It’s Getting Hot In Here

You betcha, Powershift will soon be making a visit to the great state of Minnesota. The home of nice people, hotdish, Garrison Keillor, the Democrat-Farmer-Labor party, community wind, the highest voter participation rates in the country, and the Mall of America now has its very own Powershift!

Minnesota Powershift 2008 is much more than a conference. It is part of a process of building people power around a vision for a clean energy economy and a sustainable future that can unite rural farmers, inner-city residents, labor leaders, small businesses, students, and local governments. It is a recognition of our own role in making change, bridging the gaps between our personal lives and the sweeping changes that must be made. Its time to build a climate positive society, one that has moved beyond “limiting the damage” we do to the global environment and oppressed communities and instead engages proactively and eagerly in the opportunities inherent in a post-carbon society.

Minnesota Powershift is about building a strong community. Our goal is not a student conference, but an intergenerational gathering, with everyone from middle school students to local activists and nonprofit leaders participating in the activities. The conference has a focus of not just learning from each other but building social capital - the community and friendships that will make a transformation possible and make working with each other both more productive and more fun. Minnesota Powershift will integrate community organizing with art, music, creative writing, political action, skills trainings, and open dialogue about the most pressing issues of our time.

Minnesota Powershift is about going beyond “drop-in-the-bucket” solutions – its about transformation. It is about recognizing our crucial role as change agents, not just to improve our own local communities, but to build models for change that generate more economic, social, and political power for the global transformation while inspiring other local groups, students, small businesses, and local leaders around the world. MN Powershift acknowledges the importance of both policy and technology, but also that neither will be adequate or effective unless they focus on empowering we, the people, to actually implement the solutions we need to reorient our lives and our neighborhoods for a sustainable future. It is literally a shift in power: from fossil fuels to clean energy, from an economy controlled by large centralized entities to one that emerges from the vibrant relationship of local producers, from seeing ourselves as victims of the turbulent changes facing our future to seeing ourselves as collaborative creators of the future we want to see.

Join us October 3-5 in Minneapolis-St. Paul for Minnesota Powershift! Visit http://www.mnpowershift.org for registration, donation, and sponsorship. Sure thing, eh!