Jim Britell

– HANDBOOK: HOW TO STOP BAD PROJECTS IN YOUR COMMUNITY

WHY DOES YOUR TOWN NEED LAND-USE ADVOCACY? In many urban areas today, just driving to the store for milk is a time-consuming hassle; communities nationwide are disfigured by nearly identical vistas of Taco Bells, McDonalds, Dollar Stores and Dairy Queens. This overdevelopment and sprawl has resulted in part from citizens not being involved in community …

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– EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGNS USE ONE-PAGE ALERTS & SIGN-ON LETTERS

Every grassroots campaign needs a basic call-to-action that clearly and dramatically summarizes your issue. You cannot have a serious campaign without one. Your alert should be compelling, well-written, accurate, and persuasive; and must contain a wealth of information condensed into one page. Your alert should give a brief background explaining what you want people to …

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– Why Polluter’s Victims Hate Enviros More Than Polluters

Neoliberalism, embraced mostly by and for rich people, naturally would have local, financially interested people play a vital role in arriving at decisions about the business use of public assets. The Alinsky approach tries to ensure that people with vested financial interests and rampant conflicts-of-interest are completely excluded from deciding the outcome of federal land …

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– What Al Capone, Saul Alinsky’s Mentor, Taught Him

There are some larger and little discussed issues around the growing trend that seeks to resolve all conflict with partnerships, roundtables, win-win and consensus processes. These approaches have not just suddenly appeared in a vacuum. America’s fundamental assumptions about the political decision-making process itself are being systematically reshaped by a new political theory called neoliberalism, …

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– The Problem with Partnerships and Roundtables

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 which elevated economic utility and job creation above all in matters of public policy. Public resource managers now face local political pressure to base every …

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– What is the relief you seek?

All successful environmental campaigns resemble one another. All unsuccessful ones fail in their own unique way. From company personnel officers to politicians, those who attend to official “complaints” say that people who present grievances and complaints almost never state the exact relief they seek. But agencies, legislators, and the entire American political process are organized …

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– Confronting Goons and Bullies In Public Meetings

The vast majority of environmental campaigns are businesslike and seldom create personal confrontations, but for some issues and in some areas of the country, public meetings on environmental issues can occasionally subject activists to bullying and personal threats. The overwhelming majority of personal threats, while unnerving, never result in physical harm. Fortunately, there is an …

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