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Patriciafaye Marshall, a facilitator in McMinnville, Oregon, has facilitated multiple symposiums in the greater Portland area, has a long history with political and community activism and describes herself as an “activist at heart.”
On a Community call last year, she was very excited to hear Pachamama begin talking about engaging Symposium participants in broader social movements which address structural and systemic change, especially because she had been interested in doing something in that context locally. There had already been some talk in the community about the Move to Amend coalition, which had been discussed on the call. Around the same time, a couple of Symposium attendees convened a study group on non-violent resistance, and Patricia Faye attended.
A fire was lit, and Patriciafaye and others held a Challenge Corporate Power study group, created by the Women’s International League for Peace and Justice, to prepare themselves to get into action with Move to Amend. At its completion, Patriciafaye and a group including 11 Symposium attendees began meeting each week, and have continued to do so, with the group growing to its current 31 members. They have become an official affiliate of Move to Amend and are forming a coalition with 7 other jurisdictions in Oregon to work toward getting an initiative on the local ballot. Patriciafaye says they feel like it could really happen and that momentum is moving them forward. ”We’re just doing it,” she asserts, “We’re on fire!”
And it appears, too, that the fire is spreading. The group is now also working on Community-Rights Organizing with CELDF (Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund) and will be hosting a Democracy School Workshop there in May. They are truly in it for the long haul to protect the rights of their community members—which also extends outward to support Pachamama’s collective work in the world.
The story of these ‘fired-up’ Symposium attendees serves as inspiration for us all as we consider what kind of action we want to take for a thriving, just and sustainable world.
We know that there are many more of you out there with inspiring stories, and we can’t wait to hear them! Send them into us at support@pachamama.org
