Social Justice Strategies

“When we accept small wonders, we qualify ourselves to imagine great wonders.” –Tom Robbins

When we accept small wonders, we qualify ourselves to imagine the greater ones. And what greater wonders are there than the greatest hopes of humankind: peace, justice, health and happiness? In this way, an awareness of small things, a practice of appreciation and sensitivity, prepare and anchor our abilities to imagine and do great things.

I’ve been active in social justice, cultural repair and change for over 20 years. I was a community-based educator and organizer in Appalachia for 5 years and studied at and worked extensively with Highlander Center. In the past few years I’ve reconnected to those roots and have begun to work more closely with young activists especially, teaching peace-making, self-care, learning psychology, cognitive biases, awareness, and communication skills. And nourishing hope with a community of people dedicated to making a better world.

Recent Workshops:

Powershift 2015:

Natural Mind: Earth-Based Patterns for Connection, Health and Power.

Seeking Biocracy: Social Change as personal and planetary development

Powershift 2014:

Changing the Dream: Social Change, Activism and Imagination

Mountain Justice Spring Break 2015

We See the World as We Are

Building off the work of Dan Kahneman, Ken Wilber and others, this workshop will help emerging social-change activists understand messaging and teaching as developmental constructs. It will impart strategies to help leaders reach people “where they are” and improve their understanding of and response to why sometimes “people don’t get it.”
Workshop will be engaging, experiential, co-constructive, dialogue oriented.

Nature Based Mindfulness, Awareness, and Self-care Routines

Mountain Justice Spring Break 2013

The Nature of Leadership

“No amount of reasoning can engender a moral value, because all values are, at bottom, emotional attitudes.”
-Jessee Prinz

There are two worlds. One “out there” objective reality, and one “in here;” subjective, human reality. Modern humans mostly believe and live in the second, constructed reality, which is daily growing more distant and virtual from the “real” world. Ecological repair, and the social and political change that it will require, cannot happen until there is a critical mass of citizens who are awake in, live in and believe in their embodied existence on the Earth. Join me for a fun, interactive, outside, exploration of ways to use Nature to create peace and health in ourselves, in others, and in the land.

Powershift 2012:

Cognitive Climate Change: The Psychology of Sustainability

“We do not see the world as it is, we see it as we are.”- Anais Nin

Planetary disruption and destruction are identified and analyzed as problems of technology, industry, or culture. At the root of the problem, however, are patterns of disruption in the human mind and body. An emerging body of evidence points to the fact that connection to nature is an essential form of nutrition. In the same way that we rely upon good quality food to be healthy, humans must connect to our “second mother”- Nature – if we wish to heal both self and world.