A grassroots campaign against a powerful foe is a battle where your best source of ammunition is data you weaponize into persuasive information, and the simplest way to collect, organize and mobilize data is to put it in a case file created specifically for the issue. Opening a file means simply starting a new electronic […]

When the laws regulating forest practices, endangered species, clean air and water were put on the books, it was well before the 1990s when our society became enthralled with neoliberalism that elevated economic utility and job creation above all in matters of public policy. Public resource managers now face local political pressure to base every

The first grassroots campaign to preserve roadless wilderness pioneered innovative tactics, methods and strategies, now abandoned, that must be relearned if future such campaigns are to succeed. The unsurpassed exemplar of effective grassroots organizing is the 1940s campaign that blocked the building of a dam in the Adirondacks of New York. The campaign created a

For 50 years the environmental movement has depended on laws and regulations from the 1970’s enforced by lawyers and judges to achieve its goals. But since Trump’s election, the regulations, processes, courtesies, assumptions and norms undergirding America’s approach to the environment have been systematically discarded, reversed and dismantled. Accordingly, grassroots organizing will have to evolve