Last minute details & Announce October 24th Alaska 350 Climate Action Day Festival

I honestly almost didn't get back into this work. With the encouragement of some friends here I am... regaining momentum and energy and rolling. I would not be typing this without the support of other people....

I drove up here to Fairbanks a few days ago... camped in Mckinley village on a cold windy night with raindrops pattering against the tent-fly and the state flag snapping in the wind against a dark sky and blowing some of falls first yellow leaves across the road where it winds thru the mountains. I woke up and drank coffee and drove down into the rolling flats into what felt like summer... sun flowing everywhere and fireweed changing color in old burns on the hills and ditches still flush with wildflowers and whitestones in dry creeks glinting like broke glass and the sun moving on the water of the Tanana river when I got to Nenana with the bridge hanging over it against the blue sky transcribing the passing vehicles gracefully like some gothic monument using sign language to tell the story of migrating birds.

I staged my canoe there with the same good people who let me store it at their place last year. Like last year they wouldn’t take my money and all we did is shake hands and talk about the fire season and how I was getting an earlier start now. I don’t remember the date but last fall I remember watching the vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden at the local bar (only place to get tv coverage) with about a foot of snow on the ground and my canoe and gear staged down by the ice-rimmed river. A combination of good people telling me I was crazy and another 6 inches of snow mixed with a dip in temperatures that night convinced me into postponing the rest of my journey until now. The next day I hitchhiked back to Dawson to get my truck than went to work canvassing voters thru an environmental organization in support of our current president. A lot has happened in the last year.

I have been busy here the last few days. I drove into town on wednesday and met with Northern Alaska Disaster Relief (NADR), the umbrella group of representatives from leading organizations that are involved in coordinating assistance for flood victims in rural Alaska. They have been meeting each wednesday in the pres. church on college road and I got to the meeting a little late, was clearly the youngest one there... felt a little out of place with my crewcut and carharts; kind of like a restless kid in school again.

They are clearly good people doing good work, and it is great to see people getting together to face a challenge and the non profit sector filling in where State and FEMA assistance ends .... I will be distributing their contact information on bulletin boards along the Yukon from Tanana down to St. Marys over the next few weeks. The idea is that they will be able to help families and individuals get funds to replace a snowmobile or sofa etc., items needed to live and get thru the winter in addition to the funds FEMA has available for homes etc.. Still learning how all this works. I have a lot of commitments but did discuss volunteering with them some after the river trip. There are a lot of articles about the rebuilding effort and impact of floods, here is one (http://www.newsminer.com/news/2009/jul/29/tanana-rebuilds-after-spring-floods/).

It should be noted that when the floods were declared a disaster last spring ... that the obvious link to the root issues of climate change, energy, and food-security etc. ( the issues that originally jump started the Last Frontier Eco Alliance ) was not drawn very well in the media. There are clear parallels to what happened in New Orleans with Katrina and disadvantaged minority communities to what happened last winter in rural Alaska and the Yukon... where high fuel prices and low returns on salmon etc. ripple effected into an ugly survival situation (http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/25/nation/na-rural-alaska25).

Our new Gov. Parnell recently appealed to the Federal Government to declare the Yukon Fishery a disaster as well...: (http://www.alaskajournal.com/stories/081509/fis_20_002.shtml). We all need to support this. I am critical of the state’s work in terms of rural Alaska and energy... I organized the event last spring, attended the Renewable Energy Fair in early August and also the recent Chena Hot Springs Fair... and I know that there is a lot of energy and good people trying hard on this complex challenge... But the proven solutions are taking a long time to arrive to the people in need.

Thomas Friedman hit the nail on the head with his recent NYT op-ed (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23friedman.html) where he spoke of how “policy solutions should be as integrated as nature”. Though I work at the true grassroots and don’t wear a tie or shape policy... I believe his analogy is consistent to what I have been instinctively trying to do since I started this work last fall. Anyone can look back at this blog and see the awkward beginnings, stumbles etc. but in a year we have made significant progress. From the start I feel like I was driven by a gravity-like internal need to express and solve simultaneously, guided more by motivation and an intuitive thinking style than anything else. I always go back to my analogy of a free style rapper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freestyle_rap) to best explain the way I try to build and connect ideas into solutions...

Yesterday I met with the UAF film professor. She has been working with others to bring a film major program to UAF... currently there is a minor thru the theatre department. There is no film program at UAA. Film and media are unrivaled in terms of influence over mainstream culture, and we really need to get this film major implemented @ UAF and get some sort of program going at UAA. I have lived and worked alongside lots of good people from rural Alaska and have lots of friends in remote places and have personally been interested in trying to make a film about climate change for several years... so I completely understand the intense frustration that comes with having a lack of opportunity to express yourself or a creative vision stifled by circumstances. Take a look at these articles re suicide in Alaska (http://www.adn.com/life/health/story/798378.html & http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/us/14alaska.html). A significant quote... “A recent audit of the Alaska Suicide Prevention Council, launched in 2001 to reduce suicide numbers across the state, found that the legislators who sit on the council rarely showed up for meetings and that several seats sat vacant for years.”

My idea I approached UAF prof Maya with, and that I mentioned briefly in the interview with Daphna that was linked to in the last blog post... is to create a program that gives interested UAF film students opportunity to teach film in rural schools, learn good event organizing skills by fundraising for digital video camera donation and trip, valuable culture and service experience. And to make it a sustainable model by partnering with the university... new UAF film students each year pull from their personal network to fund more cameras and trips to growing network of villages. Rural Youth learn valuable skills to communicate thru media re social and environmental justice, restore balance to lives and communities via healing process of creative arts and media production. Perhaps showcase work in short film competition format at green events in cities, or collaborating with other established film festivals... Looks killer on everyones resume and connects youth with progressive material and global community, gives them voice, influence of positive role models (thru UAF student leaders and also thru films donated thru Yukon River Media Project)etc. I have a lot of more developed ideas but hopefully you can see the potential and vision for what it is: promising. Maya offered some great leadership and I hope we can collaborate on this...

In the 50in52 interview I talked about a shift in focus to a Green Employer Council rather than the Alaska (Anchorage) Green Jobs Corps workforce training program (which would include a green employer counil) that I had been envisioning from the beginning. It seemed more practical and I had been gone working all summer, my energy dulled by months of 16 hour days. But I did connect with an awesome friend who I actually met at our April 11th event last spring. This person brings additional energy, motivation, talent and business skills and is interested in collaborating re the Green Job vision. I have not given up on the Green Jobs front and we are moving in the direction of learning from the Ella Baker Center and looking at ways to innovatively implement their inspiration... the Berkley Study produced by SFSU Urban Studies Prof Raquel Rivera Pinderhughes (http://bss.sfsu.edu/raquelrp/) and watch video here (http://www.revision-dallas.com/?p=225). I tried to pull together a steering committee / board for this project with the event last spring, but didn't have the ability 'team of talent' to execute. Building the team of talent and connections to deliver change is something I intend to focus much more on in the future.

The last thing I need to mention in this blog post is that we are rolling with an October 24th Alaska 350ppm Climate Action Day Festival in the Cook Room of the Egan Center in Anchorage on October 24th. The focus is translating global inspiration into local action and the more community involvement the better so please email if there is anything you would like to contribute. Event sponsors $500, exhibitor booths $300, and supporter $20(funds will be used to cover our expenses than be channeled to develop our projects). You can support the event via secure online payment on right hand side of blog screen. I set this up as no-one seems to use checks these days, and because I will be off the road system for the next few weeks traveling form Nenana out to Tanana on the tanana river... than down the Yukon toward the Bering Sea. Check out www.350.org for more information behind the science of 350, event inspiration... watch on youtube: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5kg1oOq9tY). The focus is climate change Solutions and Awareness. Interested speakers, artists, exhibitors: email me to get involved!

Cities are so key in sparking social change and creating opportunity... All of our plans in some way or another incorporate leveraging the power of urban communities to drive culture in the direction of sustainability. I love all of Alaska... the small remote towns, the villages and the cities of Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau... and I really believe Anchorage is going to come thru on this and make the October 24th event something to remember for years. I grew up here as a person and all of these places have shaped me in some way or another into the person I am becoming and I want to spend the rest of my life improving these communities, preserving our wilderness, and helping people constructively become involved in creating solutions to the economic and environmental challenges we face.

Today I have been getting last minute supplies, reserved storage space for truck, developing promo material for event to email to prospective supporters, exhibitors, pulling together some basic material for school presentations and handouts. There are a lot of logistics and details. We really need Alaska to get behind this 350 Climate Action day festival, buy booths and support this 1 time effort to bring global awareness to this important issue... Alaska is the poster state for Climate Change and we need to become a leader on solutions.