BRAVO!! This Group Has Been Involved with Protecting the Arctic for Over Two Decades!!

Hello all!

Sorry, it’s been quite a while since we’ve posted.

We’ve been busy-busy with preparations for our “Ice Ride” event scheduled for Sunday, November 2nd!

DETAILS HERE: https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/808769179187426/?context=create&previousaction=create&source=49&sid_create=258003049

Anyway – Today we’re celebrating the inspirational involvement of the World Wildlife Foundation!

http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/arctic/what_we_do/

“The Arctic is estimated to hold the world’s largest remaining untapped gas reserves and some of its largest undeveloped oil reserves. These reserves, if tapped, have implications for the global climate, and for the Arctic environment.”

Quote from & more info here: http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/arctic/what_we_do/oil_gas/

Did YOU know they’ve been working to enrich the biodiversity of the Arctic – since 1992?! WE DIDN’T.

With Greenpeace working to discuss making the Arctic a sanctuary AND the WWF’s on-going work of preserving the area – we are even more excited to be a part of this movement!!

Thanks for reading – together we’re our own better future!!

Spend this Saturday with Passionate Like-Minded Individuals!

Have you heard about the #ICycle4Arctic Bike Ride taking place in two days, NATIONALLY?! (Saturday, 10/4)

WELL HERE’S YOUR IN & OPPORTUNITY!!

Here’s a link to the Chicago one taking place near Damen St. as well:

https://www.facebook.com/events/770889602973821/

We need YOU to be a part of the Save the Arctic movement.

What better way to start then enjoying one of the last not freezing Saturdays of the year together!?!

See you in a couple days!!

HEY YOU!

THANKS FOR YOUR TIME & VOICE!

Don’t get too verklempt: My Anxious Yet Wonderful Greenpeace Activist Summit Experience!

I wanted to share a blog with you all that I wrote a week after going to the Greenpeace Activist Summit at the end of this August. I originally posted it on Greenwire (Greenpeace’s Facebook, of sorts), but I feel like the best way to show you why this campaign is important to me, & why I need your help, is to let you in on why I have decided to pick up this campaign & run with it in the first place. Enjoy. 

 

“Just a few short months ago I wasn’t involved with any activism – that I couldn’t have shared with the world on social media, from the comfort of my bed, covered in vegan pizza crumbs. Yes, I’m completely aware of how depressing that sounds – because it was – and I didn’t know how to get out. I’ve always been full of this passion for large-scale change, but unequip of the tools to help proactively develop that passion into a movement; let alone, where to acquire them. And to make matters worse, I was CRAMMED FULL of anxious thoughts about ever letting myself step out of my comfort zone, to be vulnerable, and thus be best able to learn more from an experience.

Lucky for me, one day on the way to one of my classes this vibrant, hopeful, and confidently passionate Environmental Club President came up to me and was somehow able to grasp me out of my isolated state of mind. She give me an opportunity, after I voiced my general concern(although lack of familiarity) about environmental issues, to finally get involved with a much bigger cause than myself by – within minutes of meeting me – inviting me to the Greenpeace Activist Summit 2014. She sold it to me like a once in a lifetime experience.

There was only one problem, traveling that far away from home UTTERLY shook me to the core with anxious fear – and in response to that – in my head, I was coming up with thousands of reasons why I couldn’t make it. There are two main reasons for this: my seemingly endless roller-coaster of an anxiety disorder (finally diagnosed my first year of college) I’d been battling with for as long as I can remember; paired secondly with my generally introverted/ “lone wolf”, skeptical, and notoriously flaky tendencies – combine to make flakiness a rather guttural response for me – just about anytime anyone asks me to do anything.

I’m not proud to admit those characteristics about myself, but regardless they are both very real parts of who I am. I’ve spent a good majority of my life with the anxious ideology that admitting you have flaws is a weakness, so I was always afraid to do so. Although now, I view the ability to do that as an immense sign of one’s maturity level. Being able to admit that you have flaws(or even just a personality type that may not be as largely accepted as the dominant one), in my opinion, shows confidence and self-introspective that generally someone isn’t just born with. It’s earned throughout an experiential process of at one point being maybe(in my case – absolutely) the exact opposite of whatever growth result you’ve worked so hard emotionally and socially to be become. I feel like I’ve described that a little too wordy, so allow me to provide an example of what I mean by that.

In my case, as I’d briefly mentioned, before I’d been able to feel confident enough in myself to be able to admit I messed something up or that I may be wrong, I went through this phase(just about the entire rest of my life) getting extremely defensive and stubborn with people if they opposed my views or tried to criticize, really, anything about me. I associated being able to admit you’re wrong with weakness and negativity – because I’m no stranger to knowing how bad it can feel when other people tell you you’re wrong, or talk to you as if you’re not capable of accomplishing any good in the world.

So I thought, why would I want to admit I’m wrong? I also think I was afraid to admit I was wrong because I recognized and held a belief that the one in a debate who came out “right” was given a form of power. I now see that there is power in admitting you’re wrong, and that you have flaws because the power in being wrong is that you’ve learned something. And, as cheesy as this is going to sound, knowledge is really the key to bettering yourself as an individual.

With that said, taking part in the Greenpeace Activist Summit was exactly what I needed to further establish that skill. I was taught so much more about leadership than I’d ever known there was to learn, was given enough support through the organization to feel secure enough to take on the Act for Arctic campaign as a group leader in my area, and got to spend a long weekend with other passionate individuals – which skyrocketed my hope for the world we live in to astonishing new heights. And I am forever grateful and appreciative of everyone I met there; the ones that made the summit possible, and the fellow “summiters” I was able to listen and grow from, as a result of hearing their vastly different life experiences.

I’m a Greenpeace skeptic no more, it truly was a once in a lifetime experience.”

 

Thoughts?

 

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