This just in from our friends at Appalachia Rising!

Appalachia Rising: Voices from the Mountains

September 25-26, Washington DC

Appalachia Rising: Voices from the Mountains is a conference held in Washington DC on September 25-26, 2010 calling for the abolition of mountaintop removal and surface mining in Appalachia. It is a time for the national movement against strip mining to assemble and grow through a weekend of strategizing, workshops,  learning, and cultural events. We envision a vibrant weekend during which thousands will learn about the challenges Appalachia faces and ways to build a movement to end the destruction and plant the seeds of a sustainable and prosperous Appalachia.

This inset of the Beehive Collective's True Cost of Coal poster models organizing for a sustainable future in Appalachia.

Give us your input!

We have created a template for our weekend gathering, Voices of the Mountains, and are looking for you to fill in the details.

Here is a rough outline:

Friday will be a day for us to get settled in and register. Our evening program will be comprised of dinner, speakers, and entertainment.

Saturday will be a day of movement building and visioning. We want to take advantage of the fact that so many intelligent and hardworking activists and allies will be in the same place. We are hoping to use our time together on Saturday to have strategy breakouts in which people working on interconnected issues will have the opportunity share work and ideas, and move forward together.

If you are interested in facilitating a workshop/discussion or have ideas and recommendations, please fill out this workshop form.

Sunday will be a day of workshops and trainings. For those interested in participating in the day of action, Sunday will be the day to prepare. For those interested in attending workshops and continuing to put some brain power behind this movement, Sunday will also be the day for you. We want to ask you if the programming for Sunday should be general education workshops, or workshops put on by larger environmental and climate movement organizations, like Greenpeace and Sierra Club.

This is the process:
Respond to the below questions before Tuesday, August 3. You can email them to voicesfromthemtns@gmail.com.
On _____, we will email out a summary of your ideas, and you’ll have another week to respond to those ideas.
The brainstorming period ends on ______. At that point, the day of agenda working group will convene to combine the material you provided into one cohesive agenda.
If you know people who don’t do email and are invested in this work, please include them by asking these questions in person or on the phone and report back.

For guidance, take a look at the vision statement.
What do you hope to get out of Voices for the Mountains?
What topics would you like to see discussed on Saturday?
What workshops would you like to attend on Sunday? Who could lead them?
What could make this weekend especially unique and worthwhile?
Would you like to lead a strategizing session or workshop? If so, about what?

If you are interested in joining the programming team, please contact voicesfromthemtns@gmail.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 2:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.