[Sdpg] ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP PROGRAM please read

[sdpg-admin at arashi.com]

Hi everyone
         Margo Tamez poet environmental activist in a rural county in 
Arizona with her husband Ed Mendoza have galvanized their community thru 
helping teenagers find there way through gardening in the prisons, to 
starting a organic permaculture center and model in an agriculture toxic 
land completely surrounded them., then reaching out to their neighbors to 
inspire them to speak and organize.
         Margo has received an 3 year award from the ENVIRONMENTAL 
LEADERSHIP PROGRAM in recognition of her work and has sent this email to me 
to explain what the Environmental Leadership Program is about and how they 
chose people for their program. Read below.
         ps please read letter from Margo that was published in Hopedance 
Magazine on Sept/Oct Working with Conflict which she describe how Hopedance 
articles aided and inspired her activism at the end of the email


ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP PROGRAM CHOOSES TWENTY-FIVE IN SECOND CLASS OF
FELLOWS
February 15, 2001
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Paul Sabin, (617) 875-2322
http://www.elpnet.org
Cambridge, MA -- The Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) has chosen 25
innovative leaders for participation in the organization's coveted national
leadership fellowship. ELP fellows are fighting to improve corporate
environmental policies, safeguard communities from toxic waste dumps,
preserve open land from encroaching development, and protect endangered
species from invasion and extinction. They represent a new face of
environmentalism, one that reaches economically, racially, and ethnically
diverse groups, and accomplishes projects with national and local
significance. Fellows were selected because they are environmental
problem-solvers with the leadership potential and desire to propel the
environmental field to new heights.
"The future depends on the work of groups like ELP that prepare emerging
leaders to collaborate across boundaries and to develop and implement new
initiatives," says James Gustave Speth, Dean of Yale School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies. ELP is pioneering an effort to transform
environmentalism into a movement that represents diverse constituencies,
crosses boundaries, and instills the environmental ethic into everyday life.
Unlike other groups that target only activists or scientists, ELP's mission
is to revolutionize public understanding of environmental issues by training
and supporting a vibrant network of emerging leaders from all sectors,
including non-profits, businesses, communities, academia, and all levels of
government. ELP's diverse network forges new partnerships, collaboration,
and understanding of the roles environmentalists play in every sector of
American society. By investing early in these young environmental
leaders-giving them essential skills and resources for effective public
leadership-ELP is helping to protect the future of our land and communities.
The dedicated individuals in the Class of 2001 are testament to the fact
that ELP "invests in people as a way of giving dynamism and direction to the
cause of creating an environmentally sustainable and just society,"
according to Sandra Postel of the Center for Global Water Policy. ELP's
ongoing commitment to promoting environmental innovation is the foundation
for the force of the next generation of environmental leaders. While
environmental interests may be threatened by changing political climates,
ELP's fellows will be there to protect our environment in places from
Washington, D.C. to Missoula, Montana. ELP's three-year fellowship will
help transform these young, incredibly talented individuals into the people
who will forge progress and lead the country's environmentalists over the
next 20 years.

The ELP Fellowship Class of 2001-2003 includes:
Stephen Adams, Economic Analyst, Florida Department of Environmental
Protection
Michelle Alvarez, Staff Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council
Thomas Brendler, Executive Director, National Network of Forest
Practitioners
Bodhi Burgess, Environmental Sustainability Coordinator, Birkenstock Sandals
David Cash, Research fellow, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of
Government
Kristin Chester, Design Associate, Jacqueline Jones Design
Chip Giller, Publisher and Editor, Grist Online Magazine
Dianne Glave, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, Loyola
Marymount University
Daniel Gruner, Ph.D. candidate, University of Hawaii
Jennifer Hill-Kelley, Environmental Quality Director, Oneida Environmental
Health & Safety Department
Alan Hipólito, Founder, Just Growth; Adjunct Professor, Northwestern School
of Law and Portland State University School of Urban Studies and Planning
Michelle Knapik, Director of Energy Policy, City of Philadelphia
Trinh Nguyen, Northern California Campaign Manager, Surface Transportation
Policy Project
Na'Taki Osborne, Sustainable Communities Organizer, National Wildlife
Federation; Master's candidate, Emory University
Pablo Padilla, Environmental Protection Program Manager, Pueblo of Zuni
Department of Natural Resources
John Perrine, Ph.D. candidate, University of California, Berkeley
Swati Prakash, Environmental Health Director, West Harlem Environmental
Action
Urvashi Rangan, Science Policy Researcher, Consumers Union; Multi-Media
Producer, Environmental Defense
Brian Reilly, Manager, Menomonee Valley Redevelopment, Milwaukee Department
of City Development
Thompson Smith, Executive Director, Flathead Resource Organization
Donnan Steele, Ph.D. candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Quita Sullivan, Staff Attorney, Alternatives for Community and Environment
Margo Tamez, Co-Director, De Las Manos Farm; Founder, Maricopa Families for
Natural Resource Conservation
Linda Tsang, Environmental Engineer, Office of Ecosystem Protection,
Environmental Protection Agency
Max Weintraub, PCBs Coordinator, Environmental Protection Agency


The Environmental Leadership Program, an independent 501(c)3 organization,
is a non-profit initiative to promote leadership development training
opportunities for individuals who are relatively new to the
environmentalfield. ELP is supported by the Beldon Fund, Compton
Foundation, C.S. Mott Foundation, Educational Foundation of America,
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Surdna
Foundation, V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation, and individual donors. For more
information about ELP and the ELP fellows, please visit www.elpnet.org.

LETTER TO HOPEDANCE FROM MARGO

Just received this letter from Margo (who came to SLO last year with her
husband. She read her excellent poetry and he gave a presentation about
permaculture and how he was working with young men in prisons) and want to
share it with other HopeDance enthusiasts... to show how the zine is
affecting people outside our area.

<<Dear Bob:
I want to share some feelings I've had about your remarkable issues on
sprawl and the latest, water. Since I read the sprawl issue from cover to
cover, as I do each of the Hopedance mags. I receive, I have learned such
essential things as fundamental as who to call, where to get answers, how
to approach other concerned citizens, how to start a local, organized
movement to start improving citizen access to the truth, and methods to
make change. I completely devoured Carla Grindle's article, which put me
in touch with a number of wonderful people in the country, and locally who
are also working these concerns in our large rural county. Since I read
her astute and trustworthy conclusions, and her practical ideas to make
changes, I have implemented two new groups from our home: Maricopa Families
For Natural Resource Conservation, and The Pinal County Rural Alliance For
Sustainable Growth. We are now having meetings for petition signings for a
referendum, attending planning & Zoning meetings, testifying in front of
our Board of Supervisors, and openly rejecting their shallow visions of the
future of our rural land use. We are walking from house to house (out here
that's a far walk inbetween two houses!) handing out flyers for open and
public meetings with Spanish interpreters on hand. I hope I don't sound
like I'm bragging. I"m not. I'm deeply & mercifully glad that I get
Hopedance. You've brought ideas and practical solutions in an absorbable
manner into my life, my family's life. We use your magazine like a
barometer of what's happening in Phoenix, in ARizona government, and we
apply the lessons you're learning to our own local situation. You provide
a wise handbook, and we wish we could pick up a stack of your magazine like
the folks out there in California can do, so we could distribute them at
our local meetings that are now happening like never before. Some people
think I'm a lunatic out here now, my face in the faces of the commissioners
and in the newspaper alot now. Well, some of the people, some oldtimers
out here, have come up to me, after I wrote a long letter to our public
officials that the local paper published--I was totally inspired by Carla
Grindle's article!--and these elders have said:"that's good what you
did." Well, Bob, I want to let you know--this is good what you are
doing. All this has inspired me to go beyond the aesthetic of poetry, and
dive into the wreckage as Adrienne Rich says--
now I write a weekly essay in our local small town paper, and simply talk
to my community about our lives, the web of life.

<<We're having our first town hall meeting of the 20th and 21st century
(history in the making) tonight. We will be dealing with sprawl,
destruction of our Vekol Wash, the damning of the Gila River (that went
through the reservation), 48,000 new proposed homes in our area!, the lack
of honesty and integrity of our Board of Supervisors and Zoning commission,
strategies to deal with these. Frank Pierson, an organizer from another
town across the county, and a worker for the Industrial Areas Foundation
(do you know about them?) is our guest speaker tonight. We're so
excited! We spread out on a walking campaign at the beginning of the week,
have gone through each of our western county communites spreading out
handouts about the meeting. Plus 1200 flyers went out with the kids at the
local school. I've been getting calls from all over--from farmers, seed
salesman, mothers, spanish speakers, (oh! we got two volunteers to
translate at the meeting for the spanish speaking community), fathers,
workers, its amazing--the wide spectrum of people who are coming out of the
desert sand to find out about the meeting. Right now on the way to talk to
a group of cattle-men who hired a lawyer to block a developer from
attempting to re-zone their "hard-zone" road to residential. I'm working on
a coalition with them. (they've still got major issues to resolve with us
because they're contaminating the flood plain and ground water, but it is a
beginning). I was interviewed by the big paper the other morning, and the
story ran just in time for everyone to see it and get interested in the
meeting, plus their going to cover the meeting too! Wow! is not sufficient
to describe all this energy! We know the road is long an dhard, but we're
committed to keep the energy going. I've gotten support from our local
Indian spiritual community, and one is going to give an opening prayer
tonight to start us off on the good road. Bob, you've been the fire behind
my building confidence to get this going in my home community. I cannot
express my deep and abiding love and respect for your work. Please keep us
on your list for mailing! I swear I use every word from your articles, and
please give my thanks to all your writers without whom my work here would
be bleak and without light to travel by.
your friend,
Margo>>
if you wish to give encouragement to Margo Tamez, here is her email address:
tnafa-az at casagrande.com


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