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Our summer schedule so far -- please join us!

May 11, 2017

Dear friends --

There is a great deal going on at the Study Group. We are busy organizing our ambitious summer internship program, finishing up our input to the UN negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons which will begin in about a month, and much more.

In our last letter we mentioned weekly public meetings this summer. With the exceptions shown below, they will be on Thursdays, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. They begin next week.

As that letter (and others before it, here and here for example) said, we want to meet with YOUR organization or church about our climate emergency – its opportunities and its dangers.

The schedule, location, and general topics for these meetings are as follows. All meetings will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 pm except June 3 and July 8, as shown. 

• May 18, Study Group HQ, 2901 Summit Place NE, Albuquerque (map): update on nuclear issues (weapons mostly but also waste) and the excellent opportunities at hand, Study Group staff.
  
• May 25, Study Group HQ: our converging crises; the role of local organizing; overcoming silence in our communities, Study Group staff
  
• June 1, Study Group HQ: welcome for and get-together with our climate and solar ambassadors
  
• June 3, Summit Park, Constitution and Richmond NE, Albuquerque (map), 11 am to 3 pm: Solar Party, with solar displays and experts in attendance from Positive Energy and McCune Solar Works; food and conversation in a kid-friendly environment
  
• June 8, University of New Mexico (UNM) Law School, Stanford Drive NE (map), Room 2401: topics in renewable energy and climate 
  
• June 15, UNM Law School, Room 2401: topics in renewable energy and climate
  
• June 22, UNM Law School, Room 2401: topics in renewable energy and climate
  
• June 29, location TBD: topics in renewable energy and climate
  
• July 6, UNM Law School, Room 2401: topics in renewable energy and climate
  
• July 8, Ashley Pond Park Pavilion, Los Alamos (map), 12 noon to 2 pm: topic: secret for now (meanwhile "Stay calm, have courage, and wait for signs.")
  
• July 13, UNM Law School, Room 2401: topics in renewable energy and climate
  
• July 20, UNM Law School, Room 2401: topics in renewable energy and climate
  
• July 27, UNM Law School, Room 2401: topics in renewable energy and climate
  
• August 3, location TBD: capstone presentation and news conference, climate and solar ambassadors 
  

We will put these on our calendar shortly for reference.

We will have guest speakers, mostly via Skype, for most of these climate and energy meetings, but these aren't set up yet.

It will be hard for us to meet in Santa Fe or Taos during this period. Folks up north, please join us in Albuquerque when you can! Please come and meet our talented interns. We are very excited and enthusiastic about this audacious program and we hope you are too! 

We will also film these events and if they have sufficient merit we will post them on our YouTube channel.

About two-thirds of the program will be devoted to analysis and lobbying. We'll be starting that up right away, from the beginning. 

This summer's program is a financial stretch for us. It is only because of your generosity and that of others that we can even think of doing this, needful as it is for our state and our world. Do you know others who can help fund this program? We don't ask too often but we are asking now!

We will be continuing with some nuclear weapons work this summer, on the side, picking up those issues again on a full-time basis in the later summer, by which time we expect some new opportunities to have appeared. We may also see some (more) immediate dangers, such as those signaled by Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Perry's visit yesterday to the Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL's) main plutonium facility. We've been in Washington for a total of three weeks of lobbying since the presidential election, and despite all the hand-wringing in the mainstream media we can report that in some ways we are making more progress under Trump than in second-term Obama, because what used to be Obama policies are now Trump policies and Democrats can oppose them far more easily. That's on the plus side. There are plenty of negatives too. Come to the "World Headquarters" on May 18 for more. 

Stay tuned, take stock of your situation, and get ready,

Greg and Trish, for the Study Group