And the Winners Are...

Omar Freilla, director and founder of the Green Worker Cooperatives and former program director at Sustainable South Bronx, is the recipient of the first Jane Jacobs Medal for New Ideas and Activism. The Rockefeller Foundation established the award to honor two individuals whose creative vision for the urban environment has contributed to the vibrancy of New York City. This year, Barry Benepe, co-founder of Greenmarket, the largest U.S. farmer’s market program, was honored with Omar. The Rockefeller Foundation’s relationship with Jane Jacobs dates back to the 1950’s when it awarded her an $18,000 grant to research and write The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

A South Bronx native, Omar worked as the transportation coordinator for the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, where he directed a campaign to promote greater use of cleaner alternative fuels. At SSB, he managed a campaign to convert the Sheridan Expressway, an underused 1.5-mile highway in the South Bronx into a park.

Green Worker Cooperatives is working to establish a recycling and reuse program estimated to turn 13,000 tons of construction waste, which ends up in Bronx transfer stations each year, into “green collar” jobs for local residents.

Winona LaDuke, founder and director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project in Minnesota, was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Winona has been involved in the struggle to recover lands promised to the Ojibwe in an 1867 treaty with the United States. She has helped the Ojibew buy back thousands of acres of ancestral land. The National Women’s Hall of Fame was created in 1969 to honor the contributions of American women.

Winona’s article, Ricekeepers: A Struggle to Protect Biodiversity and a Native American Way of Life, was published in the July/August edition of Orion Magazine.

As fall temperatures change on the White Earth Reservation and the mist lifts off the lakes, the Ojibwe take to the waters. Two people to a canoe, one poles through the thick rice beds, pushing the canoe forward, while the other, sitting toward the front of the boat, uses two long sticks to gently bend the rice and knock the seeds into the canoe. The sounds of manoominike, the wild rice harvest, are the gliding of the boat through the water and across shafts of rice, the soft swish of the rice bending, the raining of the rice into the canoe. They are soothing sounds, reminding my people of the continuity between the generations. We have been harvesting rice here for centuries.

Added Value received the 2007 Wave of the Future Award from the Glenwood Center. Added Value promotes the sustainable development of Redhook, Brooklyn by engaging youth in after school programs, summer school, job training, nutritional classes, food security efforts and activities on a 2.75-acre local urban farm. The awards highlight creative work across the country to increase community access to fresh, healthy food, while creating the next generation of consumers who will understand the importance of nutritious food and help forge stronger connections between city consumers and rural farmers.

Laurel Kearns, former Noyes Board member and Associate Professor of Sociology of Religion and Environmental Studies at Drew University, was honored by GreenFaith, New Jersey’s interfaith coalition for the environment. Laurel's new book, Ecospirit, is now available in paperback.

Kizzy Charles-Guzman (center left), environmental policy coordinator, at West Harlem Environmental Action was selected as one of the “Rising Stars: 40 Under 40 – the Next Generation of Political Leaders in New York” by City Hall, a monthly paper covering politics in New York City. 

At WEACT, Kizzy works on key city- and state-level environmental health, justice and policy campaigns. She regularly participates in policy-setting forums and government relations activities, as well as city and statewide taskforces and other collaborative initiatives and projects.

Miguel Santistevan, a doctoral student at the University of New Mexico who has directed radio and youth programming for the Sembrando Semillas Acequia Youth Project of the New Mexico Acequia Association, was honored as a recipient of the University’s De Colores Leadership Award, given to graduate students who demonstrate exemplary community service and scholarship.

Grantee Stories

Congratulations to the DataCenter! The Oakland-based organization celebrated its 30th anniversary on October 25th with an evening of Jubilation & Storytelling. Founded in 1977 as an activist library and information center focused on Central American issues, the Center now focuses on supporting participatory research and transferring research skills to social justice activists. Recent projects and reports developed in collaboration with activists in the field explore a range of issues, including mountaintop removal coal mining, immigrant rights, worker rights, free trade and criminal justice reform.

Getting the Lead Out

Environmental Health Coalition and its Tijuana affiliate, the Colectivo Chilpancingo Pro Justicia Ambiental, recently celebrated the start of the final cleanup of the U.S.-owned Metales y Derivados abandoned lead smelter. “We are very proud this historic cleanup has finally begun. We have struggled for over a decade to find a solution to this terrible injustice. Workers, families and the environment will be protected from the high levels of toxics left at the site,” said Magdalena Cerda, organizer for EHC’s Border Environmental Justice Campaign. 

In 2004, a landmark agreement was signed by community residents and Mexican government officials that established a Metales y Derivados Working Group to oversee the cleanup process. The working group, consisting of Colectivo members, EHC, and Mexican and U.S. government officials, “can inspire other communities in addressing environmental injustice,” said Evangelina Langarica of the Colectivo.

“Metales y Derivados is exhibit A for the failure of NAFTA to protect public health and the environment,” said Amelia Simpson, Director of EHC’s Border Environmental Justice Campaign. “NAFTA encourages industries to operate in Mexico, but leaves citizens and communities with no legal mechanism to compel those industries that pollute their neighborhoods to clean up. The free trade agreements that the U.S. government is currently promoting with Peru, Panama, Colombia and South Korea only perpetuate the same flawed NAFTA model and should be rejected.”

After many years of successful collaboration, Make the Road by Walking and the Latin American Integration Center have merged to create a new organization called Make the Road New York.

The Army giveth… 

If you dig groundwater monitoring wells around an ammunition plant that has used high explosives, what would you test for? If your answer is, well, those high explosives among other things, you’d fail the U.S. Army’s logic test. Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger worked for years to convince the Army to test groundwater monitoring wells around the closed Badger Army Ammunition Plant for high explosives and the six forms of the explosive dinitrotoluene (DNT), some of which have already been found in adjacent private drinking water wells. In September, the Army finally agreed to perform the first testing for explosives at the base since the 1980s. When a former Badger worker asked why the change in policy, the spokesperson replied it was “in response to concerns raised by CSWAB.”

… and the Army taketh away. 

However, during the same meeting, the Army announced the Pentagon’s intension to challenge Wisconsin Division of Health’s Interim Health Advisory Level (HAL) for DNTs, a ruling it took CSWAB more than a year of hard work to secure. The recommended HAL, the first health-based value for total DNTs in the nation, will serve as the basis for a groundwater standard. The military is also fighting for deregulation of many pervasive contaminants for which it is responsible, including DNT, perchlorate and trichloroethylene. In other words, in a classic military Catch 22, the Army agreed to look for toxins, as long as it doesn’t have to correct the problem when found. DNT is absorbed through the gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts and skin. Potential health effects include cancer, neurotoxicity, “blue baby” syndrome, and cardiovascular, liver, kidney and reproductive toxicity.

According to the Organization for Competitive Markets, economic globalization is responsible for increasing the distance food travels, from field to fork, from an average of 1,200 miles to closer to 6,000 miles! OCM believes the problem is not just the enormous expenditure of fossil fuels this requires, but also the loss of U.S. jobs it represents. Working to make this consequence of globalization a basis for unity between farmers and producers in other sectors of the U.S. economy, OCM helped launch, and now manages, the Coalition for a Prosperous America. Through the CPA, manufacturers and farmers can challenge free trade policies, building a  non-ideological, broad-based movement. OCM’s legal counsel, Michael Stumo, explains: 

Trade issues appeal across the ideological spectrum from libertarian to conservative to progressive to liberal. Collaborators in CPA do not agree on many things outside the trade issues, but trade issues shape so many other concerns that they come together in CPA despite their differences.

Since 1999, the SPIN Project has sponsored annual media skills trainings where attendees study key concepts in strategic communication. This summer, 60 activists from across the country, representing a wide range of social justice issues, learned how to craft effective media messages and frame the terms of debate. Over the years, there has been more cross-issue work among the participants, abandoning a silo approach and incorporating a broader social justice framework.

SPIN’s forte is framing, giving activists the opportunity to sit down with experts to learn how to frame issues and describe their work. The SPIN Academy alumni is also active, sharing successes and challenges with one another through a listserv.

 YES! Magazine (Fall 2007) features the work of Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund  and residents of Barnstead, New Hampshire, who passed a ground-breaking local ordinance preventing corporations from extracting water within the town’s jurisdiction. The ordinance goes beyond the regulatory approach of limiting and controlling unwanted activities by banning corporations from withdrawing water and denying their personhood rights within the town’s boundaries. The ordinance proclaims: “We believe that the corporatization of water supplies in this community – placing the control of water in the hands of a corporate few, rather than the community – would constitute tyranny and usurpation; and that we are therefore duty bound, under the New Hampshire Constitution, to oppose such tyranny and usurpation.” (Cover photo and quotes used with permission from Yes! Magazine.)

Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund was also featured in Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots. One chapter recounts the response of several towns in Pennsylvania to the deaths of two boys poisoned by land-applied sewage sludge. Outraged by this occurrence, they worked with CELDF to pass local laws that halted further spread of the toxic waste. Another chapter features an interview with CELDF’s founding director, Thomas Linzey about the failures of the regulatory model, the emergence of the “Pennsylvania model” asserting local democracy over corporations, the spread of democracy schools to propagate the model around the nation and the challenges of building a national grassroots movement to reassert peoples’ power over corporations. Linzey states, “Eventually, it means rewriting the state constitutions; eventually, it means rewriting the federal Constitution. And now in polite company, you can’t even talk about those things yet. I think as the years roll on, more and more people will understand that we actually need to change the DNA of this country to have any chance.”

The National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture has a new logo and website! It is also featured in a video, The Farm Bill Food Battle, which humorously lets viewers know the importance of the Farm Bill to our food supply, health, environment and farm economy. The video’s creators, Free Range Studios, along with Vera Cherilov and Anna Lappé, want it to be used freely by others to advance advocacy work around the Farm Bill.

A number of grants are available for farmers from socially disadvantaged groups, but often those in need lack the grant-writing skills needed to get support. The Michael Fields Agricultural Institute is offering grant-writing assistance to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers in the North Central Region that will match eligible farmers with grant-writing advisors to help identify potential funding sources, assist with framing a project, and help with writing and submitting a grant. Translation will be provided when necessary.

Cornelius Blanding, marketing director for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund was recently selected as a Fellow of the Emerging Leaders Program (2007/08 Class) of the Centers for Leadership and Public Values at Duke University and the University of Cape Town (South Africa). The program “seeks to advance the capacity of rising mid-career leaders to contribute to the empowerment of their communities and the transformation of their countries.”

I can’t sing, I ain’t no preacher and I can’t dance
but I can farm.
There’s mighty few in this country that can farm,  
that know how to farm.
It’s something to be proud of. 
And I can make a living.

Ben Burkett is a farmer and the director of the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives. In October, Ben hosted a visit from the project directors of the Kellogg Foundation's Food and Society initiative. MAC is funded through the Diversifying Leadership for Sustainable Food Policy initiative, a partnership between Noyes and Kellogg.  

In 2003, the New Mexico Acequia Association helped win a state law recognizing the collective, democratically-governed local water management systems called acequias, which have supported ecologically appropriate agriculture practices for hundreds of years. The law gives acequias the right to deny applications for water transfers (essentially sales) when deemed detrimental to the health of the acequia. This process was hailed by family farmers as a victory for local democracy. NMAA believes it validates the cultural view that water is a community resource not a commodity.

Water scarcity is so extreme in New Mexico that proposed new uses can only come at the expense of pre-existing allocations, making water transfers the stock and trade of developers. Much of the state's water is dedicated to municipal governments and big industry (including large-scale irrigation districts), leaving the water allocated to family farmers controlled by the acequias in the cross-hairs of those seeking transfers. The battle over whether acequias have the authority to stop water from being transferred out of fragile agro-ecological systems has moved from the legislature to the courts.

A developer filed a lawsuit claiming the acequias’ refusal to grant water transfers amounted to a property taking, and that the 2003 state law was unconstitutional. The District Court judge decided that contested water transfers should go through a full-blown court hearing, turning what should have been a simple review of the record into a new trial altogether. Neither the plaintiff nor the acequias want to deal with the expense of an extensive court hearing every time a water transfer decision is contested, so the case is headed to the state Appellate Court to determine exactly how district courts should handle appeals from acequia water transfer decisions under the new law. In September, the New Mexican published an opinion piece from NMAA’s executive director, Paula Garcia, which stated: “The decision by the courts will have implications for acequias for generations to come…at stake is the survival of land-based culture and the feasibility of revitalizing agriculture and local food systems.”

Noyes In Action

What the Staff’s Been Saying and Doing

In September, Vic De Luca and Kolu Zigbi spoke at a New York Regional Association of Grantmakers’ program, Sowing a Home-Grown Food Economy in a Global City. The program, organized by Kolu and focused on food being a social justice issue, coincided with the 20th annual Farm Aid concert that was held in New York City.

Vic also spoke about grantmaking practices at the October annual meeting of the Funders Network for Population, Reproductive Health & Rights. He also joined the Advisory Committee of the Diversity in Philanthropy Project. The Project is a three- year effort to encourage voluntary, mutual support efforts by regional and national philanthropy leaders to expand diversity, equity and inclusion in foundation board and staff representation, grantmaking and contracting. Vic’s comments on the benefits of diversity are included in video interviews on the website.

Vic was also appointed to the Council on Foundations Committee on Family Foundations. The Committee seeks to raise the standard of family foundation practices and provide guidance on the Council’s services to family foundations.

Millie Buchanan was busy talking about the environmental destruction caused by mountaintop removal coal mining. She facilitated a session on the issue at the September annual retreat of the Environmental Grantmakers Association and was a leader of a funders’ visit this summer to West Virginia to see the mining operations first hand.

Also at the EGA retreat, Millie facilitated a session entitled, Tale of Two Rivers: How the Mississippi and the Rio Grande are Building Bridges Across Geography and Race. And in September, as a follow-up to the U.S. Social Forum, Millie moderated a conference call briefing, Beyond Atlanta: Moving Social Movements, sponsored by the Funders Network on Trade and Globalization. Millie has joined the three-person executive committee of the Funders Network.

In August, Wilma Montañez spoke at the Western States Center Community Strategic Training initiative about trends in philanthropy. She also made a presentation, Writing a Communications Proposal, at the SPIN Academy.

Edna Iriarte was interviewed about grantees in the Bronx for a briefing paper, Capacity Building Challenges at Bronx Nonprofits, prepared by NYRAG for the Daphne Foundation Nonprofit Coordinating Committee, and Office of Congressman Jose Serrano

In addition, Noyes Foundation staff was quoted in the following: 

• Voices From the Frontline, New York Regional Association of Grantmakers (Vic)
• Rural Philanthropy: Building Dialogue from Within, National Committee on Responsible Philanthropy (Millie) 
• Foundation & Endowment Money Management magazine (Vic)

As an active shareholder, the Foundation engages in proxy voting with the companies in which it owns stock. So far this year, Noyes voted on nominees to the boards of directors of 250 companies, supporting slates of directors at 166 companies (66%) and withholding votes for directors at the 84 companies (34%) with no women on their boards. The Foundation’s votes are consistent with its proxy guidelines calling for approval of boards unless there is a lack of diversity. Letters were sent to each of the 84 companies urging them to appoint women to their boards and to adopt a diversity policy. So far 12 companies have responded, with most agreeing to look into their board selection processes. 

In addition to the votes above, the Foundation cast votes on 37 shareholder resolutions with 21 companies. The resolutions included corporate governance, environment and human rights issues.

Related News