Parents Fighting the Climate Emergency
Marya Axner
Welcome parents and have them say hello to someone they don’t know. (4 minutes):
We love our children. We want their futures to go well. Nothing is more important to us. As parents we have this connection to the future. As parents our love is powerful. We can connect with other parents who love their children. We can make a huge difference. Each one of us in this room can make a significant difference and as a group we can. We are just beginning to see what parents can do to change society.
Find someone and say hello. Each person say name, where from, how many children
Native people: (2 minutes)
New York City has the largest number of American Indians and Alaskan Natives of any location within the United States. There are 112,000 Native Americans out of a total population of 8,175,000 New Yorkers.
Native people have a long history of living respectfully in balance with the natural world. They are the original protectors of Mother Earth. They have led the way with powerful action on behalf of the environment and efforts to sustain all life.
We acknowledge the Lenape, the original people of the land on which we meet. About 20,000 Lenape lived on the island of Manhattan for over 12,000 years living on about 80 seasonal sites. The Lenape were a loosely connected set of communities with similar cultures and languages, spread out across what is now Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York City, Long Island, and the Hudson Valley. Most Lenape were removed to what is now Oklahoma. We honor and respect them.
This land was then colonized by the Dutch in the 1600s.
This group is from Sustaining All Life (3 minutes):
Here’s who we are:
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We want to regain our power to stop climate change
- We want to learn tools to do that
- We understand and teach about the connection between climate change and racism
- We recognize how our economic system is connected to how we got in this mess. The solutions are not profit driven
Intros: 10 minutes: Find out who is in the room: Depending on number of people have people say their names, how many children, if/what their involvement is with climate change. If a large number of people come, raise hands for questions like:
Why did you want to come to this workshop?
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How many people have children under 5? (Other ages), teenagers, grandparent, adoptive parent?
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How many people are taking action on climate change?
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How many parents are worried about climate change for their children?
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How many people have children who are active in climate change?
Introduce Re-evaluation Counseling: SAL is a project of Re-evaluation Counseling: 2 minutes
We are a group of people who take turns listening to each other.
As we have a chance to be listened to, we heal from emotional or physical hurts we’ve experienced in our lives, long ago or recent. Those hurtful experiences impacted us, so that we feel limited in who we really are as humans. Hurts make us feel frozen, powerless, worried, like no one likes us, like we don’t matter, like we’re not smart, like we don’t really care, like no one else cares.. But when we feel safe and we can tell someone else about what happened we heal from those hurts. Sometimes we talk, cry, laugh, shake or even yawn. Those natural physical experiences help us regain our ability to think, love and take power.
Introduce a mini: Talk about a mini 3 minutes
Give instructions on doing mini. JUST listen. Attention. Give another person your delighted attention.
Talk about confidentiality
Explain that this is the foundational tool we use, etc, etc.
(Team makes sure everyone has a mini and offers to have minis with participants)
Do a mini on Loving our children and unloading our worries: 10 minutes
Goals of workshop: 1 minutes
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We will learn:
- How to listen to each other and why that’s a good thing to do.
- How to unload your worries about your children and climate change to help you think and regain your power.
- The importance of listening to your children about climate change and how to listen to them
- Think about how you can take action: yourself, with other parents, following the lead your of children
- Learn the connection between parenting, climate change and racism
- Think about getting support for yourself in an ongoing way
Panelists introduce themselves: Why do you care about this? How have you been involved? Why am I on this panel as a parent at Climate Week? 12 minutes: 1 minutes each
(A demo will occur at an appropriate time) 8 minutes
Parents are oppressed/young people are oppressed: Parents carry a heavy load: Randy 3 minutes
Racism and parents oppression and climate change: Berta and Jacqueline 2 minutes each: 4 minutes
Mini: 10 Minutes
Young people’s oppression: Following the lead of our children? (Counseling has given me a framework about how to back my son.) 3 minutes
Dads and climate change: 2 minutes
Building support at home with other parents: 3 minutes.
Another mini: 10 minutes18. Closing and talk about support groups following parents group. 5 minutes
Q & A: 5 minutes or so.