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Have you had concerns about a team project and didn’t share it with others? Or been part of a team where you couldn’t speak up with questions? These self-protective behaviors help us manage others’ perceptions of us. No one wants to look ignorant, incompetent, intrusive or negative. But withholding your voice can have significant negative consequences for the team. It deprives the team of the full range of the team members’ knowledge, skill and experience and makes it less likely that the team will learn and achieve its purpose.

In this training, you will glean insights from Partnership for Southern Equity and their values-based organizing model, contextualized by their short film The 4th Arm which explores how centering values and lived experience is critical to the work of organizing and central to our ability to achieve energy and climate justice. This training will help you:

• Develop the skills necessary to be an effective community organizer 
• Gain an understanding of value-based community organizing
• Deepen your understanding of allyship and allies
• Explore what it means to build power and "systems change"

In 2020, a group of New Jersey organizers helped get the country's most progressive environmental justice legislation at the time passed. The short film "A Big Win for Environmental Justice Organizers" follows community-based activists from Ironbound Community Corporation in moving the statewide legislation forward. The Lab hosted a conversation with the contributors, sharing their insights and lessons learned from a community organizing perspective, so that other local groups feel empowered to take on statewide initiatives as well. 

Optimize your climate messaging with the surprising results and important guidance gleaned from 76 climate persuasion experiments, presented by the social scientists who collectively analyzed them. Individual studies come out all the time (and the Lab loves to let you know about all of them), but it can be difficult to piece together the big picture from all the data points. That’s why it’s so valuable when researchers occasionally comprehensively review and synthesize a whole body of studies, such as this combined analysis of dozens of separate climate persuasion experiments in the US from the last 10 years. The social scientists will also share insights from their review of research on reducing political polarization on climate.

Community organizing has served as the 4th arm of government for black people seeking justice for over 150 years. This documentary highlights stories from the frontlines in Georgia, the epicenter of community organizing in the American South. It follows three organizers, from an elder in the movement to an emerging leader, and their community-building work. It explores how centering values and lived experience is so critical to the work of organizing and central to our ability to achieve the goals of energy and climate justice. When Black communities, Indigenous peoples and communities of color are authentically and thoughtfully engaged through organizing, we can win on climate and create systemic change. 

The Feminist Green New Deal Coalition released a report with Data for Progress that finds there is a strong shared belief that care should be central to climate, workforce, and infrastructure policies. In the midst of intersecting economic crises, climate crises, and the ongoing infrastructure fights, these findings reiterate that people want bold economic investments that center care for people and the planet.

Planning for a future that centers well-being for people and the planet requires an understanding of the intersectionality of the ongoing crises of care and climate, the ways in which policy can deliver intersectional solutions, and the narratives that help and hurt this cause. Join the Climate Advocacy Lab with Tamara Toles O'Laughlin (EGA), Kahea Pacheco (Women's Earth Alliance), Amanda Novello (Data for Progress), and Mara Dolan (WEDO) for a deep dive into the report's findings as well as relevant takeaways for climate advocates and their work.

In 2018, the Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) campaign secured a landslide ballot measure victory in Portland, establishing a multi-million dollar municipal fund that addresses climate, economic, and racial justice by providing funding for renewable energy projects, job training and apprenticeship programs, and regenerative agriculture. Last year, we got to look “under the hood” with PCEF Steering Committee members to cover the history of the campaign, what PCEF does, and how the community-led coalition was able to win at the ballot box. 

In a follow-up webinar, we came back together to share new developments on the victory and cover topics including:

• How has PCEF been implemented, and how is it helping the community build political power? 
• What lessons have been learned since winning the legislation, and what challenges and insights does that bring? 
• What would it take to replicate this winning model in your own context and municipality?

This interactive webinar covered the process of how this collaboration between environmental justice and labor forces was facilitated, how they built a shared vision around resilience, a rundown of the report's key findings, and a guided activity for how to apply the report's insights to participants' local communities and organizing work.

Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm went live for a special 30-minute “Ask me Anything” (AMA) exclusively for the Climate Advocacy Lab community. The US Department of Energy will be critical to the fight to stop climate change. Listen as community members ask questions of USDOE Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm. Our goal with this event is to get information to the field about the priorities of the US DOE and to uncover opportunities for the field to have more impact on these issues.

In this webinar, the Lab team is joined by the Regulatory Assistance Project to explore recommendations from the new report Energy Infrastructure: Sources of Inequities and Policy Solutions for Improving Community Health and Wellbeing.

In addition to the report, participants also learn from advocates across the country fighting for an equitable clean energy future. Contributing speakers shared their reflections and lessons learned from a variety of perspectives on what it takes to achieve energy equity, including how they're financing low-income solar, how they're growing solar through state-level policy, and how to work in strong coalition.

Contributing speakers include: Donna Brutkoski, Communications Associate, Regulatory Assistance Project; Yesenia Rivera, Director of Energy Equity and Inclusion, Solar United Neighbors; and Jacqueline Hutchinson, Vice President of Operations, People’s Community Action Corporation.