Mike Ewall

Click here to jump down to Mike’s speak­ing top­ics on ener­gy, waste, envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, com­mu­ni­ty and cam­pus orga­niz­ing and oth­er issues.

Mike’s writings/speaking:

• What the Health doc­u­men­tary (2017), avail­able on Net­flix, where the film­mak­ers stat­ed that “one of the most shock­ing things that we uncov­ered” was Ewal­l’s inter­view about how indus­tri­al tox­ins like diox­in con­cen­trate in meat and dairy products.
• Fos­sil Fuel Divest­ment: How to Evolve the Cam­paign Beyond its Short­com­ings (Octo­ber 2014)
• Legal Tools for Envi­ron­men­tal Equi­ty vs. Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice (Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Law & Pol­i­cy Jour­nal, 2012–2013)
• Pre­sen­ta­tion on pyrolysis/incineration in Logans­port, Indi­ana [20 min with Pow­er­point] (May 2013)
• Pre­sen­ta­tion on incin­er­a­tion at DC Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work pan­el [11 min] (Jan 2013)
• Occu­py Earth Day: An Exposé of the Cor­po­rate Pro­pa­gan­da Sys­tems that Under­mine Sys­temic Change Activism (April 2012)
• Ener­gy Jus­tice Factsheets

Biography

Mike Ewall is the founder and direc­tor of Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work, a nation­al sup­port net­work for grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty groups fight­ing dirty ener­gy and waste indus­try facil­i­ties such as coal pow­er plants, ethanol plants, nat­ur­al gas facil­i­ties, land­fills and incin­er­a­tors of every sort. He has been active­ly involved in stu­dent and com­mu­ni­ty envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice orga­niz­ing since high school in 1990. He’s taught hun­dreds of work­shops at col­lege cam­pus­es and activist con­fer­ences through­out the U.S. His grass­roots sup­port work has helped many com­mu­ni­ties achieve vic­to­ries against pow­er plants, land­fills, incin­er­a­tors, med­ical waste facil­i­ties and oth­er pol­lut­ing industries.

Envi­ron­men­tal Justice

Mike’s activism began while in high school, as a trash incin­er­a­tor was planned for his home coun­ty near Philadel­phia. His work against envi­ron­men­tal racism start­ed two years lat­er when, at the age of 18, he was removed from chair­ing his home town’s Envi­ron­men­tal Advi­so­ry Board for ques­tion­ing a waste com­pa­ny. The com­pa­ny was seek­ing a long-term waste con­tract from his town­ship so they could build a waste facil­i­ty in an African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty in a neigh­bor­ing town — a facil­i­ty that was soon defeat­ed. Since this vic­to­ry, his pas­sion for envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice has led him to focus much of his work on sup­port­ing low-income com­mu­ni­ties and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, and has led to numer­ous vic­to­ries against pro­posed pol­luters in urban and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties through­out Penn­syl­va­nia and beyond.

Through the 1990s, his work focused on expand­ing a state-wide grass­roots envi­ron­men­tal net­work in Penn­syl­va­nia, sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ty oppo­si­tion to land­fills, incin­er­a­tors, gas-fired pow­er plants, pris­ons, high­ways, sewage sludge dump­ing, water flu­o­ri­da­tion, nuclear waste and more.

His accom­plish­ments in his home state of Penn­syl­va­nia include stop­ping numer­ous incin­er­a­tors, help­ing halt a mul­ti-state nuclear waste dump, stop­ping a law man­dat­ing water flu­o­ri­da­tion, stop­ping the nation’s most urban pro­pos­al for a liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas ter­mi­nal, stop­ping the world’s two largest tire incin­er­a­tor pro­pos­als, and stop­ping the nation’s first pro­pos­al for a coal-to-oil refin­ery. See side­bar for more.

In 2003, he warned Har­ris­burg City Coun­cil that their incin­er­a­tor (the most diox­in-pol­lut­ing one in the nation, by far, and a major case of envi­ron­men­tal racism) would put the city into bank­rupt­cy if they bor­rowed the mon­ey need­ed to rebuild it (which they did). Eight years lat­er, the city indeed filed for bankruptcy.

Stu­dent and Democ­ra­cy Activism

Mike’s involve­ment in the stu­dent move­ment runs deep as well, hav­ing been active since 1995 rebuild­ing and sup­port­ing the nation­al Stu­dent Envi­ron­men­tal Action Coali­tion (SEAC), a group unique for its strong demo­c­ra­t­ic, youth-led, social jus­tice-ori­ent­ed take on envi­ron­men­tal­ism. In 1996, he was a found­ing mem­ber of 180: The Move­ment for Democ­ra­cy and Edu­ca­tion, a stu­dent pro-democ­ra­cy/an­ti-cor­po­rate group active in the late 1990s.

In 2004, he was a found­ing mem­ber of Ener­gy Action Coali­tion (EAC), a broad coali­tion of groups work­ing with stu­dents and youth on ener­gy and cli­mate issues through­out the U.S. and Cana­da. Near­ly a decade lat­er, EAC remains the face of the stu­dent cli­mate move­ment and is the host of the Pow­er­Shift con­fer­ences, the largest stu­dent envi­ron­men­tal activist con­fer­ences since SEAC’s era in the ear­ly 1990s.

Mike’s pas­sion for sys­temic change has led him to pro­mote elec­toral reforms to pro­mote democ­ra­cy and fight cor­po­rate pow­er, includ­ing open debates and inde­pen­dent politics. 

Ener­gy Justice

In 1999, Mike coined the term ‘ener­gy jus­tice’ and found a need for a nation­al Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work to sup­port grass­roots activists and get them net­worked with each oth­er on a range of dirty ener­gy and waste issues, as no orga­ni­za­tion was fill­ing that need. The need was par­tic­u­lar­ly obvi­ous as he was a few years into help­ing Penn­syl­va­nia com­mu­ni­ties fight off around 60 pro­posed nat­ur­al gas-fired pow­er plants (of which only 18 were built) and most oth­er states were fac­ing huge num­bers of pro­pos­als as well, but main­stream envi­ron­men­tal groups saw nat­ur­al gas as clean ener­gy (this was years before the aware­ness around frack­ing) and would­n’t pro­vide support.

Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work formed slow­ly, oper­at­ing as a ful­ly vol­un­teer project until 2006. In 2006, the net­work become tru­ly nation­al when cre­at­ing the “No New Coal Plants” net­work, con­nect­ing grass­roots activists in near­ly 40 states to stop the new wave of pro­posed coal-fired pow­er plants. Since the late 1990s, Mike has been a lead­ing crit­ic of bio­mass and bio­fu­els, and was the first to start to doc­u­ment the haz­ards with the full range of bioen­er­gy tech­nolo­gies. While win­ning vic­to­ries against bio­mass incin­er­a­tors since 1998, the anti-bio­mass net­work grew exten­sive­ly after 2006 and brought togeth­er activists in most U.S. states and, on the issue of poul­try waste incin­er­a­tion, on four con­ti­nents. The grass­roots ener­gy against bio­mass led to the for­ma­tion of a strong Ener­gy Jus­tice Plat­form. Mike leads Ener­gy Jus­tice’s work against all sorts of incin­er­a­tion (par­tic­u­lar­ly the burn­ing of trash, tires, wood waste, poul­try waste and land­fill gas), and he works close­ly with the Glob­al Anti-Incin­er­a­tor Alliance (GAIA) as well as many local and region­al for­ma­tions, such as Zero Waste Mary­land’s work against incin­er­a­tors in Mary­land and DC.

Mike’s vision for an online inter­ac­tive pol­lu­tion map­ping project began in 1995 and final­ly became a real­i­ty in 2010, now pro­vid­ing a plat­form for track­ing exist­ing, pro­posed, closed and defeat­ed dirty ener­gy and waste facil­i­ties, the cor­po­ra­tions behind them, and the peo­ple and groups fight­ing them.

In 2008, he was one of the first to earn a “tuition-free law school for activists” schol­ar­ship to the social jus­tice activist-run law school at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, where he earned his J.D. in 2011, sub­se­quent­ly pass­ing the Penn­syl­va­nia bar. Pri­or to law school, he authored the nation’s strongest mer­cury and diox­in air pol­lu­tion ordi­nances and has used these local laws to stop pro­posed pol­luters in small Penn­syl­va­nia towns. Dur­ing and since law school, he has been build­ing a legal tool­box for how to stop pol­luters with local ordi­nances in dif­fer­ent states. In 2013, he got his first law jour­nal arti­cle pub­lished, on the legal his­to­ry of envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice and the strate­gic dif­fer­ence between “equi­ty” and “jus­tice” approaches.

He now splits his time between DC and Penn­syl­va­nia and is cur­rent­ly author­ing a nation­al report on the envi­ron­men­tal racism con­se­quences of trash, sewage sludge and “bio­mass” incinerators.

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PUBLIC SPEAKING / WORKSHOP TOPICS

Con­tact Mike at 215–436-9511 or by email to inquire about rates and logistics.

Gen­er­al Ener­gy & Cli­mate Overviews

1. Ener­gy Injus­tice: How Dirty Ener­gy Impacts Communities
2. False Solu­tions to Cli­mate Change, Part 1: Dirty Tech­nolo­gies Pos­ing as Clean Solutions
3. False Solu­tions to Cli­mate Change, Part 2: Glob­al Warm­ing Pol­i­cy Loopholes
4. Replac­ing all Dirty Pow­er with Clean Ener­gy With­in our Lifetime
5. Peak Every­thing and “Extreme” Ener­gy: Oil, Gas, Coal, Ura­ni­um… (Why We’re in Seri­ous Trouble)
6. Garbage Dumps, Incin­er­a­tors and oth­er Trash Talk

   Tech­nol­o­gy-Spe­cif­ic Ener­gy & Waste Workshops

7. Don’t Nuke the Cli­mate! (Why Nuclear Pow­er is Not a Solu­tion to Glob­al Warming)
8. Bio­mess: How “Bio­mass” and Bio­fu­els Wreck the Envi­ron­ment and Communities
9. Nat­ur­al Gas: Fight­ing the Demand for Frack­ing (Pow­er Plants and LNG Export)
10. Trash Incin­er­a­tion: the Most Expen­sive and Pol­lut­ing Way to Make Ener­gy or Man­age Waste
11. Land­fill Gas-to-Ener­gy: Solu­tion or Prob­lem?
    [Oth­er pre­sen­ta­tions avail­able upon request, includ­ing work­shops spe­cif­ic to cer­tain ener­gy or waste tech­nolo­gies or fuels, includ­ing coal, waste coal, med­ical waste, cement kilns, sewage sludge, tire incin­er­a­tion, poul­try waste incin­er­a­tion and more.]

    Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice, Legal Work­shops & Organizing/Mapping Tools

12. Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice and Envi­ron­men­tal Racism
13. Envi­ron­men­tal (In)Justice: How the Law has Failed to Com­bat Envi­ron­men­tal Racism 
14. Stop­ping Pol­luters with Local Ordinances 
15. Ener­gy Jus­tice Com­mu­ni­ties: Map­ping the Chain of Destruc­tion and Our Move­ment Against It
    

    Com­mu­ni­ty and Stu­dent Orga­niz­ing & Anti-Cor­po­rate Trainings

16. Com­mu­ni­ty Orga­niz­ing: Address­ing Envi­ron­men­tal Threats in Your Community
17. Cam­pus-Com­mu­ni­ty Sol­i­dar­i­ty: How Cam­pus Activists can Sup­port Com­mu­ni­ty Envi­ron­men­tal Groups 
18. Stu­dent Orga­niz­ing 101
19. Expos­ing Cor­po­rate and Mil­i­tary Con­nec­tions to your Campus
20. “Green­ing” Your School
21. Democ­ra­tiz­ing Your School
22. How to Over­throw Cor­po­rate Rule in 5 Not-so-easy Steps

    Health and Envi­ron­men­tal Issues

23. Tox­ic Waste in Your Water: Water Flu­o­ri­da­tion, an Emerg­ing Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Issue
24. Milk Does Nobody Good

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1. Ener­gy Injus­tice: How Dirty Ener­gy Impacts Com­mu­ni­ties — Nuclear pow­er, coal, oil, gas, hydro­elec­tric, bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion, and “alter­na­tive” fuels pro­duc­tion all dam­age the envi­ron­ment and dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect low-income com­mu­ni­ties and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or. Learn about the life-cycle impacts of these dirty pow­er sources and how they affect peo­ple and our environment.
2. False Solu­tions to Cli­mate Change, Part 1: Dirty Tech­nolo­gies Pos­ing as Clean Solu­tions — Every pos­si­ble dirty tech­nol­o­gy is now pos­ing as a solu­tion to cli­mate change, yet sev­er­al are even worse than coal. This work­shop expos­es these false solu­tions, includ­ing nuclear pow­er, “clean coal,” nat­ur­al gas, “bio­mass” and trash incin­er­a­tion, land­fill gas burn­ing, bio­fu­els, biochar, hydro­elec­tric dams, geot­her­mal, “recy­cling” of tox­ic wastes and oth­er crazy schemes.
3. False Solu­tions to Cli­mate Change, Part 2: Glob­al Warm­ing Pol­i­cy Loop­holes — Cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change will not be avoid­ed by the sorts of poli­cies that com­mon­ly pose as solu­tions. Many tox­ic scams, schemes and loop­holes abound in the world of green ener­gy mar­ket­ing, renew­able port­fo­lio stan­dards, car­bon trad­ing, car­bon tax­es & off­sets. Learn how these poli­cies have failed or cre­at­ed new prob­lems for the most vul­ner­a­ble — and how we must reen­vi­sion our orga­niz­ing and pol­i­cy goals to tru­ly tack­le the problem.
4. Replac­ing all Dirty Pow­er with Clean Ener­gy With­in our Life­time — Con­ser­va­tion, effi­cien­cy, wind, solar and ener­gy stor­age can replace near­ly all dirty ener­gy sources with­in 20 years, if our gov­ern­ment were com­mit­ted to doing so. Learn about the poten­tial for these tech­nolo­gies to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the ener­gy sec­tor and replace fos­sil fuels, nuclear pow­er, hydro­elec­tric dams, biomass/waste incin­er­a­tion and oth­er dirty fuels.
5. Peak Every­thing and “Extreme” Ener­gy: Oil, Gas, Coal, Ura­ni­um… (Why We’re in Seri­ous Trou­ble) — The cheap and easy half is already out of the ground. The remain­ing half requires more extreme mea­sures, such as deep­wa­ter drilling, tar sands, frack­ing, under­ground coal gasi­fi­ca­tion and tho­ri­um reac­tors. Oth­er resources are peak­ing as well, includ­ing phos­pho­rous (crit­i­cal for use in agri­cul­ture), met­als and oth­er min­er­als… all lead­ing to peaks in food, ener­gy use and pop­u­la­tion, with dire con­se­quences for a world where pop­u­la­tion and con­sump­tion is growing.
6. Garbage Dumps, Incin­er­a­tors and oth­er Trash Talk — Where does your waste go when you throw it “away?” Where is “away” and who lives there? What hap­pens when you let trash be sent to land­fills or incin­er­a­tors? What are the alter­na­tives? This pre­sen­ta­tion can cov­er many types of waste, includ­ing haz­ardous waste, con­struc­tion & demo­li­tion waste, sewage sludge, med­ical waste, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed soil and ash. What you don’t know can def­i­nite­ly hurt you.
7. Don’t Nuke the Cli­mate! (Why Nuclear Pow­er is Not a Solu­tion to Glob­al Warm­ing) – Nuclear pow­er is being pro­mot­ed as a solu­tion to cli­mate change, yet the nuclear fuel cycle DOES con­tribute to glob­al warm­ing. Nuclear pow­er is also the most expen­sive, most racist and most envi­ron­men­tal­ly dam­ag­ing form of ener­gy we have. Learn about pol­lu­tion from nuclear reac­tors and the nuclear fuel chain, from min­ing to waste dis­pos­al, includ­ing nuclear pow­er’s con­nec­tion to nuclear weapons and militarism.
8. Bio­mess: How “Bio­mass” and Bio­fu­els Wreck the Envi­ron­ment and Com­mu­ni­ties — So-called “bio­mass” incin­er­a­tion and bio­fu­els mas­quer­ade as clean, renew­able ener­gy sources, but are false solu­tions, harm­ing com­mu­ni­ties and the envi­ron­ment. Bio­mass means every­thing from trash to trees, from ani­mal wastes and crops to tires, sewage sludge, land­fill gas and con­struc­tion and demo­li­tion wood waste. Burn­ing these fuels harms the cli­mate (even more than coal) and pol­lutes com­mu­ni­ties, while under­min­ing envi­ron­men­tal­ly-sound meth­ods for man­ag­ing forests, agri­cul­ture and waste. Learn why there are no “green” ways to burn “bio­mass” and how you can join Ener­gy Jus­tice’s nation­al grass­roots anti-bio­mass net­work to stop this grow­ing threat. 
9. Nat­ur­al Gas: Fight­ing the Demand for Frack­ing (Pow­er Plants and LNG Export) — Nat­ur­al gas extrac­tion is wreck­ing our air, land and water. Learn some of the less­er-known details about nat­ur­al gas and frack­ing, includ­ing larg­er-pic­ture mat­ters like “peak gas” pro­duc­tion, how gas is worse than coal for glob­al warm­ing, and the relat­ed bat­tles against frack­ing waste­water treat­ment, liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) ter­mi­nals, gas-fired pow­er plants, pipelines and com­pres­sor stations.
10. Trash Incin­er­a­tion: the Most Expen­sive and Pol­lut­ing Way to Make Ener­gy or Man­age Waste — Trash incin­er­a­tion (includ­ing pyrol­y­sis, gasi­fi­ca­tion and plas­ma arc) is the most expen­sive and pol­lut­ing way to make ener­gy or man­age waste. It’s more pol­lut­ing than coal (even for the cli­mate) and pro­duces 10 times few­er jobs than reuse, recy­cling and com­post­ing. This archa­ic tech­nol­o­gy is com­ing back with a vengeance, dri­ven by mis­guid­ed renew­able ener­gy poli­cies and con­fused politi­cians. One of the world’s most unpop­u­lar tech­nolo­gies, grass­roots activists con­tin­ue to stop these plans while build­ing a new “zero waste” future.
11. Land­fill Gas-to-Ener­gy: Solu­tion or Prob­lem? — Man­ag­ing land­fills for ener­gy pro­duc­tion (to burn land­fill gas for ener­gy) runs counter to the prop­er man­age­ment of land­fills as waste facil­i­ties, caus­ing unnec­es­sary increas­es in pol­lu­tion. Burn­ing land­fill gas for ener­gy mis­man­ages land­fills, is worse for glob­al warm­ing than sim­ply flar­ing the gas and increas­es tox­ic expo­sures to land­fill com­mu­ni­ties. Learn how land­fill gas man­age­ment can be improved so that the tox­ic risks to the com­mu­ni­ty are minimized.
12. Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice and Envi­ron­men­tal Racism — What is envi­ron­men­tal racism? Why DO the most pol­lut­ing indus­tries tend to end up in cer­tain parts of town? Isn’t it just about class? Learn about the real­i­ties of envi­ron­men­tal racism. This work­shop dis­cuss­es the prin­ci­ples of envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice and what is means to be involved in the envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice move­ment. We will explore the dif­fer­ences between NIMBY “not in my back­yard” and NIABY “not in any­one’s back­yard” pol­i­tics, the dif­fer­ence between envi­ron­men­tal “equi­ty” and jus­tice, and how cor­po­rate pro­pa­gan­da sys­tems under­mine envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice through sophis­ti­cat­ed divide and con­quer tactics.
13. Envi­ron­men­tal (In)Justice: How the Law has Failed to Com­bat Envi­ron­men­tal Racism — Envi­ron­men­tal racism is alive and well in the U.S., but now, 30 years after the term was coined, gov­ern­ment efforts to address the prob­lem have hijacked the envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice move­ment while the Supreme Court has thrown out hopes of address­ing these injus­tices through civ­il rights laws in the courts. Learn about the his­to­ry of this effort, and why the future of envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice pol­i­cy is not through envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice legal channels.
14. Stop­ping Pol­luters with Local Ordi­nances — At least half of the states allow local gov­ern­ments to pass air or waste laws stricter than state and fed­er­al law. Mak­ing use of these rights can offer grass­roots groups a cheap and effec­tive way to stop pro­posed pol­lut­ing indus­tries and to clean up or close exist­ing ones, with­out going through the cost­ly (and often unsuc­cess­ful) path of state reg­u­la­to­ry appeals. Learn what is pos­si­ble in your state and how we can col­lab­o­rate to draft ordi­nances to estab­lish strict new envi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy from the ground up.
15. Ener­gy Jus­tice Com­mu­ni­ties: Map­ping the Chain of Destruc­tion and Our Move­ment Against It — Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work has been build­ing an ambi­tious online map­ping and data­base project, track­ing exist­ing, pro­posed, closed and defeat­ed dirty ener­gy and waste facil­i­ties of many types, the cor­po­ra­tions behind them, and the peo­ple and groups fight­ing them. This is an orga­niz­ing and net­work­ing tool that some grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty groups are start­ing to use to share doc­u­ments, research the indus­try and to find and con­nect with each oth­er. Learn about this tool (avail­able at http://www.ejmap.org/map/), and our envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice map­ping and analy­sis tools (Jus­ticeMap and Jus­ticeMap API) and how you and your group can make use of it.
16. Com­mu­ni­ty Orga­niz­ing: Address­ing Envi­ron­men­tal Threats in Your Com­mu­ni­ty — Want to pro­tect your com­mu­ni­ty from some pol­lut­ing indus­try or oth­er nox­ious devel­op­ment? No mat­ter where you live, there’s a good chance that you’re not that far from a land­fill, incin­er­a­tor, tox­ic waste site, pow­er plant or oth­er pol­lut­ing indus­try (or pro­pos­als for such). Learn how to research and address these envi­ron­men­tal threats. Many com­mu­ni­ty groups have suc­ceed­ed in fight­ing off envi­ron­men­tal­ly-dam­ag­ing devel­op­ment, but it’s noth­ing like what you see in movies. Learn what works for com­mu­ni­ties and how to avoid pit­falls that cause groups to lose. Learn how to win with­out hav­ing to rely on expen­sive lawyers. We can help you with strat­e­gy devel­op­ment, group-build­ing and much more.
17. Cam­pus-Com­mu­ni­ty Sol­i­dar­i­ty: How Cam­pus Activists can Sup­port Com­mu­ni­ty Envi­ron­men­tal Groups — Com­mu­ni­ties all over are threat­ened with exist­ing or pro­posed dirty ener­gy and waste facil­i­ties. Stu­dents can do a lot to help impact­ed com­mu­ni­ties fight off these pol­luters. Learn how to iden­ti­fy threat­ened com­mu­ni­ties in your region, how to approach them and how to work in sol­i­dar­i­ty to move their strug­gles to victory.
18. Stu­dent Orga­niz­ing 101 — Many stu­dent orga­ni­za­tions have a hard time main­tain­ing an effec­tive orga­ni­za­tion, not to men­tion long-term, strate­gi­cal­ly orga­nized cam­paigns. This work­shop will teach you how to get and keep mem­bers, break down apa­thy, win effec­tive cam­paigns, build stu­dent pow­er and more.

Learn about:

1. Pick­ing an Issue: Ser­vice Projects vs. Issue Campaigns
2. Dis­man­tling apathy
3. Deal­ing with cliques
4. Fix­ing lame groups
5. Demo­c­ra­t­ic decision-making
6. Recruit­ing and retain­ing members
7. Effec­tive meetings
8. Strat­e­gy charts / pow­er mapping
9. Who REALLY runs your school?
10. Being vis­i­ble
11. Dis-Ori­en­ta­tion Guides
12. Tak­ing over stu­dent government
13. Effec­tive net­work­ing and coali­tion build­ing, on- and off-campus
14. Mak­ing sure your group sur­vives after you graduate

As there are many com­po­nents to this pre­sen­ta­tion, it works best as an extend­ed orga­niz­ing work­shop cov­er­ing at least 3–4 hours. Less-detailed 1–2 hour pre­sen­ta­tions can be made, but would only cov­er parts of the mate­r­i­al. Try bring­ing lead­ers of var­i­ous groups togeth­er for this workshop.

• Expos­ing Cor­po­rate and Mil­i­tary Con­nec­tions to your Campus

The work­shop explains the details on how to research the fol­low­ing types of corporate/military con­nec­tions to schools:

1. Invest­ments
2. Con­tracts for ser­vices and prod­ucts the school buys 
3. Waste Con­tracts
4. Research Grants
5. Stu­dents as Products
6. Cam­pus Gov­er­nance (cor­po­rate ties to trustees…)

Learn how to “green” and de-cor­po­ra­tize your school! This work­shop can also include a hands-on research trip to offices on cam­pus where files on these cor­po­rate ties exist, help­ing you obtain some of this hard-to-get infor­ma­tion on your school.

• “Green­ing” Your School

Schools are insti­tu­tions which cre­ate major envi­ron­men­tal and social impacts when they buy every­thing from food and paper to light bulbs and cloth­ing. This pur­chas­ing pow­er can be redi­rect­ed to sup­port­ing prod­ucts which are more social­ly responsible.

• Democ­ra­tiz­ing Your School

Most col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties are run by cor­po­rate busi­ness­peo­ple and polit­i­cal appointees rather than those who have the most inter­est in the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem. Learn how to fight for fun­da­men­tal changes to democ­ra­tize schools, giv­ing more pow­er to stu­dents, fac­ul­ty and staff.

• How to Over­throw Cor­po­rate Rule in 5 Not-so-easy Steps

Cor­po­ra­tions run our gov­ern­ment, our media, our schools and our­selves. Cor­po­ra­tions have more rights than cit­i­zens, but it has­n’t always been this way. This work­shop out­lines spe­cif­ic meth­ods to democ­ra­tize and de-cor­po­ra­tize our society.

• Tox­ic Waste in Your Water: Water Flu­o­ri­da­tion, an Emerg­ing Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Issue

Haz­ardous waste from the phos­phate min­ing indus­try has long been dumped in drink­ing water sup­plies under the guise of help­ing peo­ple’s teeth with water flu­o­ri­da­tion. In fact, flu­o­ri­da­tion does not reduce tooth decay, but does con­tribute to a wide range of health prob­lems, from dis­col­ored teeth to bone can­cer to brit­tle bones and learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. Fed­er­al agen­cies now admit that peo­ple have been over­dosed with it for the past 60 years that the prac­tice has gone on. Learn about flu­o­ride’s effects on the brain, bones and oth­er parts of the body and what we can do to reverse the use of peo­ple as an indus­tri­al dump­ing ground.

• Milk Does Nobody Good

Milk does­n’t pre­vent osteo­poro­sis, it caus­es it. Milk also caus­es can­cers and oth­er health prob­lems. Along with meat, it is the vehi­cle for expo­sure to over 90% of your expo­sure to some of the most tox­ic chem­i­cals known: diox­ins and furans. Dairy prod­ucts pro­vide increased expo­sure to tox­ic pes­ti­cides, can­cer-caus­ing growth hor­mones and antibi­otics residues. Learn the truth about milk and dairy prod­ucts and how to live with­out them. Learn about:

• Health prob­lems linked with milk
• Milk, pro­tein and osteoporosis
• Chem­i­cal and radioac­tive pollutants
• Bovine Growth Hor­mone, IGF‑1 & Cancer
• Ani­mal cru­el­ty issues & the veal connection
• How to live with­out cow secretions
• VEG­e­tar­i­AN­ism, meat pro­duc­tion, food safety