[Announce] Day 9: Many hands make light work: Join, and support, a local sustainability organization

[Robert Waldrop]

30 Days Towards Sustainability

Day 9: Many hands make light work: Join, and be 
active in, a local grassroots sustainability 
organization

There are many important things that people can do 
in their households to move towards 
sustainability. We're talking about them this 
week. But movement towards sustainability is not 
the work of hermits, it is the work of people who 
live in community, who have neighbors, friends, 
and family around them. Environmental calamity 
will fall on the "just and the unjust", which is 
to say, we are all in this together. The work of 
individuals and households is important, it is the 
foundation for all other work for sustainability. 
But it isn't all individual effort. There is much 
that we can (and should) do united together in 
local, grassroots organizations, to move our 
communities towards sustainability.

One such organization is right here at home, the 
Oklahoma Sustainability Network. The OSN is at 
once local and statewide. It maintains the premier 
sustainability communications media in the state 
of Oklahoma - the OSN listservs and the annual 
conferences and its website, 
http://www.oksustainability.org/ . It's local 
chapters are doing important work examining local 
issues and promoting sustainable alternatives. And 
everywhere you go in the OSN, you run into 
networking opportunities. It is actually much more 
than an organization, it is a rapidly spreading 
group of sustainability RHIZOMES. The group is 
fortunate to have good leadership, but the 
organization is such that the leadership is not 
overwhelming. They are mostly there to help people 
maximize their opportunities to do the good work 
of developing sustainability. I am not sure if 
this was by design or by serendipity, but it has 
been a wise choice as it has maximized the 
individual freedom (and the individual 
responsibility) of those who associate themselves 
with the group to "do the right thing for the 
right reasons".

The OSN annual conference is coming up on Friday, 
September 15th. This is a great opportunity to 
meet and network with other sustainability 
movement leadership from across the state. 
Everybody's welcome (the OSN has a rather "loose' 
definition of member - to join, you simply 
subscribe to one of the group's listservs or send 
in a request to be a member, there are no annual 
dues). The "early bird" conference registration 
deadline is Friday, September 8th, after that the 
price increases. Online registration is available 
at the group's website. Info about the event and 
an online registration form is at 
http://www.oksustainability.org/conferences.php .

There are, of course, many other great 
sustainability organizations, research groups, 
political action groups, and etc. The Sierra Club, 
Oklahoma Food Cooperative, Kerr Center for 
Sustainable Agriculture, the Land Institute, come 
immediately to my mind. People reading this in 
other states are no doubt aware of their own local 
or regional equivalents, and there is always room 
to start new organizations.

We should all be taking stock of our individual 
household lifestyles and making adjustments and 
changes as necessary to move towards 
sustainability. But we should also reach out to 
our neighbors and work together with them for the 
common good goals/principles of sustainability, 
economic security, and social justice. The smart 
combination of individual and communal effort 
shows the way towards an authentic roadmap into 
the future.

Bob Waldrop, Oklahoma City

http://www.bettertimesinfo.org

http://www.oklahomafood.coop

http://www.kerrcenter.org

http://www.landinstitute.org/

http://oklahoma.sierraclub.org/

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These tips may be freely forwarded, credit for 
authorship is appreciated. They are posted online 
at 
http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/30days.htm .