Theme: Local Action
Saturday, December 12th
In a world on fire with multiple, epochal crises, how do we nurture hope, build power and contribute meaningfully? How do we catalyze and sustain the personal and collective transformations this immense planetary challenge calls for? Though the problems seem larger than life, our greatest power may in fact lie in our closest communities, in small daily acts of courage and conviction, in small groups of unstoppable world-changers, and small gardens that revitalize communities and reconnect us to nature’s operating instructions.
December 12th | 10:49 am to 11:04 am
Keynote
Trathen Heckman
Founder and Director | Daily Acts Organization
Trathen Heckman is the founder/Director of Daily Acts Organization, a non-profit dedicated to “transformative action that creates connected, equitable, climate resilient communities.” He also serves on the convening committee for Localizing California Waters and the advisory board of Norcal Resilience Network, and he has helped initiate and lead numerous coalitions and networks including Climate Action Petaluma. Trathen lives in the Petaluma River Watershed where he grows food, medicine and wonder while composting apathy and lack.
The climate change ship has left the harbor, and what confronts us is the urgent need to accomplish multiple goals simultaneously: reducing and then eliminating greenhouse gas pollution; rapidly scaling up drawdown efforts by returning carbon to the soil; and building the resilience and adaptive capacity in our societal systems to face the multi-pronged crises coming our way. And we must do it all with an equity lens at the center. It’s a tall order, but it’s non-optional. Luckily, there are people and projects all over the country and the world providing effective pathways forward for integrated climate action, using “whole problem” approaches. By leveraging collaboration across multiple sectors, these visionary leaders are outlining revolutionary blueprints for the next wave of essential work we need to do. Moderated by Kerry Fugett, Leadership Institute Manager of Daily Acts. With: Trathen Heckman, founder and Director of Daily Acts; Lil Milagro Henriquez, founder and Executive Director of Mycelium Youth Network; Brett KenCairn, Boulder, Colorado’s Senior Policy Advisor for Climate and Resilience and Director of the Urban Drawdown Initiative.
December 12th | 12:30 pm to 1:45 pm
Panelists
Trathen Heckman
Founder and Director | Daily Acts Organization
Trathen Heckman is the founder/Director of Daily Acts Organization, a non-profit dedicated to “transformative action that creates connected, equitable, climate resilient communities.” He also serves on the convening committee for Localizing California Waters and the advisory board of Norcal Resilience Network, and he has helped initiate and lead numerous coalitions and networks including Climate Action Petaluma. Trathen lives in the Petaluma River Watershed where he grows food, medicine and wonder while composting apathy and lack.
Lil Milagro Henriquez
Founder and Executive Director | Mycelium Youth Network
Lil Milagro Henriquez, founder (in 2017) and Executive Director of Mycelium Youth Network, an organization dedicated to empowering young people of color around climate change issues, is a veteran of social justice organizing with 18+ years' experience working on a range of issues, including: access to higher education for low-income people and communities of color; food sovereignty; environmental racism; and labor organizing; among others. She is a current recipient of a Women's Earth Alliance fellowship.
Brett KenCairn
Senior Policy Advisor for Climate and Resilience | Boulder, Colorado
Brett KenCairn, Boulder, Colorado's Senior Policy Advisor for Climate and Resilience, coordinates the city's climate action and climate resilience strategies and leads development of its carbon drawdown focus area. He initiated and now leads a multi-city collaboration called the Urban Drawdown Initiative co-launched with the Urban Sustainability Director's Network and Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance. Previously, Brett founded or co-founded several organizations, including the Rogue River Institute for Ecology and Economy, Veterans Green Jobs, and Community Energy Systems, and he has worked across the western U.S. in community-based initiatives in rural, Native American and other marginalized communities.
Kerry Fugett
Leadership Institute Manager | Daily Acts
Kerry Fugett facilitates and co-creates the Leadership Institute for Just and Resilient Communities at the non-profit, Daily Acts. She previously served as Executive Director of Sonoma County Conservation Action, leading grassroots campaigns to eliminate synthetic pesticides, facilitating coalition building, canvassing to elect environmental leaders, and organizing mutual support during record-breaking fires in Northern CA. One of her main areas of focus is the weaving of antiracism into community-led climate justice movements.
As leaders driven by the urgency of the need to constantly do more to address the dire challenges our communities face, how do we avoid burnout? How do we learn to actually embody our purpose and values and personally model the cultural shifts needed for wider societal transformation? In this workshop we will discover tools designed to strengthen our “personal ecology” and our leadership compass. It includes a framework that can be applied at the scales of self, organizations, and coalitions in ways that unleash the power of community. In this interactive session, we will draw from highly effective practices developed by the grassroots non-profit Daily Acts (dailyacts.org) to increase our collective leadership resilience during times of unrest and crisis by holding reverence in our hearts, reclaiming our power, and nurturing our relations. Facilitated by Nichole Warwick, Kerry Fugett and Trathen Heckman.
December 12th | 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm
Panelists
Trathen Heckman
Founder and Director | Daily Acts Organization
Trathen Heckman is the founder/Director of Daily Acts Organization, a non-profit dedicated to “transformative action that creates connected, equitable, climate resilient communities.” He also serves on the convening committee for Localizing California Waters and the advisory board of Norcal Resilience Network, and he has helped initiate and lead numerous coalitions and networks including Climate Action Petaluma. Trathen lives in the Petaluma River Watershed where he grows food, medicine and wonder while composting apathy and lack.
Nichole Warwick
Environmental Health Programs Manager | Daily Acts
Nichole Warwick is Environmental Health Programs Manager for the nonprofit group, Daily Acts; co-founder and Executive Director of Families Advocating for Chemical and Toxics Safety (FACTS); and co-founder and Co-Director of Sonoma Safe Ag/Safe Schools. She also serves on the Leadership Institute Advisory Board, Conservation Action Fund for Education Board of Directors, and Sonoma Community Resilience Collaborative Steering Committee.
Kerry Fugett
Leadership Institute Manager | Daily Acts
Kerry Fugett facilitates and co-creates the Leadership Institute for Just and Resilient Communities at the non-profit, Daily Acts. She previously served as Executive Director of Sonoma County Conservation Action, leading grassroots campaigns to eliminate synthetic pesticides, facilitating coalition building, canvassing to elect environmental leaders, and organizing mutual support during record-breaking fires in Northern CA. One of her main areas of focus is the weaving of antiracism into community-led climate justice movements.
Sunday, December 13th
Mari Margil and Thomas Linzey of the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, leading figures in the global movement to recognize the legal rights of ecosystems and nature, will share exciting recent developments in that effort. They will highlight breakthroughs in tribal nations, communities, and countries around the world. They will explain how advancing the rights of nature in legal codes and constitutions can lead to a radical transformation in humankind’s relationship with the natural world.
December 13th | 10:39 am to 10:54 am
Keynote
Mari Margil
Executive Director | Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights
Mari Margil, Executive Director of the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, leads its International Center for the Rights of Nature. Previously Associate Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, she assisted the first places in the world to secure the Rights of Nature in law, including Ecuador. She works internationally as well as with Indigenous peoples and tribal nations to advance Rights of Nature legal and policy frameworks. Mari is a co-author of: The Bottom Line or Public Health and Exploring Wild Law: The Philosophy of Earth Jurisprudence.
Thomas Linzey
Senior Legal Counsel | Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights
Thomas Linzey, Senior Counsel for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER), co-founded the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and the Daniel Pennock Democracy School (which has graduated over 5,000 lawyers, activists, and municipal officials nationally to fight to elevate the rights of their communities over corporate rights). He is the author of several books, including: Be The Change: How to Get What You Want in Your Community; On Community Civil Disobedience in the Name of Sustainability; and co-author of: We the People: Stories from the Community Rights Movement in the United States.
People of Color have been marginalized in regards to the production and consumption of, and access to, healthy foods and as a result have far higher rates of food insecurity and of negative health impacts that result from poor nutrition. Three community leaders discuss how they are working to break through the impacts of colonization to develop a community-owned food system that is equitable, profitable and built on respectful relationships. Hosted by Naima Penniman, Program Director at Soul Fire Farm. With farmer, author Leah Penniman; Mohawk seed keeper and farmer, Rowen White; and Rev. Heber Brown, founder of the Black Church Food Security Network.
December 13th | 12:30 pm to 1:45 pm
Panelists
Heber Brown
Founding Director | Orita’s Cross Freedom School
Rev. Heber Brown, a multiple award-winning community organizer and social entrepreneur, is Senior Pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church in Baltimore, MD, and founding Director of Orita’s Cross Freedom School, which works to reconnect Black youth to their African heritage while providing them with hands-on learning opportunities to spark their creativity and build vocational skills. In 2015 he launched the Black Church Food Security Network, a multi-state alliance of congregations dedicated to creating a grassroots, community-led food system.
Leah Penniman
Co-Executive Director | Soul Fire Farm
Leah Penniman is a Black Kreyol farmer, mother, Vodun Manye (Queen Mother), and award-winning food justice activist who has been tending the soil and organizing for an anti-racist food system for over 20 years. She currently serves as founding Co-Executive Director of Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York, a people-of-color led project that works toward food and land justice, which she co-founded in 2010. She is the author of: Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land.
Rowen White
Founder/Director | Sierra Seeds
Rowen White, a seed keeper and farmer from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne and a passionate activist for Indigenous seed and food sovereignty, is founder/Director of Sierra Seeds, an innovative California-based organic seed stewardship organization; and Program Director for the Indigenous Seed Keeper Network, an initiative of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance.
Naima Penniman
Program Director | Soul Fire Farm
Naima Penniman, an artist, activist, healer, grower and educator committed to planetary health and community resilience, is the co-founder of WILDSEED Community Farm and Healing Village, a Black and Brown-led intentional community focused on ecological collaboration, transformative justice, and intergenerational responsibility. She is also: Program Director at Soul Fire Farm, dedicated to supporting the next generation of B.I.P.O.C. (Black/Indigenous/people of color) farmers; the co-founder/co-artistic director of Climbing PoeTree, an internationally-acclaimed performance duo; a Thai Yoga Massage practitioner; and a member of Harriet's Apothecary, a collective of Black women-identified healers.
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