The one-on-one meeting is the dental floss of organizing: a practice that generates greater outcomes all around, but if neglected can lead to all kinds of deleterious effects! In this call, we will share some basic information about what is a “one-on-one” and how to integrate it into your day-to-day efforts to deepen your relational organizing skills and to build a stronger Third Act community.
About this event
All of us in our Third Act of life, whether new to organizing or old pro’s, need sharper tools to do the work we want to do. Our goal at Third Act is to help provide lots of handholds as we climb together. In this workshop, we will learn to start where we are and how to talk to our friends, neighbors, relatives and colleagues about making a tangible difference in our climate and democracy work.
The questions we are hoping to tackle are: What are some fears about having these conversations? Why is it so hard to get people engaged sometimes? How can we support conversation that allows each person to feel heard? We hope you will come away with renewed insight on how to build trust, assess where people stand, identify potential leaders, and encourage them to take action.
Bill McKibben, co-founder of Third Act
Bill McKibben is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, and a founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice. He founded the first global grassroots climate campaign, 350.org, and serves as the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. In 2014 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ in the Swedish Parliament. He’s also won the Gandhi Peace Award, and honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities. He has written more than twenty books about the environment, including his first, The End of Nature, published in 1989, The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened, and his latest book is Here Comes The Sun.
lani ritter hall, Third Act national volunteer
lani is a national volunteer from NE Ohio. She supports the Organizing team and has the honor of facilitating Third Act National Volunteers and Third Act Volunteer Coordinators.
B Fulkerson (they/she), Third Act’s Organizing Director
B is a fifth-generation Nevadan who was raised by a father disabled in the Vietnam war and a mother who protested that war by hanging a giant “Give Peace a Chance” banner from their home in Reno –parents who many times bailed her out of jail for good trouble. Their first and second acts featured running social and environmental justice groups in Nevada, raising a daughter, and snaring a husband from Fallon. B’s third act centers on their grandchildren, the joy of organizing elders, and reimagining the gender binary and other unsatisfactory frameworks as a late-blooming trans activist.
Elvira Diaz, Third Act Nevada
The central passion in Elvira Diaz’ life is welcoming immigrants into America and helping them become U.S. citizens. She herself is an immigrant from Mexico, one of seven children born to Aura María Ibarra de la Selva, who emigrated to Mexico from Nicaragua, and the great-niece of renowned Nicaraguan poet and activist Don Salomón de la Selva. (In fact, her Nicaraguan grandmother was also a poet, but in a time and culture that did not recognize such gifts in women.)
She has worked for years helping immigrants and recently turned her avocation into a non-profit she calls La Casa Elvira.
Most of her students are over 60, “And of course, when they finish, guess what, I invite them to join Third Act!” She is only half joking. She sees how Third Act can teach people how to become active and engaged citizens, to vote, but beyond that, to have a real voice to express what is important to them. She is also working to find ways to make Third Act Nevada more diverse, so many different voices can help shape our democracy.
