Apply for 2012 Summer Programs!

Priority Application Deadline: November 30th!

Better Future Project is excited to announce two programs for Summer 2012!

The joint application form is available here.

Climate Summer continues! We’re working hard to build on the relationships and lessons of the first three years of Climate Summer, & we’re excited to be working on YEAR 4!

Ride for the Future (a new program in 2012)

In the summer of 2012, our Ride for the Future team will travel exclusively by bicycle together from New Orleans to ExxonMobil’s international headquarters in Irving, Texas.

Along the way, the participants will learn from and highlight local efforts to improve communities while transitioning them away from fossil fuels.  At the same time, the riders will highlight the harms fossil fuels cause communities, visiting environmental justice communities suffering from pollution from refineries and power planets, communities still suffering from the the BP oil spill, and communities suffering from natural disasters in line with scientists predictions of a changing climate, including the droughts and wildfires in Texas and hurricane damage across the region.

While learning from those who have suffered from fossil fuels and those who are building a better future without them, riders will engage in direct community service to mitigate the suffering and ease the transition.  At ExxonMobil’s headquarters, the riders will call for a meeting with executives from the world’s wealthiest fossil fuel company to ask them to recognize their responsibility to help America and the world rapidly and responsibly transition away from fossil fuels. More information coming soon to rideforthefuture.org!

12 August – The Day After

Posted by: Jackie

Talk to any of my teammates and they will tell you how I have had quite enough of long-distance biking, how my language is the most vulgar when I’m on a bike, and how many times I’ve expressed my wish to get in a car to make it up a hill. None of them are going to believe me when I say this, but I miss being on my bike already.

I’m on the bus down to New York City right now. It’s a route I’ve done countless times, but this is the first time I’m actually recognizing the town names on the exit signs. I’ve just passed the exit for Clinton, where we stopped for a night on our way from Bridgeport to Stonington. It’s odd to go by all these places that I’ve developed an attachment towards, but at the same time somewhat comforting to think about all the friends we’ve made along this route – Dotty Stumpf in Westerly, Kit and Jane Johnson in Stonington, Peg Moran in Pawcatuck. In a short while I’ll also be passing by Justin Haaheim in New Haven, and John Wilkins, Bob Halstead and Sheri Neely in Bridgeport.

Before college began last year, my parents and I took a road trip around upstate New York. Then, I knew America as a collection of towns (whose names I do not now remember) connected by highways, highways that look the same for hundreds of miles and are peppered with FOOD exits advertising McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, food courts with bad Chinese food, and LODGING exits announcing the presence of Comfort Inns and Best Westerns. I thought getting around the country was incredibly easy because all you had to do was look out for the exit sign.

Highways make things easy. I-95 has transported me several times from Providence to New York without my being able to place myself geographically at any given point. It brings me from Point A to Point B, with nothing in between. (Sidenote: I just passed by the sign for Thimble Islands, home to Brendan Smith’s sustainable oyster farm!) But on this particular bus ride, I finally recognize town names because we biked through those very towns this summer. On a bike, one journeys from Point A to Point E with Points B, C and D in between.

Biking makes things incredibly difficult especially if you’re on a heavy mountain bike and you haven’t had that much experience. I still instinctively flinch when I see a big hill, but the bus conquers it in a matter of seconds and it doesn’t even feel like we’re climbing a hill. On a bike, it’s kind of nasty when you’re biking up a hill and need to breathe, but all you can smell is skunk. And, when you’re not on a highway, you’re that much more prone to losing your way.

But then biking is also about its rewards – the 9% downhill, the smell of strawberry fields, the sight of deer and geese crossing the road, the lunch stop on the green in Milford. Biking is about remembering reality. Remembering that it’s 90 degrees out, instead of 65 like the AC in the bus wants you to believe. Remembering that it takes sweat and brute strength to transport a person, rather than just a $9 bus ticket. (Sidenote #2 passing by the Phoenix Press wind turbine in New haven now – crazy how quickly you can travel on a bus!)

So why should biking be called an ‘alternative’ means of transportation? If anything, it is infinitely more authentic than sitting in a motor vehicle. We as a society have collectively forgotten what it means to meet our needs. We think that Providence and New York are conveniently linked by a highway and forget that, if we were to use smaller roads, we would have to travel through Groton, New London, Madison and Branford. If we need gas, we look out for the next gas exit, forgetting what it takes to drill for and refine crude oil. We chuck our food wrappers in the trash can, forgetting that they have to be sent to landfill or to a trash incinerator, which may very well be situated in a struggling city with higher-than-average rates of asthma. We think that food comes from grocery store aisles, or, if we don’t do the grocery shopping, we think that it comes from a bag in the refrigerator. And we forget all the compost, earthworms, seed dispersal mechanisms, sunlight, water, sweat and backaches that it takes for food to be grown. In giving ourselves a break from the work, we also forget the joy of harvesting and the simple satisfaction of pulling out a weed.

But as much as I romanticize about biking, I am not about to bike down to New York from Providence. Like everyone else, practicality is a major factor in my decision-making and I am often slave to the conveniences offered to me. But I come away from this summer with a heightened consciousness of how much it takes to feed me, clothe me, transport me and keep me clean, and I will remember that tomatoes at a farmers’ market are both uglier and more beautiful than store-bought tomatoes, that biking up a hill always means biking down that same hill, and that often, the easiest way to live is not always the most interesting way to live.

To my teammates: When I flipped open my laptop on the bus I immediately felt self-conscious about my stickers expressing my love for farmers and telling people to SAVE THE BAY. That wouldn’t be the case if I were sitting with Ellie and Julia with identical stickers on their laptops. I miss you guys.

On Climate Change

This is Lauren’s speech for the Climate Summer press conference at City Hall Plaza in Boston.

–

Before I begin talking to you about climate change, I would like to take a look at past social movements. The abolition of slavery, the civil rights movement, the anti-apartheid struggle, the gay rights movement. I believe that these are all issues of right and wrong. “Is it moral?” is a question central to these movements.

 

My experiences in Climate Summer have made me realize that individual action is no longer enough to save our planet: we need a movement. It’s Ed Byers wearing his hairnet at Cindy’s Kitchen organizing his community to take action to keep a fossil fuel burning power plant out of Brockton. It’s Susan Fairchild managing a three-year-old farmers market in Medford that draws in thousands of people every week, and it’s Steve Connors and his student corps harvesting and then donating the crops from the Westport Town community garden. This work cannot be done if individuals do not act as if they are a part of something that is bigger than themselves. With this realization comes a unique challenge, because the environmental movement is so much more complicated than any previous social movement. The climate crisis isn’t something that you can point your finger at and say- there’s the culprit. There’s no one bad guy- there are many, many reasons why our climate is changing. Each one of us shares a little bit of the blame for the situation we’ve got ourselves in, which can be pretty tough to swallow. Not to mention that the future we’re facing if we don’t do something, fast, is completely terrifying.

With the environmental movement it’s suddenly much more complicated. We face a distinct challenge in that there is a subtle oppression felt by many in the environmental community that makes individuals who do not fully understand the science of climate change afraid to speak up and take action.

My question to you is: why isn’t this just a moral issue?

Why should understanding the science be a prerequisite for environmental activism? Why don’t we care about our environment in the same way we care about the welfare of our fellow man or woman? Why don’t we see how morally incomprehensible it is that we are destroying what every human being has in common: this planet? Who cares about the science? This is wrong.

I am fully confident standing here and telling you: I don’t completely understand the mechanisms behind ocean acidification or measuring ice cores. Parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is sometimes confuses me.  But I know climate change is bad. I know that it’s wrong.  And I know that we need to do something about it.

Two weeks ago my team and I rode to Westport Point, Massachusetts.  If you’ve never been, please, please go. I wish that everyone could have the week we spent there, have the experiences we had there and meet the people we met there. Westport is a small coastal town at the bottom of the state, where large beaches are juxtaposed to vast and open fields of farmland. I want to try and
convey to you how much beauty and peace and happiness I found in this small community in the 7 short days that we spent there, but I can’t. Words can never be enough. A picture could never be enough, even.

This coastal community that I love so much will be devastated by climate change if the current trajectory continues. If we continue to burn fossil fuels, if ocean levels continue to rise, if the earth’s temperature gets warmer, if we do nothing, Kaitlyn Madara, the 13 year old whose family hosted me and my team at their home for my 20^th birthday, will lose her home and her family will loose their livelihood. This tragedy will be repeated over and over again across the community. After riding to Westport and other equally wonderful communities this summer, my continued involvement in this movement is absolutely a moral issue. I speak for myself, and hopefully my fellow riders when I say that finding solutions to the climate crisis is absolutely a moral question, a movement of righting the wrongs we see around us to build a just and stable world.

Safety is spelled “F.U.N”

Check out this great biking tutorial made by Maine Team and MAssMovement!

 

Its over?

My brain is fried….system overload…too much to think about.

Why is my brain fried you ask?

Because this summer has been so full of everything.

Full of laughs and full of adventures.

Climate Summer 2011

This summer has been the most ridiculous summer of my life. This summer has been stressful and frustrating and sometimes I couldn’t think straight. But, this summer has also been full of people who I wish to never forget. This summer has been full of amazing people, groups and organizations that I want to take lessons from. This summer has truly been something I will never forget, something I can tell my family about in 50 years and say “I did that”.

–

You know you are tired when a black top parking lot in 100 degree weather becomes nap time!

To be honest I was a little apprehensive about participating in the program…I needed to get a bike, figure out how to ship my bike and myself out to New Hampshire, then ride hundreds of miles carrying all my belongings and a 75+ trailer in order to participate in Climate Summer. I decided not let these anxieties stop me, and I am so glad that I didn’t. I could never regret this summer, even though at times I was beside myself with frustration (thank you lice and busted computer).

Climate Summer taught me a whole lot about working with a team and organizing in a community. I like to think that these skills will transfer back to my college life! I have seen what it takes to keep building a movement over years and persist through rough times. I have seen the people who started this movement and fought when people thought they were actually crazy. I have seen programs that others said would never make it off the ground, succeed with passion! I have met people who inspire me beyond belief. And I have met students younger than myself throw their insecurities aside to scream and shout in the streets in order to gather attention to their cause.

This program may be over, but the drive of every student here will not end when we leave Boston. I have way to many things to think about for this to be over! This summer was full of struggles and excitement, and these will follow me for the rest of my life, so for me I don’t think it can end.

–

Full of laughs. Full of fun. Full of growth. Full of challenges. That is exactly what a summer should be full of, and this is exactly what my summer was with New England Climate Summer.

Mass Acceleration--my climate riding team!

This summer I felt alive. This summer I took an amazing adventure. This summer we, a group of 31 traveling students, were powerful.

Final Speech

This was Sara’s speech to everyone at the Climate Summer final party.

Team Mass Acceleration

All 31 of us in Wilmot, NH!

Team Mass Acceleration is a compilation of geographically diverse individuals from Beverly to Seattle, but we all arrived in Wilmot, New Hampshire with the same excitement and drive for a summer of many unexpected and unknown experiences. Some of the distances and inclines we conquered this summer, from George St. in Worcester-a 24% incline- to climbing the mountains of Western Mass, were not ideal for 5 women who had never biked more than 10 miles.

This summer we biked 700 miles to Lowell, Newburyport, Salem, Waltham, Worcester, Springfield, and Winchester. And we witnessed our own strength and resilience. A determined group of individuals working to enact change in our own lives and influence the lives of those we met.

Along the way we fed off one another’s energy, companionship, knowledge and friendship.

In each community, we built relationships with strangers and immersed ourselves in the projects of each town. Our friends and allies from each town we visited revitalized us. Email addresses slowly morphed into friendly faces, good conversations, and ingenious resources working towards a better future. As our friend Lynn from Marblehead joked, (sustainability) “is all these girls talk about!”

With Lynn in Marblehead!

This was certainly true this summer; unlike summers I’ve had in the past of working a less than fulfilling job. We only took two days off the entire 10 weeks, even though we were highly encouraged to take a day off each week.

All 6 teams have an unrelenting dedication to get on their bikes everyday. We understand that we can no longer sit idly when there is an opportunity to shift the way our society produces its energy to cater to our every day lives.

Those every day lives that we gave up this summer, do NOT include traveling hundreds of miles with two 75-pound trailers. We were reminded frequently this summer it is not normal to have occasional showers, live off 5 dollars a day, and find sleeping on tiled floors comfortable.

with our awful trailers...

We woke up early every day and ate, biked, thought about eating, emailed contacts from our next town, and worked.

This summer we never truly complained, but rather adapted, joked, and made the best of our unique tan lines.

We also appeared on television with no concern whatsoever of when we last showered or how dirty our minimalistic wardrobe was. We do not expect anyone to live as we did this summer, nor do we judge anyone who continues to live with the simple luxuries we once did.

Next week, we will no longer be biking, nor nomadic. We will return to our former routines: we will shower, do laundry, and go out to eat occasionally. But we will also question our habits and make conscious decisions about our lifestyles.

one of our media hits!

Mass Acceleration has come to realize that the way our society transports itself will never be the way we lived this summer. Traveling solely by bike & living off of $5 dollars a day was meant to raise questions and possibilities, not be promoted as the new alternative.

We are not all perfect in our sustainability practices, but following our morals and imaginations can broaden conversations and solutions. We all struggle, but we struggle together. This gives us common ground.

My teammate Sam likened this summer’s journey to carrying the weight of a 75-lb trailer up a hill. Just as everyone in a community has different interests and motives for entering the environmental movement, my teammates and I had different challenges when pulling the trailers. But when someone reached their limit, when they simply couldn’t bike up another hill with the extra burden, we passed on the trailer to our next teammate and continued biking.

All five of us on our first bike ride together!

There were times when the relief of four other exhausted yet inspired teammates reminded me of the unyielding influence of our collaborative passion, voice and bond. Mass Acceleration overcame falls and fears, from Eliza’s epic tumble to Alyssa’s countless topplings, to close encounters of every kind of critter to tornado warnings, never ending mountains, and inevitable bike breakdowns. Support is crucial on a team, just as in a community, just as it is in a society.

Our team’s journey this summer encompassed a lot, from eating Eliza’s Nutritional Yeast to learning the inner workings of grassroots organizing. We experienced both the extremes of sitting in the Massachusetts State House waiting to testify for the regulation of Coal ash to gardening, where we lathered ourselves in dirt. The invitation to have a pizza party with the Mayor Joe Obrien of Worcester was made possible by the power of our team, an assertive, youthful group with a powerful message.

We encountered various other situations this summer that I am certain would not have happened without our clear goal, teammates, program name, and community partners. Mass Acceleration met the Indigo Girls and was introduced at their concert, rang a Paul Revere Bell, and met with various government officials along their journey.

Our media attention this summer also astounded me, and the generosity of individuals who comforted our hungry stomachs and cleaned our dirty laundry never ceased to amaze.

The changes in the communities we saw displayed the wide range of actions our society needs to take. Our nation must engage in a widespread transformation. We’ve worked with agricultural groups and recycling incentives in every town. We worked along side low–income and at-risk youth who transformed their lives to create a better future for themselves and their community. We saw a green business incubator in Springfield find hope in working alongside an alley of gasoline products, showing the juxtaposition of fossil fuels and gardens. We witnessed the successes of organizations devoted to shutting down a toxic coal plant in Salem and preventing a proposed biomass plant in Springfield. We picnicked at a Catholic school with a wind turbine, and worshipped with a priest who wore a wind turbine along with his cross. There have been individuals committed to changing their lifestyle with renewable technologies in businesses and homes. And we’ve seen the small town of Winchester take on the extraordinary task of turning solar viral in their community.

There is still much left on the bike rack in our efforts to create the best possible future, but Mass Acceleration will now have the tools and experiences to keep pedaling up hills that seem to push us in the opposite direction. Traveling and connecting to my teammates and the community partners I worked beside will forever remind me of the ever present companionship of others who share similar hopes for the future. Undoubtedly there will be times in my own life that I will seek motivation from those who are working in a different community, fighting from a different angle, but nonetheless, part of the same movement.

Beyond steep hills and countless miles, I established connections that will continue to influence me and persist onwards while propelling the movement forward.

For my team

Posted by: Tara Escudero 8-6-11

my team at the beginning of the summer

Today is our last day as teams before we reunite and spend the week working on bigger (more comprehensive) things, such as a press conference, State of the Movement Report, future plans (personal and for the program), and reflection on our experience.  Then for all of us, it is the bigger and sometimes more frightening thing of going back to our own lives and doing our best to continue the way we were living however we can.  Instead of just that one reckless summer when I was in my young twenties and could afford to bike tour New England and meet great people, I hope each of us takes living simply, seeing a community through the lens of it potential, and the focused and passionate way of living every day.  I hope we really take these things and make them our own.

Yesterday we met with ACE, or Alternative for Community and Environment, an environmental justice group based in Roxbury, Boston, MA.  We went on a brief ‘toxic tour’ of the neighborhood, with David our guide highlighting the injustices of the poor air quality of the area through the replacement of a train with a bus fleet for public transportation in the area.  The bus fleet was initially all run on diesel, so the passengers and residents of Roxbury breathed in particulate matter basically 24/7.

David took us to a small park with some trees and benches and a stretch of grassy area, and told us about Walter.  Walter passed away when he was 12 from an asthma attack.  He was born with asthma, and lived surrounded by idling buses, his father scrubbing the soot off the wall inside their house from all of the soot that built up from the diesel emissions every year.  It was Walter’s dream to transform that space, which was once just a dirt pile, to the park that it is now, but he didn’t live to see that realized.  David spoke about how his own mother was in the hospital with asthma, and how he had to skip meetings with the city about a diesel ordinance to visit his mother; the cruelest of ironies.

It is stories like these, David said, and sharing them that will save us.  He said there are people working 9 to 5 every day to ensure the world will continue on the way it has, and we can only fight that by sharing our story.

This story and ACE’s campaign caused a chain reaction of questions in my thoughts, and has left me grasping for more answers.  They are working to have diesel transitioned to compressed natural gas, and to have vehicles be penalized for idling, and other very important things that will improve the health of the community.  But I immediately thought of hydraulic fracturing, and of all the communities elsewhere whose health is being ruined to extract natural gas.  I thought of how their train service was taken away, and how we need to be moving beyond the use of fossil fuel burning buses period.  I am very conflicted and I clearly see the arduous process of transition away from fossil fuels, something so central to the foundation on which our lives have been built.

Whether it is the suffering and injustice that communities are experiencing due to climate change, having to immigrate to other parts of the world to make a living, air pollution that causes thousands of death every year, the extinction or degradation of a beautiful place,  and the countless other reasons to take a stand, I hope each of us finds that point where they decide they can’t stand aside any more.

I wanted to really spell out the kind of world I want to see, and have seen glimpses of in all the people I have met this summer.  This is the kind of world I want particularly for my team, who I have come to love and I know will be part of making this a reality.

my team last week, I'm going to miss them

I want a world where each person not only can meet their basic needs, but see clearly how those needs are meet and gain satisfaction and a sense of purpose from that.

I want a world where oppression: gender, socioeconomic, racial, is transformed into a constant effort to reconcile how things have always been.  Instead of a “catching up,” being able to exploit our world as much as the most privileged are, I want a fundamental shift to a world where empathy and symbiosis are recognized as the only means to which everything can be treated with dignity, human or not human.

I want a societal structure that accounts for long term economic viability, that is the incentive itself for building a community’s resources on a small scale and fostering relationships that unite our economy and community.

I want the opportunity for everyone to pursue the kind of education and career they want, especially without judgement as to its usefulness or importance.

I want many more things, and I want us all to take the time to continue to spell out what we want and work for it.