SHARE 350.0

I would like to welcome all of the new members. As a reminder and invitation to all, we will be having our August meet up as a dinner at Casa de Luz (1701 Toomey Rd., www.casadeluz.org) on Wednesday, the 20th at 6:30. We hope you all can join us and we can all start getting to know each other and discussing how we can make Austin a truly sustainable community.  Feel free to bring friends.  We will have a sign on our table this time!

Also, if you have any suggestions for locations for future meet-ups, please email me directly (lauren@greenlifeaustin.com).

Hope to see you there.

Action Profiles are now live on the site. Action Profiles give you an opportunity to quantify your efforts to create a sustainable community. Join 349 like minded souls in creating a profile of your efforts to create sustainability.  An Action Profile is an easy to use form that allows you check off actions in different categories of sustainability.  Cumulative data of the group’s actions will be compiled and shared with the group.

To participate all you have to do is create a profile on this site and start logging your actions!

Developers Note:

The plugin used to create and store action profiles was developed with Share350 in mind.  It is still being refined and as such you might encounter a bug or some other unexpected behaviour.  If so, please contact us and let us know what happened and we’ll get it fixed as quickly as possible.

We’re reclaiming America’s greatest holiday…Join us!

www.green4th.com

Local Food :: Innovative Discussions :: Kids Activities :: Fun

Special Feature: Announcing SHARE 350! - a groundbreaking plan for sustainability

Guest Speakers, Guest Artists, Guest Performers
Starring Randy Jewart, Brandi Clark, the world’s first Farmer Olympics and much more!

Saturday, July 5th
9am - 1pm
Downtown Austin Farmers’ Market
Republic Square Park (4th & Guadalupe)
Free!

About the Event

Join us in inaugurating a new, national tradition.

We’re proposing that once a year - on the Green 4th of July, Americans renew their commitment to our country, in a modern context, as world citizens.

“What Happens?”

This year, participate in ground-breaking discussions at the downtown Austin Farmers Market, shop for local food, entertain your kids, and meet cool people. Saturday, July 5th: join green revolutionaries Randy Jewart and Brandi Clark in discussing our future, and helping to launch Share350.

Express yourself. Love your country. Green 4th of July!

I think that after seeing movies about our worsening environmental condition we, as individuals, feel helpless. (A couple of the conversations I had following the movie reaffirmed that this is true.) However, I feel it really is a reawakening. We can sit in the theater and think, “What difference can I make by myself?” or we can look around at the hundred other people in the chairs around us and say, “We are all here tonight because we care about the environment, and, now, what is the next step we can take collectively?” As Paul Hawken put it in his book Blessed Unrest, we are the immunity that can heal this disaster. We might start small as just a few antibodies here and there, but when we join forces we really stand a chance at making change.

If you’re bothering to read this site, then I hope you’ll take the next step in joining us to BUILD a sustainable future for our kids.

I hope you can get past the “war of mass distraction” that is looks like our current reality. In your gut I hope you feel with me the truth that this ephemeral manifestation of “the way things are” is built on illusory premises and passing values.

There is a truth about our biologic reality and connectivity to the living systems that comprise our world that impels us to confront the destructive forces at play in our times.

My dad asked me last week “why don’t people care?” about this war, this destruction, this consumption and greed. I think people do care, but that fundamentally, we know that to act meaningfully in these times requires a level of action and conviction that is well beyond the scope of current rhetoric.

When you dare to envision a truly sustainable culture, you have to be willing to go beyond this new “green” fashion. Sustainability is not a product, it’s a radical notion.

Do we love ourselves, our children and each other enough to say what needs to be said and have the conviction to propose and act on that proposition that needs to be made?

Are we willing to put the rights of nature, which support our lives, on par with our own? Are we willing to literally fight those interests which WILL oppose this?

We are not in a position to even name what needs to be named and subsequently map out a plan to enable it, but we do know where we need to start. We need to start by doing the things we can do — every single one of those things. And do them together. And build relationships through that action that lead us to a new level of engagement that doesn’t yet exist, but that will become the platform for the next level of action, and the next and the next.

So what do you have to say to that?!?

Your friend in action,
Randy