The most difficult aspect of teaching people how to successfully challenge government and run grassroots campaigns is helping people unlearn the myths they have been taught about government, politics and life.
JIm shows you how to stop a bad project in your community even though it is supported 1,000 percent by every federal, state and local politician; government agency; school board; chamber of commerce; real estate developer; large landowner; and corporation for a hundred miles in all directions. Jim distills the experiences and lessons learned from hundreds of grassroots environmental and political campaigns and extracts the most important things you need to know to be successful. Nothing in Jim’s writings was learned from a book; it was all learned the hard way by successes and failures in real campaigns
Even if you may have little or no idea how government decision making is done, have never been involved in “politics,” have never written articles or dealt with newspapers, have never lobbied anyone about anything or ever done any activism and may even be afraid of public speaking, Jim shows you how to conduct your campaign without selling yourself or your group to a foundation or agreeing to sacrifice somebody else’s backyard to protect yours.
For almost 30 years Jim Britell, environmental activist and political organizer has helped local groups get organized and run effective campaigns. An effective public speaker he is well known for his ability to motivate audiences with practical advice gained from working with groups from all over the country. During his career as an activist he has had hands on experience with successfully opposing many dozens of timber sales and is well known for his ability to find and exploit weaknesses in agency plans and schemes, and to mount original and effective campaigns. He is also a political organizer who has also managed political campaigns for candidates at the state and federal level.
Jim took early retirement from the Social Security Administration, where he held staff and management positions in systems, management information and training, and career development, in New York, Baltimore, San Francisco and Washington. He has been a labor negotiator, a long-range planner, and has testified before Congress and written legislation and regulations.
As a grassroots environmental and political campaign organizer Jim has managed over a hundred successful campaigns in Oregon and New York staffed with volunteers. For ten years he managed an active local land-use monitoring group and has been a planning commissioner. His books contain the hard-won lessons from his campaigns and his research into the organizational details of past successful and unsuccessful local and national grassroots campaigns.