Are you passionate about building collective capacity to make impactful changes in the UO campus and broader communities?

Lucky for you, the Climate Justice League invites you to the Collaborative Leadership Program! This will take place May 19th from 10am – 5pm on the UO campus, in the Education Complex, Room 276.

The CLP is open to all UO students who are excited and engaged about leadership and organizing through collaboration!

Register Now!

The CLP uses some of the nation’s most comprehensive training curriculum to put students at the forefront of their leadership development through student-led sessions, experiential learning, and detailed planning for their future initiatives. Through sessions on modern student organizing practices (e.g. goals, strategies, etc.), meeting facilitation, anti-oppression and justice, group coordination, and effective communication, the CLP endeavors to provide opportunities for students to express their personal leadership potential.

Participants of the CLP will take part in four trainings, including:

• Organizing Frameworks:
• Identify core organizing principles and techniques that directly apply to both campus and community organizing (e.g. goals/strategies/tactics/etc.)
• Anti-oppression for Collective Liberation:
• Learn how to identify oppression and how to implement reconciliation methods for responding to different forms of oppression (e.g. interpersonal, institutional, etc.)
• Meeting Facilitation and Group Coordination:
• Learn detailed techniques for creating participatory dialogue and action-oriented meetings. Some of the covered techniques include consensus building, task management systems, and asking effective questions.
• Public Narrative:
• Learn how to tell your personal story in a way that conveys your values and motivates others to action using a format practiced by some of the best speakers of our time (e.g. Barack Obama).

Registration for the CLP is free and snacks will be provided!

Register Now!

For more information, check out the website at http://www.climatejusticeleague.org/trainings/, or email the CJL at climatejusticeleague@gmail.com if you have any questions.

The CLP is co-sponsored by the Women’s Center, Clark Honors College Student Association, and the Sustainability Center.

As a micro-finance institution (MFI), Fonkoze believes that the poor already have many of the tools to work their way out of poverty. All they lack is the financial support to buy the basic tools for their business. MFIs like Fonkoze typically provide small loans to struggling entrepreneurs to buy income generating tools such as agricultural equipment, food storage facilities, cell phones which help farmers sell their products at the highest price, etc.

Unlike most other MFIs, Fonkoze supports its clients through each step of what it calls the staircase out of poverty. For the poorest of the poor the nonprofit provides business training as well as outright services such as health care or home repair. Once the clients are in a position to run their own micro-enterprise they become eligible for loans that meet their financial needs, ranging from as little as $25 to over $1000.

Fonkoze has been instrumental in the reconstruction effort of Haiti, after the devastating earthquake in 2010. For more information about Fonkoze, see their website:  http://www.fonkoze.org/

Attend the 2012 Northwest Sierra Student Coalition’s Summer Training Program (NW SPROG). It is a youth led and directed summer camp held from June 24 to July 1 at Camp Fife in Goose Prairie, Washington.

During the week-long training, you’ll learned how to work with the media, meet with decision makers, facilitate a meeting, recruit people to a cause, to promote anti-oppression, and much more through fun interactive trainings and a simulation activity. SPROG will make a huge impact on your life and give you the skills you need to make a difference in your community. You will also meet amazing people who will become lifelong friends.

Registration deadline is May 15! And rolling registration until the day before SPROG depending on how full the camp is.

Apply to a SPROG today!

SPROG is an eye-opening experience that will empower you to make a difference in your communities. It gives you the tools, skills, and support you need to create positive change. SPROG is a one-of-a-kind experience that will be remembered forever.

Tuition for SPROG is $350 per person, which covers food, lodging, and all trainings for the week. (Sign up in a group of 3 or more and receive a $50 discount each!) Need-based scholarships are also available.

Please feel free to contact me by phone or e-mail: (707) 738-3689 or terramariesmith@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Thank you and don’t forget to apply to a SPROG today!

As coal plants in the United States continue to close, local organizations around the country appear to have struck a blow to the industry. But in reality, as coal consumption decreases in our country, global demand continues to rise. A result of this shift in demand can be found in recent proposals to ship Powder River Basin coal from Montana and Wyoming through several Northwest ports. One of these proposals would bring coal right through the city of Eugene, to the Port of Coos Bay.

Eugene has been given a unique opportunity to combat coal by rallying against this proposal. Not only are coal mining and combustion dirty; its transportation presents significant health hazards as well. The coal passing right through downtown Eugene, slowing traffic for up to eight minutes would be transported in open bed coal trains. More than 100 tons of coal dust per train will blow off between Montana and Coos Bay. The dust contains heavy metals such as lead and mercury and causes lung diseases, as well as pollution from the diesel that fuels the trains. Regionally, the health impacts of coal follow the transportation and watershed routes.

This is a major issue we face as a community, region, and nation and it represents a textbook environmental justice problem. Environmental justice (EJ) is a social movement that includes mainly people of marginalized communities and focuses on the environment directly around people in society who carry many environmental burdens in their everyday lives, including living and working conditions. EJ strives to bring communities autonomy through their fight for civil and human rights. The coal trains will be passing directly through the Whiteaker neighborhood, a historically working class part of the city.

Emma Newman, a member of CJL, went on an environmental justice tour in West Eugene last week and saw the neighborhoods that would be most impacted. “One neighborhood,” Emma said, “was literally surrounded by a train yard on one side and train tracks on the other. They are already suffering from a toxic plume in their well water and the last thing that they need is coal dust drifting over their park and onto their vegetable gardens.”

The consequences of building these coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest would be widespread and severe; from the direct impact on the health of citizens and the local economy, to the contribution of coal to climate change. There are very real implications when it comes to environmental justice, and the disproportionate amount of harm this project would present to people in our community, particularly those unfortunate enough to live close enough to the tracks to experience firsthand the pollution caused by the transportation of coal. These ports would not benefit the vitality of the Northwest or the individuals mining the coal, but they would continue to fill the pocketbooks of those most powerful in the coal industry.

People in the region are working to stop this, both through direct actions and legislative measures, as well as campus initiatives to show student support for alternatives to coal. The Climate Justice League is working with local groups including the community-wide group No Coal Eugene to assert the rights of Eugene over big coal. Say No to coal in Eugene. To learn more, please visit nocoaleugene.org or climatejusticeleague.org.

A story about the fight for the last great mountain in Appalachia, where community members and environmental activists are pitted against a coal company that wants to explode it to extract the coal within using mountaintop removal.

In the Northwest, coal giants like Peabody Energy and Arch Coal are seeking to transport coal from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to export terminals on the Oregon and Washington coast.  The current route would bring open-bed coal trains (an enormous health risk due to coal dust) through the heart of downtown Eugene on it’s way to Coos Bay.

THE LAST MOUNTAIN highlights a battle for the future of energy that affects us all.

Following the film we initiate a discussion around the issue and the efforts being made in Eugene to stop the coal train.

The Last Mountain-CJL Poster

The goals of the East Campus Grove are:
1. Demonstrate low-impact lifestyle choices and edible gardening practices to local
community, students, and visitors.
2. Offer experiential learning opportunities through for-credit coursework, work-
parties, workshops, and tours held at the grounds.
3. Minimize non-renewable energy consumption through the use of water
catchment and grey-water reuse for irrigation.
4. Maximize efficiency through composting and other practices of on-site reuse.
5. Demonstrate how low-environmental impact can intersect with an aesthetically
pleasing landscape and economic affordability.

We are currently drafting a proposal showing a comprehensive outline of the project along with full campus and community support for an ASUO Over-realized Fund grant to purchase building materials, tools, seeds, etc. We need your help with gathering student, faculty, administration, and community support for the project, grant writing, planning garden logistics, and more!

After contributing to the launch of the East Campus Grove, we will be turning our efforts to greater horizons (yet to be determined) toward making an edible University of Oregon campus. Current ideas include orchards, fruit bushes, herb gardens, community gardens, interpretive signs related to native plants, etc… We would love to hear your ideas!

If you’re interested in joining the campaign or learning more, contact campaign coordinators Kelsey Ward (kelsey.j.ward@gmail.com) or Matthew Nelson (mnelson@uoregon.edu).

Sign Up Now

Our Winter Kickoff Meeting is a great opportunity to find out about the Climate Justice League, meet other members, and to get involved in our campaigns.

  RSVP on Facebook

Winter Kickoff Meeting

Tuesday, January 17th

6:00pm-7:15pm

Location: Anstett 195 (map)

Are you interested in learning more about the CJL or getting involved?

We hope to see new and old faces at our kickoff meeting on Tuesday, January 17^th at 6 pm in Anstett 195, where we will discuss plans for the term and more ways to get involved and have fun with the Climate Justice League! If you are already a member and want to help spread the word about our group and our current campaigns, please check out the page on giving class raps here.

We are more than excited to be getting the ball rolling in 2012 and we hope that you will join us for this new year of student empowerment, tangible solutions, and active community engagement!

Photo credit: Digital Pathology Consultants

A recent post on Grist.org reminds us that our personal lifestyle choices won’t balance out the already-staggering amounts of greenhouse gases emitted from poorly regulated industries and projects such as mountaintop removal, deforestation and tar sands production.

But there is one way to fight global warming, species extinction and any other environmental issue out there: increase your carbon-busting fistprint.

Two years ago, at an intimate gathering of 500+ students at Power Shift West 2009, Environment California director Bernadette del Chiaro said, “At the end of the day, it’s not about your carbon footprint – it’s about your carbon-busting fistprint! It’s not your lifestyle; it’s your life’s work [that matters].” (For those who don’t know, this quote inspired the CJL’s can-do attitude it proliferates to this day.)

To elaborate, reducing your carbon footprint is a reactive approach to addressing environmental issues, in that you are only reacting to the problem, not solving it directly. That’s where the carbon-busting fistprint comes in: it’s a proactive approach to addressing problems, through which the problem is dealt with head-on and ceases to be a problem any longer.

One of the best results of using your carbon-busting fistprint is its effect on other people. Say you tell your friends, for example, that you stopped drinking soda because it has cancer-causing agents. If your friends drinks soda, you run the risk of alienating and personally offending them because you’re indirectly criticizing their personal choices.

If, on the other hand, you take a stand against soda companies and campaign for healthier, cancer-free ingredients in their products, your friends will most likely thank you for advocating on their behalf – and hopefully be inspired to join you in the fight.

So go ahead: bicycle, recycle and eat your veggies – but remember to include a healthy dose of carbon-busting fistprint to your everyday routine. While individual actions may not add up to much, the cumulation of hundreds of thousands – maybe millions – of people taking the same carbon-busting actions could wield extraordinary results. Together, with our fights driven high in the air, we just might save the planet.

Monica Christoffels is the current Resources and Media Facilitator of the Cascade Climate Network and was one of the first members of the Climate Justice League.

This is a huge win for the climate. For more information, see the links below.

NYTimes article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/us/politics/administration-to-delay-pipeline-decision-past-12-election.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

Tar Sands Action letter from Bill McKibben announcing the win: http://www.tarsandsaction.org/big-news-won-won/