Eco City Olympia

Olympia Village Building Convergence Schedule of Events

2008-07-17T23:09:00.000-07:00

Olympia Village Building Convergence Schedule of Events

Friday July 25^th

9am-4pm Earthen Plaster: GRuB
12:30-4:30pm Cob Bench Building: Olympia Salvage

Saturday July 26^th

9am-4pm Earthen Plaster: GRuB
10:00-3:30pm Cob Bench Building: Olympia Salvage
11 am - 1pm Seed saving as an Activist Practice: Fertile Ground with Marisha Auerbach
11am-4pm Hydrogen Hybrid workshop: Grub with Ian Keith
4:30-5:30pm Introduction to Natural Building with Earthen Materials: GRuB with Joseph Becker
5:30pm Potluck picnic: GRuB
7-9pm Dana Lyons Concert: The Unitarian Church

Sunday July 27^th

9am-4pm Earthen Plaster: GRuB
10-12am Appropriate heat: Solar Ovens, rocket stoves and building hay boxes: GRuB with Sam Fox
10am-4pm Cob Bench Building: Olympia Salvage
1-3pm Introduction to using Grey Water and Compost Toilets: Love Shack with Chriset Palenshus
3-4pm How to cook your own beer for cheap: GRuB with Jonah Hankin-Rappaport
7-9pm Grand opening of Veggie Cross Roads Community Garden Live Music and Potluck Located at Milroy and Scammel on the Westside. There will be opportunities to beautify the space.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GRuB - 2016 Elliott Ave NW, Olympia.

Earthen Plaster is made of a combination of clays, sand and a fiber (straw) mixed in a muddy pit with bare feet. The mixture will be smeared with our hands onto the walls on GRuB’s new Farmhouse/Education Center to provide a beautiful and durable interior wall finish. Join Joseph Becker, an ecological builder and educator, for 3 days of muddy fun.

Olympia Salvage - 415 Olympia Ave NE, Olympia.

Cob Couch, come learn the basics of building with sand, clay and straw. Cob is easy to use, fun for all ages and temperaments (except those who don't like getting dirty) and versatile. Meet great people and gain a new skill at this hands-on workshop with Larissa Podzaline.

Fertile Ground - 311 9th Ave SE, Olympia.

Seed saving as an Activist Practice Come join us to learn how you can take responsibility for your own food supply by saving your own seed from your garden. We will be discussing harvest of cultivated and native seeds as well as flowers and vegetable crops. Seed saving is a great localized buffer against the globalization of our food supply as it encourages diversity & increases the resilience in our gardens to pests and diseases. Bring your questions, leave with seeds!

Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation - 2200 E End St NW, Olympia.

Dana Lyons, Bringing together a mix of comedy, ballads and love songs, Dana's sharp wit and beautiful voice have him performing at concert halls, festivals, conventions, fundraisers and universities across the US and around the world. Dana's music style includes a bit of everything; his biggest radio hit "Cows with Guns," receives crossover radio play on country, rock, alternative, community, college and oldies radio stations worldwide.

The Love Shack - 225 Milroy St. NW, Olympia

Introduction to using Grey Water and Compost Toilets, this 2 hour class demonstrates how to rig up a system that saves money and valuable natural resources; systems in use at this site are created at almost no cost! We'll observe how it works and have a chance to use it too.

2008-07-09T14:41:00.000-07:00

First Annual Olympia Village Building convergence

2008-06-21T13:59:00.000-07:00

In the interest of promoting a more community-oriented and
ecologically sustainable society, we are organizing a hands-on
educational event to be called The Olympia Village Building
Convergence. Over the course of a long weekend, people will have the
opportunity to participate in numerous projects involving green and
natural building techniques and principles of permaculture and edible
landscaping, partnering experienced practitioners with volunteers.
The goal is to accomplish a small number of construction and planting
projects, giving people training in the basic methods involved and
fostering a sense of community as strangers come together to create
useful spaces for all to enjoy.
We have the sites chosen for this year, we are seeking partners to help support this event through monetary and in-kind donations. Some materials we need include sand, rebar, non-toxic paint and native plants.
Donations are tax-deductible thanks to our friends at Terra Commons, a
local non-profit devoted to the art of Edible Forest Gardening.
We appreciate any assistance you may provide and look forward to meeting you at the event!
More information will be available by the end of June such as calender of events and sponsoring organizations.
For further questions or if you would like to volunteer, email: ecocityolympia@gmail.com

Group travels West stirring up environmental concern

2007-08-29T19:27:00.000-07:00

Group travels West stirring up environmental concern

By JOHN DARLING

for the Mail Tribune

August 29, 2007

ASHLAND — A sense of personal despair and powerlessness is a major stage of environmental awareness — and something that must be overcome and turned into empowerment and action, a group of Ashlanders was told Tuesday night.

"Despair is a quagmire where all becomes hopeless, but luckily it is a signpost on the journey, not the destination," said Australian Kelly Tudhope, lecturing with the Climate Change Despair and Empowerment Roadshow, which is giving presentations up and down the West Coast.

Some 20 people, including Cat Gould of Ashland, shared tales of depression on their journey to environmental activism, up to the point when "a cork popped" and they found direction and hope. "My whole life I was depressed, disempowered and in despair," she told the crowd, "but something about climate change popped that cork and I realized I can't afford to feel depression. I released that and have felt a lot more optimism about the future, even though the news is worse."

Roadshow speaker Pat Rasmussen of Leavenworth, Wash., drew gasps when she told of finding vast stands of lodgepole pines in her native state turned reddish brown from the western spruce budworm, an effect increased by warming, she said, adding that the dead timber will release a "carbon bomb" into the atmosphere over coming decades.

However, said Tudhope, of the Rainforest Information Center, while large majorities of people report being concerned about warming, very small percentages are altering their lifestyle in response. As Al Gore says in his global warming presentations, despair, like denial, lets you off the hook about doing something positive, she noted.

Holly Del Sesto of Phoenix reported "deep sadness in my heart, with tears close to the surface, till I got to the point I needed to do something about it."

Louise Pare of Ashland said, as she moved out of despair into the phase of action, that she now speaks up freely, talking to strangers on the bus about global warming.

Tudhope said the sense of despair is actually compassion for species who are being treated as resources and driven out of existence.

For those not sure of what action to take personally, Tudhope said three courses of action are close at hand:

Buy locally grown food, which hasn't been transported far.
Avoid meat and dairy products, as they are energy intensive and are a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Eat and grow organic food, made without fossil fuel energy.

Some "low hanging fruit" in the battle against climate change would be to lower the speed limit back to 55 mph, which would cut oil demand by a billion gallons a year and "allow libraries to get money now being diverted to Iraq."

The Roadshow does 90-minute presentations and one-day workshops, trying to create grassroots climate action groups, as well as to "address the hopeless despair that many people feel about how to transform despair into empowerment and effective action," according to its Web site, www.climate.net.au.

The Web site also said it hopes to "unveil the false 'business as usual' solutions being touted by the major political parties, such as nuclear power and so called clean coal."

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Article from The Mail Tribune http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070829/NEWS/708290324

Eco-Logical Living

2007-08-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

Eco-Logical Living
A bike trip to check out our northern neighbors
BY JAN SPENCER

Many people in Eugene have a growing concern about climate change, resource depletion, increasingly unruly international relations and economic instability. With those concerns in mind, Eugene can boast of a number of creative initiatives for "eco-logical" living.

But what is going on elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, and what can we learn from others? With that question in mind, during July I traveled more than 1,500 miles to central Washington state, Bellingham, Snohomish/Everett, Seattle and Olympia. People I visited showed me local examples of ecological culture change. I also gave presentations that touched on economics, global trends and human potential and explained how they relate to ecological culture change.

Of places I visited, favorite projects include The Hub in Bellingham — an expansive, you-fix-it, down-to-earth community bicycle center. Also, Zippy's is an upbeat and casual java bar in Everett that is home to a wide diversity of meetings and community events focused on positive culture change. Tonasket can boast of a citizen based community culture center. Seattle has numerous creative efforts that advocate downsizing lifestyles, urban gardening and alternatives to the automobile. Snohomish and Okonagon have their own green movements.

Olympia seems to have the greatest density of ecological initiatives of the towns I visited. One can stay at a permaculture bed and breakfast. But my favorite community asset was GRuB, a well organized and funded nonprofit dedicated to local food production. One of GruB's programs is installing raised bed gardens where people live, along with providing skill support for the gardens to be successful. GRuB is also youth education and volunteer oriented, collaborates with its next door neighbors and manages an in-town Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm.

Elsewhere in Washington, I was shocked to find dozens of suburban style developments in rural areas, far from town. The bucolic names of these places did nothing to mitigate this terrible land use. Distant from town, often in hilly areas, sometimes on islands, they are all highly dependent on cheap resources. I called my two-day bike ride on Whidbey Island the Tour of Driveways.

Perhaps the most instructive and revealing encounter for me was in the Methow Valley in central Washington near Twisp, where I had breakfast at the end of a 2-mile-long dirt road with 10 alternative locals. I asked everyone there to describe who they lived with, how far from town, their ideals and on-site resource potentials.

Individually, they were all lacking important elements of moving towards their ecological and social goals of taking care of more of their needs close to home. Difficulties included not enough people to collaborate with, not enough space, not enough financial resources, not all the skills needed and not enough time.

I suggested they consider doing an in-depth inventory of their personal and property assets and then consider discussing among themselves their respective pluses and minuses with the goal of creating a strategy that would generate the most benefits. I recommended selling the dead-end properties and creating an integrated cooperative venture among themselves at the best location.

Of course, such a strategy presents enormous challenges. The smartest choices we can make for the environment, peace on Earth and positive human potential are sharing our assets and resources in both urban and rural locations. Such strategies are the most contrary to our individualistic cultural upbringing. They are also contrary to an economy and way of life that depends on people being separate, competitive and disempowered. That economy is the source of our greatest challenges, local and global.

The tour was sobering. Sitting at Gas Works Park looking across Union Lake to downtown Seattle, with all the staggering urban elements in view — dozens of skyscrapers, elevated freeways packed with cars, sea planes landing and taking off, residences of all kinds, marinas crowded with boats — I reflected what an enormous task it is to transform the world we know into something at peace with itself. I don't think anyone really knows what sustainable is but any efforts in that direction must ultimately be honest and cooperative — and be judged not by human convenience but rather by Planet Earth.

Jan Spencer is a River Road area artist and activist involved in the Cascadia EcoFair, a "Culture Change weekend" coming up Aug. 23-26 in rural Coburg. For information and registration, visit cascadiaecofair.org or suburbanpermaculture.org or email spencerj@efn.org

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Article Courtesy of the Eugene weekly
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http://eugeneweekly.com/2007/08/16/views2.html

Get 'r' done

2007-08-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

Hey folks,

We got our first Grass to Garden Project off the ground, feel free to check it, 303 cushing street.

We got the lawn sheet mulched, the next step will be planting food plants.

We have also been working on revising our by-laws in order to finalize our 501(c)3 status.
Collecting members for the board still - if you are interested in being on the board, please contact us at terracommons@riseup.net or by calling 360-866-1331.

Still looking for more lawns to sheet mulch, if any one knows of anything...

check back soon for more updates.

~TC

2007-06-26T19:23:00.000-07:00

Jan Spencer, culture change advocate, at Traditions 7/28/07

Terra Commons presents,

A fascinating evening with

Eugene, OR ~ culture change advocate

Jan Spencer

July 28th, 2007 7pm

Traditions Fair Trade Cafe

300 5th AVE

Jan will weave together aspects of economics, urban land use, US foreign policy, global trends, Permaculture, and human potential in a unique analyses the concludes unprecedented eco logical culture change is highly recommended.

The presentation will show how many assets and allies of culture change already exist, some of them closer than we might think. Spencer will explain the term ‘culture of cohesion’ and how reinventing the urban landscape can be a catalyst for helping bring about this new paradigm.

Jan is currently writing a book about Eugene and Cascadia 30 years into the future and 15 years into recovery. Copies of Jan’s book ‘Global Trends - local Choices – towards an Eco Humanist New Culture’ will be for sale. To see Jan’s place and articles and essays Jan has written along with a YouTube video tour of his property, go to: www.suburbanpermaculture.org

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Sunday, July 29th

Permaculture Garden Bike Tour

Bring your bike and come see what amazing Permaculture gardens are growing right here in Olympia.

Please Call (360) 866-1331 for more information and to sign up to ride.

Contact:

(360) 866-1331

terracommons@riseup.net

www.oly-wa.us/terra

----------------------------------

Terra Commons is a non-profit network. We serve communities by researching, designing, and practicing habitat restoration, sustainable agriculture, and natural building. We believe that our patterns of land use and habitation are directly connected with the health of our biosphere and that of generations to come. Through our connections, we share in the responsibility of positively affecting the balance of economic, social, and ecological systems.

Big Solar's day in the sun

2007-06-04T22:20:00.000-07:00

This is not the same old pipe dream. The economics -- and the technology -- of turning light into electricity have changed. Business 2.0 has the inside look at the industrial-strength power plants coming soon to a grid near you.

By Todd Woody, Business 2.0 Magazine assistant managing editor

June 3 2007: 9:48 PM EDT

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- Clouds hang low over the New Mexico desert, deep inside a military reservation a dozen miles south of Albuquerque. A breeze stirs the air; tumbleweeds roll by. Then the sun shines through and a low whirring sound breaks the silence.

Six mirrored solar dishes that look like giant flowers with 15-foot stamens come to life. They pivot in unison, slowly tilting to face the sun rising over the jagged peaks of the Manzano ranges. A total of 468 mirrors -- 78 on each flower --capture the sun's rays and concentrate them into beams of light intense enough to melt lead.

At each flower's focal point, suspended on metal struts, is a Stirling engine -- a heavy, piston-driven heat engine whose design dates from the Steam Age but is now coming into its own, thanks to the grim calculus of rising oil prices, global warming, and the threat of government-imposed carbon taxes. As the tips of the engines glow white-hot, 150 kilowatts of greenhouse gas-free electricity flows into a power grid.

Welcome to the proving grounds of Sandia National Laboratories, a nine-acre field of dreams for solar entrepreneurs and a launching pad for the next era in energy technology: the age of Big Solar

More:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/06/01/100050990/index.htm

June 9th Eco Jam

2007-05-19T09:33:00.001-07:00

On Saturday, June 9 from 1:00 PM until 8:00 PM the teens of the YMCA
Earth Service Corps will team up with community organizations to hold
the 5th annual June Eco-Jam. This amazing event, which is open to all
teens will feature an assorment of environmental and community action
projects and will conclude with a spectacular display of visual and
performance art, created by the teens, and intended to raise awareness
of the environment.

What: The June Eco-Jam is a blitz of community action projects followed
by an evening art show, musical performances, food and fun!
When: June 9, 2007: Action Projects 1-4 PM. Evening Jam and Art Show 5-8
PM.
Where: Meet at 1:00 at the First Baptist Church 904 Washington St SE.
The 7 action projects will take place around Olympia and the evening jam
and art show will take place at the First Baptist Church.
Who: Youth aged 13-20. We are also looking for adult volunteers.
We are still looking for youth artists and performers who can raise
environmental awareness through their art.

June Eco-Jam Project List
June 9, 2007 1-4 pm
Moxlie Creek Art and Awareness: Youth Coordinator: WAKOTE Club FULL
Take a walk to learn about the underground stream. Paint the storm drain
at Moxlie Creek and provide information in writing. Downtown, corner of
5th and Chestnut
City Repair Project: Youth Coordinator: Sarah Colten and Sarah Unbehaun
Repaint Mandala, put in a garden, put a coating on the cobb oven, build
a poetry table. By the Library.
Healthy Living Workshop: Youth Coordinator: Teale Niles
Learn about toxins in common products, make a salve, practice yoga. At
Fertile Ground Guesthouse.
Hunger and Homelessness in Thurston County: Youth Coordinator Needed
Prepare and serve a meal with Food Not Bombs using vegetables gleaned by
the Gleaners Coalition. Learn about hunger and homelessness in Thurston
County. Downtown, Media Island
GRuB Project: Youth Coordinator Needed
Learn about the Kitchen Garden and Cultivating Youth projects while
building wheelchair accessible gardens.
Olympia Salvage Project: Youth Coordinator Needed
Work with the crew at Olympia Salvage, learn about reusing building
materials, and visit a deconstruction site. Downtown, Olympia Salvage
Restoration Project at Watershed Park: Youth Coordinator: Ethan J. and
Luca P.
Watershed Park is the Source of Moxlie Creek. We will be participating
in some form of restoration which may include removing invasive species,
trail maintenance, and stream restoration.

Evening Jam and Art Show
June 9, 5-8 PM

Youth from throughout Olympia will be showing artwork that they created
in order to raise awareness of the environment. They will be talking
about the different projects they were involved in earlier in the day.
And they will be performing music, poetry, etc. We will also be sharing
a meal which is free to everyone who participated in a project.

People must sign up for projects in advance and hand in a signed waiver
form, which can be picked up at the downtown YMCA. Please contact Carrie
at 357-6609 X117 or yesc@ssymca.net for more information.

YMCA Earth Service Corps Program Mission:
We empower young people to be effective, responsible global citizens by
providing opportunities for environmental education and action,
leadership development and cross-cultural awareness.

Carrie Ziegler
YMCA Earth Service Corps Coordinator
360.357.6609 ext. 117
yesc@ssymca.net

Work Party at Media Island this Sunday

2007-05-03T18:15:00.000-07:00

hello conscious friends,

This coming Sunday, may 6th we will be having another permaculture work party at media island from noon to four.

Come join us in pulling invasive plants and planting food plants and learn about permaculture activism.

There will also be a meeting about the Raccoon Collective's upcoming arts walk, as well as planning for carpooling to the village building convergence in Portland, OR.

Expect to get your hands dirty and have a blast!
Feel free to bring food and/or drink if the way is open for you to do so as well as any gardening tools.

see you sunday!

-E.C.O.

Author speaks about edible forest gardens

2007-04-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

Consumers in large cities often hear of Florida-grown oranges or Idaho potatoes. But in a time when the world’s climate is sometimes unstable, city shoppers might find themselves purchasing products grown a lot closer to home.

In the first of four lectures called “Urban Farming — Reconnecting Our Farms, Food, and Community,” David Jacke, author of Edible Forest Gardens, spoke in Rangos last Thursday about the advantages of urban food forests in a world where climate change and global warming may transform our lives.

Jacke referred to these problems as “humanity’s quadruple threat,” which consists of a rising global population of about 77 million people per year, global climate change, destruction of the earth’s habitat, and high oil production.

For the rest of the article, please visit:
http://thetartan.org/2007/01/22/scitech/urban

Oly City Repair (permaculture) Party!

2007-04-25T14:54:00.000-07:00

Hey friends,

On Sunday 4/29 Noon @ Media Island (816 Adams by the Library)
the day after the Procession of the Species Parade
Eco City Olympia

in parternership with
the raccoon ARTS collective

will be hosting a work party (with emphasis on Party!) centered around Permaculture Activism, Ecocity development, and the formation of a new City Repair Crew here in Oly. Expect to get your hands dirty doing a little permaculture landscaping on site. There will be coordination meeting for those who are interested in attending the upcoming Village Building Convergence (7) May 18-27 in Portland OR. The Raccoon Collective will also be organizing and inviting ideas for the upcoming Westside Artswalk (4) and the first Oly Zine Fair (both May 26th). Come on out so you can get to know your community and bring some food if you've got it. We'll see you there!

stay stout,

the raccoons
and Eco City Olympia

Environmental Justice and Racism Panel!

2007-04-18T16:13:00.001-07:00

Environmental Justice and Racism Panel!

Thursday, April 19
6 to 9 pm
Sem II B1105
The Evergreen State College

Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend! This event is free of
charge. Please feel welcome to participate in our discussion following the
panelists' presentations.

Learn about environmental justice impacts on tribal sovereignty, culture
and resources; events in Oaxaca; the effects of corporate personhood on
economic inequalities; health and human rights violations; climate change;
the imperative connections between social justice and environmental
activism; and much, much more.

Our panelists include...
Shelly Vendiola of the Indigenous Environmental Network
Lin Nelson, Health and Environment faculty at Evergreen
Melissa Poe, Environmental Anthropologist on issues in Oaxaca
Karen Coulter of the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project
...and perhaps more!

Speaker Bios:
------------------------------------------------------
Michele (Shelly) Vendiola (Swinomish/Lummi/Filipina) - Bellingham, Washington
Email:  msvendiola@comcast.net
Website:  www.tribalpeacemaking.com
Ms. Vendiola is a certified mediator, educator and community activist.
Currently she works as a consultant to the Families/Communities/Schools
Partnership project as a Community advocate for the rights of native
students and families.  Recently she worked with the Northwest Indian
College—Tribal Governance Leadership Enhancement Project, developing
curriculum on tribal leadership decision-making.  Shelly serves on the
Board of Directors for the Indigenous Women’s Network, an international
coalition of Native American women whose work includes support and
advocacy for community-based economic development, human rights,
environmental justice, health and wellness of native women.  She serves on
the Board of Directors for Agricultural Missions, a US based non-profit
supporting rural agricultural development internationally.  She has served
as the Program Director at the Indigenous Environmental Network and
continues to lead the Persistent Organic Pollution Tribal Initiative for
the Northwest region.  Shelly also serves as an advisor and advocate for
the Lummi CEDAR Project—Youth Leadership Institute and facilitator for the
Lummi Ventures – Shaping Lummi Education Conference.
Ms. Vendiola became a certified mediator through the Indian Dispute
Resolution Services, Inc., where she also produced and led Alternative
Dispute Resolution training events.  She also received training from the
San Francisco Community Boards Program.  Shelly provides conflict
resolution training and facilitation services and together with her mother
conducts a five-day Tribal Peacemaking Training Institute for tribal
communities and programs throughout the country.  Shelly has a M.Ed. in
Adult & Higher Education and practices popular education methodology
within all aspects of her work as an educator, activist, and community
organizer.
---------------------------------------------------------
Karen Coulter - Fossil, Oregon
Email: karen@poclad.org
Phone: 541 385 9167
Director of the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project in eastern Oregon.
Karen has been a grassroots activist on environmental, anti-nuclear and
social justice issues since 1980; part of the Earth First! movement since
1984; worked for the AFSC against the MX missile; for Greenpeace
International as Acid Rain campaigner and international lobbyist on ozone
depletion. Helped create the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the
Environment. Graduate of Reed College.
---------------------------------------------------------
Lin Nelson - Olympia, Washington
Email: nelsonl@evergreen.edu
Lin Nelson is a teacher/researcher/advocate around issues of environment
and social justice. Before she came to Evergreen in the early 1990's, she
worked with various movement organizations in the Northeast, in particular
with the Akwesasne Mohawk Environmental Justice project, the
Labor-Environment-Justice Network of NYS, and the National Women's Health
Network. She's been a writer/contributor on the environmental/occupational
health chapter of Our Bodies Ourselves. Here in WA, she collaborates with
the Washington Toxics Coalition and other environmental health
organizations. Currently Lin's working with Anne Fischel and the Evergreen
Labor Center on a project about pollution impacts on families in working
class communities.
---------------------------------------------------------
Melissa Poe
Email: mpoe@u.washington.edu
Melissa Poe, M.A., PhC, is an environmental anthropologist who recently
returned from Oaxaca, Mexico where she has been conducting research since
2002. Poe is finishing her doctorate at the University of Washington,
Seattle where she focuses on issues of environmental politics and social
justice in a communal forestland in the Sierra Zapotec region. Poe's
undergraduate degrees in Sociology and Spanish, together with her early
career experiences in sustainable development (vis-à-vis ecotourism),
provided just the right background for graduate-level ethnographic work in
Latin America. Identity issues – of race/ethnicity and gender – and how
these affect rural (indigenous) people’s access to forest resources and
environmental decision-making have been central emphases of her research.
Poe is the co-author of the article, Community Forestry in Theory and
Practice: Where are we now? forthcoming in the Annual Review of
Anthropology. She maintains a long time interest in communities and
forests and has recently been working on collaborative forest management
in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. Poe teaches undergraduate courses on
the political economy and cultural politics of environmental change, world
development and inequality and using ethnography to understand complex
human-environment relationships.
---------------------------------------------------------
If anyone is inspired to ask questions of the speakers ahead of time,
please email erc@riseup.net and we will forward your discussion topics to
each panelist.

These are questions/discussion topic ideas we've posed to them already:
What types of human rights violations have you encountered in your work?
In what area of this struggle (and in which part of the world) have you
had experience in?
What connections do you see between environmental activism and social
justice?
From which angle  do you think social change is most effectively
achieved?...(policy, popular movement... what level of organization?)

The Cheetwoot congress

2007-04-16T20:54:00.000-07:00


A seminar series about this place and its continuous progression towards
becoming a model for regenerative living. The natural abundance of this
place is truly magical. As citizens of Cheetwoot, our shared
relationship to this temperate rainforest connects us to one another.
The Cheetwoot Congress is an opportunity to discover where we’ve been,
where we are now, where do we want to go and how do we get there,
together. It’s a forum organized by the people, for the people. A place
to share food, converse, learn and generate a vision for an attainable,
fulfilling future. Terra Commons is currently looking for volunteers and
organizational sponsors interested in making this ground-healing,
monthly event sprout. Lively planning sessions will be starting soon so
don’t hesitate to contact us at terracommons@riseup.net to be involved
in the next step of our journey together.

WOW!!! read this

2007-04-10T22:03:00.000-07:00

Taking nature’s cue for cheaper solar power from PhysOrg.com

Solar cell technology developed by the University’s Nanomaterials Research Centre will enable New Zealanders to generate electricity from sunlight at a 10th of the cost of current silicon-based photo-electric solar cells.

[...]

2007-03-23T18:00:00.000-07:00

Ecocity

Olympia

“Grow Something Different”

Project Descriptions and Needs

Downtown Garden Boxes: Part of a downtown beautification project that also includes bike racks and cobb benches, not to mention a great way to gain publicity for our the work of our organization.
Needs Include: Soil, lumber, plants, and partners (GRuB & climate justice action group perhaps) and most of all vounteers!
Urban Layers Building: A mixed use, multi-story, eco-building that would haver retail on the first floor (ideally the Oly food co-op perhaps with a fair trade & local mercantile) , on the second floor would be social services, and on the top floors low and medium income housing. This green building would have such features as passive solar and rooftop gardens.
Needs include: Presentation and design work, new website design, organizational commitment, location, development funding, and public support and education.
Downtown Artesian Well Park: A project to develop the downtown well into a urban oasis. This park may feature fruit trees, gardens, basket ball and four square court, and a artistic drinking fountain.
Needs include: Fund raising strategies (peace tiles), presentation and design work, large amounts of community support (signatures), and volunteers!
Heritage Park Permaculture Tree Garden: A amazing tree garden at Heritage Park that features native edibles and permaculture education.
Needs include: Design and presentation work, large amounts of community support (signatures), fund raising strategies,

Creek Daylighting: A way to bring nature into the city by uncovering creeks that are currently flowing through culverts and restoring them with native plants and trees! (ex: Moxlie Creek D-town and Indian Creek on the Eastside)
Need include: Research and data collection, huge amounts of community support, and definitely volunteers!

Pedestrian Plaza: A plaza that would encourage people to leave their cars at home and come interact in the open air! Possible locations are downtown on Franklin St between 5th and Legion or an alternative site down by the Port.
Needs include: Political will and community support.
Ecocity Zoning Map: A map that would show where the greatest cultural density is and also highlight places for ecological projects. In the long term this map could be used to curb sprawl, aid in conservation, and be the official zoning map adopted by the City of Olympia.
Needs include: A possible partnership with Evergreen Grads doing GIS work and community support and education.

HELLO WORLD

2007-03-22T17:39:00.000-07:00

EcoCity Olympia (ECO) has entered the blogosphere, everybody get crazy and celebrate, NOW!