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BY HANNA KOZLOWSKA

In print | Published October 8, 2009

In the week following October break, environmentally-minded student groups will be introducing new modes of outreach, both on and off campus. Earthlust will be kicking off a “350 Week” — a week of events devoted to raising awareness about its environmental initatives, and for the first time ever, the Good Food Project will be presenting a workshop at an environmental conference.

Good Food at Power Shift

The Good Food Project has been invited to speak at the Power Shift Regional Summit, a conference devoted to facilitating activism for environmental issues. It will be held on October 24 on Penn State University. Ben Dair ’11 is preparing a workshop for the conference.

“We want to help other student groups, talk to them about local foods, composting, gardens,” Jamie Hansen-Lewis, one of Good Food’s leaders, said.

Power Shift is a part of the Energy Action Coalition, a youth initiative composed of environmental organizations from around the country, dedicated to promoting and supporting the clean energy movement. Power Shift ’09, a national conference, brought 12,000 activists to Capitol Hill to show legislators their concern with action on climate and energy. This year, 11 Regional Summits are aimed at lobbying for a clean energy jobs plan to be passed by Congress by December.

The Power Shift website (powershift09.org) calls for people to act on these goals, saying that “we can create millions of jobs that put Americans back to work … We are inheriting an economy and climate in crisis, and if Obama and Congress don’t act NOW, WE will be the ones who pay.”

The Pennsylvania Summit will include lectures, panels, training and workshops. The Good Food workshop, which will be conducted with Dickinson College, is called “Campus Food Systems.”

“We want a more creative workshop than your standard picture presentation,” Hansen-Lewis said. She and Dair haven’t decided on the specifics yet.

Good Food wants to share the keys its success in changing some of Swarthmore’s food policies with other colleges. Good Food launched the composting program and has been engaged in promoting local, organic food on campus through the “Look Local” campaign.

The group is entirely student-run – a status publicized by its members. “It appears that we have less institutional support, because we have no ‘director,’ but the administration has been supportive,” Hansen-Lewis said. “It is good that the garden is a legitimate student space.”

Besides the “good, cooperative dynamic with the administration,” Lewis said that the small size of the garden is an advantage because it makes the project more manageable.

Earthlust and non-affiliated students are also attending the event. It was, in fact, thanks to Earthlust that Good Food received an invitation. Earthlust has been working with Power Shift for some time.

“If I have any goal or if we have any goal, it’s for everyone to find an avenue that they’re really interested in and learning and growing from it,” said Zein Nakhoda ’12, one of the leaders of Earthlust.

Nakhoda also emphasized the importance of networking at Power Shift. “It would be nice if we teach each other about what we’re doing on national campuses. Communication is the biggest thing,” he said. He hopes that the members of Earthlust will get to know each other and other Swarthmore students that choose to attend.

While at Power Shift. Nakhoda would also like to pursue his own interests, which include the power of direct action in social movements and the solidarity economy, an idea born out of Latin American countries. It proposes an alternate economic system that involves self-governed, self-owned local production.

Powershift is a forum where Nakhoda can explore his interests. “The good thing about Powershift is that they have a very wide range of entry points into the social justice component of the environmental movement,” he said. “[Powershift] breaks down a lot of the environment versus economy dichotomies that get presented as reasons why the environmental movement can’t succeed.”

350 Week

In the week leading up to Powershift, Earthlust will host 350 Week on campus to raise awareness about unsafe levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and to encourage students to reduce carbon output through consumer pressure, political pressure and personal choices.

“Our 350 Week is centered on the number 350,” Nakhoda said. Three hundred fifty is the safe upper limit for the amount of carbon dixoide in the atmosphere, a quantity measured in parts per million. Currently the carbon dioxide of the earth’s atmostphere is above that level, at 390 ppm. If the carbon dioxide remains at this level, there will be irreversible environmental consequences, including the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

But Nakhoda explained that the week is about more than just a number. “It’s about people becoming engaged in the change to a more environmentally just way of living … and then learning how each person can engage in their own way.”

A general letter from Earthlust to the students explains the week’s goal. “As a Swarthmore commuity, we are among the most environmentally privileged in the world. With the right intention and information, every one of us has the potential to drastically reduce our energy footprint.”

Many of the events are just fun activities for students — a t-shirt tie-dye session, a variety show performance, and a paces party. But Nakhoda hopes that these events will draw students in to hear the group’s message. “We might put up a presentation between acts of the variety show,” he said.

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