League of Conservation Voters Meeting

Ann, Debbie and I went to the listening session. I found it quite helpful for learning about plausible environmental legislation for this legislative session. Everything they discussed is at the state level. The League of Conservation Voters is working with a whole group of WI environmental orgs to come up with a focused conservation agenda for the year. After listening sessions with citizens and discussions between reps from the participating organizations, four issues will be chosen. It seemed to me like we might have a lot to offer them by bringing a strong student force into the effort for one (or several) of the issues. Here are some of the issues they suggested. Many already are being worked on. They will wait until after the elections to pick the issues.

1. Restriction on Phosphorus in lawn fertilizer (a bill went through the senate last year, but died in the assembly).
2. Global warming- reduce emissions by 80% by 2050. This would be based around the recommendations of Doyle's task force.
3. Encouraging private land conservation (getting rid of tax disincentives for conservation, and perhaps adding a few incentives)
4. Hunter-angler-trapper bill of rights (making the head of the DNR an appointed, not elected position, requiring that Natural Resources Board nominees be voted on in a timely fashion, and requiring that money paid in hunting fees for conservation is used for just that)
5. Groundwater protection (quantity)
6. E-waste recycling (requiring that sellers of electronics like TVs and computers accept and organize recycling for electronics. There is a bill on this I think)
7. Pollution runoff in vulnerable landscapes (increasing management of manure in areas where it gets into wells due to geological features)
   

Wellstone Action and Envir. Policy Campaign

Wellstone Action is a non-profit with several leadership and campaign training programs. Some are for people who are working on campaigns for office, some are related to unions, and so forth. Usually participants have to pay a lot for the training. Campus Camp Wellstone is focused on issue-based campaigns and is co-funded by a sponsor and Wellstone Action. Individuals attend for free and the workshops last a day an a half over a weekend.

The one I attended at UW was sponsored by Planned Parenthood and the case study was a bill about hospitals providing information about emergency contraception to rape victims. The attendees were mostly undergrads, and only some of them were involved in the particular campaign. They were activists from all sorts of fields and the issue was a foil for skills. At the same time, Planned Parenthood had much of their work done for them and found new supporters among us (they did win the campaign after a hard fight). The training covered coalition-building strategy, messaging, leadership skills and how to organize and retain volunteers. The skills apply to any campaign or work in a non-profit and also to professional life.

Here are some links about the Wellstone leadership training:

• About Campus Camp Wellstone
• Bringing Campus Camp Wellstone to your school
  

This is a rough game plan for working with Wellstone Action.

1. Pick an issue and partner organizations. This will be something to organize a campaign around, like a bill that we organize people to lobby for. Maybe the partner org can help fund leadership training.
2. Work on the campaign, brainstorm strategy.
3. We help sponsor a Campus Camp Wellstone for the campus at large. It is a training opportunity for Nelsonites and activist undegrads and others. The training uses our issue as a case study and in the process helps us develop our campaign and get ideas about being effective.
4. Do the campaign (lobbying, letter-writing, etc) soon after camp Wellstone.

Meeting Notes 9/10/08

Meeting goals/agenda

1) Talk about when a regular meeting time will be set

• Set for once a month on Friday mornings scheduled at the previous month's meeting
• Next mtg is set for October 3rd, 9am, in the student commons
• Decided that it would be worthwhile to have some form of treat (suggestion of of coffee and bagels) for all monthly meetings that rotates between all of us - Ann volunteered to go first. If you have any bagel or cream cheese allergies you should let her know.
  

2) Binder contents and info from previous cohorts

• Didn't really say too much about this except that Becky noticed that there were guidelines how to start a class, should we decide to incorporate that into what we do
• The binders were returned to 175C and are available for everyone to look whenever they get the chance

3) What are we actually going to do?

• One thought was to break our work into three sections each with roughly equal number of us
  a) work on the retreat
  b) work related to the Institute
  c) work directed at the University and/or community at large
• This thought was later balanced by the idea that we don't really necessarily need to be in groups of three since other partnerships may already exist (e.g. Kevin Gibbons and the Discourse idea).
• In effect the total number of projects and the division of labor for each of those projects was tabled until after the retreat.
• As for specific ideas a few standouts emerged from the list generated during our May meeting
  a) Organizing the retreat
  b) Bringing in Wellstone Action Training to help run a personalized activist training course
  c) Environmental Issue Discourse Series
  d) Lobbying especially as part of work with a partner organization (e.g. League of Conservation Voters)
  e) A Doris Duke Fellows (as many as possible from all schools) retreat or service learning trip down to New Orleans using Ashleigh's contacts
• These ideas were combined into chunks
  a) Discourse + potentially a connected class
  -> Paul and Emily
  b) Retreat Organizing
  -> Julia, Ruth, and Becky
  c) Lobbying & working with partner organizations like Wellstone or Conservations Voters
  -> Nina, Ann, Debbie, Emily
  d) Potential New Orleans spring break trip
• At this point we decided to table further discussion until after the retreat. The thought was that we should take these ideas with us and flesh them out, or use energy from the retreat on other ideas that form while there.

4) Other

• Emily and Becky expressed interest in exploring the microloan idea more
• While we were meeting Julia and Paul's former student, Annie, was holding a meeting of rethinkwi.org which has just started a recycling ambassadors program at football games. This was seen as another potential group to partner with as well as something that we could help promote since they are always looking for more volunteers.

Feel free to add to this post with anything that I missed.

May Meeting Notes

These are the main talking points from our first meeting. Much of this was repeated during our next meeting, but here is what I took down.

Project ideas and other thoughts we had:

• Retreat -> organize something for the fall so more than just a one shot deal
  -> suggestion of ropes course organized by Ann (actually happened earlier today)
  
• Organize a course focused particularly on Nelson Institute students
• Put any extra money generated or received into a mico-loan program (e.g. Keva) so that the money could be used for time before being returned for use by the next cohort
  -> this could be coupled with a lecture on globalization or the like
• Partner with Kevin Gibbons to work on his suggested Discourse series
• Assist the WE Conserve program especially with outreach
• ESSA polar bear power consumption idea (I think that this was some sort of power management idea, but I don't recall for certain at the moment)
• Greening Science Hall & the NI as a whole
  -> issue of the widespread use of disposable items at NI events
  -> develop standards on how to hold a "green" event and/or standards for how the NI will host events
• Help to develop an urban ag ordinance for Madison
  -> permanancy for community gardens in particular
• Lobbying: learn how to and apply it on an issue
  -> Maragart Crom (sp?) possible contact
• Finding partner organizations rather than starting from the ground up
  
• Start a blog or wiki for collaboration
  -> Success
  

Speaker Suggestions thus far

Here are the suggestions so far. Feel free to make new, more elaborated posts about these same folks. Also specify if you think a speaker would be particularly good for the retreat or the discourse series.

• Andrew Wice (suggested by Evan)- Novelist
  
• Author of To the Last Drop

• Nalini Nadkarni (suggested by Gini)- Activist and faculty at evergreen state college in tropical biodiversity
• www.nalininadkarni.com
• www.researchambassador.com

• David Zetland (suggested by Debbie)- Water resources postdoc in CA
• Latest article from the NYTimes Freakonomics blog
• Blog: http://aguanomics.com/

IES Grad Student Ropes Course

Hey Team,

Setting a date for the ropes course in the Fall is no problem. I do have to check in with ALPs to see when their training weekend are; we can't do it then. I may need help from a Dukie who will be around this summer. Mostly recruiting. I will not be back until August 26th, but I will get things rolling now. Maybe if I tell the office, they will help spread the word to incoming grad students?

Let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions for a good date to pick!

~Ann