Last week, KFTC members and staff joined 5 other community and faith-based grassroots organizations from across the South for the 2011 Community Media Organizing Project annual training in Nashville, TN.  This year's training focused on youth engagement and leadership development.  Workshops ranged from language justice and creating multi-cultural spaces to online community mapping and video blogging.  Skills were built around identifying and supporting spokespeople, tapping into social media outlets, creating your own media outlets, developing relationships with media contacts, and countless others. Participants even got to preview an upcoming short film on youth leadership and one young woman's story, Maria Full of Hope.

This past weekend, more than 100 people attended the Growing Appalachia conference at the Jenny Wiley State Park in Prestonsburg. More than a dozen counties were represented among the presenters and attendees, with the majority of folks coming from eastern Kentucky. Growing Appalachia was a full day of workshops and conversations about small-scale farming, sustainable forestry, and clean energy solutions that can benefit the land and people in eastern Kentucky. Workshops ranged from home weatherization, to horse-drawn logging, to growing your own edible mushrooms, to how to get your farm certified organic. 

The workshop was hosted by the Floyd County Chapter of KFTC and many members participated in the planning and staffing of the event. Members were excited that this year's attendance had doubled from the first conference last year.

Throughout the day, several people shared their experience of local success. "Solar works here.  We're living proof of it," Elijah Collett from Leslie County shared during the workshop about solar energy solutions. Leading up to the conference, Elijah and his wife Guylaine were featured in the Lexington Herald Leader. You can read the article on how they power their mobile home in Leslie County with solar energy here.

People had a lot of great ideas about moving this work forward including more workshops and ways to work together to make some of these ideas happen.

Watch a slideshow of the day below:

KFTC Members Beverly May, of Floyd County, and Kat Goodman, of Jefferson County, discussed energy production in Kentucky as a health justice issue at a University of Louisville conference focused on Health Equity this past weekend.

They presented the facts about health impacts of coal at each step in its cycle - mining, processing, transport, burning and waste disposal - and told their own personal stories about paying the true costs of coal every day. They presented data showing that each of these coal cycle steps occurs both in large volumes and in mainly in high poverty counties or neighborhoods in Kentucky.

Beverly May, a native of Eastern Kentucky and a nurse practitioner in the area, presented the health impacts associated with mountaintop removal valley fill practices, coal processing and exposure to the resulting slurry, and transport of coal throughout Kentucky's communities.

Kat Goodman, who grew up in the shadow of the R.D. Green power plant and coal ash dumps outside of Henderson, KY, presented the health impacts associated with coal combustion and exposure to coal ash and discussed her own personal health struggles.

Both presenters linked chronic health problems that have been linked to exposure to pollutants from mining and burning coal, such as cancer, heart disease, asthma and chonic obstructive pulmonary disease, to the future of economic development in Kentucky. Individuals suffering from conditions that require uninterrupted health insurance are not likely or able to leave their jobs to start small businesses. And yet, small business development is exactly what it's going to take to grow Kentucky's economy and, in Eastern Kentucky, transition away from coal.

Kat concluded with the point that these health impacts being thrust onto communities already impoverished is not a coincidence and certainly makes energy production in Kentucky an issue of health justice.

The audience was engaged and attentive. Good outcomes are already clear - KFTC has been invited to do the presentation at the University of Louisville medical school in December and attending students will explore starting a student chapter on campus.

Download Bev and Kat's presentation here. Please contact nancy@kftc.org if you are interested in doing this presentation to an audience or if you have any questions about the citations or information in the presentation.

Visit www.appalachiarising.org for live coverage of today's events in Washington!

The Appalachia Rising Day of Action is today. Thousands have gathered to call for an end to the devastating practice of mountaintop removal mining. From the Appalachia Rising website:

"Mountaintop removal has already destroyed over 500 of the world's oldest mountains and more than 2,000 miles of streams, and has contaminated our nation's waters. Together, we will bring Appalachia's cry to our nation's capital: We must end mountaintop removal and transform the economies of Appalachia away from destructive mining practices and toward clean-energy jobs and a sustainable and healthy future."

The day of action follows a 2-day conference held in D.C. over the weekend.

Are you an electrician, plumber, HVAC contractor or solar installer looking to learn more about energy efficiency in homes and businesses? 

The Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED) will offer a free "lunch and learn" on Thursday, September 2 in Paintsville. Water heating and space heating experts will share the latest in energy efficiency for both residential and commercial applications.

Location:

Time, Date:

10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Thursday, September 2, 2010

Topics:

• Heat pump technology
• Geo-exchange waste heat recovery
• Gas condensing technology
• Tankless water heating systems for water and hydronic space heating applications
• Solar water heating systems

Speakers:

United States Social Forum from a New Power Leader Perspective!

Wow! This forum was truly a great experience for me. I considered it to be a buffet of all the social issues of the world. I felt like a kid in the candy store for the first time. Attending all of the sessions is what I wanted to do, but of course I could only choose one the first day.  Both my number one and two choices for workshops ended up being canceled. My cluster member Wanda Jefferson and I found the USSF to be an adventure.

We went to M. I. E [Missing in Education].  This forum involved five people telling their perspectives on education in America. We had one person who spoke on the ills of K-12. There were two people telling about the rising cost of college education. They were trying to administration to drop some of the fees. Another person spoke on how American children are so behind in education compared to most of the other industrial nations.  At last the ending the forum talk about how we could change our schools. This led me on a quest to another education forum which was very exciting.

The next education forum was IDEAL institute for Democratic Education in America.  In this forum, children being active with their own education and youth led groups. These groups would be peer-peer teaching. This was a welcomed surprise finding out how they were allowing children to participate in their own education. The most exciting thing was they had opportunities for you to be a mentor in your own hometown. The mentoring program was people being able to go to the schools and helping the children make the rules which included how they wanted to receive their education. The second session of this forum was the next day and lasted from 1-5 pm. In this forum, all styles of teaching were discussed. This was very informative and great to be a part of.  

The most relaxing part of the USSF was participating in the Yoga Transformation session.  We did yoga, listened to music on mats, and just learned how to have a calming effect on ourselves.  I was not able to be a part of the meditation forum. If anyone was able to attend, please let me know what they thought about it. Another part of the forum was the maternal health. In this session, the question was posed what is the most dangerous risk for American Mothers.  As we all know, healthcare is a big issue for everyone.  The biggest danger for maternal health in America is not having the ability of prenatal care. Yet, we live in the richest nation in the world.

To my surprise, the Food Sovereignty forum was quite interesting.  Urban farming was talked about. Topics included growing your own vegetables and using less pesticide.  I enjoyed this talk because I have been trying to grow my own vegetables organically.  The main area we focused on was in Detroit. While discussing urban farming, a gentleman stood up and let everyone know the farming was just a way of letting the big banks buy large plots of land in the Detroit area.  He said that he could not buy the lot next to his house and do urban farming. This is called “minimizing Detroit”.  Most of us were unaware of what minimizing meant.  A lady on the panel explained that it was called, at one time, urban renewal or “get rid of the negroes”.  This caused uproar amongst the participants in the forum.  The gentleman spoke again saying that most African-Americans, in Detroit, are losing their properties. This Urban farming is just used as a way to take away their land.  It seems to me that while the urban cities of America are mostly African-American, now the big banks want to reinvest in the inner-city even though they do not like the residents. Additionally, I heard about this at the 2007 Social Forum in Atlanta, but by another name, Gentrification. In my opinion, this is just the same game, but only the name is changed.  How can this be stopped?  This is a passion of mine that I would like to continue to work on. This is an issue that definitely needs to be brought up in the social circles of Louisville and the state of Kentucky.

Overall, I found Detroit very interesting. I appreciate being able to travel with Kentuckians For The Commonwealth and Kentucky Social Forum. It gave me a chance to learn, network and connect with members and allies.

I hope members who were unable to join us in Detroit, MI will come hear all about it at the upcoming report back held at the office of Women In Transition. Details are below.

Kentucky Road to Detroit USSF Debrief & Potluck with W.I.T July 21st (6p-8p)

    219 West Ormsby Avenue Louisville, KY 40203-2819 - (502) 636-0160

*Check out this link for USSF posters www.ussf2010.org/materials

Shirley Moorman

KFTC members have finished their first day of the U.S. Social Forum, taking part in the opening ceremonies and the big march to Cobo Hall.  Our folks have registered and are getting some much-needed rest before jumping into a day packed with workshops tomorrow. 

Here are some pictures from Day 1

At 1am last night, the first KFTC members boarded buses that would take them across the country, picking up activists to bring them to the US Social Forum in Detroit.  Twelve hours later, we have arrived!

For the rest of the week, we'll meet with grassroots organizers and leaders from across the country and beyond to learn from one-another in a wide range of workshops, actions, and other events.

KFTC members will help to facilitate workshops such as "The Struggle for Justice in the Coal fields of Appalachia and Colombia," "A discussion of the life and example of Anne Braden, and "Appalachian Economy in Transition."

Later tonight is the opening ceremony and march.  Check back for pictures of that and other updates throughout the week.

The Governor's Conference on Energy and the Environment will take place at the Lexington Convention Center on Wednesday, September 30th and Thursday, October 1st.  There is a charge for attending, but scholarships are still available (see the link below). 

According to the information page, this year's agenda will address the following topics:

• How do we achieve energy security in a carbon-constrained world?
• How do we develop our biomass resources?
• What opportunities do we have to increase our renewable energy portfolio?
• How can smart grid technologies help us achieve our energy efficiency objectives?
• How are actions at the federal level going to affect Kentucky's energy landscape?

The agenda includes a session presented by state and federal elected officials about Kentucky's energy landscape and a session that will discuss "new opportunities" in that landscape for our state.  The decisions our state must make around questions of energy and the environment at this critical moment will steer the use of taxpayer money well into the future. 

The questions covered on the agenda point to even bigger questions for KFTC. What do we want Kentucky's energy landscape to look like in the coming years?  What direction will we head as a state in terms of both energy reliance and our economic future?  How can we facilitate a clean, sustainable, just transition in our communities?  This conference is a chance to hear the answers the Governor and policymakers are offering to these important questions and to voice your feedback about those suggestions.

  Click here to link to the state information page about the conference, which includes registration and scholarship information.

There are a lot of challenges to running and winning in Easten Kentucky. 

But is all hope lost? 

Heck no!

               - Mike Dixon

In partnership with Wellstone Action, KFTC organized a Candidate and Campaign training this past weekend in Hindman with 30 participants.  The focus was overwhelmingly on running for office in Eastern Kentucky, but some members from other parts of the state came as well.

The goal was to encourage people to run for office or to help their friends run by providing a top-notch campaign training focusing on campaign planning and budgeting, telling your story, grassroots voter contact, fundraising, base-building, stump speeches, developing a winning message and more.

"KFTC nationally is held up as a kick-ass gold standard of community organizing," said Ben Goldfarb, Director of Training Programs for Wellston Action.  "I'm a little nervous to be training you all, but I think it will be great."

Local members with experience in Eastern KY races joined us to add what they've learned locally to the Wellstone model of running for office including Mike Dixon (mayor of Blackey), Bennie Massey (Lynch City Council), Carl Shoupe, (Benham City Council) and Randy Wilson (recent candidate for his Jackson Rural Electric Co-op).

"A big part of running is getting out there and talking to your neighbors, getting to know them, and talking about issues that they care about.  A lot of us are doing that anyway and we should be doing it even more."

This is the fourth time Wellstone Action has visited Kentucky and KFTC members have participated in each of the trainings.  We're considering another training if the Voting Rights constitutional amendment gets on the ballot next year. 

We're trying to schedule a smaller candidate training based on what we learned this weekend, tentatively in October in Lexington to replicate pieces of this training.  We'll put it on the KFTC Calendar as soon as we settle on a date and location.