Workshop Block B [
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11:15am EDT
Budgets for Black Lives
Speakers
Project Manager, Participatory Budgeting Project
Maria first became involved in participatory budgeting (PB) during the very first PB cycle in the U.S. in 2009. Inspired by the experience, she took on a leadership role as a founding board member of the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP). She is currently PBP's Project Manager...
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Biola Jeje is currently at the American Postal Workers Union doing social media and communications work. Biola was previously the Statewide Coordinator of New York Students Rising, a statewide network of students dedicated to defending public higher education in New York State. A...
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Natasha D. Soto is a Community Organizer for the Clean Air Coalition of WNY for the past 5 years. CA is an Environmental Health and Justice Organization that believes in democratic decision making; CA knowing s that when residents have the capacity to make real decisions that impact...
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11:15am EDT
Building Rain Resilience and Green Jobs
Moderators
Managing Director, Mayors Innovation Project
Satya Rhodes-Conway is the Managing Director of the Mayors Innovation Project and a senior associate at COWS. She works with cities across the country to implement innovative policy that promotes environmental and economic sustainability and builds strong, democratically accountable...
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Speakers MG
Maris Grundy is interested in all elements of the botanical world, especially the intersections of human plant-use in stormwater management and urban ecological restoration. Maris focuses her work on ecological, social, and economic justice in her current role as the Sustainable Landscaping...
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Julie Barrett O'Neill serves as General Counsel for the Buffalo Sewer Authority. In addition to legal work, Julie oversees the implementation of the Authority's $93 million green infrastructure combined sewer overflow reduction program. Julie also assists the City of Buffalo Mayor's...
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Burrell Poe heads up RainReady's national advocacy and community organizing work, including recruiting, educating and convening people affected by flooding and drought; and advocating for legislative changes to help protect victims and their communities. Burrell is on the Emerging...
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Manager for Higher Education Engagement, The Democracy Collaborative
Assisting with the New Economy Action Project at CommonBound in Buffalo, NY 2016
11:15am EDT
Building WealthWorks Food Value Chains
Speakers
Director of Regional Initiatives, Rural Support Partners
Andrew has been at Rural Support Partners since June of 2012. A native of Appalachia, his path to sustainable economic development work began in a small farming community in the mountains of rural Western North Carolina. As Director of Regional Initiatives at RSP, Andrew works with...
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Mr. Gonzales is Prs of the Los De Mora Local Growers' Cooperative, Inc., a 35-member agricultural coop designed to serve as an economic conduit between local agricultural producers and emerging commercial markets. He utilized the WW framework to connect the cooperative to consumers...
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11:15am EDT
Challenging Entrenched Power Through New Economy Work in Red and Rural Communities
Speakers IB
Ivy Brashear is the Appalachian Transition and Communications Associate at the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development in Berea, Ky. Before joining MACED, she was chief blogger at The Rural Blog, which is a product of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community...
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Cooperation Jackson
Brandon is a founder and organizing coordinator of Cooperation Jackson, which is an emerging network of worker cooperative and supporting institutions. Cooperation Jackson is fighting to create economic democracy by creating a vibrant solidarity economy in Jackson, Mississippi, that...
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Roberto Nutlouis is Diné (Navajo) from Pinon, Navajo Nation. He is of the Tódích’ií’nii (Bitter Water) clan, born for the Tótsohnii (Big Water) clan. Through his involvement with Native Movement, the Indigenous Youth Coalition of Pinon, Indigenous Community Enterprises, and...
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11:15am EDT
Community Benefits Agreements: Making Them Solid, Making Them Stick
Speakers SM
Sam McGavern is a writer and public interest lawyer, currently serving as co-director of the Partnership for the Public Good. He also teaches at the University at Buffalo Law School. He has written non-fiction, poetry, fiction, scholarly articles, a movie screenplay, and comic books...
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Board of Directors, PUSH Buffalo
Cities, Buffalo, PUSH Buffalo, Gentrification, Anything!
JW
John Washington is a Community Organizer with PUSH Buffalo and the Community Economic Empowerment Task Force co-ordinator for the WNY Peace Center
11:15am EDT
Community Investing Innovations & Challenges
Speakers
Vice President, Cutting Edge Capital, Oakland, CA
Brian is an attorney with over twenty-five years of experience serving nonprofits, start-ups, and publicly-traded companies. As a principal of Oakland-based Cutting Edge Capital and its sister law firm Cutting Edge Counsel, Brian’s work is focused on direct public offerings, corporate...
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Certified Financial Planner, Natural Investments
My mission is to help progressive investors achieve their long-term financial goals and make the world a better place using Socially Responsible Investing.Certified Financial Planner™ with 20+ years of experience in the investment industryBachelor’s degree in finance from the...
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Glynn Lloyd is the Managing Director of The Boston Impact Initiative, a social impact investment fund utilizing an integrated capital approach investing in enterprises throughout Eastern Massachusetts that address the wealth gap and ecological challenges of our time. In addition...
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Co-Managing Director, Fund for Democratic Communities
Marnie Thompson is co-Managing Director of the Fund for Democratic Communities (F4DC), where she focuses on building the capacity of social justice activists and organizations, spreading the gospel of grassroots fundraising, and building a new economy based on cooperation, democracy...
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11:15am EDT
Divesting from a Corrupt System: Lessons Across Movements
Speakers NC
Natalie is a National Organizer for the Responsible Endowment Coalition, where she focuses on private prison divestment.
Alana is the East Coast Organizer for Jewish Voice for Peace.
ZK
Zakaria is a National Organizer with the Responsible Endowments Coalition.
Iliana Salazar-Dodge is a recent graduate from Columbia University. She co-founded Columbia Divest for Climate Justice and organized around fossil fuel divestment for four years. Iliana is currently engaged in the Reinvest in Our Power project through the Divestment Student Netwo...
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11:15am EDT
Economic Autonomy in the Immigrants' Rights Movement/ Economia autonoma en el movimiento de derechos a los inmigrantes
Moderators EB
Artist, Educator, Organizer. Originally from San Antonio, TX, Esmeralda worked with
Fuerza Unida, a Latina-led organization that empowers women workers and their families to organize for justice. It’s through that work that she came to Highlander, first through the Southern Grassroots Economies Project. An accomplished visual artist, Esmeralda also holds an MA in Educational Leadership, Politics and Advocacy from New York University...
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Speakers FP
Pancho is director of Living Hope Wheelchair Association, a grassroots organization of immigrants with spinal cord injuries. He is one of the founders of Fe y Justicia Worker Center, a community organization in Houston for low-wage immigrant workers. Since coming to the U.S. from...
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11:15am EDT
Listening to Those Working in America's Fields
Speakers JE
Jeannie Economos serves as the Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project Coordinator of the Farmworker Association of Florida, a 33-year old, statewide, grassroots, farmworker membership organization with five offices in different rural agricultural areas in the state. Her...
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Julie Taylor is Executive Director for The National Farm Worker Ministry (NFWM) a faith-based organization which supports farm workers as they organize for justice and empowerment. NFWM helps to connect this country’s major farm worker organizing groups to denominations, religious...
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11:15am EDT
New Systems: Possibilities and Proposals
Moderators
Deputy Director, The Next System Project
System change! Finding ways to radically transform the architecture of the current political-economic system in order to produce a more sustainable, equitable and just future.
Speakers
Coordinator, USSEN / Wellspring Cooperative
Emily Kawano is an economist and the co-director of Wellspring Cooperative, a non-profit working to build a network of worker co-operatives in low income communities of Springfield, MA. She is also the coordinator of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network and a Board member of RIPESS...
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Mike Lewis is the Founder and Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Community Renewal. Lewis is an author, practitioner, researcher, educator and organizer. He has a diverse base of experience building businesses, CED organizations, national and international networks and...
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Gus Speth: Co-chair of the Next System Project and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, Speth is a also faculty at the Vermont School of Law and an award-winning author. Bringing decades of experience in sustainable development and environmental advocacy from organizations like...
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Ed Whitfeld is co-founder and co-managing director of the Fund for Democratic Communities (F4DC). A long time social justice activist, Ed had been involved in labor, community organizing and peace work since the late 60‘s when he was a student activist at Cornell University. He was the chairman of the Greensboro Redevelopment Commission for 9 years and formerly board chairman of Greensboro’s Triad Minority Development Corporation. In his work with F4DC, Ed helped initiate the formation of the Southern Grassroots Economies Project (SGEP) and their annual CoopEcon conferences aimed at networking and training among people interested in developing a cooperative new economy in the US South. He has visited and studied worker cooperative activities from the Evergreen Cooperatives of Cleveland, OH to the massive Mondragon Cooperatives Corporation in the Basque region of Spain. For Ed, helping people in communities engaged in meaningful, democratic, just, sustainable and productive activities is a key motivation., Fund for Democratic Communities
Ed Whitfield is a long time social justice activist who came through the late sixties black student movement to do labor, community and anti - war organizing in the South. In 2007, Ed Co-founded The Fund for Democratic Communities (F4DC) whose mission is to strengthen authentic democracy...
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11:15am EDT
11:15am EDT
Queering Labor: Worker Cooperatives as a Model for Leadership Development and Economic Stability
Speakers RI
Center for Family Life
Rachel Isreeli is a cooperative developer at the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park where she cultivates worker leadership and anti-exploitative work opportunities through direct work with coops and training community organizations to develop coops in their communities. She is...
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Maria is the Leadership Developer for Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC) in the Environmental Justice and Community Development Department. Maria has over 10 years of experience as a facilitator, specializing in conflict resolution, racial and gender justice, and community building...
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Saturday July 9, 2016 11:15am - 12:30pm EDT
Ketchum 315
11:15am EDT
Race, Power, and Energy Democracy
Speakers
Founder & Executive Director, Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy (GCCLP)
Colette Pichon Battle is a generational native of Bayou Liberty, Louisiana. As founder and Executive Director of the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy (GCCLP), she develops programming focused on equitable disaster recovery, global migration, community economic development, climate...
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11:15am EDT
The Shocking Impact of Boring Energy Policy
Speakers
Co-director, Institute for Local Self Reliance
John Farrell is a co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and directs the Energy Democracy Initiative. Widely known as the guru of distributed energy, he has received accolades for his vivid illustrations of the economic and environmental benefits of local ownership of...
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11:15am EDT
Updating Cuba's Economic Model: The Role for Social and Solidarity Economy Practices
Speakers
Consultant, Colegio Universitario San Gerónimo de La Habana, SOL² ECONOMICS
Rafael J. Betancourt, PhD (ABD) in Economics (University of Florida, USA) and MSc in Urban & Regional Planning (ISPJAE, Cuba) is an economist with 30 years of employment and academic experience in international cooperation, business administration, local development, strategic urban...
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President, SOL Economics
Eric Leenson is President of Sol Economics, a firm that builds strong links between socially responsible enterprises throughout the Americas – North and South. He has been involved in the fields of socially responsible investing (SRI) and business for more than 30 years, serving...
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11:15am EDT
Urban Gardens: Growing Health, Wellness and Justice in Diverse Communities
Speakers YA
Yemi Amu is co-founder of Oko Farms and Farm Manager at Moore Street, an aquaponics production and education farm in Brooklyn. She leads Oko Farms' design/build projects and directs its education programs. Yemi began as a nutrition educator, using hands-on education and culinary skills...
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Executive Director, Recirculating Farms Coalition
Marianne Cufone is the Founder/Director of the Recirculating Farms Coalition, a national non-profit organization that supports farms and farmers from hands on training to policy advocacy, in innovative, eco-efficient "water based" agriculture. Farming methods include hydroponics...
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CEO, Buffalo Go Green Inc.
Allison DeHonney is the owner and operator of Buffalo Go Green, Inc. and Urban Fruits & Veggies mobile food truck, which services several food desert communities. She possesses certification in "Good Agricultural Practices" (GAPS), which Allison obtained through the Cornell Cooperative...
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Owner/CEO, VDL enterprises , Inc.
Vivian D. Logan: is the owner and CEO of VDL enterprises, Inc. a human service consulting company and serves as the Coordinator for the Nutritional Eating & Living Project. She has worked in the Human Service field for over 25 years and in the field of social work for 21 years, as...
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11:15am EDT
When Coal Plants Retire, Who Should Pay?
Speakers PD
Peter is an Organizer and Director of Communications for the Western New York Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. As a union member for 17 years he has served in a number of roles, including site diversity trainer, co-chair of the United Way Committee for the United Auto Workers Local 686...
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Richard Lipsitz is the President of the Western New York Area Labor Federation. During his career, he has worked for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and Service Employees International Union. Richard also served as the Director of the Buffalo Labor Studies Program for the...
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Executive Director, Clean Air Coalition: Organizing for Health and Justice
Rebecca has organized win the Clean Air Coalition since 2011, supporting residents to run and win environmental justice and public health campaigns. Rebecca serves on the board of the Western New York Council for Occupational Safety and Health, and for over a decade has been involved...
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Peter Stuhlmiller is a teacher and elected President for the Kenmore Teachers Association. The KTA is a local union representing over 688 in-service and 400 retired members. Peter is active in the governance and committee structures of the state and national affiliates – NYSUT and...
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