Dear friend of the Forest,

I arrived home from a gathering last month exhausted but excited. Energized. Inspired. My brain was racing—processing, analyzing, sorting through the conversations and questions. And, in keeping with the goals of this gathering, I arrived home ready to hit the ground running and work.

Representing the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters and Earth First!, I had pitched in on organizing, and then attended this extraordinary gathering in October 2019.

It was The Resurgence: the Forest and Climate Movement Convergence, that took place after 2 years of planning, in the beautiful deciduous woods of the Shawnee National Forest. It was amazing. It was billed as a way to create a momentum to challenge false solutions and build broader strategies and tactics of resistance for effective action.

The Convergence brought together over 250 grassroots activists from around the country who were ready to work, and go deep on the tough questions, challenging each other and themselves.

It was deliberately and decidedly not a conference, but rather a convergence, and in its aims, a resurgence. Due to excellent and long term organizing, many of the goals were achieved, which centered around allowing for a deep, challenging and radical discussion that sought to bring peoples’ thinking outside the box and develop better approaches to our campaign work.

We are in unprecedented times. The juncture we are straddling, the scientists tell us, couldn’t be more critical in terms of requiring a shift in priorities, a wake up call that inspires more people to action. But we don’t need the scientists to inform us. That the biological fabric of our blue green planet is being ripped apart could not be more clear, and to those in “the trenches,” the causes are no mystery. Corporate profits, an emphasis on human’s “convenience,” and a separation that leaves so many of our species apart from the land, having lost the connection that helps us make our home, Mother Earth, the highest priority, over any kind of daily life convenience.

We would be short sighted and totally off the mark if we did not craft our work accordingly.
Please support BACH however you can so that we can continue to effectively do that work.

Getting people on board involves a battle for the story, but the question for us is: what is our story? It is not the story it has been in the past because it must be compelling in a way that relates to the current situation, and it must be compelling in a way that will allow people to believe that they have a role in slowing down and ultimately stopping this collision course we are on, rather than just running for cover.

We are also part of the forward motion coming out of the convergence. You can be too.

Though it was two years in the planning—it was not a culmination so much as a beginning. The tasks now include reinvigorating our networks of forest activists and forest/climate activists, and carrying forward the discussions we kicked off in October.

We also discussed pulling together a smaller regional convergence for people in the west who were unable to come to the event in Illinois, and also targeting particular days to have coordinated action for forest issues, again, linking to the climate crisis. Forest defense is climate defense!

What we are seeing is that essentially all serious and seriously radical grassroots groups are feeling the imperative to up our game in these times. That is the work before all of us.

I hope you are with us in our forward-looking trajectory! We need your support at any level, and your involvement.

We continue working with other grassroots activist groups in our “backyard,” on the critical issues of intact forests, precious habitat and river systems that we have remaining. We continue to bring our media consulting to the table as well, to collaborate with other groups, particularly those on the north coast .

Please help us keep the forests in the forefront of people’s hearts and minds as we maintain all the other important work. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that forests have never been under graver threat than in these times.

Please donate what you can today. It all counts.

For the wild everywhere, and for the wildness in all of us,

Karen
Karen Pickett for BACH

*Make sure checks are made out to Ecology Center/BACH!
Mail to P.O. Box 2072, Berkeley, CA 94702. (We have not moved, but got a PO box to streamline our process. We still maintain our San Pablo Ave. address and can receive mail there.)

**You can also donate through our website http://HeadwatersPreserve.org. Click on the Donate button at the top.
Thank you for your support!