In fact, the opportunities for involvement in the issues and for creating the changes that are so desparately needed are limited only by our vision and willingness to be involved. I have loved being at the MEC and seeing more and more people become involved. And, indeed the involvement is extending far beyond the MEC. I look forward to even greater growth and participation and to the MEC becoming ever more efficient and effective.
I would appreciate your vote so that I might serve another term on the MEC Board of Directors. I am one of the founders of the MEC and I have served on the Board since it began. I am pleased with the evolution and growth the Center has gone through since its humble beginnings in 1987. And I am excited about the possibilities which the present and future hold for the MEC.
Since the MEC opened its doors in Ukiah, new environmental centers have sprung up in several neighboring towns in Mendocino County, including the MEC's new office in the town of Ft. Bragg. These new centers are a tribute, in part, to the effectiveness an environmental center can provide to local people who are working on issues. More importantly, though, these centers represent a networking and organizing opportunity which has never before been seen or tried in Northern California. I am interested in being in the forefront of this networking and organizing as a member of the MEC Board.
After all, that which our local environmental centers can do and be is still largely undefined and untried. Through the last few years I have often been surprised and delighted at the variety of functions a center can undertake, I am convinced that there is still a lot more that can be done. I am personally interested in seeing local centers put more energy into electoral politics, planning and land use issues, defining ways that we may all have a healthy and sustainable ecology AND economy, and in giving a greater voice to the environmental concerns of people of color. But, regardless of the specific concerns a center may have, it is obvious that local centers provide an ideal vehicle for people who choose to "Think Globally and Act Locally". I hope that, with your vote, I may continue to help make such a vehicle available.
Because I have worked at the MEC since October of 1989 (full time and then some since January 1990) I feel I have an intimate and preactical understanding of the issues and needs of the Center. I am an experienced and skilled member of several boards, including the Head Start Board (1979-80), the Rancho Navarro Homeowners Association (President, 1988-90), and the Forests Forever, Inc. Board of Directors (presently). I would be honored to serve the members of the Mendocio Environmental Center as an energetic and creative Board member.
I am living on the Pinoleville Rancheria at the present time and am involved in the move against the Shamrock Material Inc. asphalt plant. We have been in the fight against this plant for three years. Through this effort I have begun to realize the industrial destruction of our natural resources.
I want to be involved in the action of the Environmental Center to work against this destruction.
I am a tribal member of the Pinoleville Indian Community, and the Environmental Center has bee supportive in our efforts to remove the P.I.C. tribal council. This tribal council is working counter productive. They are self-serving, and their support of, possibly, fraudulent land and business developments will mean trouble for 6he tribe as a whole.
I want to help the Environmental Center be a positive support through the development of the Native American environmental component. This component can one day be a resource for all of the Northern California natives.
I think that the Environmental Center is a very important asset and that every community should have one. So if I could help support it by being on the Board of Directors I would like to do it.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2004
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