Mulling the Lawn: A Grassroots Review
Please Don’t Empower Me
A friend asked me the other day to remind him why I don’t like to use the word empower when I am doing organizing work. I believe that when we talk about “empowering” people, we make an inherent assumption that the people we are working with don’t already have power, and our action is what gives them power. I believe that everyone has power, and that my job as an organizer is to support people in using their power, share my power with them, and build collective power to stop oppression.
Mobilizing or Movement Building?
This past weekend, the fifth annual Environmental Action Conference was held at Vermont Technical College in Randolph. The conference offered more than 20 skill-building and issue-oriented workshops to over 250 participants. It featured a video address by governor-elect Peter Shumlin and a keynote by Professor Patrick Parenteau, who among other things is a former Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation in Vermont.
Brewing Strong TEA
Although I am not at all attracted to the TEA Party’s principles, I have been fascinated by their organizing success and have been watching it for some time now. The TEA Party (TEA = Taxed Enough Already) did see some success in the mid-term races. At least five of their U.S. Senate candidates won, and perhaps 40 of their U.S. House candidates will be sworn in this January.
The TEA Party Patriots claim that the movement began with Rick Santelli’s Rant in February 2009. A few dozen key organizers met after that event to capitalize on the energy that was sparked by the rant. Santelli gave the TEA Party national recognition and a jumping off point that the organizers could use to mobilize activists.
7Days: At All Costs
One key campaign manager looking for work is Amy Shollenberger, who ran Doug Racine’s campaign.
With scant resources but an army of union supporters and volunteers, Shollenberger fully applied her grassroots organizing skills.
If a job doesn’t turn up within the party, however, Shollenberger says she’ll focus on ramping up her consulting biz, Action Circles, whose slogan is “building movements with action and hope.”
Vermont Commons: Good-Bye to Rural Vermont’s Exceptional Leader, Amy Shollenberger
Five years ago, when we moved to Vermont, you couldn’t buy chicken raised and slaughtered on a local farm at the farmers’ market, and it certainly couldn’t be served in a restaurant. Finding farm-fresh raw milk was nearly impossible since the farms couldn’t advertise, and when you did find a farm that sold it chances were that you would have a hard time getting any of the measly 25 quarts a day that the farms were allowed to sell. Few people other than organic farmers knew about harmful effects of GMO crops in our state, and growing hemp – an eco-friendly food and fiber crop – was illegal.
But the tide is turning, and while many people and organizations have been a part of these regulatory changes, Rural Vermont, under the leadership of Amy Shollenberger, has been a consistent force in every one of these agricultural victories.
Vermont Commons: What Will You Eat If Vermont Secedes?
And, how can we begin thinking about ourselves as producers rather than consumers? I believe that this is the cultural shift that needs to happen. As long as we think about ourselves as consumers – people who use up resources – we will not succeed in achieving independence from the tyranny of the corporate-industrial food system. We must take responsibility at all levels and work to create a new system that adds health and value to our bodies, our soils, and our communities.
