nature’s model as the blueprint.

  • Andy Lipkis, President and Founder of TreePeople, will return to keynote with news about the potential transformation of LA from a water-wasting disaster into a leading model of water use efficiency and a true urban watershed.
  • Henk Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Netherlands, conceived of and directed the now legendary Rebuild by Design project to climate-proof the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area after Hurricane Sandy. Ovink is now crisscrossing the globe, helping coastal cities to think, design and build ahead of time, before climate-related disasters strike – or strike again – and again.
  • Hear visionary presentations by Lipkis and Ovink from the main stage, respectively on Friday and Saturday mornings, and then join them together for a truly historic first-ever dialogue on Saturday afternoon in a don’t-miss event.

Culture, Faith & Community

At Bioneers 2015, we examine models of thriving, diverse communities. What’s working, why is it working, what can we learn and apply elsewhere?

  • Learn how Restorative Justice is transforming youth and public policy with young restorative justice leaders from Oakland, CA including keynoter Fania Davis, a renowned Restorative Justice leader who has expanded the idea to include rights for nature.
  • Delve into Food Justice with the exceptional movement leader Malik Yakini, whose Detroit community is creating some of the most powerful community-based innovations to build a fair food system, plus a landmark panel with Fair Food founder Oran Hesterman.
  • Hear Sister Simone Campbell of Nuns on the Bus lay out a faith-based vision for “Healing for the 21st Century,” coming in the slipstream of Pope Francis’ historic appearance at the UN in September to keep moving his climate encyclical into action.
  • Explore the importance of basing community design on Indigenous knowledge and relationships with Tohono O’odham Community Action and Sustainable Nations as part of the Indigenous Forum.

Resilient Food Systems

At Bioneers this year, we’re featuring incredibly important conversations about food and community. Dive into the past, present and future of “Cuba and Sustainable Agriculture” with Greg Watson and Kevin Danaher. Witness the power of increasing access to healthy food to build and restore individuals and communities during Healing Foods, Healthy Communities. And lots more!

Democracy-enabling Technologies

For all the talk about the democratizing power of technology, too often communities find themselves left out of the conversations and decisions that really matter. We’ll be featuring two leading lights in the movement to leverage open-source technology for community empowerment. Citizen science is so powerful that three states have outlawed it.

  • Shannon Dosemagen, co-founder and President of the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, supports a burgeoning citizen science movement based on low-cost meets high-tech tools – think helium balloons equipped with remotely operated cameras for toxic discharge monitoring.
  • Joining us from New Zealand, Ben Knight helped found Loomio, an innovative collaborative decision-making platform now used by thousands of community groups across the globe, including Spain’s Podemos movement.


Of course there’s much more—explore the full schedule and register for Bioneers 2015 today » 

Spotlight: Neil Harvey, Bioneers Radio Senior Producer

This time of the year is especially high-voltage at Bioneers. As we’re ramping up for the conference, we also spring brand new radio on the world: The Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature. Our radio team tells us this may be the finest series ever, in part because the 2014 conference talks were so amazing.

Because the series airs on hundreds of stations, we have to release the 13 shows one at a time, as they air. You can now hear the first three, and stay tuned weekly for postings of each new show as it airs. 

01-15 Game Changing Climate Leadership

02-15 Nature's Intellegence

03-15 City of Joy

What to Expect: Hope, Humor & Women’s Wisdom

Neil Harvey, Senior Producer and Host of the annual series, recently shared some of his perspectives on what you’ll find in this year’s shows. Neil collaborates on the multi-award-winning series with Bioneers CEO & Co-Founder Kenny Ausubel (Executive Producer/Writer) and Stephanie Welch, Managing Producer. In fact, the series exists because Neil started coming to the conference in the late 1990s, and hooked Bioneers up with his team at New Dimensions Radio, who partnered with us get the series off the ground in 2001.

Neil says that one striking characteristic is the prominence of the feminine voice.  Four shows focus on women’s leadership and the archetypal feminine, and three more feature exclusively female voices. 

“From Eve Ensler’s appearance in two shows including her tour-de-force on the archetype of Adam and Eve, to the brilliant storytelling about 'Archetypes in Every Woman' with Jean Shinoda Bolen, Luisah Teish and Sri Swamini Svatmavidyananda, to the five sheroic Native women fighting Canadian tar sands and Amazon oil extraction in the 'Indigenous Women Rising' show, this whole experience of the rising power and vision of women gave me goose bumps.”

Neil says another highlight is the humor of several of the speakers in this series, especially in these often-dark times. While these are mightily serious issues, it’s vital to keep a light heart and a hopeful mind in order to move forward. This is something that a bioneer possesses. 

On a related note, Neil’s favorite part of making the show is the people. He said, “The guests we work with are quite remarkable human beings. They are true sheroes and heroes of our time.”

[blockquote align=”center”]“The guests we work with are quite remarkable human beings. They are true sheroes and heroes of our time.”[/blockquote]

Please give us your feedback when you hear the shows, and help spread the word! 

We Couldn’t Do It Without Your Support

We want to give a big shout-out to our hard-working radio team. Beginning with extensive prep work before the conference each year, the radio team works tirelessly throughout the year to create the polished, award-winning shows that are heard worldwide. And just won 12 national-global awards!

We offer a deep bow of gratitude to our radio sponsors, Organic Valley Family of Farms and Mary’s Gone Crackers. And to all of you who support the radio series and Bioneers at large!

Radio Sponsor Logos

We’re able to get the series out so widely because of your generous support. You are keeping Bioneers Radio freely available to the public and spreading game-changing solutions and ideas that are truly changing the world.  

Listen, subscribe and share Bioneers Radio Series XV online »

Grassroots Action: Braving The Blast Zone To Stop Oil Trains

Photo by Alison Ehara-Brown

On July 17, 22 out of a 106 train cars bound for a refinery in Anacortes, Washington derailed and spilled 35,000 gallons of oil in northeastern Montana, downing a power line, closing a major highway, and forcing evacations in a nearby town. While no one was injured, the accident came just hours after another derailment had shut down rail traffic through the area. The accident also came on the heels of six other major derailments just this year, including several explosive spills, exposing the still-unchecked dangers that oil trains pose. Indeed, the incident was followed by news on the 20th, with federal officals confirming that the train wasn’t speeding, but in fact traveling within the authorized 45 mph speed limit.

Trains hauling crude from the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana have been involved in one fiery derailment after another. In 2013, a runaway train hauling crude from the Bakken derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, incinerating much of its downtown and killing 47 people.

Do you or anyone else you know live in an oil train blast zone? Chances are you probably do. An estimated twenty-five million Americans live within a “blast zone,” a one mile evacuation area recommended by the US Department of Transportation.

While almost every major city across North America has rail lines running through them, our railways are designed for trains carrying people, not hazardous materials like the highly flammable, explosive — and increasingly commonplace — Bakken crude, across our cities.

A Call To Action

Idle No More

Photo by Alison Ehara-Brown

Early morning July 11, I joined Idle No More SF Bay and the Bay Area Refinery Corridor Coalition for a walk through a blast zone through the adjacent cities of Richmond and San Pablo, California. We walked six miles through neighborhoods along the railroad tracks which are within the 1 mile radius of a potential oil train explosion. We were joined by members of a variety of environmental groups, including Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Communities for a Better Environment, and many others at a second march near Richmond’s Kinder Morgan rail terminal before arriving at a Stop Oil Trains Rally at Washington Park in Point Richmond.

Both events comprised part of the larger Stop Oil Trains week of action to call attention to the growing threat of oil trains across North America. Marking the beginning of the week, July 6 was the second anniversary of the tragic oil train catastrophe that befell Lac-Mégantic.

Locally, transportation of crude-by-rail has led to fears of a potential disaster reminiscent of Lac-Mégantic, but has also unleashed powerful community activism in the form of the Refinery Corridor Healing Walks. These walks, led by Idle No More SF Bay, aim to raise awareness of the health risks and dangers posed by five large oil refineries in the Northeast San Francisco Bay and of the crude coming in from the Alberta Tar Sands and Bakken Oil Fields.

“There is NO safe way to transport extreme tar sands and Bakken crude,” states the Stop Oil Trains call to action, backed by groups including ForestEthics, Oil Change International, Center for Biological Diversity, and 350.org. “Two years after Lac-Mégantic, oil trains keep exploding and carbon pollution keeps rising. Oil trains are a disaster for our health, our safety, and our climate.”

Crude By Rail: Our Lives Are On The Line

Remember Lac MeganticPhoto by Alison Ehara-Brown

In the Bay Area, the week of action to stop so-called “bomb trains” commenced on the triple-span Benicia-Martinez Bridge, with protesters being arrested in their attempt to drop a banner reading “Stop Oil Trains Now: Are You in the Blast-Zone.org.” The Union Pacific Railroad span, which crosses the Carquinez Strait, near the Benicia Valero and Martinez Shell Oil Refineries, has been identified as a route used on the Oil Train Blast Zone map as the route used by oil trains moving through the Bay Area.

I live in the sleepy town of Benicia and the sights and sounds of passenger and freight trains rolling along the Carquinez Strait shoreline are a definitive part of my everyday experience. However, crude-by-rail spells catastrophe for both nearby residents and the local ecology of the San Francisco Bay estuary, upstream from the Pacific Ocean.

For the past few years, Benicia residents have risen up to fight back against Valero Refinery’s crude-by-rail proposal — a nationally controversial project that could turn the sensitive wetland habitat of Suisun Bay adjacent to the refinery, and the downtown cores of communities up-rail, such as that of California’s capital city, Sacramento, and the college town of Davis into fatal blast zones.

Oil Train Blast Zone HerePhoto by Alison Ehara-Brown

Nationwide, people living near a blast zone are overwhelmingly people of color. According to the new report, “Crude Injustice By Rails,” by Communities for a Better Environment and ForestEthics, eighty percent of Californians reside in “environmental justice” communities.

In Richmond, crude-by-rail is one of the most vivid examples of the fossil fuel industry’s blatant disregard for the climate, health, and safety of low-income communities of color. The city is on the frontlines of two major oil train fights: first, the fight to shut down the illegal Kinder Morgan oil train terminal, which was permitted behind the backs of the community, and second, the fight against the proposed Phillips 66 oil train terminal in San Luis Obispo County, which would bring an additional 2.5 million gallons of toxic, explosive tar sands oil through the city every day.

Richmond residents are also concerned about coal train dust blowing into their communities. During the blast zone walk, we caught the sight of open top rail cars in a largely Black and Latino neighborhood.

IMAG2726

Photo by Daniel Adel

Coal dust from open top cars are a health and environmental hazard, containing toxic materials like lead, mercury, and arsenic. BNSF Railway found that “every uncovered coal car can lose between 500 pounds and one ton of coal in transit.” Where is the coal going? According to a report in KQED Science — mostly to Japan and Mexico.

Linking Our Future To The Frontlines

The week of action showed the potential of alliances that could be forged in the months and years to come with frontline communities like Richmond. A variety of groups came together on the issue of oil trains, including students and alumni who had pushed for fossil fuel divestment on their campuses.

As enunciated by the California Student Sustainability Coalition, “To these communities, divesting from fossil fuel isn’t just about re-investing prudently in the future, but about struggling to survive today.”

This Could Be

Photo by Alison Ehara-Brown

At the closing rally, a retired train worker expressed that stopping oil trains in our communities should not be reduced to a “nimby issue.” On the contrary, frontline resistance is part of a larger process in our transition away from fossil fuels — a step towards a more clean, just, and healthy future for all of us.

Learn more about this topic via our Bioneers radio show: An Oil Spill Runs Through It: Corporate Power and the Sliming of American Democracy

Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit presented by Marygrove College

GLBD Stage Pic YouthIn addition to the yearly conference and since fall 2009 GLBD has become a year-round presence in Detroit. Our coordinator is an active participant in various networking collaboratives: Zero Waste Detroit (recycling education, closing the local incinerator), People’s Water Board (water affordability for all Detroiters), People’s Platform (issues determined by the community), Equitable Detroit (working on a Community Benefits Ordinance), Community Radio Station (providing a voice for Detroiters), Environmental Justice, Food Justice, Place-based Education and Uprooting Racism Planting Justice.

After attending Traverse City’s ‘satellite’ conference three years in a row; Paula Cathcart, IHM and Gloria Rivera, IHM wondered if it would be possible to sponsor a ‘satellite’ conference in Detroit. In 2004 they presented the idea to Great Lakes Bioneers (Traverse City) and to national Bioneers after consulting with 20+ Detroit organizations and colleagues who enthusiastically endorsed the idea and offered their support. The first GLBD conference took place in October 2005. GLBD will present its 11th conference this year.

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Salish Sea Bioneers presented by the Whidbey Institute

The Whidbey Institute is a place of renewal and inspiration, and home to the bold seekers of positive change.  We nurture and connect people who are doing uncommon work for the common good. Woven throughout our work is the spirit of the land. Our 100 acres of northwest woodland and historic farmstead, which we call Chinook, hold and energize everything that happens here. To learn more, visit: www.whidbeyinstitute.org. We became a network partner because our founders, Sarah Kelly and Tucker Stevens, were inspired by another BRCN event they attended and wanted to bring it to the Northwest!

Connect with Us

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Upcoming Events

Date Title
Monthly Meeting Community Rights Organizing Group: Impact Hub Seattle – Seattle, WA
Every 2nd Wednesday SSB Monthly Gatherings: Impact Hub Seattle – Seattle, WA (7:00 pm – 9:00 pm)
10/26/2015 Salish Sea Bioneers Seattle: Impact Hub Seattle – Seattle, WA (October 26, 5:30-8:30pm)
11/6 – 11/8/2015 Salish Sea Bioneers Gathering: Widbey Institute – Whidbey Island, WA



Central Coast Bioneers presented by Ecologistics, Inc.

Ecologistics, Inc., creating a resilient and healthy community for the residents of San Luis Obispo County, that is sustainable, both environmentally and economically. We became a partner site to bring the Bioneers Conference to residents of the Central Coast who could not travel to Marin, and to feature speakers and topics of local interest along with the National Bioneers keynote speakers.

Ecologistics LogoConnect with Us

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CCB Conference PicCurrent Events

Central Coast Bioneers
Blue C Community Garden
SLO Down Cancer
Dreaming the Salinas


 

 

Badger Bioneers presented by Sustain Dane

Sustain Dane is a Madison, Wisconsin-based nonprofit organization that envisions the Madison Region as a national model for sustainability and sustainability innovation. They work toward this vision by fostering a rich and diverse network of sustainability champions.

Sustain Dane’s vision of sustainability holds a healthy planet, a just society, and a strong economy as equal and interrelated parts of a vibrant community. Their work is focused on bringing sustainability to people wherever they are – at work, in schools, in neighborhoods.

The centerpiece of all of Sustain Dane’s work is the sustainability champion — any individual, regardless of job title, who wants to effect positive change in their sphere of influence. Sustain Dane works with these champions to help them become leaders and inspire others to be sustainability champions. They are building a network of engaged change agents working toward a resilient future for the Madison Region.

That’s where Badger Bioneers comes in. Since 2009, Sustain Dane has hosted a Bioneers Resilient Communities Network event annually to connect and inspire our sustainability champions. The Badger Bioneers Conference provides the skills, networking and ideas needed to become more effective agents of change in our businesses, schools, and communities. Being part of the BRCN community shows Badger Bioneers participants that they are part of a larger, connected movement of communities across the country.

Aside from hosting the Badger Bioneers Conference, Sustain Dane offers year-round programs and events to support champions and promote sustainability to a broader audience.

Connect with Us

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Email

Upcoming Events

Date Title
7/21/2015 MPower Sustainability Session: Energy Efficiency for Facilitie
7/22/2015 Step Up: Equity Matters – Coffee & Conversation
7/29/2015 Sustainable Business Network Breakfast
8/11/2015 MPower Sustainability Session: Energy Efficiency for IT
9/15/2015 MPower Sustainability Session: Water Stewardship
9/18/2015 Step Up: Equity Matters – Training for Workplace Diversity
10/20/2015 MPower Sustainability Session: Sustainable Food Choices 
10/21/2015 Sustainable Business Network Breakfast
11/10/2015 Badger Bioneers Conference
12/4/2015 Step Up: Equity Matters
For the most current event information, you can also visit us here:
www.sustaindane.org/events

 

 

Chloe Maxmin: Lessons from a Young Divestment Leader

At Bioneers, we believe that youth have the power to help shift the future for the better. Chloe Maxmin is one of those young people catalyzing change.

Maxmin, a graduate of Harvard University, became an activist when she was 12 and started a Climate Action Club in her high school, galvanizing a movement in her school and community. She then founded “First Here, Then Everywhere” to empower youth environmentalists, and then co-founded Divest Harvard, receiving national and international recognition for her activism.

Investing in the Future

“Divestment is the opposite of investment,” she says, introducing the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement during her Bioneers talk.

Modeled after the anti-apartheid struggle of 1980s, divestment, which aims to stigmatize the fossil fuel industry and expose our colleges, universities, and other institutions investing in their stock as socially irresponsible, has achieved significant strides since its inception. Young people are playing a major role in building the movement.

Chloe’s insights hold special resonance for me. As a student at San Francisco State University when the call for fossil fuel divestment emerged, I watched the movement unfold and capture hearts and minds before my eyes.

“At our first meeting, we had only 10 people, and none of us knew what we were doing,” says Maxmin. “Now, in our third year, we have 70,000 people who have signed on to our campaign.”

Share this story and spread the word about #BioneersYouth!

An Eye-Opening Walk through San Francisco Bay Oil Refineries

Photo by Rucha Chitnis

On June 20, 2015, I joined a Refinery Corridor Healing Walk led by Idle No More San Francisco Bay organizers. We marched 12 miles from my hometown of Benicia, California to Rodeo, California, crossing sights both monstrous and beautiful. What felt like a dream on this most remote side of the Bay was long overdue.

San Francisco Bay Area Oil Refineries Too Often Overlooked

The northeast corner of the San Francisco Bay Area is home to five refineries—Chevron, Shell, Valero, Tesoro, and Conoco Phillips—and a proposed Wespac oil terminal.

The Refinery Corridor Healing Walk began on the shores of the Carquinez Strait, several miles west of Benicia’s Valero Refinery, opening with a ceremony giving thanks to the waters that support all life on earth. From there, we took the healing walk west through local neighorhoods and south across the Carquinez Bridge, to Rodeo’s Conoco Phillips Refinery, the oldest of its kind in the Bay Area.

Walking within these communities provided an eye-opening experience, as places like Rodeo and Benicia are on the frontlines of the fossil fuel industry. Indeed, in recent years, Bay Area refineries have attracted national controversy with expansion projects to increase the amount of crude coming in and being refined. This, in a time when scientists agree that 80% of the world’s fossil fuel reserves should remain underground, unburned, to avert the worst impacts of climate change.

Idle No More Helps to Connect the Dots on Big Oil’s Impact

When people think of the Bay Area, they think of a dynamic, forward-looking region at the heart of social and environmental progress. The five large San Francisco Bay oil refineries and their enduring connection with our fossil fuel based economy are too often overlooked.

Last year, Bay Area activists joined Idle No More to create the Bay Area Refinery Corridor Coalition. Working together, the two groups have organized these Healing Walks along the refinery corridor of northeast San Francisco Bay to bring attention to the health risks and dangers that the refineries pose and the crude coming through the communities from the Alberta tar sands and the Bakken oil fields.

A grassroots movement of indigenous peoples in Canada, including bioneer Clayton Thomas Muller, Idle No More made headlines for opposing hazardous fossil fuel projects including the building of the Keystone XL pipeline over indigenous land in Alberta. For more about the Idle No More movement, check out Clayton Thomas Muller’s keynote from the 2014 Bioneers Conference:

IMG_3421Photo by Rucha Chitnis

Healing WalkPhoto by. Alison Ehara-Brown

Rodeo FuturePhoto by. Alison Ehara-Brown

See more photos from the Healing Walk here.

Changing Our Mindset: Envisioning A Brighter Future

The Refinery Corridor Healing Walks are near and dear to me, where my multiple identities collide and manifest as a singular entity. I have been an environmental advocate for years and as a Benicia local, the Bay Area’s refinery corridor is literally my home—the place of my upbringing.

Growing up in the city of Benicia was a lesson in duality. A former state capital, not to mention an early contender for Metropolis of the West, Benicia, a sleepy town just shy of 27,000 people, remains hidden from public imagination. Visitors often describe the city as quaint and picturesque—a vision that runs counter to the reality that the eastern end of the city fronting Suisun Bay is the site of heavy industry.

While Benicia never became the commercial or political hub its founders envisioned it to be, the Valero Refinery at the center of its massive Industrial Park has been an important part of our fossil fuel based economy, along with the other four refineries in the area.

But now we have an opportunity to reimagine the future. As Pennie Opal Plant of Idle No More SF Bay said at the end of the Healing Walk:

“The people in the refinery are not our enemies. We have no enemies. We have no human enemies. It is the mindset that creates that,” she said, pointing to the Rodeo refinery smokestacks, “that is our enemy. We are here to change that mindset.”

Learn more about the Refinery Corridor Healing Walks and how you can get involved at Pennie Opal Plant’s workshop at the 2015 Bioneers Conference.

Did you enjoy this story? Please like and share it to spread the word!

Saints and Sinners? From Charleston to the Vatican

Thursday June 18th was a study in contrasts and cognitive dissonance – saints and sinners from Charleston to the Vatican.

A Tragedy Unfolds in Charleston

I woke up very early, and when I flipped on MSNBC TV as I made my tea, I first learned of the horror of the Charleston murders the night before. I broke down weeping. Not again – and again and again. The anguished faces, the enduring suffering of our African American brothers and sisters, the weary rituals of needless death and destruction. Mass murder in a storied African American church by the hand of an angry, unemployed young white man, a white supremacist with a recently purchased handgun. His stated intention was to start a new Civil War. In truth, the Civil War never really ended, has it?

The shock of watching both the US and South Carolina flags at half-mast, while the Confederate flag flapped at the top of the pole. And we wonder how these acts can continue?

One of these times, something’s gotta give. No one can say when that tipping point will occur, but it cannot be far off. What’s very different about the media coverage is the degree of discussion calling this an act of domestic terrorism. Our original terrorism laws were written for exactly these kinds of acts — by the Ku Klux Klan, at that time. How about turning some of our terrorism resources to arresting domestic terrorism? Toward stopping the chronic murders and terrorizing of African Americans and other people of color? Toward shutting down the bombing and threatening of abortion clinics? Toward preventing violence against women?

In 2001, September 11th happened just weeks before the Bioneers conference. We feared that few people would show up out of concerns about travel and further terrorist acts. Instead it was the biggest turnout ever. J.L. Chestnut, the legendary civil rights leaders and first African American attorney to practice law in Selma, gave one of the most powerful talks ever. He connected the monstrous terrorist act to centuries of domestic terrorism against African Americans, people of color, women and the Earth.

J.L Chesnut said this:

“Fighting on behalf of women, on behalf of minority people of color, fighting on behalf of the environment and the planet are all one big battle. It is all about a struggle for the soul of America.”

This cathartic talk could hardly be more relevant 14 years later.

By the way, speaking of the soul of America – big surprise – what’s really driving today’s scourge of gun violence is the gun industry and its familiar, the NRA. One of the best analyses of the gun industry’s takeover of the NRA was in Rolling Stone two years ago. As Rolling Stone reported:

But over the past decade and a half, the NRA has morphed into a front group for the firearms industry, whose profits are increasingly dependent on the sale of military-bred weapons like the assault rifles used in the massacres at Newtown and Aurora, Colorado. “When I was at the NRA, we said very specifically, ‘We do not represent the firearm industry,'” says Richard Feldman, a longtime gun lobbyist who left the NRA in 1991. “We represent gun owners. End of story.” But in the association’s more recent history, he says, “They have really gone after the gun industry.”

And when will we start to talk seriously about Restorative Justice? We have to break out of the paradigm of revenge and punishment to get to the root causes. Some serious truth and reconciliation is in order. Only then can we truly begin healing the deep wounds of racism and economic violence if we want to end this kind of atrocity.

The Pope’s Astonishing Climate Encyclical

The other huge news of the morning was the Pope’s astonishing climate encyclical. My immediate reaction was, “There is a God.” It’s Liberation Ecology – the explicit convergence of ecology and justice, put on moral, ethical and spiritual footings. Someone who tells it like it is and acknowledges the end of human civilization as we know it, if we don’t act as if the house is burning.

What an incredible relief to ditch the spin and political maneuvering and just call it “filth” and “ecological sin.” To tie climate change and the decimation of our ecosystems to the bottomless greed of the 1%, the structural concentration of wealth, and the pathology of consumerism that’s devouring planet and people. It’s all one issue. The Pope got it right.

The implications are almost unimaginable. This slow-motion lightning bolt is going to reverberate among the world’s 1.2 billions Catholics and electrify countless other millions and billions of people of faith. The Pope will visit the US in September and speak at the UN. This is just the beginning.

So, a day of saints and sinners, of light and shadow, of a deep knowing that change is gonna come — and it’s greatly up to us what directions it takes.

2015 Bioneers Conference Highlights Restorative Justice, Climate & Faith

We will be covering these issues in depth at the 2015 Bioneers Conference. Sister Simone Campbell, a founder and spokesperson for Nuns on the Bus, will keynote about Creation Care and the mounting role the faith community is going to play in years ahead in merging ecology and justice. Oakland’s luminous Fania Davis will share her wise perspectives on Restorative Justice, which she believes must also extend to the natural world – our relatives — in a relationship of kinship and interdependence.

Keep the faith.

Kenny Ausubel,

CEO & Founder, Bioneers

Photo Credits: David Yan via Flickr, Creative Commons / Creative Commons,Catholic Church England and Wales