We humans categorize each other.  Even from our youngest age, we group similar objects and people together. Yet, we reject when those categorizations apply to ourselves (even to the point of irony...see: my fellow Millennials reject the label "Millennial"). 

The reason is simple: when we accept or adopt a label it becomes part of our identity.

Many years back when I started Enviro(ish), I started it on a principle in the wake of this truth. I proposed that we should not get hung up on the label and just do eco-friendly things in our day-to-day.  This is still true, in part...meaning yes, please continue to do eco-friendly things.  With the way 2020 is going, here's hoping some people reading this don't leave their lights and faucets on and put recyclables in the trash out of spite.  But I digress.

As my Enviro(ish) conversation has continued, and as the systemic nature of the climate crisis has reared its ugliness, and seeped more deeply into our collective conscious, I've been spending more time thinking whether my theory of change of Enviro(ish) is really enough. Is it the only thing that matters?  That answer is no.  It's no longer "do eco-friendly things and don't worry about being labeled an environmentalist."   I fervently believe now it is "do eco-friendly things and embrace being an environmentalist."  

Nearly every conservative I know in real life enjoys hunting, fishing, visiting our national parks and/or getting outside in nature.  Newsflash: this makes you an environmentalist.  In this starkly regressive period of the Trump Administration on all the issues I care about most, there is a bright spot.  Do you remember when Congressman Chaffetz (R-UT) tried to sell of 3.3 million acres of public land and utterly failed?  I do.  I have posted before about how the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were passed on a bipartisan basis, but I feel the need to remind people these foundational laws for environmental protection were signed by a Republican President. Environmental protection use to be universally agreed upon.  (And while I have you here, President Nixon also started the Environmental Protection Agency.) 
(Read more after the jump)

We as a nation are grappling with corruption and inappropriate conduct at the highest levels of power.  Whether it is the White House, Hollywood, or corporate America...something about these past few years has broken open a multitude of stories that people bottled up or swept under the rug for years.  I believe this breaking dam flooding us with news is connected with Trump. It's been three years to the day since I woke up for the first time and realized a reality television star was voted into the most powerful role in the world by 3 million fewer of my fellow Americans over the most unequivocally qualified Presidential candidate in my lifetime. Given that the winner was a man and the loser was female screams at me every day exactly one thing:

No matter how hard I try, no matter how much I follow the rules and play the game, a man who works a fraction as hard will always succeed before I do simply because I'm a woman and people don't like women who have power, especially when they seek power.

Look, we can argue about whether the above statement is objectively true all the time...I know there are exceptions....but this *is* the rule.  There are study after study after study on the double bind women face that makes this the truth not just emotionally but experientially.  Yes, for all women.  This is the rule under which being female in America operates and something about the Presidency following this rule to the painfully egregious degree it did in the wake of November 2016's election made me confront its truth more directly than I had before.  And the bottomless indecency, the relentless corruption, and the endless circus going on because of the current occupant of the White House reminds me daily of the inequality and unfairness I face as a woman because of this steadfast and oppressive rule of life. 

In the wake of not being able to be in denial, what happened to me was a psychological and philosophical shift that will stay with me for the rest of my life, summed up as: "never again".  I believe we got this outcome because like everyone else I know, I bottled up truths and swept them under the rug.  I focused on optimism.  We all tried to live in a state of denial and belief that equality is inevitable on the long arc of the moral universe.  And we could comfort ourselves with famous words telling us that arc bends towards justice.  Just nobody ask what forces actually bend that arc.  Keep it to a superficial catch phrase, don't look deeper into what Nobel peace prize winner Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr really said.

But today I don't want to focus on the people in power or reflect on the inherent inequity of the situation.  We do a lot of that, all the time.  Today I want to talk about the passive way in which we respond to the courage of whistleblowers who disrupt that script.  How we discount the actions by the people who come forward first, who testify at great risk to their livelihoods and sometimes their life to speak truth to power.

We talk about power being held to account as something obvious and inevitable. Abstractly it always is talked about with phrases like "of course", as though naturally everyone does it in real life all day every day. 
Uh, N-O-P-E.

Look, not to go all hard-core Nazi history on you this early in a post, but everyone thinks they are Oskar Schindler and no one wants to admit they would've been in the Nazi party even though that math equation can't work out. More importantly, the majority of people would've been bystanders during that era of Germany: not actively perpetrating crimes against humanity, probably knowledgeable enough that something was amiss, and doing nothing about it.  Go along to get along. That's human nature yo.  That's where we're at.

So why do we persist in talking about whistleblowers as something run-of-the-mill we expect?  Like their courage is so every day and common?  I think that's because being righteous against oppressive power is so deeply in the narrative we have as Americans that it's part of our cultural DNA.  Our country was founded by patriots who pushed back against a monarchy...who held power to account and founded a nation based on democratic principles and liberty, with a first amendment enshrining our freedom of speech and freedom of the press.  We learn about that history in textbooks sanitized of not only the impact to indigenous communities and erasing the stories of non-white males who helped create that history, but more importantly, erased of the struggle to get there.  We downplay the sacrifice because we know the outcome.    We all know that the colonies defeat the British, that the North wins the Civil War and slavery ends, and we know that America and our Allies defeat the Nazis. Why focus on the messy middle when we have to get through 200 years of history in 2 months? Next decade please!

Today I want to reflect on the time periods when those outcomes were most unlikely and most uncertain.  Because in order to truly appreciate the courage of someone speaking truth to hold power accountable, we have to marinate ourselves in the moments where its not inevitable at all and soak in the truth of how systems of power protect themselves.  In order to understand the bravery it takes, we have to empathize with how much fear and abject terror a person has to overcome to speak up in the first place.  The more powerful the person who is doing wrong, the more important it is to come forward, obviously.  But also the higher the stakes, the scarier the threats towards the person who might speak out and the greater likelihood of irreversible, negative impact to that whistleblower.

And I'm not writing this down abstractly as a citizen.  I'm writing this as a way to explain my absence from blogging these past few months.  You see, I personally experienced something I knew was wrong in mid-June, a much worse second example that showed a pattern, and through a series of things that happened the week after, forces converged in my conscience and I was confronted with the choice every person in a situation like that faces: "do I speak up at great risk to myself and my future, or do I stay quiet and go along to get along". 

Courage is one of my top five values and given the severe nature of the situation, I chose to speak up.  This post isn't about whether I experienced this because of the organizations I volunteer with or where I worship or where I work.  It's not about who I went to in reporting it.  I want to level up to something more universal about the experience that applies to any power situation where speaking truth is somewhere in the range of hard to dangerous.  Here's what I've learned in the still ongoing, painful aftermath of my decision to speak up....

This is first in a series to reflection on each documentary I saw at Mountainfilm Festival 2019.  Each post will be a reflection on the documentary and a focus on the impact and the issue that documentary is raising.  My goal is to share my authentic take on watching the films as a witness who cares about having an impact. This is not a film review.  Spoilers are probably all up in this.

Like every American and likely every person around the world, we've all heard the sitting President of the United States talk about the wall.  I won't do that justice by linking out to it.  I've always said when the topic comes up in conversation that having grown up in San Diego, I realize how pointless a wall as a concrete barrier is.  Pointless both because people find a way around it always, but pointless also in a greater sense.  The amount of folks who crossed the border from San Diego / Tijuana everyday for commerce, for work, for recreation...it always was and continues to be high.  I remember vacationing in Rosarito and Ensenada growing up.  I remember my neighbor working in Tijuana, driving himself to the border and walking across to save time so his company would pick him up on the other side.  The talk and rhetoric about the border has always been puzzling and annoying to me as someone from a border community.  The rhetoric is so heated that other side from the United States could besome form of oozing evil that will come through any gap, when in reality, the border is an artificial construct in a way you really understand only by living near one.  In reality it's always porous like Swiss cheese going in both directions, and we're better off economically, politically and as humans when we think about it this way.

I had heard that the monarch butterfly which migrates across the border by the millions was being threatened by Trump's border wall, and so was intrigued to catch this documentary at Mountainfilm 2019.  The premise of the film is a fascinating concept.  The filmmaker and a team of characters (literally and cinematically) will travel along the 1200 miles of the Colorado River that forms the border between Texas and Mexico from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico.  Canoes or kayaks, sure.  I fully admit that I didn't expect before immersing myself in the film that this would involve bikes and horses.  Bikes for the first stretch from El Paso because the river is fairly dried up, and horses through the amazing wildlands of Big Bend National Park.

Check out this beautiful imagery from The River and the Wall webpage and read more after the jump.

This is my second year at this amazing film festival, and I have to admit something to you dear reader.  I didn't want to talk about it.  I knew how transformative this experience was for me last year, anticipated it happening again this year, and I decided before going I was so protective of the community that goes to Mountainfilm and the experience I get to have there that I didn't want to share it with the world.  Via social media.  Here.  Anywhere. Because getting to be in this stunningly beautiful place, seeing films that are made to move me, exploring the caverns of my emotions, and illuminating the power of storytelling...these were all things I didn't want to talk about for fear the stampede might follow.  Something like "the first rule of Mountainfilm club is don't talk about it".

I was wrong.

The theme this year was Equity.  While the moderator of the opening symposium focused on this topic -  Dr Michael Sawyer - was right to say "equity is a way of life, not a theme at a film festival," I found myself in an interesting spot amongst my Mountainfilm friends (family really, but I digress).  At first I was explaining the concept of equity compared to equality...essentially verbally stumbling through a description of this diagram that reveals equality as just giving everyone the same regardless of need, compared to equity which gives according to the need:

By the end of the film festival, I was personally so appreciative of the rare opportunity to really explore in depth the concepts of intersectionality and privilege.  It's rare as a white woman for this the opportunity to do such a concentrated amount of internal work on myself with such rigor and consistency over the course of a weekend.  The organizers of the conference, like me, I think held some fear that my fellow white people who attend the conference would not react well to having their privilege called out and dissected.  In the final talk on Monday - aptly named "What Now?" - an attendee of color said their skepticism turned into appreciation and I was grateful and more than a little relieved to hear that perspective from a non-white attendee. 

I thought I would keep Mountainfilm to myself, and jealously guard it as a treasure that I get to experience every year among the stunning peaks of Telluride.  I believed despite the evidence of very few clicks on this site that by not posting about it...that maybe some others wouldn't hear about it and they wouldn't come.  But here's how the equity theme challenged me: it told me I was wrong.  That wealth is - yes - my privilege as a white person and my economic income that affords me the chance to get to Telluride and vacation there for the weekend, but it's also the wealth of ideas.  That through Mountainfilm I gain immeasurable knowledge and have a responsibility to share that bounty with others.  That by benefiting from these stunning films on difficult topics, I should leave and continue this conversation in any and every way possible to honor their beauty and creation.

So I am committing to sharing individual posts on each one of the films as my contribution and my commitment to not be an elitist prick about it.  Being elitist was never a good fit for me anyhow.  ;)

Each post will be a reflection on the documentary and a focus on the impact and the issue that documentary is raising.  There's a lot to unpack with each one, so I'll focus just on one documentary and issue at a time. My goal is to share my authentic take on watching the films as a witness who cares about having an impact. It will not be a review.  I'm not here to enumerate flaws. I'm not a filmmaker, nor am I in "the industry".  Plus, I didn't get my nickname "sunshine" because I'm critical. I rewatch my favorite movies. Often. #unapologetic

I'm excited to share this journey with you here, and especially to hear your comments and reflections on the documentaries and this experience.  I have come down from the mountaintop both literally and figuratively. 

Shall we? Let's go!

As you can tell by this Enviro(ish) site, I have not blogged in over a year.  There’s a lot of reasons for that, excuses really, and one of them is that I’ve always questioned this online realm for impact.  Is it slacktivism?  Does it translate into impact in real life?  Who reads this anyways?  You do?  Awesome.  Thank you for that :)

But more importantly, the Trump era has drastically changed the landscape and re-defined the priorities of progressive causes so dramatically that I’ve been “in the weeds” as it were, trying to figure it out as it changes in real time. And just when I think I’ve seen the landscape enough to paint a picture of it here, it seems to shift.  I’ve been taking actions and redefining my theory of change, and I’m ready(ish) to share with you what I think, believe and know.  Truthfully, in any conversation about impact, you never really know what you’ve accomplished until the outcome stage.  “The proof is in the pudding” so to speak.  And so to be perfectly honest with myself and to you, for a long time I have struggled with writing this blogpost because when are you ever done?  The answer is never.  On this long arc of the moral universe as Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr said, I don't think we ever reach the end.  But that's not the point.  The point is we work towards bending it every day.

One of my founding principles, though, is never let the perfect be the enemy of the good or eco.  So here’s hoping this post helps you in one way or the other.

This idea for a post topic is in recognition of the numerous people asking me “but seriously Megan, how do you know which environmental organizations to give to that have the most impact?”  I am definitely going to answer that with a direct response.  But first I am going to walkthrough a few priorities on that journey.  While it may seem to swerve and wander, I can assure you it’s with necessity and intention. And I hope you end up having the impact you are truly seeking.

This is going to sound hokey, and new age…but honestly the MOST important thing about having an impact is growing your mindset.  Let the belief settle within you that *you* *can* make a difference.  We live in a world that simultaneously and often negates aspects of our identities, which can undermine our sense of self and especially self worth.  And it all comes wrapped in an ever increasing amount of disconnectedness and isolation.  I’m not here to disagree with any of those experiences that are genuine barriers to having an impact.

I am here to tell you one simple truth: if you believe you can’t make a difference, then you definitely won’t.

The individual belief that one person can’t make a difference is something we all share.  This feeling is universal.  This cuts to the core of our own insecurities as people.  Every human has this doubt.  But therein lies the unlock.  If every person had this same doubt, then so did Nelson Mandela, Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Teresa, and Susan B. Anthony.  We talk about their legacies as though it was inevitable.  But in reading autobiographies of all these folks the theme of self-doubt is deep throughout.  Their doubt is the same doubt that we all share, and it is the relief valve towards progress.  They were just one person, too.  And their progress was not theirs alone.  Their progress was thanks to thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even millions of individual actions from people whose names we don’t know and were part of the movements they have come to symbolize.  Embrace the possibilities and hold space for awe at what can be accomplished.  And I've said before, if you have a case for optimism as the way to solve climate change, you can be optimistic about the change you seek too.

So if you want to have an impact, first, you have to believe you can.

The next four steps are after the jump, after this poem which always inspires me to bring my mindset back into the truth of infinite possibility.

It's no secret that I'm a woman (gasp!).  And so it shouldn't be surprising that I take a lot of inspiration from the women who fought for 72 years to achieve the 19th amendment which gave me the right to vote.  I have been reading about Civil Disobedience and watching Suffragette and Selma and brushing up on the power of non-violent protest.  And there's one phrase that sticks with me:  Deeds Not Words.

It's used by the suffragettes when they finally give up on changing the system from within and advocating with their impassioned pleas, and changed tactics to take disruptive actions to achieve their aim of Votes for Women.  And the concept of "deeds not words" is true, basically a maxim of any theory of social change.  If we've learned anything from this election on a universal basis, I hope it's the fruitlessness of posting on Facebook or social media only.  It's how we all got our news, but it's a big echo chamber of people who agree with you.  Change in the real world cannot be slacktivist, it must be done through grassroots mobilization, through calls, through peaceful protest, through volunteering, through donation.

But I'd like to put this "deeds not words" thing down, flip it and reverse it.  I've found myself using this term to evaluate President-elect Donald J. Trump and I think it's a befitting measuring stick we should all use.  For the liberals and progressives and Democrats among us, I think it will help us maintain some sanity and steady on the helm.  (And not only because we cannot trust his word, since he's been "Pants on Fire", "False" or "Mostly False" 60% of the time out of 334 claims on Politifact....seriously, I can't really fathom living my life where only 15% of what I said was "Mostly True" or "True"....I'm pretty sure I would be unemployable if that were the case)

But more importantly because "deeds not words" put any other way is pretty much how we roll here in the United States of America...

[Read more below the jump]

As part of engaging in a dialogue in the wake of Trump being elected, I've written up a compilation of where Donald Trump has broken the Ten Commandments to engage with my fellow Catholics.  Shared here in case others find it useful.  Take care of each other out there.  And if you are in the trenches, just know that I am right there with you. 
 
#1 - I, the Lord, am your God.  You shall not have other gods besides me
How can you be a Christian if you never go to church?  (he also broke #8 on this one)
"Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told reporters Thursday that he attends a church in Manhattan, but the church released a statement saying the real estate developer is not an "active member."  http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/28/politics/donald-trump-church-member/

Also, what kind of Christian doesn't believe in the need for redemption and forgiveness from the Savior....what kind of Christian doesn't bring God into the picture of forgiveness? 
"I am not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don't think so," he said. "I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don't bring God into that picture. I don't."
Trump said that while he hasn't asked God for forgiveness, he does participate in Holy Communion.
"When I drink my little wine -- which is about the only wine I drink -- and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed," he said. "I think in terms of 'let's go on and let's make it right.'"  http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/18/politics/trump-has-never-sought-forgiveness/

#2 - You shall not take the name of the Lord God in vain
Well, this one is easy thanks to the interwebs...you can see him say it himself...
[Read more below the jump]

My darlings.  My dear small handful of readers.  Even among you there is a diversity of thoughts and voting in this election.  I don't want to turn you away.  I want us to stay together and not break up.  Because dialogue and openness is the most important thing everybody needs right now.  Along with goodness, and you all are people I value so much.

I have to cheat on you though, and I want to tell you why.  11/9 changed me from who I was when I started this blog. I began this journey as encouraging you to be environmentalish and allowed myself and us all to believe that was the pathway to progress.  Do one thing.  Make it a habit.  Rinse, repeat.  That the drumbeat of progress on environment and climate would be steady at the national level - we had just made AMAZING gains - and you and I together just had to make small changes to our dailies to get there.  I was wrong.  I was heartbreakingly and painfully wrong.  In the wake of President Trump winning people have accused me of hubris, of thinking I'm "better than", of not listening.  They have said I only care about what happened in this election because my job depends on it.  They have laughed in victory at my Facebook posts of the grief cycle I'm going through after pouring myself into 15 years of environmental work.  They have attacked me personally for decrying the hate crime spike after this election.  They have called me a racist for defending minorities against that hate (no really, I quote: "the definition of a bigot").

I may have been wrong about this election, but those people?  They've got me all wrong.  Most of you know me in real life, so I know you might think this doesn't need to be said, but as a woman and an environmentalist, America just indicted me.  Slapped me upside the head and spit on me. Some of my fellow citizens just tumbled me to the bottom of Mt Everest with no oxygen and bricks in my backpack.  I'm gonna need to take a moment to assess my scrapes and bumps and bruises (done, check).  And now I need a minute of affirmation before I get back to climbing (spoiler alert: I WILL NEVER STOP CLIMBING). 

Who am I then? I am an optimist.  I am hopeful.  I believe in the importance of active listening, of going deeper than soundbites.  I look for the inspirational.  I love to laugh about things that should make us all weep (not kidding).  When I think about what I do every day when I get up and go to work, I think about whether I'm having an impact.  Whether I'm making a difference. I worked hard to learn my craft.  I practice what I preach.  I am a builder.   I am a Catholic.  I reach across the aisle.  And those people who want to bring me down?  Haters gonna hate.  Says a whole lot more about them than me.  And besides, I've long ago decide to be myself anyway.  And sounds like I'm in good company....PREACH AMBER, PREACH!
[Read more after the break]

I finally figured out the stats of my blog site and turns out I have more than one reader.  Huzzah!  The most interest was my recent EcoPartyDownload...so here's to listening and continuing that conversation. These type of posts take me a lot more time, but is it worth it?  Give the people what they want?  You tell me! 

I had to update the "Meet Megan" section of this blog recently and realized I've been doing environmental work for almost 15 years.  Shoot. Time flies.  But then again, in such a fast-moving and constantly evolving profession as sustainability has turned out to be, that feels like light years ago.  Particularly when thinking about the future I see for how corporate sustainability is shifting.  And in this regard, the environmental movement and its theory of change going back decades has not yet embraced what I believe to be the greatest opportunity for corporate America to "step up".  But before I can get to advocating for what I think is the answer, we have to get on the same page, and that involves dipping into how we all got here (I'll make it quick! Like ripping off a band-aid).  But I really do have to give you the skinny on why the environmentalists got to their belief system on what causes corporations to reduce their impact on the planet.  They have a really good reason for being that way.

In the days of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and the blue marble photo of Earth that sparked the environmental movement, there wasn't a political lens to it.  I mean, consider: who doesn't benefit or get impacted by waterways, drinking water and air clean of pollution? Passage of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were strongly supported on a bipartisan basis by Congress (I know...feels like a fairy tale to say that these days!).  And then....came the reaction.  The backlash.  President Reagan's underlying principle of "economy vs environment" meant appointing a blatantly anti-environmentalist to lead the EPA and ripping out the solar water heating system installed by President Carter.  Which all led to the formalization and codification of environmental issues being deeply partisan with the GOP being "anti" for all things environmental, and that divide has stayed the rule pretty much to this day.  With the notable and extremely temporary exception of when climate had it's moment in 2007 where conservatives supported taking action until they collapsed into this still toxic and resistant strain of denialism. Deep roots that denialism has. Sigh.  Anyways, that concrete-like hardening on the political front was a result of multinational corporations deciding that environmental regulation was onerous, expensive and corporates came in heavy to all levels of government against any further action.

So how did this play out outside of the Beltway?  How were companies interacting on environmental issues in their business during the 80s and 90s before corporate sustainability became "a thing"?
(Read on below the jump)

I'm always so much more of a visual learner.  And thankfully in corporate America we're in a world of PowerPoint decks which lends itself well to my existing preference (shoutout to my people with different abilities though...sorry friends I'm sure it's hard to adapt!)

Anyways, I have finally been trying to get my Twitter on for these posts so that I could have more than you, my dear singular reader.  So I've written a couple on the post that was most difficult and scary for me...The Act of Listening, Especially When It's Hard...in which I steeped myself in the ways I could in the black experience to extend my support of Black Lives Matter to the Kaepernick peaceful protests through understanding...especially in light of him being the most disliked player in the league and death threats.  Holy cannoli that's aggressive of us America!  It's called exercising his Constitutional right to freedom of expression...take a deep breath and chiiillllllllll.  Anyways, my decision to purposefully increase exposure and understanding worked pretty well in terms of increasing my empathy.  And so far the interwebs hasn't pilloried me for trying to engage in a race conversation as a white person (thank you for that, my dear singular reader!)

Saw this graphic from Think Progress and just love everything about what it says.  Americans standing up together with Kaepernick in solidarity of his peaceful protest.  I think it gives new and deeper meaning to the phrase "When the Game Stands Tall".

I was very scattershot about podcast listening, but have recently discovered them while traveling (no eyestrain during turbulence!) which means with my work travel I'm becoming a regular.  Have a long car ride to Palm Springs? Finally caught up on the entirety of Serial season 1.  So over this past weekend, I went through a number of the TED Radio Hour podcasts, and this one about Crisis & Response had a great mention of something I had never heard before.  One of the segments is about a man who lost all of his money in the Madoff ponzi scheme.  He spoke about how he finally connected with others who lost everything who had decided to think about it differently....they had embraced with gratitude that the experience had made them more connected to others than ever before.  He ultimately learns as well to overcome the blaming and shaming of the experience, determining that just because he lost all of his money to Madoff, he didn't want to surrender who he was as a person as well.  

When pivoting towards advice for others to "prepare", he says two things which I agree with whole-heartedly:

1. Know that you will have a crisis in your life.  That the concept of living a charmed life free of crises is not possible for anyone, so that when something does take place that unbalances you, you only experience the shock of what your are actually losing or dealing with...not the amplified shock of "I can't believe something like this could ever happen to me".  Ummm...YES. 
   
2. He quotes a principle called basic trust, which I had not heard of before and am already 200% in support of:

(Read more after the jump)

What a difference 3 weeks makes!  Since I first blogged about the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and Native American protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, the situation looked bleak.  I mean really horrifying with protesters bitten by security dogs drawing blood and attacked by pepper spray awful.  But since then the movement has netted real results.  And I hope this march towards justice achieves its aim.

Most recent, 1,200 archaeologists wrote a letter to President Obama condemning the damage to our cultural heritage of one of the most significant sites in North Dakota that the Pipeline LLC company did by bulldozing Tribal burial grounds.  This is the incident that led to the above atrocities...and the fact that the Dakota Pipeline company did it without permission from the Army Corps of Engineers and ONE DAY AFTER the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed the location of these sacred sites makes them as I've opined before: corporate psychopaths.  So huzzah  for the experts agreeing.

Most importantly, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has received an even greater step/win with an official halt on pipeline construction order from a Federal Appeals court, which is significant because the Obama Administration letter was only a request in support of a stoppage.  Not to mention the protest at the White House over this issue (raised profile is a good thing for justice!) or the consultations with the administration.

Having read a lot of Brene Brown lately, I am beginning to understand the power of shame to prevent conversations that desperately need to happen.  As a white person, I believe it's important to recognize the impediment fear of shame brings to this conversation and acknowledge this history so we can start to do right.  This video handles the subject with humor (which I always appreciate).  Worth a watch...what did you think?  

I used to think the world was so organized.  Blame it on the media I grew up with - a book, a movie, a television show.  Everything seemed so neatly organized into distinct units with a beginning, middle and end.  So I've become increasingly interested in gatherings that defy my own limitation.  Climate Week NYC is one of those weeks.  It has become a week on the calendar where strategic, global thinkers on climate from government, private sector, universities...anywhere...swarm the city and all kinds of micro and macro announcements are made.  More importantly, all kinds of connections are made between those with funding to those with the big ideas that are going to solve this thing.

And almost in perfect PR unity, the Empire State Building, eco-famous for it's own massive environmental retrofit, now has LED lights (eco-perfect!) which can mark the occasion.

Excited to see what comes out of this Climate Week 2016!  Take a look at the 3 minute overview video on the organizing group.  FWIW...pretty proud I'm one of the 100,000 EVs driving on the road in the U.S.  "Everything we do locally will have an impact globally"...pretty slick quote and I dig it.

This post took me a few days to write and get the courage to share...because for me this post is really hard.  I'm grateful that my job allows me to learn from the best in the field of engaging in race related conversations.  That being said, I'm white and I still suck at it.  Evidence in a recent  Facebook "conversation" that went poorly.  But I've learned to think of this as work, because that's what the "Courageous Conversations" class called it.  I've learned to think of engaging in the conversation as important to live my values, that silence is consent, that being neutral in the face of injustice is not the answer nor the way forward.  So here we are.  If you could read with a belief in my good intentions dear singular reader, I think we'll find our way onward together. 

Sunday September 11 passed and it was 15 years.  In the years since I've been humbled by people's experiences and loss. I like every other American have memories of that day, but some people's memories are more visceral and painful than others like mine. Finding out a classmate from business school was focused on renewable energy because he lost a brother that day and wanted to help get American dependence off foreign oil, that humbles me to this day.  About a month ago I watched The Falling Man, which is a horrifying refresh of the realities of that day, and of the sanitation we went through as a country to try to heal from this terrorism and tragedy.

But this year I wanted to do something other than post about it personally.  Rather than watch Zero Dark Thirty which has become my go-to way to deal with feeling terrorized.  Maybe I was inspired by the TED radio podcast the Act of Listening.  Maybe recently watching The Falling Man felt like enough remembrance of that day.  Maybe it was the fact that Straight Outta Compton on dvd was sitting on my table from Netflix that got me thinking.  Reminded me about #Oscarssowhite. And reading on why the ad industry's diversity initiatives are failing.  Got me thinking about Colin Kaepernick's nonviolent act of protest of kneeling during the anthem, and both the negative reaction he had received and the acts of support from fellow NFL players and one of my hometown female soccer athletes.  And my thought process was this: I wouldn't protest the anthem nor burn the flag, and I will fight for my fellow Americans Constitutional right to do so...but more importantly...why do they feel the need to do so? What is their experience that has driven them to do so on September 11, this sacred American day? 

I decided instead of looking online at the 9/11 remembrances and instead of posting on my Facebook, that this year I would spend that day listening.  That I would try to understand what I do not "get" based upon my own experience in the most accessible way I could: movies.  I would listen by watching Selma and Straight Outta Compton back-to-back as an active steeping in the African American experience and community.  And here's the thing that shook out for me by watching these two movies back-to-back that reach back to the 1960s and the 1990s:  how very little has changed.   Time has passed, but even this recent history has a way of repeating itself.

It's still hard for me to personally imagine kneeling during the anthem on September 11...but that's because I haven't faced the decades long injustices and struggle of African Americans in this country.  And if that were my experience, I would be hard pressed to find ways to get people to listen.  I would be out of avenues that weren't like kneeling during the anthem.  The backlash that has come to the leaders whose voices have been heard and led to change for these communities is severe.  In the 1960s, they were murdered.  In the 1990s, they were discounted and silenced in the mainstream media as thugs. 

What happened when NWA were interviewed by the mainstream media in the 1990s has almost no difference to the way we've engaged in the mainstream media about Black Lives Matter.  The average American and the media has only given space to address the "how" there's been engagement in the conversation.  The outrage at the method as a way to ignore the message.  I keep thinking what I would do if my voice wasn't heard and I felt my life was on the line?  Any rational human would say it louder or find new ways to get themselves heard, myself included. 

So through the act of listening in the way available to me, I empathized and I learned.  And decided firmly that it's not hard to see how we've gotten here at all.  I for one want to count my voice in with their movement for justice.  Silence is not the answer nor the way forward and I believe more people like me - aka white - need to be anti-racism not just not racist. 

I may just be one voice in the void, but I think it matters, because that's what enviro(ish) is all about:
Because you can despair that each action you take is only one tiny drop in the ocean....or you can be inspired that the ocean is made up entirely of tiny drops.

At my best friend's wedding in May, I caught up with a friend from college I hadn't seen in a few years.  She offhand mentioned Brene Brown and I asked who that was.  Her response included "you are basically what Brene Brown is all about."  So when I made it back home I watched her first TED talk on the Power of Vulnerability, immediately followed by her second TED talk on Listening to Shame.  Within 5 minutes of finishing I texted my friend and said how obsessed I had become with this message...how honored I was to be thought of as "whole-hearted"...and she sent me Brene's Daring Greatly book and I read it start to finish.  It's safe to say it has been a life-changing reframe for me.  I read the "Man in the Arena" aka "Daring Greatly" quote often to stay grounded and inspired.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'd encourage you to take some time to listen to her TED talks in order.  For the purposes of this blog....finding inspirations that will keep us going...I enjoyed discovering Brene's talk to 99u, which is about supporting the "99% perspiration" principle in the creative community.  In it, she focuses on the sweat we expend because of fear of criticism and she extends the arena metaphor to walk us all through how to deal with critics and how to make sure we reserve the best seats for our champions and ourselves.

I love this talk (and I re-listen to it often!) because I think the messaging of feedback and criticism is missing what this brings to it.  In business school you have to be open to feedback and it's seen as extremely negative if you are not.  But we know there is some criticism that is not helpful, on the far end, there's bullying and trolls and the like.  So how do we differentiate constructive feedback from criticism and more importantly, how do we forge ahead when faced with a landslide of criticism?  The power is immense in what she's saying here...knowing what the critics will say and saying back: "I see you, I hear you, but I'm going to show up and do this anyway".   Bless.

Steep yourself in some Brene Brown...you won't regret!