Comments Kristin McGuire has made

please forgive me ...

I plead guilty to the following:

• I use harsh cleansers to scrub my bathroom -- baking soda and vinegar don't demolish nasty scum and mildew, and I'm not ready to paint my bathroom black!
  


• I own too many pairs of cute, high-heeled, leather sandals.  Bought new.  At Nordstrom.
  


• I drink Chai soy-lattes from Starbucks (mmm, no one tops their spicy-sweet blend ...)
  

Mea Culpa!On So tell us ... what's your dirty little environmental secret? posted 4 years, 7 months ago 84 Responses

environmental justice for all ...

Changing a message is not the same thing as changing a goal, and sometimes it's necessary to change messages in order to achieve goals (as opposed to simply talking about them).  This doesn't require conceding the end result (a cleaner, healthier planet), but it might mean positioning environmentalism to soy-latte Seattlites differently than to single moms living on E. 126th and Lex.  In order to be effective, we need to make environmentalism real and relevant for each group or individual (for example, urban families are all too familiar with the growing childhood asthma epidemic).

It may sound good -- in sound bites and in theory -- not to "water down" the movement or its message, but are you willing to forsake larger-scale action (and impact) for the sake of the message?  What good is the message if it fails to resonate with (or worse, it alienates) the masses who can actually make a difference and accelerate achievement of our end-goal?  Do you want to stubbornly hang on to a "message" that isn't working, or get real results?