Sunday, May 8

A sunny day in Washington DC found participants from the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition, the Coalition for Eastern Forests and Communities and the National Rural Assembly (now that’s a mouthful of goodness!) inside and hard at work preparing for our advocacy week.  The long day included: a communications training complete with role playing, brainstorming about effective messaging around our priority ‘asks,’ and a review of the behemoth of a meeting schedule; the collective group plans to tackle over 100 meetings over the next 4 days.
 
When asked about our goals for the week, responses ranged from: “Having a recommendation stick in a staffers’ mind” to “Taking the Metro more”, “Just learning the ropes” and of course, “Not losing Merrill” (your friendly local rancher from Idaho). We’re confident we’ll be able to accomplish all of these, and we’ll most certainly do our best to keep track of Merrill.
 
The diversity of participants (38 people from 13 states and Washington DC) and knowledge of the group is astounding.  It’s impossible to overstate the amount of dedication, sincerity, and ambition that these individuals bring to the table, and ultimately makes us stand out among the infinite issues and constituencies that characterize this city.  We come from valleys in Montana, wet and dry forests in Oregon and New Hampshire, farms in Tennessee, and a plethora of other landscapes in between the 3,300 miles that separate the home states of our farthest reaching participants.
 
Nonetheless, these individuals converge in Washington DC because across the country, rural communities are facing the same challenges and are able to rally around similar solutions, including the need for strong community-based organizations, landscape-scale restoration, incentives to promote thermal energy from biomass, investment in monitoring, and an expanding list of ideas and philosophies designed to ensure vibrant rural communities across the nation. We are defined by a perseverance that is forged by the connection to the landscapes surrounding our communities, tested by the challenges we face to ensure their resiliency and productivity, and united to preserve them through collaborative innovation and the insights of diverse voices. These are the places that sustain us; those that we call home.  For the individuals participating in this Week in Washington, there is perhaps no more important purpose. These landscapes and the people connected to them are the reasons we continue this work…no matter the day, no matter the time, and no matter the distance.
 
See the groups’ issue papers here:  http://www.sustainablenorthwest.org/resources/rvcc-issue-papers