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Oct 14
2010
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Organizing Against PovertyPosted by Bruce Robinson in speaker , rights , politics , policy , nonprofit orgs , justice , jobs , Ideas , government , education , economy , current events , community , California , activism |
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What can people in poverty do to improve their lives? Mary Gonzales takes an atypical approach; organizing disadvantaged communities to exercise political clout they didn’t know they had.


Mary Gonzales, The Gamalilei Foundation's regional organizer for California and Hawaii, reports that her greatest success story to date occurred in Venturra County, where a combination of organizational outreach and concentrated research enabled the local agricultural community to fend off a major mining operation's plans.
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Among the many groups at the Copenhagen climate conference last winter was Mediators Beyond Borders, who were there to lobby for including mediation in the framework for resolving disputes over resource scarcities as the world attempts to deal with climate change.


Fifty years of support and participation in the drive toward democracy in South Africa has earned some recent recognition for a new Santa Rosa resident, both here and there.
The South African award bestowed upon George Houser is named for Oliver Tambo (left) , the African National Congress' president-in-exile during the years that Nelson Mandella was imprisoned. Tambo died in 1994. Non-violence was a consistent theme throughout his lifetime of political involvement, George Houser recalls, starting with his early participation in the American Civil Rights Movement.
As Houser explains, South Africa was the only region on the continent that was claimed and colonized by the Dutch, who introduced the concept of apartheid, a state-controlled form of enforced segregation.