"I directed four summer canvass offices for the Fund. Quite frankly, I never enjoyed canvassing and did not particularly excel at the art of it either! However, I developed relationships with people who started as activists in my offices and remain in contact with them as peers working towards social change to this day. While my job does not involve canvassing now, I know it has a valuable place in the overall movement."
Sarah Hodgdon
I wouldn’t be qualified to be the Executive Director of the Dogwood Alliance without the skills I learned from Green Corps. Practically every day, I rely on the expertise Green Corps gave me. Dogwood Alliance and the Southeastern forests are better off because of Green Corps.
In Nov. 2002, office superstore chain Staples agreed to phase out paper products made from endangered species of trees, and committed to including 30 percent post-consumer recycled paper content in all paper products. The announcement was a long-awaited victory for me. My organization, the Dogwood Alliance, along with several other Green Corps graduates, had been working toward this goal for two years.
The Dogwood Alliance, a North Carolina-based coalition of more than 70 southern groups, works to preserve forests in the region. Kelly Sheehan, from the Class of 1999, and Robyn Williams Heeks, from the class of 2000, teamed up with ForestEthics' Liz Butler, (Class of 1996) and Bill Holland (Class of 2001) to determine how best to protect those forests.
Our campaign got to work mobilizing citizens to speak out. We delivered 20,000 postcards to Staples' corporate headquarters, and organized a day of action that saw protests in 45 states. We recruited more than 100 businesses to sign on to a letter encouraging the company to improve the environmental quality of their paper.
Our efforts were successful, and the campaign moved on to challenge other chains, including Office Max and Office Depot, to meet or beat Staples' new policy. Green Corps trainees worked to raise the visibility of the campaign, create groups to target the two companies and hold them accountable into the future, build grassroots pressure, and generate media. With just six weeks on the campaign, Green Corps trainees recruited 700 activists, held thirty protests in four key states, generated 500 phone calls, 1,000 postcards, and 228 personal letters into corporate headquarters. Due to the flood of consumer pressure, both Office Max and Office Depot have announced policies to phase out products made from endangered forests.
“My introduction to politics was the door-to-door canvass I worked on in the summer of 2000 while I was a college student. Every night, rather than working at a sandwich shop or a checkout counter, I was reaching out to citizens by knocking on their doors, talking to them about pressing conservation issues, and asking them to get involved—I was doing something I cared about. Working on a canvass, I developed the dedication, work ethic, and skills that have allowed me to do the work I do today and see statewide victories, like the passage of Wisconsin’s Clean Energy Bill which sets the state’s first renewable energy standard. For me, canvassing was the crash course in grassroots organizing that set the tone for what I do now and will do in the future.” Jessica Garrels
Jessica Garrels joined the WLCV Institute staff in March, 2005. Most recently, Jessica was a Natural Resource Management Volunteer in the Peace Corps on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Niger, West Africa. Jessica grew up in Marshfield, Wisconsin, and graduated from UW-Madison in 2002, with a B.A. in International Relations. She spent a large portion of her college years interning and working for WISPIRG (Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group), which is how she became involved in conservation efforts, public education and outreach, and mobilizing people to have an open dialogue with their elected representatives. Jessica also interned with the State Environmental Resource Center in 2002.
"Canvassing helped teach me that democracy is something that is best practiced face-to-face. My experience prepared me for reaching out to people who tune out television ads and mailings, but who will engage with a direct interaction at their door. I am certainly a better and more effective public servant because of this experience." Eric M Garcetti
Mr. Garcetti won a hotly-contested election to the Los Angeles City Council in 2001, becoming one of the youngest city councilmembers in the city's history. Over 100 languages are spoken on the streets of his district, from Hollywood to Downtown and across the Los Angeles River. The neighborhoods he represents constitute the beating heart of Los Angeles.
Council President Garcetti chairs the Rules and Elections Committee. He also serves as Vice-Chair of the Energy and the Environment Committee and sits on the Housing, Community, and Economic Development Committee, which he chaired for four and a half years. He is also the Vice-Chair of the Ad Hoc River Committee and the Ad Hoc Homelessness Committee, and serves on the Ad Hoc Stadium Committee. He was unopposed for re-election and began his second term in office in July 2005.
During his first term in office, Garcetti led the effort to fund the nation's largest Affordable Housing Trust Fund, oversaw the economic and cultural revitalization of Hollywood, wrote and championed Proposition O to clean up our local water, won passage of a plan that eliminated the city’s business tax for 60% of all businesses, and helped bring thousands of new high wage jobs to Los Angeles and his district. In his district, he doubled the number of parks, ensured the availability of an after-school program in every school in the district, and reduced graffiti by more than 60 percent.
Councilmember Garcetti's work has been recognized in dozens of awards, including a Green Cross Millennium Award from former President Mikhail Gorbachev for his environmental leadership, a "Tiger Award" from the Valley Industry and Commerce Association for his work on business tax reform, and the first Olson Award from Human Rights Watch for his human rights activism. The Los Angeles Times writes that Garcetti is "smart” and “imaginative” and offers the city “refreshing idealism.” He was featured in LA Weekly's Best of Los Angeles issue and the Los Angeles Alternative Press readers named him "L.A.'s Favorite Elected Official" of 2003. In 2004, The Los Angeles Business Journal named him one of the 25 Angelenos who stand out for their potential to shape lives in Los Angeles. A profile in Los Angeles magazine in 2006 called him "a rising star".
Prior to his election, Garcetti taught public policy, diplomacy and world affairs at Occidental College and the University of Southern California. In 1998, the Rockefeller Foundation selected him as a Next Generation Leadership Fellow. Garcetti studied urban planning and political science at Columbia University, where he received his B.A. and M.A. in International Relations. He studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and the London School of Economics. Council President Garcetti canvassed with the Fund during college.
