Local Clean Energy Alliance Open House and Fundraiser

Join the LCEA for an open house/fundraiser to benefit the The Clean Energy Tour, a series of solar-powered concerts, press conferences, and student leadership trainings throughout California utilizing music, arts and culture to stop the Dirty Energy Prop. The tour is the largest transmedia GOTV (Get Out The Vote) event in this election and features hip hop legends Pete Rock and CL Smooth. It’s the official tour of the Communities United Against the Dirty Energy Proposition coalition, which includes over eighty social and environmental justice groups across California.

This will be your opportunity to meet and socialize with members of the Alliance while enjoying a light meal and supporting this historic music tour to stop Prop 23. This event is open to the public and we encourage all members of the Local Clean Energy Alliance to participate.

To RSVP please contact brenna@baylocalize.org

NO on Prop 23

When: Thursday, October 21, 6-8 pm

Where: Oakland Historic Building

436 14th Street (at Broadway) in Downtown Oakland (12th Street BART station)

Light refreshments and finger food

Each guest will receive a free ticket to the San Francisco Green Festival!

10/10/10 Global Work Party Oakland Style: Food Justice Bike Tour!

Just a reminder about the Food Justice/Urban Ag Bike Tour for 10/10/10.  Its HELLA grassroots and free, fun, and for-surely-inspiring!  I hope many of you can make it.  Please spread the word, facebook, personal invites to friends you want there, etc.  Start out with a bike ride in the morning, then head over to the Laney College party organized by Bay Localize, Ella Baker, Oakland Climate Action Coalition, and Communi-tree.

For those who aren’t too tired out after the work-parties, bike rides, and concerts, some of us will also be hosting another “Radical Film Night” at the Newton House (285 Newton Ave., starting around 6:30) where we will be showing the film “Gashole” or a series of film shorts highlighting innovative alternative sustainable economic enterprises.

Here are the details:

Join Planting Justice, Walk Oakland Bike Oakland, People’s Grocery, Phat Beets, and other community organizations on a Food Justice Bike Tour on October 10 as part of 350.org’s Global Work Party to highlight innovative local urban agriculture and food justice initiatives while burning fat, not oil.

We will start at Planting Justice’s rooftop garden in Temescal (5252 Claremont Ave., next to DMV) and from there we will visit inspiring sites in West and North Oakland, including a worker-owned food coop, community gardens, a greywater project (possibly), a greenhouse, and other sites that demonstrate local sustainable food projects.

Greening Cafes: Easy Steps to Save Energy, Water, Waste and Money

When you grab that deep cup of rich dark-roast Mexican coffee and that lemon poppyseed scone, do you wonder if the business has met Green Cafe Standards?  Some of us intinctively go for the fair-trade coffee, but do you think how much water and energy the cafe is using? If they have environmentally responsible purchasing?

Well, neither do I, but perhaps we should.

The Green Cafe Network work with independently owned coffeehouses to actively reduce their ecological impacts and become certified green businesses. 

For the Love of Water: Art and Water Festival

I just got a call from Christina Bertea of Greywater Action to tell me about their awesome event called Water Works that is happening every Saturday and Sunday in September.  I had a chance last spring to sit in on one of their greywater training workshops for a laundry-to-landscape system and wrote an article on it.  It got my curiosity bones jumping, so I’m definitely going to check this out.

From the announcement:

Water Works is an effort to make sustainability appealing by showing that it can be attractive, whimsical, intriguing, and just plain fun affordable as well. Water Works has artists and tinkerers weigh in on the water conservation question and has lots of functional exhibits to show for it, plus lots of activities for kids  too.

Join 6 dynamic artist-designers as they rethink our daily relationship to water: personal hygiene, appliances and graywater, gardening and landscaping, recreation, food production, waste management, rainwater storage and management.

Every Saturday and Sunday in September: 11am -6pm at 5809 Ayala Avenue in North Oakland.

Confirmed speakers:
9.18 DL WEST MARRIN “Hydro-mimicry & Changing Our Perceptions of Water” 3PM
9.19 BETSY DAMON (Keepers of the Waters) “Water Revealed” 3PM
preceded by ANKA DRAUGELATES, “Ocean Music”
9.25 ELDER & BERTEA “Water Works and Future Think” 4PM
9.26 GIL FRIEND, JANE BYRD, AURORA MAHASSINE, MARTIN BERMUDEZ 4PM
“UrbanArchitecture and EcoSystems Surfaces”

Check out the blog to learn more
http://waterworksoakland.blogspot.com/

Tuesday Evening in Oakland: Mayoral Candidate Forum on Green Jobs and Climate Action

Source: Green For All Flickr

Oakland’s important Green Jobs and Climate Action forum with mayoral candidates is being hosted by the Oakland Climate Action Coalition Tuesday night at the Oakland Museum of California:

Date: Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Time: 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM
Location: Oakland Museum Theater, Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak Street (at 10th Street)

From event site: Oakland is on the cusp of adopting the boldest, most equitable and most creative Energy and Climate Action Plan of any city. But it all depends on the next mayor. That is why the Oakland Climate Action Coalition is extremely committed to creating opportunities for us to talk with mayoral candidates about equity, green jobs, better air quality, and lower energy bills.

We hope you can join the Oakland Climate Action Coalition, which unites labor, business, social justice, and environmental organizations from throughout the city.

Hear Oakland Mayoral Candidates answer the hard questions on climate action and environmental equity.

*Free childcare provided on request. Doors open at 6:30 PM with free light food and drinks, forum starts at 7:00 PM.

If you’d like to attend this event, please RSVP online. http://action.ellabakercenter.org/site/Calendar?view=Detail&id=100181

We look forward to an evening of questions, answers and climate action with you!

Hell No on Prop. 23!

San Francisco Chronicle cartoon

One of the more pernicious and deceptive propositions on California’s ballot this November is Prop 23.  The proposition would suspend AB 32 (Global Warming Solutions Act), the landmark greenhouse emission reduction law that was passed by the legislature and signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006.  The Orwellian name given to it by proponents is “California Jobs Initiative” but opponents have dubbed it the Dirty Energy proposition both because it is being bankrolled by Texas Oil companies and because it would stall clean energy investments and green jobs creation.