Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project

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Collaboration History

The Justice & Ecology Project developed out of Movement Generation’s strategy training work among Bay Area organizers of color. As Hurricane Katrina hit, organizers wanted support in better understanding environmental issues and the opportunities and challenges facing working-class communities of color in relationship to ecology and sustainability.

In 2007, Movement Generation, in collaboration with the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center, developed a set of two three-day training retreats and evening meetings to address this set of questions. The training and discussion sessions were designed to develop practical strategies to address the increasing economic and social impacts of global environmental problems on working-class communities and communities of color. We came together looking at issues of peak oil, peak water, losses in biological and cultural diversity, climate change, environmental toxins, food security, sustainable agriculture and food systems, as well as new opportunities for the development of local, sustainable, socially-just economies and participatory democracy.

Since launching in 2007, the Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project has engaged over 300 grassroots organizations and annually trains over 3,000 change agents (community leaders, activists, and organizers) through intensive retreats, political education, hands-on skills workshops, peer exchange, campaign development, alliance building, strategic support, and more. MG’s work has expanded to include the integration of an ecological lens onto existing work within organizations, as well as ongoing work to develop shared strategies that harness the collective power of participating organizations to advance a justice-based approach to ecology.

Justice & Ecology Retreats at OAEC

Once a year, MG selects a cohort of 25-30 local and national leaders of racial, economic, and environmental justice movements to attend a five-day retreat at OAEC. Combining in-depth discussion of ecological justice issues with structured presentations and trainings by expert ecologists and organizers, the Justice & Ecology Retreats provide transformative experiences for participants. The retreats explore the following themes:

• What are the economic, cultural, political, and ecological contours of the systemic crisis we face?  Together with the cohort, we grapple with the scale, pace, and implications of the crisis through multiple lenses such as water, food, climate, work, democracy, race, and biocultural diversity.
• What can we learn from struggles for people and planet around the world? What are the lessons and inspirations we can draw from diverse domestic and international social movements?
• What role do organizers, activists, and cultural creatives play in making those connections?

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Resilience-Based Organizing

The Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project builds the capacity of communities to be responsive to changing conditions, both economically and ecologically, as part of a vision of ecological justice. Resilience-Based Organizing (RBO) is the idea that people working together to directly meet their needs – through shared work, democratic self-governance, and, ultimately, confronting and transforming unjust policy – is critical for ecological restoration and community resilience.

The approach departs from traditional campaign-based organizing in which communities identify a problem/issue and then target a political figure with decision-making power to change rules or implement regulations in order to alleviate that problem, therefore depending on existing structures of power. Instead, RBO organizes people into a collective effort to meet the need at hand through direct democratic decision-making and physical implementation by those who are being impacted by the problem. It often involves intentionally butting up against legal or political barriers to force the question of whether or not a community has the right to self-govern and take right action in their own interests. RBO combines meeting community members’ needs through visionary, ecologically responsive action with confronting illegitimate rule.

Read more on MG’s Justice and Ecology Project from participant, the one and only, adrienne maree brown! we are the movement generation and Movement Generation Solutions Part II.

And check out their zine, From Banks and Tanks to Cooperation and Caring: A Strategic Framework for a Just Transition.

Movement Generations’ co-founders at an MG fundraising event at OAEC in 2019.