To honor the historical struggles of the Civil Rights Movement, the US Social Forum convened in Atlanta, Georgia to build on this legacy of resistance, struggle, and solidarity across movements for economic, social and environmental justice. Over ten thousand community organizers, activists, and representatives of NGOs gathered for a week of marches, direct actions, rallies, cultural events, critical discussions and workshops. The majority of Forum participants were people of color, many were young, and all were passionate about building a more just country.

Nile Malloy, who is a Freedom from Oil campaigner with Rainforest Action Network and a member of Bay Localize's Steering Committee, worked in solidarity with several Bay Area organizations — Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Environmental Justice Climate Change Initiative, Center for Environmental Health, Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance and others — to incorporate a climate justice track into the Forum. Climate justice is a grassroots movement to find solutions to global climate change and fossil fuel dependency that include environmental justice.

Nile reported that the Forum itself was overwhelming but full of great energy. Of the more than nine hundred workshops, a few stood out. The first was a presentation by Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), on "Energy Colonialism" and the impacts of renewable energy plans on tradition Indigenous and First Nation communities.

The second workshop that stood out was "Doing It For Ourselves: Local Solutions to Build National Power for Climate Justice" with Just Transition Alliance, Chicago Climate Justice, Environmental Justice Climate Change Initiative, West Harlem Environmental Network, and Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice. Each of the speakers touched on the life cycle of green house gasses, spoke to the issue of unjust/false solutions to global warming, and presented innovative, cross-movement solutions for positive action. One of the highlights of the session was by Cecil D. Corbin-Mark, Director of Programs at West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT). WE ACT is addressing the greater problems of Harlem by establishing the WE ACT Environmental Justice Center of New York. In 2004 they purchased a Harlem brownstone and hired a Harlem-based architect to work on its renovation. The LEED Certified green building will open next year and include a solar rooftop garden, recycled wastewater used for cooling, low-flow toilets and green landscaping.

By participating in these workshops and talking to people at the forum, Nile and the rest of the climate justice coalition came to better understand the wide-array of strategies for social change. From a localization perspective, the challenge remains to incorporate this diversity of strategies and communities. Often our movements — for localization, for climate justice, for social justice — take the easier path to "suburban" solutions, which further marginalize our communities instead of healing our diverse urban centers. To do this is to disconnect from the justice in our work. True grassroots, solution-based organizing necessitates bringing the social forum to all communities across the country. True justice necessitates true systemic change.

This spring, Bay Localize partnered with DIG City Coop to propose an edible, herbaceous rooftop design at the Epicurious Garden, inspiring the owner to help our organizations promote green technology and urban sustainability solutions. The result of this collaboration is the Green City Gallery, a venue showcasing regenerative design, appropriate technologies, and eco-art from local organizations, businesses and individuals. Through the Gallery, we want to increase awareness of these services and products, and accelerate the development of healthy, ecologically balanced Bay Area cities.

The Green City Gallery hosted a Grand Opening celebration on July 22nd. There was music, food, and remarks by Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and Assemblywoman Loni Hancock. Read this coverage of the gallery and the event from the August 1 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle's Home and Garden section. The space will be open until (at least!) the end of October. Check out the online calendar and join us for upcoming classes, workshops and social events!

Imagine a vital solution to oil wars, climate change, peak oil and gross corporate profits from energy. At Bay Localize, we think we've found it: local renewable energy, owned by your very own city. Not only can it power our grid, but eventually our transportation as well — and it's all ours.

Bay Localize is organizing the Local Clean Energy Alliance along with Pacific Environment, Sierra Club (Northern Alemeda County Group), Kyoto USA, Local Power and a range of area businesses to build community support for clean local community energy in the East Bay. Community energy efforts are also underway in San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, San Luis Obispo, Fresno, and Chula Vista.

"The primary benefits are local control, increasing the fraction of renewables, decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, and rate stability," explains Neil DeSnoo, energy engineer for the City of Berkeley.

Under California's Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) law, communities can literally take power into their own hands by purchasing and/or generating electricity for their residents. PG&E continues to provide all metering, billing, collection, and customer service to participating CCA customers, but would allow local governments to bid for or produce a cleaner, more local energy mix for their constituents.

"The idea is to beat the status quo," DeSnoo notes. The status quo for many communities in California has been the system of PG&E, which relies heavily on natural gas. Although the company has committed to generating 30% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020, its renewable portfolio currently amounts to only 12% of total sales. Unfortunately, PG&E continues to invest in the development of nuclear and natural gas — two nonrenewable energy sources with their own unique environmental drawbacks.

Shifting toward publicly-owned power could mean better service as well. According to a July 26 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, PG&E customers endure more frequent and longer-lasting blackouts than other Californians. In 2006, the average PG&E customer lost power for more than 4 1/2 hours, in contrast, the publically-owned Sacramento Municipal Utility District recorded just 99.3 minutes without power for the average customer last year. "We've been through this so many times," San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said after his staff met with PG&E. "There's nothing more I can say. I've already said (everything) to them. Should I handcuff them? Arrest them? Should I bring them all to justice? Should I sue them? Obviously, we're not happy. Obviously, they're not happy."

Bay Area cities are rising to the challenge and moving toward change. San Francisco recently filed its own CCA plan to generate 51% of its electricity from renewables by 2017. The city's plan calls for 31 megawatts of solar panels on hundreds of large warehouse-scale rooftops, 72 megawatts of fuel cells and other distributed generation, 107 megawatts of technologies at hundreds of sites that reduce or eliminate power demand, and 150 megawatts of new wind turbines, some potentially within city limits.

The cities of Berkeley, Oakland and Emeryville are collaborating on a similar CCA proposal to submit to their city councils. Renewable electricity is also the greenest source of fuel for vehicles through plug-in electric cars and trucks — and certainly a more sustainable alternative to mass production of biofuels. Demand for biofuels is projected to increase dramatically to the point where it could displace production of food crops, leading to a situation in which more of the world's poor would go hungry to fuel the cars of the wealthy. Transportation fueled by local solar panels, windmills, distributed fuel cells and captured wave and tidal flows can help prevent deepening global inequities.

GET INVOLVED TODAY! We need more organizations and activists to get involved in building political and customer support for CCA in Berkeley, Oakland, and Emeryville. Contact Kirsten Schwind at kirsten@baylocalize.org to help make it happen!

Bay Localize's Rooftop Resources Project has been producing results. With the Neighborhood Assessment of food, solar, and rainwater-harvesting potential for Oakland's Eastlake neighborhood nearly complete, the project is now moving from conception to demonstration. We're working on a showcase gallery, a Rooftop Resources Guidebook, and a pilot project — all of which will build the case for green rooftop development among local and state decision-makers.

In addition to the recently opened Green City Gallery showcase (see above), the Rooftop Resources Project is working on a pilot rooftop garden with the Oakland Food Connection. We're building a vegetable garden on the roof of EC Reems Academy of Art and Technology, which will provide middle school students with a venue for hands-on organic gardening and nutrition education. Learn more about how you support this exciting effort!

Greenroof development is still a nascent field, and a greater body of information is needed to convince developers of the benefits of implementation. The fifth annual Green Roofs For Healthy Cities conference in Minneapolis focused on research and case studies. Among other topics, the conference unveiled an open source life cycle cost benefit calculator, called the GreenSave Calculator. This tool calculates data from any given project to compare investment costs with a payback in energy savings, longevity of the roof, and so forth.

The green roof market is growing steadily and awareness is keeping apace. Here in California, the Rooftop Resources Project has lobbied Assemblymember Loni Hancock to include living roofs as part of qualifications in the "Cool Roofs" Bill 785. Now the bill has passed Assembly and currently stands in committee in the Senate. The State Air Resources Board, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and other state and local agencies are serving on a joint task force to develop a set of standards for technologies that mitigate the urban heat island effect as well as air quality. Keep up to date on these developments by visiting the Rooftop Resources Project webpage.

And yet, the municipal government has just begun a major greenhouse gas inventory for the entire city — a vital step in PlaNYC, the city's new sustainability blueprint for slashing carbon emissions 30% by 2030. Groups like Sustainable South Bronx are promoting inspiring solutions like safe greenways, zero-waste policies, and urban green roofs to improve community conditions and the environment at the same time.

The business sector has been no less innovative. One such eco-entrepreneur, Eli Zabar, is known far and wide around New York for his famous breads, gourmet eateries, and rooftop vegetable gardens! Eli's rooftop gardens are a very unique variety — they're rooftop greenhouses with protective roofs above them to allow the gardens to grow all-year round.

Knowing that I was headed out to the East Coast, Bay Localize's rooftop crusader Ingrid Severson insisted that I pay a visit to one of Eli's establishments. And so I did. Looking up from the middle of East 91st Street to the building on my right, the words "The Vinegar Factory" stood boldly on the sign overhead. Above these, several large greenhouses jutted proudly skyward. I darted quickly inside to keep my appointment with Bob Berger, General Manager for Eli Zabar's Vinegar Factory grocery and restaurant.

Bob led me through the shop's two bustling floors, all the way up to the rooftop. Four greenhouses covered the entire space, 3,000 square feet of which was dedicated to raised bed-grown tomatoes. On the other side of the street stood another set of greenhouse gardens yielding a wide range of rooftop greens and veggies. Amazingly, two full-time urban farmers are employed just to care for them.

Bob explained that they keep growing conditions favorable almost year-round (except in January and early February) by harnessing the heat from baking ovens on the floor beneath! An industrial compost grinder is also part of the operation, which converts bakery and deli waste into nutrients that are spread on the garden beds.

All told, the Vinegar Factory's rooftop gardens represent a half-acre of fresh strawberries, arugula, mache, squash, and other assorted vegetables. I asked Bob where it was all going. Most is sold on the premises, he said, as ingredients in their upstairs restaurant or as salsas, sauces, salads, or produce in their ground floor grocery. The rest goes to other restaurants and stores run by Eli throughout New York City. Having eaten a delicious deli sandwich — topped off with rooftop-grown tomato slices — I can attest to the quality.

I thanked Bob for the tour, and wished them well in their business. While many solutions will be needed to strengthen our local food systems, Eli Zabar is demonstrating the kind of commitment that will be needed to move us in that direction.

On July 27, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 231-191 to approve the 2007 Farm Bill, the omnibus legislation that sets national priorities for a range of farm, food, nutrition, and conservation programs for the next five years. Although some Democrats (including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) touted this year's legislation as "a good first step to reform," the bill falls far short of the goals that Bay Localize and other environmental, food, and sustainable agriculture activist groups have pushed for.

• Alemany Farm
  
• California Coalition for Food and Farming
  
• California Food and Justice Coalition
  

RECENT EVENTS:

We hope you were lucky enough to join us for the Grand Opening of the Green City Gallery on July 22nd (see above). If you were even luckier, perhaps you joined us on July 14th for a sneak preview of the space and an inspiring benefit concert for Bay Localize with folk singer Dana Lyons (at left).

Earlier in the month, our friends at the Urban Permaculture Guild put on the Permaculture Convergence, a one-day event of workshops, talks, hands-on demonstrations, friends, and food.

On June 2, Bay Localize hosted the Localization Leadership Forum at the BALLE annual conference in Berkeley, featuring panelists from the cutting edge of local food, energy, and finance. Around 80 people learned about exciting localization initiatives underway in the Bay Area from Temra Costa of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, Tim Rosenfeld of the Marin Energy Management Team, and Don Shaffer of BALLE. Also in June, Bay Localize co-sponsored the Farm Bill Forum at Alemany Farm (see above).

In May our friends at the Oakland Food Connection held a fundraiser called "Will Work for Food...Justice!” that included a delicious organic meal, music and a panel discussion with local and statewide food activists and farmers. Also, the City of Berkeley held a Measure G Climate Action Kick-Off to jump-start the community's momentum toward reaching Measure G's ambitious objectives for curbing climate change.

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   Bay Localize
   436 14th Street, Suite 1218
   Oakland, CA 94612 USA
   (510) 834-0420
   Web: http://www.baylocalize.org