Jessica Nichols ’15.

Two Bates sophomores are among finalists in a letter-writing competition designed to teach college students effective advocacy.

Jessica Nichols of Lincoln, Mass., and Kate Paladin of Palo Alto, Calif., wrote and sent a letter to U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud, a Democrat representing Maine’s 2nd District, expressing concern about proposals to pipe tar-sands oil through Maine.

The pair entered the letter in the Letters to an Elected Official program operated by Project Pericles, a national not-for-profit organization that promotes the teaching of social responsibility and participatory citizenship at the college level.

The Bates team and student pairs from four other schools will present and defend their letters at a mock legislative hearing that’s part of the 2013 Debating for Democracy National Conference, to be held March 21-22 at The New School for Liberal Arts, New York City.

Kate Paladin ’15.

Also attending the event as Bates delegates to the conference are two first-year students, Alexandra Morrow of Lebanon, Maine, and Dana Cohen-Kaplan of Newton, Mass.

“We’re delighted that Jess and Kate have been named finalists,” says Darby Ray, director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships at Bates, the office that administers the college’s curricular and volunteer activities in the community.

“Bates has a strong tradition of equipping students for informed civic action, and Jess and Kate’s well-researched and compellingly written letter is an excellent example of such action.”

The other finalist teams come from Berea, Carleton and Swarthmore colleges and Chatham University. At the March 21 legislative hearing, one team will be selected as the winning team and will receive $3,000 to develop an advocacy campaign related to the issue they wrote about.

The four finalist teams will each receive a $500 award also for use in developing an advocacy campaign.

The issues that the other semi-finalists wrote about were:

• the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program;
• the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994;
• gender equity in the Pennsylvania Math-Engineering-Science Achievement Initiative;
• and parental notification language in Pennsylvania abortion control legislation.

Students from schools affiliated with Project Pericles sent 57 letters to more than 100 elected officials throughout the United States, proposing innovative ideas on issues ranging from gun control to aerial drones to Alzheimer’s disease. Among other criteria, the letters were judged on the quality of policy analysis and research represented, and clarity of presentation.

This year’s panel of former government officials who will assess the letters and the students’ cases for them includes U.S. Sen. Harris Wofford (D-Penn.); U.S. Rep. Thomas Downey (D-N.Y.); Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke; and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Constance Berry Newman, a member of the Bates class of 1956.

Founded in 2001 by philanthropist Eugene M. Lang, Project Pericles works directly with its member institutions, such as Bates College, as they individually and collaboratively develop model civic engagement programs in their classrooms, on their campuses and in their communities.

Called Belcampo, it is “not just an interesting company, [but a] potentially an important one,” writes Richard Bradley.

“It aims to manage its land and animals in a sustainable fashion, using best practices typically only used by much smaller farms that find turning a profit an ongoing challenge. No agribusiness has ever tried this experiment on such a large scale, much less in three countries simultaneously.”

The company began with land, and lots of it, that Robinson bought in the three countries after selling his company, Linsco Private Ledger Corp., in 2005 and turning his attention to food and farming, two passions born from visits to his grandparents’ Maine farm as a child.

“Eco-friendly but moneymaking.”

At first, Robinson simply wanted to “rehab some pastures [and] make some good food” while trying to break even. After rejecting various ideas to make the venture financially viable (such as eco-marinas or a fertilizer-free golf course), he began searching for someone who knew how, in Bradley’s words, “to transform empty farmland into an eco-friendly but moneymaking property.”

That led him to Belcampo’s current CEO, Anya Fernald, founder of the food consultancy Live Culture and named in 2010 as one of The New York Times “Nifty 50″ up-and-coming American talents.

“Belcampo is a big bet,” James Freeman, founder of Blue Bottle Coffee, tells Bradley. “It’s a breathtakingly complex thing.”

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She points to the residents of Bayview Hunters Point, a neighborhood in San Francisco burdened by high crime rates, lack of medical care and an overdose of toxic waste.

San Francisco’s two major freeways, I-280 and U.S. 101, merge over Bayview Hunters Point. Residents struggle with the confluence of poverty, crime and disease exacerbated by harsh pollutants and industrial development. Photograph by Kate Paladin ’15.

With Greenaction, Paladin explored the effects of Bayview’s two Superfund sites, industrial facilities identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as potentially hazardous polluters. One is the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard; the other the Yosemite Creek sediment site.

Kate Paladin ’15 speaks about her experience as Otis Fellow during an EnviroLunch in New Commons on Jan. 17, 2013. Photograph by Mike Bradley/Bates College.

Picking up on a Greenaction community survey project, she noted that the reported rates of health problems among Bayview’s residents were well above the national averages.

Despite Bayview’s long history of pollutant-related health issues — particularly asbestos poisoning — Paladin says the government and corporations have been slow to act. She believes that for Bayview and other impoverished communities, change will come when activists partner with an empowered citizenry.

The Otis Internship and Fellowship, funded in honor of Phil Otis ’95 by Margaret V.B. and C. Angus Wurtele in memory of their son, is awarded to students of any major who demonstrate an interest in the ethical stewardship of the environment.

As an environmental studies major, Paladin says that her experience in Bayview has inspired her to “keep fighting for those whose voices tend to be ignored.”

Moving forward, Paladin is interested in sustainable development and reducing consumption.

“If we use less power, plastics and other ‘stuff’ in general, we will prevent future communities from becoming the next Bayview Hunters Point,” she says.

In this early 1960s image, U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie ’36 and Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, with an unidentified park ranger, visit Maine’s Cadillac Mountain. Image courtesy of the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library.

One of the landmark environmental laws developed by the late U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie, the Clean Water Act turns 40 in mid-October 2012.

Bates College, from which Muskie graduated in 1936, presents a panel discussion exploring the history and future of the Clean Water Act at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 1, in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

Editor’s Note, Oct. 5, 2012: See video of the panel.

The event is open to the public at no cost. An installment of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships’ Civic Forum series, the event is jointly sponsored with the history department, the environmental studies program and the Muskie Archives. For more information, please call 207-786-6202.

The panelists are:

• Stephen Hinchman, an attorney who works with the Androscoggin River Alliance, an organization dedicated to the health of the river, the local economy and local communities;
• Pete Didisheim, advocacy director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, one of Maine’s best-known environmental advocacy organizations;
• Emily Figdor, director of Environment Maine, a research, education and advocacy organization;
• and John Storer, engineer for the city of Auburn’s water and sewerage districts and the Lake Auburn Watershed Protection Commission.

A native of Rumford, Maine, Muskie grew up well-aware of the sorry condition of the Androscoggin River, rendered one of the nation’s dirtiest waterways by decades of municipal and industrial pollution. An early champion of environmental protection, Muskie spearheaded the Clean Air Act of 1970 and later the Clean Water Act.

Today, while not pristine, the Androscoggin is dramatically healthier and is increasingly the focus of recreational and economic development initiatives.

Coinciding with growing public awareness of environmental issues and the establishment of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, these laws were instrumental both in reducing pollution of the nation’s air and waters, and establishing the pro-environmental mindset that continues to shape U.S. society and policymaking today.

Noted environmental photographer Chris Jordan gives the 2012 Otis Lecture.

Photographer Chris Jordan, known for confronting viewers with the environmental devastation produced by the consumer society, speaks at Bates College at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 9, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Titled Encountering Midway, Jordan’s presentation is the 2012 Otis Lecture at Bates. A reception in the Olin Arts Center lobby follows. Supported by the Philip J. Otis Endowment, the event is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required; please contact olinarts@bates.edu. For more information, please call 207-755-5978.

Jordan’s subject at Bates, his Midway: Message from the Gyre project, explores the death of albatross chicks from plastic waste fed to them by their parents. Foraging in a section of the ocean known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive vortex of trash that is changing the Pacific’s ecology, the adult albatrosses pick up the plastic along with their regular food. Jordan’s images include heartbreaking depictions of the plastic lingering in the decomposing corpses of juvenile birds.

“Talking to Americans about consumerism is like talking to someone with an alcohol problem,” Jordan told Orion Magazine in 2007. “Our culture is in deep denial about what we are doing to our planet.” What might be most tragic, he added, “is that we are in denial about how our consumer lifestyle is sapping our own spirits.”

His images, often beautiful and always compelling, confront the viewer with the consequences of heedless consumerism — particularly the mind-bending quantities of waste left by the production and disposal of consumer goods. In other projects, he has composed thousands of photos of waste items into replicas of familiar images; depicted the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and rendered captivating images of discarded cell phones and junked cars.

Formerly a lawyer with a passion for photography, Jordan took up camera work full time in 2003 and is now a preeminent environmental artist. He has exhibited widely in the U.S., Europe, and Asia and received numerous awards including the Sierra Club’s Ansel Adams Award for Excellence in Conservation. His work appeared in the 2007 Bates College Museum of Art exhibition Green Horizons.

Learn more: www.chrisjordan.com

The annual Otis Lecture at Bates is funded by the Philip J. Otis Endowment, established in 1996 by a gift from Margaret V.B. and C. Angus Wurtele in memory of their son, Philip, a member of the class of 1995 who died attempting to rescue injured climbers on Mount Rainier.

In recognition of Otis’ appreciation for nature, the endowment helps support Bates programs with an environmental focus, in particular those exploring the spiritual and moral dimensions of humanity’s relationship with the environment.

Environmental historian William Cronon.

With the 40th anniversary of the landmark federal Clean Water Act approaching in mid-October, Bates College will observe the occasion with a talk by influential environmental historian William Cronon at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 20, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Cronon’s talk, titled The Riddle of Sustainability: A Surprisingly Short History of the Future, is the Charles and Virginia Tangney History Lecture at Bates. Open to the public at no cost, the event is the second installment in this fall’s Civic Forum Series, produced for Bates by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships.

The talk is jointly sponsored by the history department, the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, and the environmental studies program, as well as the Harward Center. For more information, please call 207-786-6202.

Cronon is Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He studies American environmental history and the history of the American West.

He is a national leader in the study of past human interactions with nature, concentrating on how people depend on the ecosystems around them to sustain their material lives, how they modify the landscapes in which they live and how ideas of nature shape the world around us.

Cronon heads UW-Madison’s Center for Culture, History and Environment, which brings together scholars from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, history and forestry to study environmental and cultural change throughout human history.

He has written and edited several prize-winning books, including Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (Norton, 1991), which was awarded the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for best non-fiction work in 1991 and was one of three nominees for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in History.

Oct. 18 is the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act of 1972, one of two transformational pieces of environmental legislation championed by the late U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie, Democrat of Maine. Bates has a special interest in this legislation that launched a massive cleanup of the nation’s waters.

A member of the college’s class of 1936, Muskie was a native of Rumford and grew up near the Androscoggin River, which by the mid-20th century was one of the U.S. waterways most badly affected by industrial and municipal pollution. The Androscoggin has long been the focus of research by Bates students and faculty, including one chemist, Walter Lawrance, who was the state-appointed Androscoggin rivermaster.

The 12th annual Clean Sweep, Bates College’s green “garage sale” of appliances, furniture, electronics and other goods donated by the college community, raised $21,223 — a record sum for the event — that will be divided among 14 local nonprofit organizations.

A popular community tradition, the June 16 sale filled the college’s Underhill Arena, drawing hundreds of bargain-hunters from the region.

The event is a win-win-win for the nonprofits, shoppers and the environment. Sale proceeds go to nonprofits that, in exchange, supply volunteers to help staff the event, as well as other support. How large a share of proceeds each nonprofit receives is determined by the number of volunteer hours, trucks and tables it provides.

This year’s volunteers put in nearly 1,400 hours of effort, says Julie Rosenbach, manager of sustainability initiatives at Bates, a college recognized for both “green” programming and active engagement in the community.
Shoppers and the environment benefit because so many valuable items are given a second chance at a useful life, rather than going into the waste stream.

“With the help of the participating organizations, we were able to find a home for almost all of the leftovers, so very little — less than would fit in a pickup truck — went into the trash,” says Rosenbach.

Located in Lewiston except as indicated, the nonprofits taking part this year were: the Caleb Group (River Valley Village); Common Ties Mental Health Services; Dominican Sisters; First Universalist Church, Auburn; the Justice, Ecology and Democracy Collective, Greene; the Life Center at John F. Murphy Homes, Auburn; Lots to Gardens; Maine People’s Alliance; the Root Cellar; the Share Center, Auburn; Somali Bantu Community Association; Support Solutions; TriCounty Mental Health Services; and the Trinity Jubilee Center.

While goods for the sale were donated from across the campus community, many of these still-worthy items came from students preparing to leave campus at the end of the academic year.

Bates is one of a number of colleges and universities nationwide that benefit both local nonprofit organizations and the environment by selling useful possessions donated by students as they depart at the end of the academic year.

Bates environmental economist Lynne Lewis. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

“Desperate Alewives,” a Maine Public Broadcasting Network documentary featuring Bates environmental economist Lynne Lewis among others, has been nominated for a New England Emmy in the category of Outstanding Environmental Program. The program is part of the MPBN series Sustainable Maine.

The 35th Annual Boston/New England Emmy Awards, sponsored by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Boston/New England chapter, will be presented June 2 in Boston.

A river herring called the alewife — aka sawbelly, mooneye, gaspereau and big-eyed or spring herring — is an essential component in the fresh- and saltwater food chain along much of the Eastern Seaboard. In Maine, alewife populations have plummeted, prompting research by a group whose members include scholars from Bates, Bowdoin College and the University of Southern Maine, many of whom are featured in the MPBN segment.

Watch Desperate Alewives.

“I think if we don’t care, it’ll be too late,” Lewis says. “Policymakers always want to know the costs and benefits — and the costs of these decisions always tend to be very localized, the politics very intense, about taking out a dam or putting in a fish ladder.

“But the benefits accrue to so many different people: to the anglers, to the property owners, to the codfishery, to the lobster fishery.”

Associate Professor of Geology Beverly Johnson.

Lewis and her Bates colleague Beverly Johnson, a geology professor depicted in the documentary, are collaborating with faculty from Bowdoin and USM on the project “Maine Rivers, Estuaries and Coastal Fisheries,” funded by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Experimental Programs to Stimulate Competitive Research (ESPCoR) through a grant to the University of Maine’s Sustainability Solutions Initiative.

That initiative is designed to connect research with concrete action that promotes the economy, vibrant communities and healthy ecosystems in and beyond Maine.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the collaboration will weigh the costs and benefits of river rehabilitation in Maine and the effects of rehabilitation efforts on fisheries and economies.

Chair of Bates’ economics department, Lewis’ own research explores the potential benefits and costs of river rehabilitation and, specifically, dam removal.

Johnson’s research seeks to reconstruct the Gulf of Maine’s ancient nearshore ecosystem in order to help scientists predict current responses to natural and human influences. Funded by a $393,000 NSF grant, that interdisciplinary project also includes biologist Will Ambrose and archeologist Bruce Bourque of Bates and Robert Steneck of UMaine’s School of Marine Sciences.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph, shown at center during the "Life is Living" festival, Chicago, 2009. Photo by Bethanie Hines.

“The movements for social change and environmental accountability are one and the same,” says Marc Bamuthi Joseph. “And focusing on steps to sustain the planet will ultimately force us to envision a pathway to sustaining humanity.”

Finding that focus is the goal of the stage show red, black & GREEN: a blues, which Joseph and a host of collaborators present in performances at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 27-28, at the Lewiston Memorial Armory, 65 Central Ave.

Bates College and the Bates Dance Festival present this widely acclaimed multimedia production that brings to life personal stories about the impacts of a deteriorating environment. Doors will open at 8 p.m., and the piece begins with a 20-minute immersive audience experience on stage.

Tickets cost $20 for the general public and $10 for students, and are available at batestickets.com. Learn more.

Called “as smart and provocative as it is breathtakingly beautiful” by the San Francisco Chronicle, rbGb combines spoken word, music, dance and a stunningly dynamic stage design. Such eclecticism reflects Joseph himself — a true Renaissance man equally talented as a poet, a dancer, educator and activist.

April 24, 2012: Marc Bamuthi Joseph in a half-hour interview with Maine Public Broadcasting’s Suzanne Nance.
April 20, 2012: Joseph is one of 21 artists nationwide to receive the prestigious Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Award.

This full-length performance piece is designed to jumpstart a conversation about environmental justice, social ecology and collective responsibility in the climate-change era. Joseph, one of America’s vital voices in performance and arts education, brings the piece to Lewiston as part of an ongoing relationship with Bates.

“rbGb breaks new artistic ground and delivers a powerful message,” says Laura Faure, director of the Bates Dance Festival. “We’re honored to have had a sustained relationship with the brilliant Marc Bamuthi Joseph over the past nine years, and are thrilled to bring this remarkable work to Maine.”

rbGb reunites seven artists from the acclaimed 2008 work the break/s: a mixtape for stage: writer-performer Joseph; director Michael John Garcés; choreographer Stacey Printz; turntablist/percussionist Tommy Shepherd; documentary filmmaker Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi; lighting designer James Clotfelter; and media designer David Szlasa.

Joseph will be joined onstage in the Lewiston performances by Shepherd, dancer-actor Traci Tolmaire and vocalist Yaw.

Stories for rbGb were developed from material gathered at a series of festivals, held in four cities across the U.S., that use participatory arts and action to advance social and environmental justice in diverse and underserved communities. Under Joseph’s artistic direction, these Life is Living events in Oakland, Calif., Harlem, Chicago and Houston have yielded residents’ testimony as dramatic source material — specifically, the voices of people often left out of discussions about “living green.”

Interviews, poems, films and murals from Life is Living have become words, dance and images that express the challenge of living green where violent crime and poor education are more of a threat than ecological crisis, and that reveal emerging definitions of environmentalism in these communities.

Set into designer Theaster Gates’ malleable stage installation of repurposed building materials and clay objects, and heightened by Jacobs-Fantauzzi’s vivid films and vibrant graffiti murals from Life is Living, rbGb is driven by the idea that valuing your own life, and the life of your community, is the first step to valuing planet Earth.

The production is composed of two sections. Titled “the colored museum” (inspired in part by the George C. Wolfe play of the same name), the first invites spectators on stage to look into the windows of installations that represent four urban regions, and stories and movements from these areas.

In “colors and muses,” audience members return to their seats and watch as the piece extends beyond conversation and focuses on central figures in Houston, New York, Chicago and Oakland.