This past weekend the Lois Gibbs Fellows participated in a two day training by Wellstone Action! Trainers, Karen Lopez and John Gilbert taught vital organizing skills like how to volunteer recruitment, power mapping, and messaging.

Karen and Robert identify needs for successful one on ones

Wellstone Action! is a national center for training and leadership development for movements.

The organization was created in  to honor the legacy of Paul and Sheila Wellstone by continuing their work through training, educating, mobilizing and organizing a vast network of progressive individuals and organizations.

Katy and Christian draft power map

Throughout the training fellows worked together to role play the design and implementation of a fictional campaign. This exercise gave everyone the experience  of how to navigate  effective meetings with community leaders,  how to organize successful town hall meetings, and advocate for resident in their own community.

Bob, Tom and Marika planning a campaign

Thank you to Bagel Jays and Five Points Bakery for provided delicious treats for the fellows!

Lois Gibbs visited Buffalo Tuesday, January11th  to kick off CAC’s fellowship named in her honor. The Lois Gibbs Fellowship is an innovative program that will empower 15 Western New York residents to advocate for a healthy and just environment. The fifteen fellows;  Ronata Pokrasky, Joy Africano, Marika Woods-Frankenstein, Bonnie Lawrence, Megan MillsHoffman, Jordan Dalton, Robert Albini, Christopher Romano, Robert Moses, Anthony Orta, Toni Hajdaj, Katy Brown, Debbie Scott, Thomas Lowe and Judith Anderson, all spoke to Gibbs about her experience organizing her home town. Throughout the evening, Gibbs stressed the importance  of building relationships and positive messages.

“This is a great opportunity for me,” said fellow Thomas Lowe. “I have grown up learning about Love Canal and the wonderful work that Lois Gibbs has done and I am truly honored to be a part of a fellowship named after such an effective environmental activist.  Growing up in the Niagara Falls area, where Ms. Gibbs started her journey, makes this fellowship even more special.”

The fellowship, sponsored by the Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo, consists of a ten month program where fellows will learn and practice skills necessary to organize around environmental justice issues.

Fellow Renata Pokrasky agrees, “I hope to acquire the skills needed to help bring about change in my community. People need to work together in their neighborhood to gain the support of their elected officials in a joint effort to improve the quality of life in their community. We all need to work to make those goals happen.”

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The Clean Air Coalition of Western New York today announced the launch of the Lois Gibbs Fellowship, an innovative program that will empower 15 Western New York residents to advocate for a healthy and just environment.

The Clean Air Coalition of Western New York believes that leadership development of a grassroots base is critical to building an effective environmental health movement in the region. The Lois Gibbs Fellowship will train activist skills and foster relationships between grassroots actors and decision makers.

The Lois Gibbs Fellowship is a selective, 10-month program that provides a diverse set of emerging citizen leaders with the tools and training to build sustained political will to improve the environment and health in Western New York neighborhoods.

“Western New York is full of environmental health hazards,” said Erin Heaney, the Coalition’s Executive Director. “Our Tonawanda Coke Campaign put us in touch with residents from throughout the region who have questions about environmental hazards in their community. The Fellowship will allow these folks to connect, learn how to organize their neighbors, and make change.”

Over the course of one year, the Lois Gibbs Fellowship will provide rich training opportunities in the following areas:

* Developing effective messages and media outreach
* Strategic campaign planning and power mapping
* Holding elected officials accountable
* Grassroots lobbying
* New media
* Corporate and Government research
* Engaging faith-based communities

The Fellowship is open to anyone in Western New York. Applications may be found online at www.cacwny.org or by calling the Coalition to request a paper application. Individuals interested or working in environmental health and justice issues are strongly encouraged to apply. Priority will be given to residents working on land-use and food access issues. The application is open to people new to organizing as well as experienced folks looking to hone their skills. The Fellowship is designed as a part-time program that can accommodate people who are working full-time. Applications are due November 4th.

The program is named in honor of Lois Gibbs, a grassroots environmental justice advocate from Western New York. She is best known for her successful campaign to relocate families living on top of a toxic waste dump in Niagara Falls. Lois Gibbs is emblematic of the program’s philosophy: ordinary individuals can make an extraordinary difference when they organize.

The Fellowship is generously supported by the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo.

We hope you’ll join us on July 13th for our screening of Maquilapolis: City of Factories.

The film shares the stories of women who work in multinationally-owned factories in Mexico. For example, after making television components all night, Carmen comes home to a shack she built out of recycled garage doors, in a neighborhood with no sewage lines or electricity. She suffers from kidney damage and lead poisoning from her years of exposure to toxic chemicals. She earns six dollars a day.

As Carmen and a million other maquiladora workers produce televisions, electrical cables, toys, clothes, batteries and IV tubes, they weave the very fabric of life for consumer nations. They also confront labor violations, environmental devastation and urban chaos — life on the frontier of the global economy. In MAQUILAPOLIS, Carmen and her colleague Lourdes reach beyond the daily struggle for survival to organize for change: Carmen takes a major television manufacturer to task for violating her labor rights. Lourdes pressures the government to clean up a toxic waste dump left behind by a departing factory.

The event is at 7 pm at the Kenmore Library on Delaware Road.

At our meeting in April, we decided we wanted an update from the folks who have been working at EPA and DEC to clean up Tonawanda Coke. It took us a few months, but we’ve got a few dates on the calender.

July 7th at 7:00 pm: EPA and DEC Community Update

We’re hosting folks from EPA in New York and local DEC staff involved in the enforcement action at Tonawanda Coke. They will be there to show all the changes that have been made at the plant and answer our questions. Come prepared with questions, and bring friends! We need to let them know we’re grateful for the progress that has been made and that we’re not going away until the job is finished!

July 15th at 7:00 pm: Department of Health Study Update

Jim Bowers from the NYS DOH will join us to share information on the health study for Tonawanda. He’ll be sharing the boundaries they’ve identified and hear our feedback.

Both events are at the Sheridan Parkside Community Center, 169 Sheridan Parkside Drive in Tonawanda.

We apologize for being out of touch on the web! Our webmaster was down and out for awhile…but he’s back!

Be sure to check back often for updates on how to get involved over the summer!

JD Crane, owner of Tonawanda Coke, has a history of abusing workers and communities in cities across the country. Today, he has two plants up and running: one here in Tonawanda and another in Erie, PA.

The plant in Erie has received nearly as much attention as Tonawanda Coke. The state filed a public nuisance suit against the company and Crane faces serious fines if they do not clean up soon. Like Tonawanda Coke, Erie Coke has frequent equipment failures that result in heavy smoke and odors. We blogged about their most recent power failure in March.

Residents in Tonawanda and Erie need to work together if we’re going to ensure JD Crane cleans up his act. So the Clean Air Coalition is heading to Erie, PA on June 4th. We have plans to meet with residents and activists who are working to clean up the plant. We’ll get a tour of the neighborhood around the plant and brainstorm ways of working together to ensure worker and community health is protected at both plants.

We have plenty of seats available! To come along, just shoot an email to erin@cacwny.org.

As promised, Denny Larson from the Global Community Monitor came to visit us this weekend – and we had a great time!

On Saturday, Denny showed our new members how to test the air in our community. We tried to take an air sample on Kaufman, but it was too windy. YNN did a great job capturing our day – check out their piece here.

Given that we don’t know how much longer the DEC funding will be available to monitor the air in Tonawanda, it’s especially important that residents know how to test what’s in the air. To help us fight to keep the DEC air monitoring up and running sign our online petition.

We plan to keep the Tonawanda Bucket Brigade up and running all summer. Want to be part of the patrolling unit? Email erin@cacwny.org or come to our next community meeting April 19th at 7:00 PM at the Sheridan Parkside Community Center.

Our campaign against Tonawanda Coke began with a bucket. Looking for a way to demonstrate the air in Tonawanda is dangerous, Jackie and the gang hooked up with Denny Larson from the Global Community Monitor. Denny taught the group how to use “the bucket” to take their own air samples. The air in the bucket was analyzed by an EPA-certified lab and came back showing high levels of benzene and all sorts of other nasties. And well, the rest is history!

Well Denny is returning to Buffalo! He’s proud of the work we’ve done since the first bucket and ready to help us kick-start some of our new campaigns.

We will meet at Legion Post 264 at 60 Main Street in Tonawanda at noon on Saturday, April 10th. Denny will speak for a bit, show us how to use the bucket and then we’ll head out to take our own air samples!

We plan to use the results of the bucket to launch our new campaign for clean air in Tonawanda. We hope you can make it!

Tonawanda Coke just won’t stop.

Today I got a call that an ally over at the Wastewater treatment plant could see flames coming from the plant.

So I hopped in my car. Sure enough, I could see the dark smoke from Riverside.

I sat there for about 20 minutes. Even with the wind blowing away from Kaufman Ave, it stunk.

I met up with Kathy Ryan and together we discovered the flames coming from the plant.

Apparently, the plant had an exhaust failure. That’s a fancy way of saying the gases didn’t make it to the right places to be taken care of safely. Instead, the ovens were opened and the gas was set on fire and vent right into the atmosphere.

I spoke with the DEC, they say the problem will be fixed by 1:00PM.

Did you see this? Did you smell it? Report it to the DEC by calling 851-7200. The more people that call, the stronger our case. Enough is enough!