Portfolio
Jay Thomas Taber
November 2002
_________________________________________________________
Community Service
My 27 years of community service included work on various advisory commissions, campaign committees, task forces, and speaker’s bureaus. Of particular note was my participation in authoring a Natural Heritage Plan for Whatcom County that has in the decade since, made possible the protection of old-growth forests, shorelines, heron rookeries and salmon habitat. Several thousand acres of parklands for hikers and equestrians were also added to the county system by the funding we secured.
I also served as president of Whatcom Falls Neighborhood Association for several years, during which time I helped manage the transition from a largely rural to a more urban setting as our community went through rapid growth. Throughout the ensuing turmoil, I kept our neighborhood in tact by helping facilitate the siting of a new middle school, traffic safety improvements, and negotiations that prevented a new highway from bisecting the area.
In the early 1970s, I helped build the Community Food Co-op and the Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill in Bellingham, Washington. They are both alive and well today.
Political Advocacy
As a political advocate, representing my neighborhood and a public-interest non-profit, I helped develop a process and plan for the protection of our municipal reservoir in Bellingham, Washington. The Lake Whatcom Agenda we put forward was largely responsible for both the election of progressive candidates and the initiation of inter-agency cooperation that did not previously exist.
This experience carried over into comprehensive growth management planning for our entire county, in which I participated as ex-officio advisor to the Whatcom County Growth Management Oversight Committee and numerous neighborhood associations. I was also selected to represent the Nooksack Basin Environmental Caucus in a joint U.S. EPA/Washington Department of Ecology watershed management initiative to recover endangered salmon.
Professional Consulting
In my brief but productive career as a consultant to governments, non-profits and foundations, I functioned primarily as a funding analyst and liaison to agencies involved in regional landscape and watershed management. Secondarily, I performed a promotional and coordinating function bringing together key public leaders and consultant teams to develop such items as proposals, master plans, preliminary studies, and reports used to brief legislators, administrators, and philanthropic institutions.
Two projects I was charged with overseeing, the development of the Whatcom County Non-Motorized Transportation Plan and the Bay to Baker Trail Preliminary Study, involved researching thirty years of multiple agency planning archives, state and federal law and programs related to funding and environmental protection, as well as composing preliminary construction estimates for developing itemized sections of these plans. This work was then integrated with existing transportation and recreation planning and development procedures that enabled the seven state, local, and federal agencies to leverage significant additional funding over the subsequent decade.
One project I was unable to complete prior to moving from Washington State to the Bay Area is Without Their Consent, a documentary film project involving the Lummi Indian Business Council, the Whatcom Human Rights Task Force, and Northwest Indian College. I did however manage to outline the concept for telling the stories of how federal agencies, Indian Health Service employees, white squatters, and underhanded realtors colluded over the past 150 years to alienate tribal and individual native lands within the Lummi Reservation. Crucial videotaped interviews of elders with first hand knowledge have been preserved in anticipation of eventual funding for the project.
Scholarship
In my senior year at New College of California, San Francisco, I produced three important documents: 1. my Prior Learning Portfolio, 2. a national survey of political researchers entitled Research as Organizing Tool, and 3. my senior thesis, Salvaging Democracy.
My Prior Learning Portfolio documented my experiential learning over a ten-year period in four key areas: Networking for Social Change, Organizing Community Involvement in Public Policy, Managing Public Interest Litigation, and Developing Media Relations.
Networking for Social Change is a 20 page examination of case studies of developing regional networks from local connections in government, media, and political activism. It presents my analysis of networking relationships, methods, objectives, and benefits I learned working with neighbors, associations, non-government organizations, churches, public institutions and tribes.
The 24 page Organizing Community Involvement in Public Policy focuses on methods, processes, obstacles, and opportunities with emphases on articulating grievances, conducting research and analysis, networking, active participation, developing an agenda, working in core groups, planning strategy and tactics, gathering intelligence, and mobilizing resources.
In the 21 page Managing Public Interest Litigation, I examine legal activism, with analysis of the litigation process and how it interacts with other venues of societal debate and protest by exploring ancillary benefits derived through a focus on strategy and research.
Developing Media Relations comprises a 12 page review of altering public discussions through news coverage that examines methods of directing media attention, influencing editorial attitude, and creating space for objective and investigative journalism. The emphasis is on generating public interest, circumscribing political violence, and breaking the cycle of misinformation. Case studies expose how to educate, pressure, maneuver and assist local media in covering public affairs.
The 29 page report Research as Organizing Tool is the result of a series of interviews of leading activist researchers on the Far Right in the US that I conducted in the summer of 2001. In this investigation of community-based research as a progressive organizing tool, I comment and reflect on the most salient points of the taped and transcribed interviews summarized in the report.
Salvaging Democracy is a 67 page discussion that began with my inquiry into anti-democratic movements in the US, including research into social movement theory, analysis of societal organization and networks, as well as review of right-wing strategy and tactics. In this look at research as the foundation for community education, organizing and action, I present an overview of the history of American conservatism, and how social movement entrepreneurs manipulate groups targeted for recruitment.
Key elements discussed include sociopolitical models of engagement, the impact of television on the ability to comprehend reality, and reducing aggression of fundamentalists. In addition to my written thesis, I prepared a scripted 45 minute audio-visual presentation that serves as an introduction to understanding the systemic violence of the American Right through an expose of the Wise Use and Anti-Indian movements.
The presentation packet includes handout exhibits and a bibliography of literature and online resources. The chronology of events from my own experience combined with a video reveals domestic terrorism as the unfortunate consequence of intentional actions engineered and choreographed by a nationwide network of right-wing movement professionals.
As a graduate student at New College, I produced two essential documents: my master’s thesis, Communicating Social Transformation, and a curriculum proposal focused on providing future social change agents with specific tools they will need as teachers, organizers, and inspirational leaders engaged in strengthening civil and indigenous societies.
Communicating Social Transformation is a 78 page argument for the public health model of community organizing that builds on my undergraduate thesis by examining primary obstacles to functional democracy in the US. In this paper I define the public health model of operation, discuss the philosophical basis of the model, compare it with other models, delineate specific methods and devices of the model, and review the applicability of the model in three case studies.
The curriculum comprises nine courses adaptable to undergraduate, graduate, and popular venues such as university extension and private adult education. The lower level serves as an introduction to understanding globalization by studying forms of societal organization, social movement development, society in conflict, community safeguards and regulating mechanisms. The upper level prepares students to channel discontent productively through studies of psychological warfare, models of social engagement, grassroots communication, networking and organizing, and analysis of popular education.
Social Activism
My social activism as director of Whatcom Environmental Council took several forms: recruiting participation in growth planning, litigating disputes with local governments, protecting communities from disruption by trade and industry groups, and coordinating community action against organized hate. Two actions in particular stand out: 1. the publication of Paul de Armond's Wise Use in Northern Puget Sound, a 187 page report documenting the involvement of the Building Industry Association in sponsoring unregistered PACs to influence elections and derail growth planning, and 2. the subsequent exposure of their associated field agents in working with paramilitary militia recruiters for the purpose of intimidating the Building Industry’s political opponents.
November 2002
_________________________________________________________
Community Service
My 27 years of community service included work on various advisory commissions, campaign committees, task forces, and speaker’s bureaus. Of particular note was my participation in authoring a Natural Heritage Plan for Whatcom County that has in the decade since, made possible the protection of old-growth forests, shorelines, heron rookeries and salmon habitat. Several thousand acres of parklands for hikers and equestrians were also added to the county system by the funding we secured.
I also served as president of Whatcom Falls Neighborhood Association for several years, during which time I helped manage the transition from a largely rural to a more urban setting as our community went through rapid growth. Throughout the ensuing turmoil, I kept our neighborhood in tact by helping facilitate the siting of a new middle school, traffic safety improvements, and negotiations that prevented a new highway from bisecting the area.
In the early 1970s, I helped build the Community Food Co-op and the Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill in Bellingham, Washington. They are both alive and well today.
Political Advocacy
As a political advocate, representing my neighborhood and a public-interest non-profit, I helped develop a process and plan for the protection of our municipal reservoir in Bellingham, Washington. The Lake Whatcom Agenda we put forward was largely responsible for both the election of progressive candidates and the initiation of inter-agency cooperation that did not previously exist.
This experience carried over into comprehensive growth management planning for our entire county, in which I participated as ex-officio advisor to the Whatcom County Growth Management Oversight Committee and numerous neighborhood associations. I was also selected to represent the Nooksack Basin Environmental Caucus in a joint U.S. EPA/Washington Department of Ecology watershed management initiative to recover endangered salmon.
Professional Consulting
In my brief but productive career as a consultant to governments, non-profits and foundations, I functioned primarily as a funding analyst and liaison to agencies involved in regional landscape and watershed management. Secondarily, I performed a promotional and coordinating function bringing together key public leaders and consultant teams to develop such items as proposals, master plans, preliminary studies, and reports used to brief legislators, administrators, and philanthropic institutions.
Two projects I was charged with overseeing, the development of the Whatcom County Non-Motorized Transportation Plan and the Bay to Baker Trail Preliminary Study, involved researching thirty years of multiple agency planning archives, state and federal law and programs related to funding and environmental protection, as well as composing preliminary construction estimates for developing itemized sections of these plans. This work was then integrated with existing transportation and recreation planning and development procedures that enabled the seven state, local, and federal agencies to leverage significant additional funding over the subsequent decade.
One project I was unable to complete prior to moving from Washington State to the Bay Area is Without Their Consent, a documentary film project involving the Lummi Indian Business Council, the Whatcom Human Rights Task Force, and Northwest Indian College. I did however manage to outline the concept for telling the stories of how federal agencies, Indian Health Service employees, white squatters, and underhanded realtors colluded over the past 150 years to alienate tribal and individual native lands within the Lummi Reservation. Crucial videotaped interviews of elders with first hand knowledge have been preserved in anticipation of eventual funding for the project.
Scholarship
In my senior year at New College of California, San Francisco, I produced three important documents: 1. my Prior Learning Portfolio, 2. a national survey of political researchers entitled Research as Organizing Tool, and 3. my senior thesis, Salvaging Democracy.
My Prior Learning Portfolio documented my experiential learning over a ten-year period in four key areas: Networking for Social Change, Organizing Community Involvement in Public Policy, Managing Public Interest Litigation, and Developing Media Relations.
Networking for Social Change is a 20 page examination of case studies of developing regional networks from local connections in government, media, and political activism. It presents my analysis of networking relationships, methods, objectives, and benefits I learned working with neighbors, associations, non-government organizations, churches, public institutions and tribes.
The 24 page Organizing Community Involvement in Public Policy focuses on methods, processes, obstacles, and opportunities with emphases on articulating grievances, conducting research and analysis, networking, active participation, developing an agenda, working in core groups, planning strategy and tactics, gathering intelligence, and mobilizing resources.
In the 21 page Managing Public Interest Litigation, I examine legal activism, with analysis of the litigation process and how it interacts with other venues of societal debate and protest by exploring ancillary benefits derived through a focus on strategy and research.
Developing Media Relations comprises a 12 page review of altering public discussions through news coverage that examines methods of directing media attention, influencing editorial attitude, and creating space for objective and investigative journalism. The emphasis is on generating public interest, circumscribing political violence, and breaking the cycle of misinformation. Case studies expose how to educate, pressure, maneuver and assist local media in covering public affairs.
The 29 page report Research as Organizing Tool is the result of a series of interviews of leading activist researchers on the Far Right in the US that I conducted in the summer of 2001. In this investigation of community-based research as a progressive organizing tool, I comment and reflect on the most salient points of the taped and transcribed interviews summarized in the report.
Salvaging Democracy is a 67 page discussion that began with my inquiry into anti-democratic movements in the US, including research into social movement theory, analysis of societal organization and networks, as well as review of right-wing strategy and tactics. In this look at research as the foundation for community education, organizing and action, I present an overview of the history of American conservatism, and how social movement entrepreneurs manipulate groups targeted for recruitment.
Key elements discussed include sociopolitical models of engagement, the impact of television on the ability to comprehend reality, and reducing aggression of fundamentalists. In addition to my written thesis, I prepared a scripted 45 minute audio-visual presentation that serves as an introduction to understanding the systemic violence of the American Right through an expose of the Wise Use and Anti-Indian movements.
The presentation packet includes handout exhibits and a bibliography of literature and online resources. The chronology of events from my own experience combined with a video reveals domestic terrorism as the unfortunate consequence of intentional actions engineered and choreographed by a nationwide network of right-wing movement professionals.
As a graduate student at New College, I produced two essential documents: my master’s thesis, Communicating Social Transformation, and a curriculum proposal focused on providing future social change agents with specific tools they will need as teachers, organizers, and inspirational leaders engaged in strengthening civil and indigenous societies.
Communicating Social Transformation is a 78 page argument for the public health model of community organizing that builds on my undergraduate thesis by examining primary obstacles to functional democracy in the US. In this paper I define the public health model of operation, discuss the philosophical basis of the model, compare it with other models, delineate specific methods and devices of the model, and review the applicability of the model in three case studies.
The curriculum comprises nine courses adaptable to undergraduate, graduate, and popular venues such as university extension and private adult education. The lower level serves as an introduction to understanding globalization by studying forms of societal organization, social movement development, society in conflict, community safeguards and regulating mechanisms. The upper level prepares students to channel discontent productively through studies of psychological warfare, models of social engagement, grassroots communication, networking and organizing, and analysis of popular education.
Social Activism
My social activism as director of Whatcom Environmental Council took several forms: recruiting participation in growth planning, litigating disputes with local governments, protecting communities from disruption by trade and industry groups, and coordinating community action against organized hate. Two actions in particular stand out: 1. the publication of Paul de Armond's Wise Use in Northern Puget Sound, a 187 page report documenting the involvement of the Building Industry Association in sponsoring unregistered PACs to influence elections and derail growth planning, and 2. the subsequent exposure of their associated field agents in working with paramilitary militia recruiters for the purpose of intimidating the Building Industry’s political opponents.
posted by Jay Taber at 10:36 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home