"Wendy Davis is the founder of Deeds Not Words, an advocacy initiative that empowers millennial women to channel their passion and energy on issues of gender equality into actionable change. She was previously a Texas state senator and candidate for governor of Texas, who fought tirelessly... Read More →
The purpose of this plenary is to dialogue about the past present and future of power shifting the movement. Regarding the attendees - many of whom are under 24 years of age- need safe spaces to speak freely about connections between climate change and many other major social justice issues. This basic education is crucial to building a youth climate movement that understand and centers equity and justice.
"Selected as one of the Grist 50 People You’ll Be Talking About in 2016, Anthony has over ten years of policy analysis, community organizing and outreach/advocacy experience. While serving as a policy analyst for various environmental consulting firms in California and Colorado... Read More →
Access to Higher Education Organizer, Florida Immigrant Coalition
Born in Honduras, Julio Calderon arrived the United States as an unaccompanied minor in 2005 escaping poverty. Julio started his work with Students Working For Equal Rights (SWER) by pushing for the DREAM Act in 2010. Years after He served as the END (Education Not Deportation) Coordinator... Read More →
Curtis Hierro is the 29 year old Organizing Director for the Central Florida AFL-CIO. Born in Miami, Florida to a father who immigrated to the United States from Cuba in the Mariel Boat Lift and raised by a single mother who struggled under the weight of poverty radicalized Curtis... Read More →
After a day of sessions, workshops, and speakers, Power Shifters are invited to perform, create, connect… or just kick back.
At the Solidarity Salon, come and:
Perform whatever is in your art-ivist heart! If you play music, read poetry, or want to do a creative dance, we’d love for you to share.
Support the community art build! The art made at this event will not just inspire the performers. We will provide the supplies—you just come prepared to create. These banners, signs, and other visual pieces will also be used for our Power Shift direct action the following day.
Invite your friends to join you! We’ll provide the food—you will make it fun! (There will be snacks.)
"Earthman" Lanny Smith is a Climate Reality Leader, a North American Environmental Educator of the Year and an award-winning environmental strategist/songwriter/Eco performing artist.
Elle Hearns is a revolutionary organizer, freedom fighter. She has spent a lifetime being committed to making sure that marginalized voices are centered and reflected in social justice movements. Elle served as a lead organizer of The Movement for Black Lives convening held in Cleveland... Read More →
This panel introduces us to frontline leaders that know how to (em)Power Vote. They have come to highlight how building power to scale can strategically move politicians and policies to amplify local, regional and national fights. Elections can be tough, but they can also be empowering. Our panelist will offer clear ways to recharge and join in on the action.
Josephine M. Balzac is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Rollins College in the Department of Business. She is also an adjunct law professor at Barry University School of Law teaching Sustainability in Business. She is an attorney admitted to practice in Florida and the U.S. District... Read More →
Orlando Director, Florida Institute for Reform & Empowerment
Yulissa is a committed individual with a deep passion for community service and environmental stewardship. She brings a diverse background and a passion for community organizing and education to Organize Now and Florida Institute of Reform and Empowerment (FIRE). Ms. Arce’s professional... Read More →
Becca Guerra is the Executive Director of the Florida 501(c)3 Civic Engagement Table, the Florida affiliate of State Voices. Previously, she has organized across the South and Southwest working for ProGeorgia, the NAACP National Office in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast Regions, America... Read More →
Robin is a Minister, author, public speaker, activist and holds a B.A. in Political Science and Religion from the University of Mary Hardin Baylor. A Texas native, she has traveled throughout the U.S. and Africa with missions teams. Recently, Robin had been active in humanitarian... Read More →
Membership Development Director, Florida Immigrant Coalition
"Jose Luis Marantes serves as the Membership Development Director for the Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC) . Prior to joining FLIC , Jose Luis served as the State Director for Mi Familia Vota in Central FL leading Latino civic engagement efforts that engaged over 40,000 voters in... Read More →
Eleadah is an organizer and author of The World Without Racism. Eleadah is passionate about creating effective change and being a leader in her community. She has a background in sociology with more than four years of applied research experience.For the past four years Eleadah has... Read More →
This session will ground participants in why building power at the statewide level is important and give them the basics of how to do it. It aims to provide a case of understanding of how to get things started, share what models have work in different parts of the country, engage participants in their visions for building statewide power, and give them resources and next steps to turn their visions into reality.
Evan Weber is a youth climate justice activist born and raised on the island of Oahu in Hawai'i, where his community is seeing the effects of the climate crisis first hand. He is the co-founder of U.S. Climate Plan, an organization empowering our generation to take action for scientifically... Read More →
The session will be broken up into: presentation (What is fracking? why is fracking dangerous? How is fracking an environmental justice Issue? how is fracking a climate justice issue; Why do we need a ban on fracking in Florida? What is the history of the Floridians Against Fracking coalition, and what strategies have they used to build power? How do you get an ordinance to ban fracking going in your city or county?); a short video or other narrative presentation from a leader in a frontline community (possibly Calhoun or Collier County); a discussion or activity (possibly break out groups by campus or city to brainstorm answers to questions like "how can we work in solidarity with FLAF to advance both our objectives? How can we incorporate fracking into our campaign messaging? etc); group report back; and closing.
Doug Miller first learned they wanted to be an organizer when, during their senior year at NYU, the oil and gas industry threatened to Frack New York City’s watershed. Since then, Doug has volunteered with 350.org, worked with Fossil Fuel Divestment campaigns as the Southeast Network... Read More →
This session gives people a chance to understand Reproductive Justice and how it has everything to do with Environmental justice. Zika, HIV, and other STD’s is relevant to our generation and we are in a crisis of limited healthcare and a lot of the these diseases are passed around or contracted because of the lack of knowledge of the issues and protection. This session will help build the movement simply by bringing folks together around issues we all face and have to combat through knowledge and resources to how to combat this issue.
First, we will be discussing the importance of food in environmental, economic, health and accessibility terms. Then, we will we outline the steps we took in beginning our own vegetable garden without any money or knowledge of food through reaching out to the community and getting involved with local movements. Finally, we will discuss the benefits of growing your own food and sustaining yourself.
Coming from a state that isn't listed here? Head to Salon G to find Power Shifters from your state & connect with folks from all over. Lunch will be provided.
We will look into strategies and tactics used by the Immigrants movement to push for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students in Florida. DACA (2012) will give a national perspective and how students linked and organized together, In-State tuition (2014) will give a Florida perspective. We will use this time to look at our past, what opportunities we have and how we can move forward to expand either of those programs, and what new tactics and strategies can be implemented.
Access to Higher Education Organizer, Florida Immigrant Coalition
Born in Honduras, Julio Calderon arrived the United States as an unaccompanied minor in 2005 escaping poverty. Julio started his work with Students Working For Equal Rights (SWER) by pushing for the DREAM Act in 2010. Years after He served as the END (Education Not Deportation) Coordinator... Read More →
This workshop identifies the feminine essence as the missing link to healing ourselves and the planet. This does not refer to women, but to the feminine essence present within both men and women that has been abused and not allowed to express and manifest in our society of destruction and waste. Participants will understand how the power of compassion can be a way to effect change in environmental, social, and political sectors through community-building activities and the creation of personal affirmations.
Jamila Tull is a recent graduate from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science with a concentration in Policy and Toxicology. While earning her degree she helped to organize student community gardens, events centered... Read More →
Already worrying about your GPA? It’s time to shift the power. We’ve been graded by our schools all our lives - now, we’re going to grade them. Is your school doing its part to end the climate crisis, or is it adding to the problem with high greenhouse gas emissions, poor waste management, and investment in fossil fuels? We deserve to know. In this workshop, participants will learn about an upcoming campaign (starts later this fall) that includes the tools and resources to grade their universities or cities on climate, unite students behind a common platform, collaborate with activists across the country, and hold our institutions responsible for protecting our future.
Participants will learn how student organizers developed a goal, strategies, and tactics to stop a new Combined Heat & Power (CHP) plant from coming to campus. These very efficient power plants are the fossil fuel industry’s latest green-washing tactic they are beginning to offer to Universities as climate commitments begin approaching and coal plants are shutting down. You will take away messaging ideas, power facts from well-documented research, and new organizing ideas for stopping the expanse of more fossil fuel infrastructure that comes from fracked gas. We’ll share our organizing plans, ideas, and goals plus get feedback and brainstorm new tactics to bring back in the current fight in North Carolina.
Claire is a sophomore at Duke University and ran the Sierra Student Coalition's Sieze the Grid campaign last year. Since then Caroline Hansley with Greenpeace has supported Claire in this new campaign to stop the CHP plant from coming to campus.
By understanding the power structures that are already in place and our own power as organizers and community members we can achieve systemic change through grassroots efforts. This is an immediate skill share that has long lasting purpose for any campaign on any issue and can be utilized to better understand the sectionality between social justice issues and climate justice issues to better incorporate these communities into our work. Power has the ability to control, create, and prevent change but power is neutral and how it is used depends on your values. We can harness it for our causes to wage and win campaigns.
Originally from Puerto Rico, Denise's parents raised her and her brother on the northwest side of Chicago. Her parents worked hard in the airline catering industry and as union members to provide a better life for their children. Denise Diaz received her BA in Political Science from... Read More →
In this session, we will present on the idea of regenerative ecology as it applies to the climate justice movement. Ecosystem restoration and regenerative agricultural practices have the potential to sequester huge amounts of carbon if adopted on a global scale- on the local scale, these practices can improve food security, public health, and ecosystem services provided by communities. Specifically, we will go more in-depth on the model we're trying to work with of: grassroots bioremediation of degraded/toxic landscapes (disproportionately occurring in communities of color) that leads to community agroforestry projects (such as food forests). These initiatives all revolve around the community in the soil, and optimizing it for carbon sequestration, bioremediation, and nutrition. Participants will learn about a not oft-talked about solution to carbon sequestration and way to improve public health, all using allies from the natural world- like plants, fungi, and bacteria. We can provide case studies from our experience planting a food forest on our campus, as well as the commencement of a bioremediation pilot project in the community of Tallevast, FL. Carbon-sequestering agriculture is the subject of Jay's thesis, and the bioremediation project is the subject of my (Orion) thesis. Topics introduced will include: permaculture, composting, bioremediation, biochar, "rewilding", and medicinal herbalism. These will all be introduced through the lens of carbon sequestration and emission reduction.
Young leaders will find creative ways to use common methods in order to successfully get out the vote on their campus and/or community, while building a sustainable long lasting network.
Florida State Director, Vote Mob & Student Power Network
David has over eight years of campaign and mobilization experience ranging from local, statewide and national electoral campaigns to more issue based movement building campaigns. His worldview is shaped by his upbringing in Brownsville, Brooklyn whose motto is “never did, never... Read More →
This session offers its attendees an opportunity to learn and understand the most effective communication strategies that allow us to reach the reachable range of dispositions US citizens have regarding climate change. This session has a special focus on people of color as they are often the majority populations in many of the marginalized communities most negatively effect by climate change.
The climate justice movement recognizes that it is our most oppressed communities that are the most vulnerable to the negative consequences of climate change, even though they are the least responsible for causing it. Yet, for decades, “grasstop” environmental organizations have been the driving force of the environmental movement, working on behalf of frontline communities rather than uplifting them, sometimes even using frontline communities as props or tools to push their own agendas. Not only has this paradigm been unjust - it has also been ineffective. Now is the time to reverse these practices, and to center frontline communities in this movement.
The primary purpose of this workshop is to discuss how to center frontline communities in the struggle for climate justice. One incredibly effective tool that is being used around the world is a guiding framework called the Jemez Principles. We will go through these principles, relate them to our personal experiences, and come up with a plan to implement them in our work moving forward.
Dayna Lazarus was born and raised in St. Petersburg, FL. She graduated from the I.B. program at St. Petersburg High in 2007, and went on to New College of Florida where she graduated with a BA in Environmental Studies with a focus on Environmental Justice in 2011. Although she was... Read More →
As students and young people, we have a powerful voice within our campuses and communities to confront injustice and transform the systems around us. In this workshop, farmworker and youth leaders will explore the responsibility each consumer has in holding food corporations, like Wendy's, accountable for abusive conditions within their supply chains. We will learn about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' fight to raise wages and eradicate abuses in the fields and how the Campaign for Fair Food has transformed the U.S. agricultural industry – and how students and youth play a powerful role in amplifying the voices of farmworkers within our campuses and communities.
Yaissy Solis (24, Immokalee, FL) grew up in Naples, FL, just 37 miles away from the CIW’s Community Center in Immokalee. She fell in love with this farmworker-led struggle for dignity & respect in the fields while organizing with CHISPAS, a student-led (im)migrant rights organization... Read More →
The Hive seeks to draw in members of both IDEAS Chapters at the local level and members of the general community. In name, The Hive represents a bee hive and the bees are the attendees of the event. The “bees” gather at the Hive and formulate an action plan to address a global problem with a local solution. Everyone disperses afterwards until the next action project or planning meeting to work on the task at hand. The primary goal of The Hive is to accomplish action projects in a community through a crowd sourced ideas.
Jerry Funt - Jerry is a researcher and organizer with UnKoch My Campus. He has been involved with the organization since its beginning and he has been involved with organizing generally for about 5 years. He first got involved in organizing as a freshman at FSU with Progress Coalition... Read More →
This workshop will offer guidance and advice for students regarding project planning and campaign planning through an sustainability career development lens. We offer project-based career development support and related “certification” to students and young professionals as a way of documenting the steps they have taken throughout their extracurricular development to become leaders in their school or community organization. On the National Wildlife Federation EcoLeaders site for example, student can apply for certification to contribute to their own career and leadership development in the environmental workforce. We’ll spend time with various skill building tools such as creative leadership development, campus/community partnership fundamentals and we’ll even have a mock project planning session. The session will be based on the EcoLeader guiding principles of project planning as a way to build leadership - PLAN, DO, COMMUNICATE, SUSTAIN.
Eriqah Vincent BioA proud native of Newark, NJ, Eriqah R. K. Vincent is a 2010 departmental honors graduate of Spelman College with a bachelor’s degree in Comparative Women’s Studies. In her newly promoted position of National EcoLeader Coordinator for the National Wildlife Federation's... Read More →
Drawing on our recent actions at the City of Miami Commission and our community organizing in Miami's Liberty City, Little Haiti, and Little Havana neighborhoods, Valencia Gunder will lead a series of open-ended small group dialogues on climate gentrification. Participants will explore climate as a threat multiplier with a focus on specific risks faced by low-income communities, leadership development in said communities, and ways that resident-led climate activation can flip the script on age-old fights around gentrification.
Statements from residents who participated in Valencia's recent workshop on climate gentrification:
“What kind of mechanism is being set up to protect homeowners in this neighborhood?”
“Where there are property owners struggling to keep afloat, the county should be proactively working to ensure that banks don’t act as predators. What are creative things we can do? A resiliency fund?”
“With all the insurance companies circling around, how do we act proactively?”
“How do we create the conditions so that when natural disasters hit, we are prepared and we can bounce back? We don’t want climate change and natural disaster to be reasons for massive gentrification.”
Valencia “Vee” Gunder is a community advocate and organizer affectionately known as "The Big Mouth of Liberty City”. A Miami Native, Valencia has organized many high-turnout events in Liberty City, including the annual “I Am Woman” Women’s Expo, Hoodweek with the Belafonte-TACOLCY... Read More →
Common Sense Economics: Young Workers is an interactive training which examines the economic situation facing people under the age of 35. We will take a look at how people feel about the prospect of reaching the American Dream, analyses the economic trends and policies that have been passed to get in our way and how we can change the rules to get there. This training sets the groundwork for the New Majority to come together around a shared narrative of how the economy is not working for us and creates a springboard of activism that can help turn around the financial crises facing young people.
Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in the heart of Central Florida, she serves as the Orlando Regional Coordinator for the Council on American Islamic Relations of Florida (CAIR-FL). There, she leads communications, fundraising, and gives “Know Your Rights” presentations... Read More →
