Lab-sponsored Research

This workbook is meant to help you translate the analysis and recommendations we provide there into workable features of your organizing. Whether you’re currently involved in a multiracial, cross-class climate coalition, thinking about starting one, or evaluating a past coalition on reflection, we hope this workbook clarifies for you and your coalition partners the breadth of considerations and decisions you should be prepared for.

Multiracial, cross-class (MRXC) coalition-building is essential if the climate movement is serious about tackling the climate crisis at the scale it demands. However, a historical lack of collaboration, trust, or healthy mechanisms to deal with conflict often impair those efforts. This Blueprint report and accompanying workbook provide an analysis of the difficulties MRXC climate coalitions are likely to face and offer recommendations for a proposed path forward.

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth ran a Climate Crisis Deep Canvassing Project in Louisville, Bowling Green, and Hazard, Kentucky where they knocked on thousands of doors and had more than 600 conversations with low-income communities and communities of color. They developed a written report that synthesizes the lessons, themes, and best practices from their on-the-ground experience to inform future canvassing trainings and program design.

Supported by the Climate Advocacy Lab's Climate Justice Microgrant Program.

In June 2019, the nonprofit Cleveland Owns convened The Lakewood Community Solar Fellowship, a free leadership development program focused on bringing resident-owned community solar to Lakewood, Ohio. A group of 7 residents took part, meeting for a few hours every Sunday in the basement of the local public library. The goal? Form a solar cooperative to fight climate change and build toward climate justice.

When the Fellowship started, most of these residents were strangers, but together they would go on to form the Cleveland Solar Cooperative (CSC), Ohio’s first community-owned cooperative solar developer. How did this happen?

This case study details how Cleveland Owns helped convene the Cleveland Solar Cooperative (CSC), Ohio's first community-owned cooperative solar developer. It explores how Cleveland Owns developed the foundation for energy democracy efforts in their city; the key moments, challenges, and successes they and allies faced as they formed the cooperative; and an offering of tools and resources for other communities seeking to replicate their model.

Among these resources and insights are:

• An account of Cleveland Owns' organizing principles and group norms
• An honest reflection of challenges they faced, such as developing mutual trust and the technical expertise necessary to navigate the local energy market
• The rationale behind the cooperative business model underlying the CSC
• The CSC's process of developing bylaws, governance structures, and technical infrastructure for themselves
• Their ethos of self-assessment that drives their evolution as a collective
• A tool kit of organizing materials and resources on energy democracy and solar development

Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition's (FCAC), a community-led grassroots organization working towards climate justice on Lower Tanana Dene lands in interior Alaska. This report was developed by their Renewable Energy Working Group in partnership with the Lab to capture and share out the learnings of their in their longest standing campaign organizing around their local electric cooperative, Golden Valley Electric Association (GVEA) which provides electricity for almost 100,000 residents in Interior Alaska.

In 2020, a group of New Jersey organizers helped get the country's most progressive environmental justice legislation at the time passed - S232. This documentary delves into the role of community-based activists from Ironbound Community Corporation in moving the statewide legislation forward. By focusing on the community organizing perspective, this film offers insights and lessons learned from ICC so that other local groups feel empowered to take on statewide initiatives as well. Given community organizers know their neighbors, experience the impact of environmental injustice firsthand, and understand how policies affect people's lives, they are the experts whose voices are critically needed in halls of power. The accompanying discussion guide attached provides a road map for community organizers across the country who hope to translate local relationships into statewide legislative victories.

This report details the anatomy of the campaign and strategy that achieved the groundbreaking Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF), a multi-million dollar fund that addresses climate, economic, and racial justice in Portland, OR.

As communities and advocates worldwide work to respond adequately to increasing climate disasters, where can climate advocates find resources to advance just, equitable, and community-based disaster recovery?

In this webinar, Climate Advocacy Lab teamed up with Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) to discuss CJA's recently released multimedia report Our Power Puerto Rico: Moving Toward a Just Recovery (a project completed with support from the Lab!). During the conversation, authors, experts, and frontline organizers who contributed to the case study and report highlight tools (including the 'Just Recovery framework'), practices, and experiential lessons learned from applying a participatory model of "Just Recovery" to disaster response in Puerto Rico following hurricane María.