On February 8, 2015, in the middle of a classic Midwest blizzard, 49 local Community Rights activists from about a dozen counties across rural Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, met for a full day in Whitehall, Wisconsin to educate themselves, to network with like minded people, and to build community. This was the informal network’s second grassroots-led bottom-up organizing event, modeling what it looks like and feels like when we walk our talk around how we further the Community Rights cause across the country.
There were full group and roundtable discussions, workshops, and Q&A sessions. The entire event was videoed by the local community access cable TV station, with Wade Britzius at the helm. Some of the smaller break-out sessions were simply audio recorded. Here’s a link to the entire archived event:
• Event Kickoff with introductions by everyone present & brief reports from existing local CR groups in the Driftless region (55″ video)
• Conversation with author and corporate anthropologist Jane Anne Morris (1’06” video)
• Open discussion between attorney Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin and local elected officials (59″ audio)
• Non-verbal large group exercise demonstrating how a healthy dialogue about divergent values can be initiated, facilitated by Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin (18″ video)
• Open discussion on Arts & Culture Organizing and Curriculum Development around Community Rights issues (36″ audio)
• Presentations by members of a new CR support network group that has since failed to coalesce (24″ video)
• Q&A with members of a new CR support network group that has since failed to coalesce (1’01” video)
• Presentation by author and organizer Al Gedicks on his groundbreaking work in Wisconsin (and beyond) resisting the development of sulfide mining (44″ audio)