This October 18th conference will serve 5 purposes:

1. To educate, inform, and empower Massachusetts residents to take actions in their communities to help build the local infrastructure and institutions needed to provide economic security in a changing world.
2. To clarify, catalyze, and consolidate the emerging efforts across the Commonwealth that are blazing the trail for community-organized energy, finance, banking, healthcare, food, education, retail, service, manufacturing, and more.
3. To identify those individuals and organizations who are committed to building relocalized, resilient communities and institutions as the lifeboats to a secure green future.
4. To improve regional, statewide, and local networking and collaboration to maximize effectiveness, and provide a vital clearinghouse and collaborative space for emerging alternatives in Massachusetts and elsewhere.
5. To build momentum around local, regional, statewide, national, and international policy changes that will help prevent catastrophic climate change and destructive resource wars, and to connect the dots between relocalization and large-scale, broad-scope issues.

We’ll offer workshops, tabling, panel discussions, keynote speakers, structured & purposeful networking, space for collective analysis and movement building, local organic food, childcare, film screenings and entertainment. We’ll highlight a variety of local-based strategies, state-level strategies, and global strategies, including 100% renewable electricity in 10 years and the October 24th International Day of Climate Action.

We’ll emphasize community-focused strategies including regional organizing, municipal resolutions, community-led projects like home weatherization / solarization barnraisings, urban farming & gardening, farmer’s markets, worker cooperatives, recycling, buy-local campaigns, and community action against environmental injustice, toxics, fossil fuel plants, food deserts, bio-weapons labs, and on behalf of community planning rights

We will establish regional and statewide planning committees to take on some elements of the conference organizing, as well as to provide a vehicle for ongoing regional organizing. We will use the inclusive, holistic, and exciting framework of relocalization to draw together diverse issue groups to take on these broad, far-reaching challenges in a more integrated way.