Sunday, March 2, 2025

March newsletter

 

MARCH 10 LUNCH AND LEARN - Sustainable Agriculture with Jason Cavadini, UW Extension, 12:30 p.m. ONLINE Register: tinyurl.com/WISC-310Ag     What’s the alternative to factory farms? The Wisconsin Chapter Water Team wants to know! Jason Cavadini, the UW-Extension Grazing Outreach Specialist, will take about grazing and sustainable agriculture and answer our questions on Monday, March 10 at 12:30 p.m. Zoom in, bring your own lunch, and any questions you may have! Visit tinyurl.com/WISC-310A or call 608-315-2693.

MARCH 12 KNOWLES-NELSON LOBBY DAY IN MADISON     Knowles-Nelson Lobby Day is an advocacy, networking, and educational event for all those who value Wisconsin’s land, water, wildlife, and way of life, hosted by Team Knowles-Nelson. Join us in Madison on March 12, 2025 to advocate for the reauthorization of the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program. We’ll share success stories with legislators and demonstrate why its continued funding is essential for preserving Wisconsin’s outdoor legacy. Lobby Day will kick off at the Wisconsin Masonic Center with a morning of advocacy programming to prepare you for meetings with your legislators. We’ll provide materials and key talking points about the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program. Then, you’ll head to the Capitol for pre-scheduled meetings with legislators and their staff. As meetings wrap up, we’ll reconvene with an informal networking session to debrief and connect with fellow advocates. All are welcome and encouraged to participate in this important day for our state’s future. Together, we will make a difference in shaping conservation policy. Lealrn more at tinyurl.com/WISC-312-LobbyDay

MARCH 4 THE BIG SHARE      On March 3 and 4, the Sierra Club Foundation, fiscal sponsor for the Wisconsin Chapter, will join nearly 70 other non-profits to spread the word and raise critical funds for the amazing work being done. For this event, the Sierra Club will highlight work to shut down the dangerous Line 5 pipeline. Tune in to the featured segment airing  at 3 p.m. on March 4 during the Big Share Live broadcast and learn why shutting down Line 5 is so important. Watch via the Big Share website at https://www.thebigshare.org. To support the campaign, go to https://www.thebigshare.org/organizations/sierra-club-foundation-wisconsin-chapter. Your participation will enable the Chapter to continue its mission of protecting Wisconsin’s water, land, and wildlife. Your tax-deductible donation that will drive Chapter efforts forward across Wisconsin.

MARCH 21 CLIMATE ACTION HOUR     Sierra Club's Monthly Action Hours are a place for concerned and overwhelmed people to make sense of what is happening and take meaningful action together. Join us for our next Coulee Region Climate Action gathering on March 21 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Location TBD! RSVP here (appreciated but not required) for more details: tinyurl.com/CRSC-CAH25

FEBRUARY CLIMATE ACTION HOUR     by Chris Miller, CRSC Board member What does a 92-year-old and a twenty something year old have in common?  Well, as this gathering showed the answer is a fierce defense and love of our environment. Coulee Region Sierra Club is offering a new way to get involved during these dire times of political and social disruption…these times of aggression and disrespect. 

At our gathering, we partnered with the National Sierra Club which is offering Monthly Action Hours, online gatherings for concerned (and busy) people to make sense of what is being thrown at us. The hour provides the structure and opportunity to take meaningful actions together. Our club invited its local members to listen to the national organization’s recording of this hour. As we gathered, we listened to information about the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act). Although the IRA has not been in the news of late, the IRA is a huge win for the climate and for you and me. The IRA puts us on a path to cutting climate pollution 40 percent by 2030 while creating nine million jobs!! It has granted billions of dollars to state and local  communities for clean energy infrastructure and manufacturing, fighting climate pollution, and helping families save money on their energy bills. 

In our own area, Dairyland Power was the first rural electric cooperative to be awarded monies from the IRA under the Empowering Rural America Program and was awarded $579 million. This money is specifically designated for developing solar and wind energy. With this program they will be able to decrease carbon emissions by 70% by 2031! And in the meantime, this development will allow them to keep consumer rates down. It will also allow new jobs to be created in our community as manufacturers and data centers will be looking for affordable rates and sustainable power. Imagine all of this being cut…it will create suffering and havoc. 

It was with this kind of information and the encouragement of each other that we then took action and called our representatives in the house and the senate. We joined our phone calls to the 4,000 phone calls that were taken during the original National Hour. We were set on an instructive path to post on social media or send out emails on our own. For all of these we were provided helpful scripts. The highlight was Sam at age 92 making calls to his representative and senator…certainly an inspiration for us all.

We were a small yet powerful group. We all came for different reasons. The common thread was creation of a space of sharing, supporting, educating, and inspiring each other. One of the first pieces of advice I received after the election was to “find your herd.”There is safety and influential power in numbers. On this night, the energy felt alive and electric. We joined our voices together in support of each other…in recognition of each other’s contributions…in strengthening the common shared vision of each other. On this night, I felt that I had found “my herd.”We invite you to stay tuned to the development of ongoing Action Hours. 

Find scripts you can use to call your representatives and senators at these links where you can also view the hour on your own or accessing the slides. Watch the recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUea-cITSKs. View the slides at https://sc.org/FebActionSlides. Take the actions here: https://sc.org/FebWorksheet Alone we can feel lonely and powerless…together we stand connected and strong. Come join us next time …the planet needs you…we need each other.

Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will
take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal. To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present
inhabitable. - This excerpt from Rebecca Solnit’s book, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power, was part of the Action Hour program.

MEET THE BOARD - FLO SANDOK      Flo Sandok started life in New York but moved to the Midwest for school. An artist, art historian, and painter, Flo ended up in Rochester, Minnesota where she became a community leader and organizer for environmental causes. In addition to a local environmental group, Flo helped to found a film fest, a whole Earth auction for the arts, and an annual neighborhood picnic (that's still going strong). She was also instrumental in passing state legislation to require schools to notify the community about school pesticide use, securing a grant for a pesticide-free soccer field, and educating the community about non-toxic parkland maintenance.

A decades-long Sierra Club member, Flo now lives with her partner on a farm in the Viroqua area, and her passion for protecting our environment is still strong. She's a member of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, the Crawford Stewardship Project, and Viroqua Plastic Free. In addition, she's active in work to protect wolves and the Boundary Waters and to stop CAFOs and line 5 pipeline development. 

Over the years, she's worked to avoid and prevent burnout in groups working on big, important, often difficult issues. She recommends groups make time to get to know each other and  clarify group goals, resources, and limits to avoid feeling overwhelmed. Food, conversation, humor, music, and regular reminders that, “We have the power,” will help keep groups together, she says. She recommends learning about the Movement Action Plan model for non-violent social movements developed by U.S. social change activist Bill Moyers to help groups keep going even when things seem hopeless. 

In her personal life, a nearly perfect 50 year record of annual trips to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness helps keep her focused and grounded in what's important.
Flo's lived experience proves the Goethe quote, “At the moment of commitment, the entire universe conspires to assist you,” and that understanding helps her continue to organize, cooperate, educate, lead, and believe that our actions matter and make a positive difference.

52 WEEKS TO PLASTIC FREE     The grassroots group Viroqua Plastic Free posted a week by week list of suggestions to reduce and eliminate plastics in our lives. https://www.viroquaplasticfree.org/post/52-weeks-to-plastic-free Check out the suggestions for individuals, then share them and encourage your school or workplace to adopt them. 

MORE MARCH EVENTS

VOTE APRIL 1     Voting in spring elections is notoriously light, but club members should not sit this one out. For more information, see https://conservationvoters.org and to check your voter registration status, visit myvote.wi.gov.


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