The head of Green for All believes this is the moment, and our movement needs to take advantage of it. A stirring and deeply personal presentation on organizing power by engaging community.
Ellis-Lamkins' momentum: "Improving the lives of working families in America by creating opportunities and access to work, wealth, and health."
Bio
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is the Executive Director of Working Partnerships USA, named by San Jose Magazine as one of the 100 most powerful people in Silicon Valley and one of "40 to watch under 40" by the Silicon Valley Business Journal.
As a woman of color, she has distinguished herself as an innovative leader in the Silicon Valley and led the way for emerging leaders in the American progressive movement, directing campaigns to win policy victories on local, regional, and state levels. She has been featured in the Wall Street Journal online, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, America at Work, NBC News and ABC News.
Drummond Pike
Drummond Pike is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tides. Awarded as an Outstanding Foundation Professional, Pike helped pioneer the advent of donor advised funds in philanthropy.
Through his leadership, Tides has helped increase the capacity and effectiveness of thousands of social change organizations. Pike was a founder and Associate Director of the Youth Project in Washington, DC, and served as Executive Director of the Shalan Foundation from 1976 to 1981. He was among the original founders of Working Assets, a telecommunications company dedicated to progressive philanthropy and political activism.
Advocacy of the preservation or improvement of the natural environment, especially the social and political movement to control environmental pollution. Other specific goals of environmentalism include control of human population growth, conservation of natural resources, restriction of the negative effects of modern technology, and the adoption of environmentally benign forms of political and economic organization. Environmental advocacy at the international level by nongovernmental organizations and some states has resulted in treaties, conventions, and other instruments of environmental law addressing problems such as global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer, and the danger of transboundary pollution from nuclear accidents. Influential U.S. and British environmentalists have included Thomas Robert Malthus, John Muir, Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Paul R. Ehrlich, and Edward O. Wilson. In the social sciences, the term refers to any theory that emphasizes the importance of environmental factors in the development of culture and society.
I just saw few minutes ago a fora.tv presentation by Phaedra-Ellis Lamkins who is the CEO of Green For All that was a very inspiring and engaging. It was both determinate and sensitive. It is very good that the green movement is now moving to installed itself in each class of the society.
Even though it was a matter that is affecting everybody’s life, it was way to often portrayed as something that was related only to the middle class and higher ones. We can only welcome the fact that it is also going into the circles of people who do not have the best opportunities around them. I think it shows that people see themselves as something more than the money that they receive or will receive.
If right at the beginning of their life or carrier, people see themselves as something more than money and the family they are going to built, the consequences will be that they will act as such in their everyday life. When they will be in a discussion whether it takes place at work or in any organization they belong to, the environment will not be ignored or dismissed. Indeed whatever are the positions and responsibilities they will hold, they will bring with them the notion of the environment.
Since everybody is aware of it and is concerned by it, the expectations about the environment will only grow in people mind. Therefore what green for all is doing is actually increasing not only the awareness of the environmental concerns but also is making sure that the actions the government takes, are not just limited to the middle class, upper middle class or rich people but that they reached everybody. The only way to make that happen is to include in the conversation the people who are living in the area that are the most vulnerable and where choices are extremely limited.
It should not be green just for people who can afford it but green for everyone. If we have only few people who are interested by the green movement, it will not be enough to motivate the government to act.
The more people are active participants to this movement, the more careful the companies are going to be before neglecting the environmental consequences of their projects. I am not suggesting that it will stop them from doing everything they can to go around it but at least they will find people in front of them who are ready to fight and do whatever it takes to reduce the pollution of their project. Usually these kinds of actions make a big difference.
At the end, I will say that it is a good thing that people see the environment as part of who they are. The more people will think that way, the more available they would be to take actions to not only protect it but to create the conditions that are going to make them enjoy it and live around it.
The more people are conscious of the relations between them and the environment, the more the companies and the government will be inclusive of the environmental concerns. Before implementing their projects, they will take that in consideration because even their employees will be aware of the consequences of their actions. When people are working for something they know in their heart is bad, they are not doing a good job. They do everything to leave the company.
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