It’s late evening now at the Blue Mountain Center in upper New York state where the Council of Canadians has travelled today to meet with others to discuss strategies and frameworks to protect the Great Lakes.
Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow, Blue Planet Project organizer Anil Naidoo, Ontario-Quebec organizer Mark Calzavara, Toronto chapter activist Michael Brothers, and I are here to explore how to build a broader movement to defend the Great Lakes as a commons, a public trust, and a protected bio-region.
Those here include representatives from On The Commons, Food and Water Watch, Ecojustice, the Ontario Chiefs, the FLOW Coalition, the Detroit People’s Water Board, Red Vida, and the Victory Garden Initiative.
This evening we shared a wonderful meal together, introduced ourselves to each other, and began to outline what we might be able to achieve over the next three days.
Tomorrow morning we will begin with a “sharing of stories and realities from our many Great Lakes communities to put together a picture of the whole.” The afternoon will involve a discussion of our successes and the “sobering realities” of the challenges ahead.
More to come.
For more on this meeting and the frameworks of the commons and the public trust, please go to ‘UPDATE: Council to attend Great Lakes commons meeting, Nov. 11-14’ at http://canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=5266.
