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FORUM2024

One Vote, One Planet: Healing Our World

Proudly presented by the Temple of Understanding in collaboration with Marble Collegiate Church, New York City.

Voter Reflection Guide

Program

Welcome

Rev. Dr. Michael Bos, Senior Minister of Marble Collegiate Church

Keynote Address

Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe

Opening Prayer

Rev. Cathlin Baker, First Congregational Church of West Tisbury, MA

Dialogue I: Traditional Knowledge and The Rights of Nature

Dr. Vandana Shiva, Hindu traditional knowledge
Bob Thurman, Tibetan traditional knowledge

Artwork/Poem

Annie Colangeli, photo
Marshall Lyles, poem

Dialogue II: Vote Peace and Environmental Justice

Melanie Goodchild, Systems Thinking and Complexity Scholar
Nina Simons, Co-Founder of Bioneers.org

Artwork/Poem

Fredericka Foster, painting
Alicia Hokanson, poem
Carole Vandal, flute

Dialogue III: People Power, Building a Movement

Bill McKibben, Contributing writer to The New Yorker and a founder of Third Act
Zanagee Artis, Founder and the Executive Director of Zero Hour

Closing

Alison Van Dyk, Executive Director, ToU

Keynote Speaker and Opening Prayer

Keynote Address: Chief Arvol Looking Horse

Chief Arvol Looking Horse was born on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota. At the age of 12, he was given the responsibility of becoming the 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, the youngest ever. He is widely recognized as a chief and the spiritual leader of all three branches of the Sioux tribe. He is the author of White Buffalo Teachings and a guest columnist for Indian Country Today. A tireless advocate of maintaining traditional spiritual practices, Chief Looking Horse is the founder of Big Foot Riders which memorializes the massacre of Big Foot’s band at Wounded Knee.

Opening Prayer: Rev. Cathlin Baker

Rev. Cathlin is the 50th minister of First Congregational Church of West Tisbury and their first female minister. Prior to her ministry in West Tisbury, Cathlin served as the Special Assistant to the President of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. In addition to assisting then President Joseph Hough in all aspects of seminary administration, she also participated in a Ministerial and Spiritual Formation program for the students, supporting their personal spiritual and vocational development. Both at Union and while serving on church staff at Judson Memorial Church and The Riverside Church, she was involved with community-based anti-poverty efforts. 

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Rev. Baker has two degrees from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, both in Christian Ethics. (MA 1996, MDiv 2000) She received her undergraduate degree from Hamilton College in Clinton, NY where she majored in religion. Rev. Baker was born in New York City and raised in North Plainfield, NJ.  She lives in West Tisbury with her husband, Bill, the Managing Editor of the Vineyard Gazette, and her two children Hardy and Eirene. She is currently writing a book about how and why people choose church, based on her study group with the congregation, Mapping our Faith Journeys.

Traditional Knowledge and The Rights of Nature

Dr. Vandana Shiva

Hindu Traditional Knowledge

Vandana Shiva, a world-renowned environmental thinker, activist, feminist, philosopher of science, writer, and science policy advocate, is the founder of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in India and President of Navdanya International.

Trained as a Physicist at the University of Punjab, she completed her Ph.D. on the ‘Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory’ from the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

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She later shifted to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology, and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India.

In 1982 she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), an independent research institute that addresses the most significant problems of ecology of our times, and two years later, Navdanya (‘nine seeds’), the movement in defense of biodiversity and the contributions made to the climate, environment and society by small farmers.

The recipient of many awards, including the Right Livelihood Award (the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’) and the Sydney Peace Prize, she has been named among the top five “Most Important People in Asia” by AsiaWeek.

She is a prolific writer and author of numerous books and serves on the board of the International Forum on Globalization, and member of the executive committee of the World Future Council.

Bob Thurman

Tibetan Traditional Knowledge

Bob Thurman, known in the academic circles as Professor Robert A.F. Thurman, is a talented popularizer of the Buddha’s teachings and the first Westerner Tibetan Buddhist monk ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. A charismatic speaker and author of many books on Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics and culture, Bob was named by The New York Times the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism, and was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri Award in 2020, for his help in recovering India’s ancient Buddhist heritage. Time Magazine chose him as one of the 25 most influential Americans in 1997, describing him as a “larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the Dharma, the precious teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, from Asia to America.”

Vote Peace and Environmental Justice

Melanie Goodchild

Melanie Goodchild, moose clan, is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibway woman) from Biigtigong Nishnaabeg First Nation and Ketegaunseebee (Garden River) First Nation.  She is a systems thinking and complexity scholar who offers a uniquely Anishinaabeg approach to making sense of society’s most entrenched problems.  She is a PhD candidate in Social & Ecological Sustainability in the School of Environment, Resources & Sustainability (SERS) in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo. 

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Melanie is a Research Fellow with the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation & Resilience (WISIR) and a faculty member of the u-school for Transformation by the Presencing Institute, the Academy for Systems Change and the Wolf Willow Institute for Systems Learning.  She is an International Women’s Forum (IWF) Leadership Fellows Program alumni (2015-16), a program sponsored by Harvard Business School and INSEAD.  

She lives with her family in Baawaating (place of the rapids), in the traditional territory of the Three Fires Confederacy.

Nina Simons

Nina Simons is co-founder of Bioneers and serves as its Chief Relationship Strategist. She is a social entrepreneur who is passionate about the power of women to transform the world, reaching racial and gender justice, indigeneity and rekindling a sacred relationship to nature, while co-creating a just transition that’s regenerative, loving and peaceful.

She speaks internationally and co-facilitates transformative leadership offerings that integrate Relational Mindfulness, Restoring the Deep Feminine, and The Work That Reconnects.

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Nina co-edited Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart, and recently wrote the award-winning book Nature, Culture & the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership. She was named a recipient of the Goi Peace Award in recognition of her pioneering work through Bioneers to promote nature-inspired innovations for restoring (reciprocal relationships among) the Earth and our human community.

People Power: Building a Movement

Bill McKibben

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.

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Bill has also won the Gandhi Peace Award, and honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities. He has written over a dozen books about the environment, including his first, The End of Nature, published in 1989, and the forthcoming The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.

Zanagee Artis

Zanagee Artis is 25 years old and a founder and the executive director of Zero Hour. Zanagee has led Zero Hour’s global education campaigns, digital engagement, federal policy advocacy, and fundraising at different points throughout his tenure. Zanagee has also led the organization’s political campaigns strategy to elect more Green New Deal Champions to Congress. 

Zanagee works to oppose new fossil fuel leasing and development on public lands and waters as the Fossil Fuels Policy Advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

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Zanagee is the co-author of A Kids Book About Climate Change and co-host of 1 Point 5: A Kids Podcast About Climate Justice. 

He has been featured in numerous publications for his work on climate justice policy, including The New York Times, Teen Vogue, The Miami Herald, and The Economist. In March of 2022, Zanagee traveled to Antarctica as an ambassador of the Global Choices Arctic Angels Network to witness polar climate impacts firsthand. He is a 2022 graduate of Brown University.

FORUM Action List

  • Become informed and spread the word, talk with family, friends, and colleagues
  • Share the video recording of our FORUMS:
  • Share our videos of ECO JUSTICE FOR ALL Dialogues & Interviews
  • Join an environmental group, unite and take action
  • Take part in or organize a cleanup on a beach, river, creek, park, street, etc
  • Use your voice and your vote to push for credible climate action locally, nationally, and globally
  • Support legislation to curb plastic production and waste
  • Put pressure on corporations and manufacturers
  • Make your money count, support green companies
  • Invest money responsibly in renewable energy and energy efficiency
  • Walk, bike, or take public transport
  • Reduce, reuse, purchase items secondhand, repair & recycle properly
  • Cut down your consumption
  • Eat organic, non-GMO, eat more vegetables, and less dairy, meat, seafood, and fish
  • Cook more, buy more in bulk
  • Don’t waste food, create compost
  • Respect and protect green spaces, do not cut down trees
  • Plant trees and native vegetation, plant regenerative forests and food gardens
  • Cut back on flights, boat cruises, and unnecessary travel
  • Refuse any single-use plastics and avoid products containing microbeads
  • Carry reusable bags, produce bags, water bottles, utensils, coffee cups, and straws.
  • Save energy at home and at work.
  • Use less water. Use less hot water.
  • Adjust your thermostat for heating and cooling.
  • Switch to energy-efficient light bulbs and electric appliances.
  • Turn off electronic devices when not in use.
  • Wash laundry with cold water and hang clothes to dry.
  • Host a viewing party for one of the many plastic-pollution-focused documentaries, like A Plastic Ocean, Garbage Island: An Ocean Full of Plastic, Bag It, Addicted to Plastic, Plasticized, or Garbage Island.

Here are a few links we suggest for more information:

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