SUMMIT WORKSHOP DESCRIPTIONS

TRACK 1: Just Energy Transformations for Bioregional Resilience - Convener, Bill Baue

Decolonizing Our Minds, Decolonizing Our Energy Systems: An Interactive Discussion with Lily-Rakia Chandler and Elyssa Serrilli - Kanien'kehá:ka (“People of the Flint”) (aka “Mohawk”) Thanksgiving Address. Reframing Our Understanding of Where Our “Power” Comes From. Discussion: Recognition that we can’t talk about Energy Justice and Just Transitions without starting from a decolonization perspective. We set the context for this workshop track by providing an introduction to the concept of decolonization, and provide participants with basic level concepts and a few tools they can use to see the world through this lens. Interactive with breakouts.

Revolutionary Power: An Activist's Guide to the Energy Transition with Shalanda Baker - Stemming from her work in Mexico, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, Professor Shalanda Baker will discuss energy policy through the lens of a queer woman of color. In her forthcoming book, Revolutionary Power: An Activist's Guide to the Energy Transition, she argues that the technical terrain of energy policy is the next domain to advance civil rights. She also argues that the ongoing climate crisis gives us an unprecedented opportunity to reshape the energy system with justice (and love) at the center.

Creating Local Clean Energy Equity and Resilience with Community Choice Aggregation with River Strong and Stan Swiercz - Faced with pressing climate, economic, and environmental justice imperatives, our communities have an opportunity to create new models for energy resource development and ownership that contribute to community resiliency, equity, localization, additionality, sustainability, and economic development goals. One such model is an innovative municipal aggregation program referred to as Community Choice Aggregation 3.0. Under this approach, communities are empowered to develop and operate local energy efficiency and renewable distributed energy programs and projects that contribute to a carbon-free, localized, equitable, and sustainable energy future. This interactive workshop explores the goals, framework, and progress being made by the communities of Amherst, Northampton, and Pelham to create, pilot, and advance a CCA 3.0 program.

TRACK 2: Making Real the Green New Deal - Conveners, Alphonse and Olive Knight

The Magic of Community Energy Co-ops with Crystal Huang, Alphonse Knight and Timothy DenHerder-Thomas - Energy Democracy is moving from an extractive energy economy to one that is shared and locally owned. Should access to clean energy be a right? What would a new energy economy look like? What role do energy cooperatives play in a just transition? Learn how energy co-ops build racial and class justice, green job training and community economic development.

Energy Democracy: Advancing Equity in Clean Energy Solutions with Al Weinrub and Crystal Huang - Hear about the way forward for a revolutionary movement in energy, one that wrests control and ownership of energy resources out of the hands of the energy establishment—democratizing energy and making it a vital resource for advancing the environmental, economic, and social justice needs of our communities. Check out their book!

The Rise of People Centered Clean Energy Cooperatives with Crystal Huang, Dirk Vansintjan and Lynn Benander - Utility companies determine much of how energy is produced, stored and managed. Communities are organizing to ensure they have a voice in these decisions and that they are able to meet their energy needs. Come learn what a people-centered, just transition to a new energy economy can look like. Hear the lessons learned from ResCoop, a federation of 1,000 energy cooperatives with 1 million members. Hear the stories of how this movement is taking hold now in the US.

TRACK 3: Community Solar Policy Best Practices - Convener, Stephan Roundtree

Solar Enabling Legislation with Maria McCoy - What states are successfully moving forward building solar? Building solar for all? What policies make that happen?

Greening Affordable Housing: Solar and Storage Breakthroughs with Isaac Baker, Brooks Winner and Emily Jones - The Green New Deal calls for radical new clean energy investments in affordable housing, despite over a decade of obstacles for this part of the market. In this workshop, we’ll explore the financial, technical and knowledge barriers that have kept affordable housing developers for incorporating solar and storage into their buildings to date and the recent breakthroughs in the industry that are clearing a path forward for this critical part of achieving a just clean energy transition.

Solar Policy Threats and Opportunities with Dwayne Breger - Where do we go from here given the push back against solar and the urgent need for much more solar for all? What are the next policy advances needed? How can we get involved?

TRACK 4: Community Owned Solar Development

Solar Project Criteria and Site Selection with Isaac Baker - The first step in developing a community owned solar project is to understand the community’s needs and goals and use those to select a site that can meet those criteria. Come learn how to select a good solar site for your community.

Solar Financing for Community Ownership with Lynn Benander and Timothy DenHerder-Thomas - Once you have all the pieces from the last workshop, you’ll secure financing with a path to local ownership within 10 years,with a direct purchase or third party owned financing. Come see the various financing models that can work for your project.

Solar Project Design, Permitting, Interconnection, Incentives, and Financial Projections with Rob Garrity - Once you have a site you’ll engage in an iterative process to put the pieces together required for a successful solar project. You’ll get a preliminary site design, secure permits, interconnection and incentives, and build out your financial projections to see if the project is feasible.

TRACK 5: The Energy Transition - Convener, Ruth Lazare

Solar and Wind plus Storage and a discussion on the Future of Energy with Steven Strong

The End of the Fossil Fuel Era with Richard Heinberg - Our society has to kick its fossil fuel habit now. How do we stop fossil fuel extraction? What strategies are working? Where can do we need to focus now?

TRACK 6: Community Owned Transportation and Heating - Convener, Diego Angarita

Solar Powered Mobility Networks for Massachusetts with Judeth Van Hamm and Bill James - How solar powered transportation builds the biggest solar farm in the world over streets making solar much more available for everyone. We will give you the tools to be able to design solar powered mobility networks for your community.

Community Biodiesel with Link Shumaker and Pat Pierce - What's the role of biofuels in a just transition? Hear stories about Northeast Biodiesel, a worker-owned biodiesel plant in Greenfield Massachusetts that Co-op Power's Community Energy Co-ops have been supporting and other community initiatives across the US.

Zero Carbon Footprint Central Heating with Tom Leue - I describe the Yellow Heat technology. This is the world's only zero carbon footprint central heating option. Now available for installation in this region. Especially effective for greenhouse operation.

TRACK 7: Self Care, Community Care, Society Care - Convener, Louise Legois

Springfield's Climate Health Equity Work with Catherine Ratte - Resident Leaders from Springfield will share the process they have been working through to select two priority actions from the Strong, Healthy and Just--Springfield's Climate Action & Resilience Plan to advance for implementation with assistance from the Kresge Foundation. Participants will learn and be able to use the climate+health+equity sorting process and will assist Springfield resident leaders to refine implementation plans for success.

Creative Vegetarian Cooking with Our Local Organic Harvest with Leslie Cerier - In this organic, vegetarian, farm to table cooking demonstration on Zoom, our culinary journey begins. Join The Organic Gourmet chef, teacher, and cookbook author Leslie Cerier as she shows you how to create dishes based on our local harvest. Through the playful art of mix and match, recipes, cooking tips and techniques, Leslie will inspire you to transform all the goodness of our local farms into nourishing and delicious meals all year round.

Breathing in Times of Covid with Louise LeGouis - Breath, called “the ultimate skill in life”, is central to finding strength, calm, and hope. This year our breath is challenged in so many ways just as we need it more than ever to navigate difficult times. This workshop will provide simple tools to find, support, and develop our breath including a short meditation, breath work, and simple movements. The workshop can be done standing or sitting, preferably near an open window.

TRACK 8: Multi-Class, Multi-Race Organizing - Convener, Mela Bush

Apologies, Healing and Reparations with Sherri Mitchell - Stories of multi-race, multi-class, intergenerational, inclusive gender apologies, healing, and reparations – what comes up – where hope lies.

Environmental Pollution with Mela Bush - Hear case studies of communities impacted by environmental pollution and what they are doing to build resiliency and energy independence.

How Communities are Made Vulnerable by Climate Change with Jacqui Patterson and Gopal Dayaneni - Climate Change impacts low income communities far more than communities with wealth. What does justice look like?

TRACK 9: Solidarity Economy - Convener, Galilea Matias

Cooperatives and Collaboratives: Beyond Business As Usual with Julian Hill and the startup Worker Owners of Sea & Soil, Gabby, Dominic & Noah - In a world of predatory hyper-competition how do we model cooperation and collaboration? How do we move beyond the limits of scarcity mind-sets to creating a context for creativity, equity, and abundance? This is an exploration of the ways in which collaboration from the community level to the national and international level can advance our movements for justice. It connects the work of grassroots social change with the work of progressive entrepreneurs and folks changing the structure and governance of labor/owner/investor relationships. What do we need to change about our institutions and our own minds-sets? What does it take to build a new culture of Enterprise and new organizations of Solidarity , Equity and Justice? You will participate in discovering what new kinds of solidarity are possible beyond old notions of the "public" vs. "private" and "profit" vs "non-profit" divide.

We Work, We Own, We Lead: A History and Future of Liberating Cooperatives with Rebecca Lurie - How can history and future Worker-owned Cooperatives point us towards it Just Transition? There are 7 Cooperative Principles. How are these principles foundational to building beyond and above current typical notions a 'good business' or even of charitable Social Enterprise? The current movement of worker owned Business Development is more than just another structure for building Equitable Enterprises; which centers community justice. This is one of the models for shifting the power relationships. Ranging from supply chains and consumer interactions to community development and the control of local budgets for procurement. Moving beyond a solitary capitalist defined bottom-line. We will uncover the ways in which worker owners do business changes and redefines what ‘business’ is and how it’s done.

Towards a Movement of Movements: Solidarity Economics and Justice with Stephanie Rearick - In a time of converging crises... What does it mean to work in solidarity towards the economic, social, and cultural common good? And how are all of these goods intertwined. From Emergency Relief of many kinds prompted by environmental disaster, neglectful public policy, and endemic racism; to the Mutual Aid necessitated by unexpected pandemics within long-standing economic hardships. From ongoing Food Justice efforts in CSA's and Co-Ops to cultural collaboratives, finance mutuals, and worker-owned community enterprises. Solidarity Is Everywhere. At the same time that there's not enough solidarity to get us where we need to go. How do we build resilient networks for a change? What’s happening in Solidarity and what still needs to happen? What external infrastructures do we need to build? What changes do we need in our own minds and organizational cultures? In the face of destructive indifference, this is a session on the convergences of creativity. The intersection of what we want and what we need for imaginative liberation.

TRACK 10: Community Finance - Convener, Michael Lightsmith

Public Banks, Private Finance & Social Impact Investing with Ellen Brown, Christina Jennings, Mitty Owens and William Spademan - This session explores ‘more than alternatives' of our Capital Finance Markets status quo and so-called Social Investing. It looks at the past and present strategies for democratic and community centered financing models; which moves us beyond mere alternatives to extractive and predatory business practices. Our goal is to begin envisioning something new. What you will learn in this session is how we can transform the public sphere of finance and leverage our private resources to jump-start and grow a transition founded in Justice and grounded Equity. How do our cooperative efforts get funded and financed? How can we mobilize for policy change and personal change in our relationship to money and investing? What are ways we can rethink and reframe our own agency in relation to financing the local? This session celebrates economic resistance and liberation strategies and also looks towards our future innovations...in Community

Participatory Budgeting, “Partnerism” & Building Community Capacity with Mike Menser, Johanna Bozuwa, and Emily Kwano - How do we learn to partner within our differences and cultivate mutuality? How do we build the skills and capacity for self-governance, self-management, and a culture of community resilience? What do the current and historical models have to teach us about how we build the capacity for democratic participation? This session examines how we learn from the current, local and global, models of participatory democracy and community guided ownership and governance. It is inclusive of the grassroots and policy approaches; while being focused on how we build cultures of competence, transparency, and accountability. How do we reclaim the “Commons” and re-define “Public Space”? What are the possible relationships between institutions, individuals, local governments and self-governed or ‘ungovernable’ community coalitions? In this session you will learn the challenges and the vast opportunities for building financial resilience one community at a time.

Use Your Pension Funds to Bolster Your Co-op and Community with Michael H. Shuman - Michael Shuman, Community Economist and Author of Put Your Money Where Your Life Is, will show you how to invest your retirement savings locally using Self-Directed IRAs and Solo 401ks. These powerful tools have been around for some time, but few know how to use them to strengthen the community, increase local resilience, and enhance the tax base. You can invest in everything that matters – your local coop (like Co-Op Power!), your sister’s first house, or your nephew’s student loans.