Cohousing-L Mailing List: 2011 Natl Coho Conf update: Liz Walker was Fantastic! and the conference's labor challenges

[Craig Ragland (craigragland]

LIZ WALKER, founder of Ecovillage at Ithaca and author of "Choosing a
Sustainable Future"

Liz Walker gave this morning's opening address. After an inspiring context
on why cohousers (current and future) are being called to grow our
sustainability efforts, she shared more of the Ecovillage at Ithaca (EVI)
story, as well as stories of how the pebble of EVI thrown into the Ithaca
pond has rippled out into their broader community. Its truly remarkable how
they have engaged with local educational organizations, businesses, and
other non-profits to grow local goodness.

EVI has been actively working in local food, integrated agriculture, car
sharing, sustainability education, local sustainable business, the
transition movement,and much more.

Liz's slides and stories were so powerful, I'm sad about how inadequate my
words are in helping you resonnate with all the goodness that's happening
here. Perhaps some of the other Coho-L'ers here at the conference can share
about the conference? I know that some of you are "out there."

HOTEL - UNION situation

Another sadness for me is how little is being accomplished with the union -
at least so far. So much more would have been possible If the Unite
Here! representatives had been interested in collaborating instead of
confronting. This morning, about 10 people from the union were in front of
the hotel for about an hour. I went out briefly to share my sadness about
the situation and my respect for their intentions.

Norma Wassel, our registrar did not hear from any of our attendees about the
union's presence as they registered - its possible some of the other
registration volunteers who were working by her side did hear about it, but
they did not shared that with her.

Before introducing Liz in the opening plenary, Lisa Poley, Coho/US Board
member and Conference Chair addressed the labor issue. I'll be at a
roundtable in a couple of hours to share with any conference attendees
interested in learning more.... I just wish there was more I could share.
Hopefully, some who are well versed in the unionism movement and even this
particular union's concerns will there to help. Rather than creating any
content to support that, those few of us dealing with this situation have
been doing damage control, trying to save Coho/US from the economic impact
on our tiny org.

In a community of communities (who are gathered together right now in DC),

Craig Ragland
Coho/US Exec Dir... for just a little while longer