Sara Mersha (2010) is the Director of Grantmaking and Advocacy for Grassroots International. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Sara worked for 12 years as Lead Organizer and then Executive Director of Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), a grassroots group serving low-income communities of color in Providence, RI. After serving as Visiting Faculty in the Ethnic Studies Department of Brown University, she began a master's degree at Brown's Center for Environmental Studies. She now focuses her work on climate justice and food sovereignty, including with the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, work that she describes in the video below.
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I have just returned from another jam-packed Switzer Fellows retreat held in southern California the weekend of March 23-25, 2012. Over the last few years, as part of our ongoing outreach to Fellows and colleagues in the region, and our interest in showcasing leaders who are addressing the depth and complexity of interconnected environmental and social issues, this annual spring retreat is a perennial favorite of mine because it offers an opportunity to delve into a set of urgent environmental issues in southern California. In fact, how can we examine the environmental issues of California without including the social justice dimensions, the pressures on rare and threatened natural...
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) released a report this week on the costs of California’s progress in generating more electricity from renewable power and there was good news. Prices of new contract bids submitted to utilities last year were about 30 percent lower than in 2009, according to the report, signaling a more competitive future for the renewable power industry in California.
Until now, the CPUC has released quarterly reports on the number of contracts signed by utilities toward meeting California’s goal of...