Reflecting on the “Environment + Climate Crisis Forum”

By Steering Committee Member Dick Williams

“The whole ‘show’ came out of the trunk of Niamh’s Honda Fit,” commented a Steering Committee member at its follow-up meeting to the November 9th “Environment + Climate Crisis Forum”.

Five days prior to the event we were told that the heating system in St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church had broken down. Two buts: (1) We had planned the Forum as a hybrid in case the pandemic worsened in Baltimore City; and, (2) Temperatures the day of the Forum rose as high as into the low 70s, assuring that the building wouldn’t be frigid that evening.
We rolled with the dice we had. Of the 130 plus registrants and walk-ins, 120 appeared in person or via Zoom—with a majority preferring to attend virtually.

We gathered in Bullock Fellowship Hall, socially distanced, masked and bundled up. The rest of us gathered virtually. Nearly all had selected the topic of their choice to collaborate on prior to arrival so check-in went smoothly. 
    
Niamh and Tanaira, the principal “brain trust” of this Forum, offered opening remarks which included establishing grounds rules about break-out room discussion, note-taking, chart-writing and listening for those who hadn’t had a turn yet to speak. Our trained facilitators then gathered with their groups.

As no one of the Steering Committee was able to attend all of the break-outs, let us share from our brief post-Forum Survey what attendees thought.

Our first question was: Please share with us a prime takeaway for you from the Forum? Here’s a sampling of the 17 responses:

• “Our group was the virtual waste breakout group and our biggest take away was to focus on composting efforts and to focus on joining existing efforts versus starting a new one.”
• “There are many people, with good ideas concerned about environmental justice issues in our area.”
• “That collectively selecting a climate action-oriented goal is possible even with people you've never met before.”

About Which break-out room activities worked best for you:

• “The activity in which everyone talked about what they felt they could bring to the conversation individually whether that be experience, resource channels, etc.”
• “Assessing levers [professional expertise, reputation, connections, etc.].”
• “I really liked focused approach (moving though different prompts) to keep the conversations moving forward and not getting stuck in the weeds.”

14 responded to the Which didn’t work so well. Here are several:

• “Group leader couldn't always see all the group participants and overlooked some contributions. This was also a function of the virtual break-out group format.”
• “Our facilitator did an excellent job. Everything worked well.”
• “The facilitator was late.”

From the Questions and concerns, among a number of replies were these:

• “I would like to see a Big Picture attainable vision from all of our collective tiny parts.”
• “I think leaving out the institutional forces that cause/empower many of the issues we face is unsustainable.”
• “I am concerned about the framing of climate/environmental justice as separate from our government and our representatives. The framing of ‘we can’t rely on our government to take action, so we must’ ignores the power we have as voters, and that our representatives work for us. I’d like to see climate/environmental community organizing as a way to do good work ourselves within our neighborhoods but also as a way to demand that our government meet our needs.”

Given each break-out group's set Goal, what is your Intended Next Step to take action, and was there a roundabout date by which that action should be taken? (16 resp.)

• “I volunteered to contact Parks & People to ask about the status of organizing a umbrella "Friends Of" group and I have a scheduled call for Monday, 11-15-21.”
• “finding out more about what the vo tech schools do.”
• “Rough draft of a video storyboard by Feb. 2022.”

Better than 76% have reported planning on attending the one-year-anniversary “Environment + Climate Crisis Forum” in 2022 to report out on progress made and challenges encountered, and to start anew.

Thanks all!  ♥
​