Buffalo Rebellion: Earth Day Weekend Summit
Signs held high during Buffalo Rebellion’s first event.
For Buffalo Rebellion’s first event, we decided to organize a four-day Climate Justice Summit Earth Day weekend. To break through the typical whitewashed and greenwashed events that take place around this time. And to start growing a more radical and intersectional climate justice movement across Iowa.
Specifically, we set out on registering 100 participants to attend a weekend of learning about the root of the issues we face and how to organize/build power. While also gaining real-life experience by preparing and executing a direct action on Iowa’s biggest carbon polluter.
A priority for this Climate Justice Summit was for us to provide an accessible opportunity centered around doing away with the corporate backed whitewashing that has occurred in environmental/climate justice movements historically. We understand that those most impacted and those most at the frontlines of climate justice are those who have been marginalized and intentionally left out of these spaces. Due to this we wanted to ensure access to the Summit, specifically for Black, brown, and indigenous communities across Iowa.
We focused on relational recruitment prioritizing people with the most at stake and the most to gain from a thriving climate justice movement. We also had a goal of making this Summit as no to low-cost as possible for all attendees. We wanted to ensure that costs would not be a barrier for anyone we invited.
The end result was an eclectic mix of people coming together over the weekend to soak up knowledge, build new connections, learn new skills, and to get re-grounded and energized for the fights ahead. We were moved by the feedback we received from participants and the responses below speak for themselves. It was a powerful weekend.
From here, we’ll be organizing a follow up call with participants in a couple weeks to keep the energy going. We want participants to be using what they learned to focus on a local issue to begin building out teams with our support. Together we’re building a network of people growing their skills and power to take on bigger issues that impact us across the state and beyond.
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