Category: Past Events

What: Cleo Woelfle-Erskine gives a public talk on his new book: Creating Rain Gardens

Where:  L.A Eco-Village (directions)

When:  Friday, September 14, 2012 at 7:30 pm

Learn how to collect rain to reuse in your front or backyard, and help keep pollutants out of the L.A. River and the ocean in the process. Water conservation expert Cleo Woelfle-Erskine will talk about his new book, Creating Rain Gardens, covering everything from rain barrels to simple living roofs, permeable patios, and other low-tech affordable ways to save water in the garden. From Puget Sound to the Kansas prairie to the Chesapeake bay, communities are installing thousands of rain gardens and rain cisterns as part of watershed restoration projects. These integrated urban waterscapes can be an alternative expanding dams, desalination plants, and sewer systems. Creating Rain Gardens walks gardeners through the process of building a rain garden, with step-by-step instructions for designing and building swales, French drains, rain gardens, and ephemeral ponds—the building blocks of rain-harvesting gardens. From soil preparation, planting, troubleshooting, and maintenance, to selecting palettes of water-loving plants that provide all-season interest and a habitat for wildlife, Creating Rain Gardens covers everything a gardener needs to create a beautiful rain garden at home. Copies of the book will be available to purchase.

 

About Cleo

Cleo Woelfle-Erskine is a hydrologist, educator, and scholar of water. He co-founded the Greywater Guerrillas, and has led dozen of community-based workshops on rainwater harvesting and greywater reuse across North America. His writing on dam remova environmental justice, and urban gardening has appeared in High Country News and Yes, among other magazines, and in the anthologies Urban Wilds and Dam Nation. An avid gardener, Cleo is also pursuing a PhD in the Energy and Resources group at UC Berkeley where he is investigating how rainwater harvesting affects streamflow.

Sponsored by Urban Soil/Tierra Urbana limited equity housing co-op, the Beverly-Vermont
Community Land Trust and CRSP Institute for Urban Ecovillages.

What: Art of Community Conference in Occidental CA

Where: Occidental, CA

When: September 21 thru 23, 2012

More details here:  http://www.artofcmty.com/
This year’s theme is People, Place, and Purpose, representing three intertwining threads that will be woven throughout program content, categorized as follows:

• PEOPLE: Group process and dynamics, cooperative skill building, decision making models, social sustainability.

• PLACE: Ecological sustainability and local economies, understanding of and connection to our physical environment, nuts-n-bolts of cooperative ownership of buildings/land, and forming/joining intentional communities/cooperative networks where you live.

• PURPOSE: Focused networking sessions, regional organizing, creating community with intention, and the Communities Movement.

The weekend program includes a wide variety of interactive workshops and inspiring presentations by well known facilitators from the Fellowship for Intentional Community as well as the Bay Area and beyond.

If you live in, would like to live in, are exploring intentional communities and ecovillages, or just want to have fun, this event was made for you.  Don’t miss it.

 

Spread the word.  CRSP Institute for Urban Ecovillages is coordinating ridesharing, so
let us know if you plan to attend:  crsp@igc.org or 213/738-1254”

What: Rampart Village Neighborhood Council Board Election.

Where:  see the boundary map here: http://rvnc.org/RVNCmap.pdf 

When: October 6, 2012

More information at: http://rvnc.org/

If you live or work in the LAEV Neighborhood Council district, please plan to vote on Sat. Oct 6, 2012. Watch for details.
See RVNC boundary map here: http://rvnc.org/RVNCmap.pdf

What: Presentation of the film This Way Out:  a step by step guide to starting a worker co-op, followed by a series of discussions with Dr. Liz Rider

Where: L.A Eco-Village (directions)

When:   December 2, 2012 from 9am to 12:30 pm and continues for two more sessions as noted below  Attend one or several.

Veggie potluck breakfast at 9am.  Session starts at 9:30 am

#4 Sun 12/2 from 9am to 12:30 pm on Planning and Funding
#5 Sun 12/9 from 9am to 12:30 pm
#6 Sun 1/6/13 from 9am to 12:30 pm

*Pre-requisite for Sessions #4 thru #6:
You must have seen the film in sessions #1-3 or have a basic understanding of co-ops and their
principles and the basic types of worker co-ops.

For resources on worker co-ops, see: http://usworker.coop/about/history/regional and
http://www.ncba.coop/ncba/about-co-ops/co-op-types/worker-cooperatives

Please let us know if you are planning to attend: crsp@igc.org or phone 213/738-1254.

Free events but donations requested.

Watch the film trailer:

This Way Out is…Out! from MightySmall Films on Vimeo.

About Dr Lisabeth Ryder:

Dr Lisabeth Ryder is a life-long social justice and human rights activist. While earning her doctorate at UCLA, she worked with Professor Leo Kuper in International Alert Against Genocide and Mass Killing to educate about genocide, In 1991, she was one of the 12 founding members of the East Timor Action Network that later helped bring about the plebiscite in East Timor making it the world’s newest nation. She was an organizer against the racist initiatives in California, with Coalition ‘94 against Proposition 187 and with Metropolitan Alliance against Proposition 209. Working for organized labor for two decades, Dr Ryder has provided support for labor organizing campaigns across the country as a staff member of SEIU and AFSCME.

Starting in the 1970’s she participated the Free Venice Conspiracy, an early food cooperative in Venice California, she has worked to develop cooperatives such as the Wee Bruins child care cooperative at UCLA student housing. She sees Worker Cooperatives as the game changer in taking back our economy of predatory capitalism, and has worked with the Democratic Socialists of America and the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives grow the worker cooperative community. She serves as Co-Chair of the Labor Council of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and program coordinatot of cooperative development as Occupy Jobs: http://www.occupyjobs.org

Sponsored by Urban Soil/Tierra Urbana limited equity housing co-op, the Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust and CRSP Institute for Urban Ecovillages in association with Occupy Jobs