Notes from the Left Coast

Drummond Pike’s Blog

Tides’ presence was strong at the Bioneers conference last weekend. Tides folk, ably led by Berit Ashla, produced three panels, including “Race, Class, and Power: Structural Analysis and Fairness.”

Over 350 participants filled a conference room to learn from: Gihan Perera (Miami Worker Center),
Manuel Pastor (USC, Economist),
Colette Pichon Battle (Moving Forward Gulf Coast),
and Van Jones (Ella Baker Center).

I thought they were at the top of their game addressing themes central to Tides Foundation’s emerging ECO Initiative, including:

• How environmental degradation in communities of color is a symptom of the way we have structured the economy, distributed resources and excluded communities of color
• Communities of color must be part of the solution, and that means political and economic power building in communities of color
• There are terrific opportunities based on current work, and there is a need to build more and different kinds of capacity; and
• The high costs we will all pay if we don’t recognize the critical importance of this work.

ECO Initiative LAUNCHED

Over the past year, a Tides Foundation staff team, headed by Cathy Lerza and Sara Gruen, and aided by consultants Angela Park and Henry Holmes, has been building the mission, vision and values of a new sustainability initiative, now called Environmental Equity, Community Opportunity/ECO. Through a comprehensive scoping/field conversation process that engaged more than four dozen leaders and activists from around the country, ECO now has a mission and goals statement, and is putting the finishing touches on its program, which will include convenings, training, technical assistance, and grantmaking.

On October 17-18, Tides hosted a powerful convening of 20 ECO leaders from across the environmental, economic justice, and social justice fields to advise funding and program strategy; participants included:

• Bob Bingaman (national field director of the Sierra Club);
• Gihan Perera (director Miami Workers Center);
• Maya Wiley (director of the Center for Social Inclusion; and Tides Network board member)
• Dan Chu (vice president for state affiliates of the National Wildlife Federation;
• Deepak Bhargava (executive director of the Center for Community Change);
• Judy Hatcher (director of the Environmental Support Center);
• Eveline Chen (director of Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice);
• Lucy Blake (CEO of the Apollo Alliance);
• Pat Sweeny (director of the Western Organization of Resource Councils);
• Felicia Marcus (vice president of the Trust for Public Land);
• Richard Moore (director of the Southwest Network for Economic and Social Justice);
• and Luther Propst (founder and director the Sonoran Institute).

Participants universally termed it one of the most powerful meetings they had ever attended, expressing a desire “to continue to meet together to help shape a powerful new movement rooted equally in values of environmental protection, social and economic justice and democracy “. The vision of this meeting poured over into the Bioneers Conference .

Not surprisingly, climate and energy were recurring themes throughout the ECO gathering As part of the ECO initiative, we are exploring the ways in which Tides can manifest leadership on climate and energy. Senior philanthropic advisor Cathy Lerza, assisted by consultant Henry Holmes and with great support from Center program director Farnaz Golshani, have begun to explore a Network wide climate and energy gathering to bring together Center projects and Foundation grantees addressing climate and energy along with representatives from Shared Spaces and CCI to identify what we as a Network are already doing and how we could amplify the impact of that work. Preliminary research indicates that over 50 Center projects and 200 Foundation grantees are taking on climate and energy. Still in the scoping phase, a Network climate and energy event might take place in mid 2008, perhaps in conjunction with Momentum. Great work, Cathy, and stay tuned, all!

BTW, I’ll be on the road all next week (in DC, NY), spreading the Tides gospel and exploring new business.

Through 21st Century Foundation (a grantee of Tides Relief and Reconstruction Fund), Tides Foundation is part of the Gulf South Allied Funders, a group of committed donors moving resources to grassroots groups in the Gulf Coast Region. On behalf of this group, Jason Sanders played the role of key convener and host for this Tides briefing that was designed to:

• Inform current and potential donors about the challenges and opportunities of rebuilding along the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast for the long-haul;
• Give attendees a clearer sense of approaches that are working and strategies that are needed;
• And feel inspired to pledge to rebuilding efforts thru 21st Century, and/or Tides R&R Fund.

The briefing moderator was:
Donna Edwards, Executive Director, Arca Foundation
(Donna is running for a US Congressional seat for Maryland too.)

The activist panel included:
Derrick Evans, Turkey Creek Community Initiative (JBL Awardee);
Derrick Johnson, NAACP of Mississippi;
Judith Browne-Dianis, Advancement Project;
Steve Bradbury, Louisiana ACORN;
Patricia Jones, Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association (LNWNENA) .

Participants also viewed a video clip from Spike Lee’s documentary, When the Levees Broke.

The briefing preceded an awards dinner honoring community heroes rebuilding the Gulf Coast. Jason reported that, “Both the donor briefing and awards dinner were great successes and folks walked away sober, fully engaged and excited about partnering opportunities.”

So…why WAS there a FEMA trailer in front of Tides?
One of the activists brought this trailer — the kind that folks are still living in on the Gulf Coast — for our viewing. For those of you who missed the chance to walk through, here are some pictures taken by Courtney McFall. This only begins to provide a real sense of the serious hardship still being faced by so many survivors of Hurricane Katrina two years ago (in 2005).