Bordertown

In this episode we welcome Walt Poleman , Senior Lecturer and Director of the Ecological Planning Program at the University of Vermont.

Walt specializes in natural history, place-based landscape analysis, and education for sustainability. He teaches courses in natural history and human ecology, landscape inventory and assessment, and conservation science.

He is co-director of the Field Naturalist Ecological Planning Graduate Program, and serves as faculty advisor to the Sustainability Learning Community. Walter is the founding director the PLACE (Place-based Landscape Analysis & Community Engagement) Program, and co-coordinator of the Greater Burlington Sustainability Education Network.

Walt coordinates the Rubenstein School’s dual master’s degree program with Vermont Law School, and teaches ecology there each summer. His teaching awards include the President’s Distinguished Senior Lecturer Award, the Kroespsh-Maurice Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Outstanding Service-Learning Faculty Award.

This episode features "The Mighty River" by Railroad Earth

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In this episode we welcome Ryan Geary, owner the of The Hive , and co-owner of Rabble-Rouser.

He works in a variety of mediums and disciplines, including wood carving, furniture making and painting, but his preferred art form and main focus over the past 5 years has been 2D and 3D collage.

Ryan attributes his health and ability to live a productive life, to, among other things his active creation of arts and his return to those things that brought him joy and comfort as a child. He loves to grow cannabis, coaches little league and owns a home here in central VT where he lives with his son his wife, as well as x-wife and her husband, where they function as one unit and co-parent their children

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In this episode we welcome Janice Walrefen of All Together Now.

Janice Walrefen co-creates AllTogetherNow!, Community Arts Center in East Montpelier, with Ellen Leonard. Together they teach summer camp and produce our community seasonal pageants, parades and puppet shows. Janice has her Art Tiles clay studio, classroom, puppets and shares community gardens at AllTogetherNow! Ellen is the director of the awesome preschool at AllTogetherNow! and teaches family music classes. Their mission is to be an inspiration and model for sustainable living and celebration.

Janice resides along the Winooski River in Plainfield Vermont among the wise white pine, sweet cedar, fiddleheads, cattails, wild and domestic creatures that share her home and garden; red squirrel, crow, turkey, deer, jay, merganser, fox, owl, mink, weasel, otter, chickadee, yellow finch, grouse, woodpecker, goose, duck, canine, and human friends. She grew up in the Senoran desert of Arizona with her artist/potter mother and two sisters. She takes after her mom and makes a living as an artist, making handmade tile and sculpture from clay, teaching art to people of all ages, creating masked costumes and large street puppets, coordinating seasonal pageants and parades in Montpelier, the State Capital. Janice is also a member of the Vermont Craft Council .

We were joined this week by Jason Mallery, who helped out with music.

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Matthew Binginot is a designer producer, and lover of all forms of media creativity. He is especially drawn towards photography, music, film and graphic design, although he is always seeking new forms of creative epression to tell stories and share his inspiration.

When not producing his own media art, he teaches a program called Digital Media Arts at the Central Vermont Career Center . Every day he inspires young artist to be creative and show them new ways to practice their passion.

Additional music by Matthew Binginot

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This week our guest is Bennett Shapiro of Madtech Sound. If you go to a live music event in this area, you are bound to see Bennett, walking around with his magic tablet, making things sound good.

We talk to Bennett about his journey as a sound engineer, the music scene in central Vermont and his ideas about integrating our live podcast into the Rabble-Rouser Chocolate Factory and Community Center.

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This episode is a conversation about how the Bordertown podcast aligns with the Rabble-Rouser creative vision. Our guest is the founder of Nutty Steph’s and one of the visionary’s behind Rabble-Rouser, Jaquelyn Rieke. She will provide background on the formation of the Rabble Rouser, collaboratively-owned Chocolate Factory and Community Center, and discuss the creative vision. Vic Guadagno will discuss ecomedia and the goals of the Bordertown Podcast. Music Director Rob Meehan discusses our musical ideas, and offers insight as a long-time advocate for food justice.

Bordertown has moved from the studio to a live setting and the first few episodes are visioning sessions to discuss collaborative goals and emerging strategies. This week we discuss synergies between Bordertown and the Rabble-Rouser Community Center.

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We're taking the show on the road. After several years of recording interviews in our home studio, we are embarking on a public conversation at Montpelier’s new Rabble Rouser – Chocolate Factory and Community Center.

In this episode we join the Rabble Rouser community at their launch party. We hear from Jaquelyn Rieke (formerly known as Nutty Steph), the visionary behind this undertaking. We also hear from Bill Kaplan, forward thinking landlord with a strong commitment to community. We speak with just a few of the folks behind the building renovation, architect Tolya Stonorov, woodworker Eyrich Stauffer and painter/artist Hans Stewart. We chat briefly with Montpelier Alive’s Dan Groberg and wrap up with owner of the Hive, and now Rabble Rouser, Ryan Geary.

This episode represents a new format for the Bordertown podcast as we are recording live, in a public setting. This is the first of a long-discussed format, in hopes to better achieve our goal of creating conditions for relationships building and enriching communication in our region.

Music, Hard Livin' by Railroad Earth.

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Chuck Collins is a Senior Policy Analyst for the Institute for Policy Studies. He is the author of many books including Born on Third Base , The Community Resilience Reader and Is inequality in America irreversible? He is the co-editor of the Inequality.org website.

Chuck has dedicated his life to understanding the basis of economic inequality in the US, and has pioneered countless efforts to connect investors, business leaders, and one-percenters to the common wealth of their place in the world. He has organized and led many activities against corporate practices and economic policies that increase economic inequality. He is an organizing force behind Patriotic Millionaires, a united network of high-net worth Americans, business leaders and investors who are united in their concern about the destabilizing concentration of wealth and power in America.

Chuck’s story of wealth inequality is a first hand account…His great grandfather was the meat-packer, Oscar Mayer and Chuck grew up with the inherited wealth from his family fortune. He realized in his mid-twenties that the “mountain of privilege” that had defined his life so far…did not resonate with him…and he gave away his inheritance, to several foundations that funded “change, not charity”. He has been advocating for solutions to the ever-increasing wealth inequality in our country ever since.

Chuck references the French economist Thomas Piketty when he suggests that, “If we stay on this trajectory, we are moving to become a hereditary aristocracy of wealth, where the sons and daughters of todays billionaires will control the media, the culture and the politics of the future”.

Chuck speaks of the breakdown of a “culture of mutual aid”. Because wealthy people can buy their way through life they don’t ask for help, and therefore don’t develop reciprocal relationships, And as Chuck describes, "you can’t have community without real need and vulnerability".

He describes privilege is a disconnection drug…it keeps us apart. It creates a buffer zone, and that disconnection leads to unfulfilled lives. Chuck speaks of the “invitation home” to wealthy people in our country...to bring their wealth back to community and invest in place and people. Chuck proposes that, “People are waiting to be invited to something bigger than consumption….and that is community”. As we decrease our wealth divide, we find a solution to personal disconnection, our social divisions and, with investment in local systems…our ecological crisis…

I interviewed Chuck at the LOCALize IT conference, held in South Royalton, Vermont on October 21-22, 2017. The LOCALize IT conference was co-sponsored by Local Futures, Vermonters for a New Economy, the Sustainable Futures Fund of the The Vermont Community Foundation, the New Economy Law Center at The Vermont Law School and BALE, Building a Local Economy.

The LOCALize IT Conference was a two-day solutions focused gathering for leaders and community members engaged in accelerating a localizing movement in our region.

Thanks to Railroad Earth for providing the theme music "Lordy Lordy"

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Sherri Mitchell, Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset is an Indigenous rights activist, spiritual teacher, and transformational change maker. She was born and raised on the Penobscot Indian reservation with a family of strong advocates and social justice activists. It was engrained in her from a very young age that, “not only do you not accept poor treatment of the ones that you love, but you also don’t participate in, or be complicit through silence in the mistreatment of others”.

Sherri Mitchells book, Sacred Instructions, Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change was released earlier this year.

Sherri is the Founding Director of the Land Peace Foundation, an organization dedicated to the global protection of Indigenous rights and the preservation of the Indigenous way of life. Prior to forming the Land Peace Foundation, She served as a law clerk to the Solicitor of the United States Department of Interior; as an Associate with Fredericks, Peebles and Morgan Law Firm; and a civil rights educator for the Maine Attorney General’s Office, and she was the Staff Attorney for the Native American Unit of Pine Tree Legal. Sherri is an Advisor to We Are Nature Rising, who "helps next generation leaders awaken their ecological identify & foster the leadership skills necessary to act on behalf of the planet".

Sherri received her undergraduate degree from the University of Maine, and received her Juris Doctorate and a certificate in Indigenous People’s Law and Policy from the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law. Sherri is an alumna of the American Indian Ambassador program, and the Udall Native American Congressional Internship program. In 2010, she received the Mahoney Dunn International Human Rights and Humanitarian Award, for research into Human Rights violations against Indigenous Peoples. In 2015, she received the Spirit of Maine Award, for commitment and excellence in the field of International Human Rights. In 2016, Sherri’s portrait was added to the esteemed portrait series, Americans Who Tell the Truth, by artist Robert Shetterly.

Her broad base of knowledge allows her to synthesize these many subjects into a cohesive whole, weaving together the legal, political, and spiritual aspects surrounding a multitude of complex issues. Sherri is the cohost, with Rivera Sun of Love (and Revolution) Radio, where they focus on stories of creative nonviolence, resilience and resistance and her work is featured in a documentary film on transformational change, by New Story Film.

I interviewed Sherri at the LOCALize IT conference, held in South Royalton, Vermont on October 21-22, 2017. The LOCALize IT Conference was a two-day solutions focused gathering for leaders and community members engaged in accelerating a localizing movement in our region.

The LOCALize IT conference was co-sponsored by Local Futures, Vermonters for a New Economy, the Sustainable Futures Fund of the The Vermont Community Foundation, the New Economy Law Center at The Vermont Law School and BALE, Building a Local Economy.

Thanks to Railroad Earth for providing the theme music "Lordy Lordy"

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Christine Hanna is the Executive Director of Yes Media

Christine grew up in Virginia, received her bachelors degree in economics from UVA and after graduation had the opportunity to travel to the former Czechoslovakia to study comparative economics. It was during that time she was able to witness and appreciate the power and creativity of entrepreneurship and problem solving. She returned to the US where she received her MBA from the University of Washington with a focus on entrepreneurship and innovation .

After receiving her MBA she was swept up into the internet arena and spent the first seven years of her career trying to get people to transact via the web. She got a first hand look at how capital drives innovation and motivaiton in this country and found herself demoralized through the process of simply selling products.

Although invigorated by the process of using the internet for marketing products, she realized it was undermining what she felt was truly important. She said to herself, "if I'm going to work this hard, I'm going to work on something that I really care about". She left that company and joined a nonprofit called Northwest Environment Watch, which was essentially a sustainability think tank.

Christine defines her love for marketing as the understanding of what it takes to move someone from having never heard of something before, to being a loyal advocate and ally.

Christine eventually went on to use what she had learned to launch "Go Next Door" in Seattle, a web-based network dedicated to supporting local businessess and building community. After that, she went on to cofound the Seattle Good Business Network in 2010. Christine and her colleagues grew the organization from a small startup to an influential Seattle player, strengthening the region's locally owned retail, manufacturing and food sectors.

She is a passionate advocate for a sustainable, inclusive local economy, with a great track record for putting that passion into action. Christine joined YES in March 2017 and says the role couldn't be a better fit.

I interviewed Christine at the LOCALize IT conference, held in South Royalton, Vermont on October 21-22, 2017. The LOCALize IT conference was co-sponsored by Local Futures, Vermonters for a New Economy, the Sustainable Futures Fund of the The Vermont Community Foundation, the New Economy Law Center at The Vermont Law School and BALE, Building a Local Economy.

The LOCALize IT Conference was a two-day solutions focused gathering for leaders and community members engaged in accelerating a localizing movement in our region.

Thanks to Railroad Earth for providing the theme music "Lordy Lordy"

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