Monday Creek Restoration Project is a collaborative effort of 20 organizations to clean up an Appalachian Ohio stream fouled for generations by acid mine drainage and industrial waste. The grassroots effort has involved state and federal agencies, VISTA volunteers, community volunteers, and college students who monitor the watershed and share…

A North Oakland (California) neighborhood spent years convincing the city to convert an old college building into a senior center, housing, a park, and an African American cultural center instead of replacing it with a strip mall. Community strategies included publishing a monthly newsletter, attending meetings, replacing city politicians, and…

The founder of Bread and Puppet Theater discusses the use of puppetry and theater arts to build community, educate the public about environmental and sociopolitical issues, and provide a setting for group consciousness raising; grassroots reclaiming of art as part of everyday life; and ceremony as a powerful element of performance and as part of…

Tours of minority group neighborhoods show participants the effects of polluting industries that are disproportionately sited near them. The tours make people aware of this overt environmental racism and inspire them to take action. Such tours must be handled with tact, preferably by the affected communities themselves, to avoid voyeurism and…

A Gathering of Waters is a community-based art and activism project to raise awareness that the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo is a desperately endangered river, connect communities dependent on the river, and galvanize those communities into action. Activities provided actual and symbolic experiences of river water for American Indian, Hispanic, Anglo, and…

A New Mexico foundation helps primarily Hispanic and American Indian communities restore adobe churches by supplying technical assistance and matching grants. Community leadership of the projects enhances volunteer commitment. The projects build community cohesiveness and pride, maintain local culture, foster intergenerational relations, teach…

Timber operators, ranchers, corporate timberland owners, environmentalists, state government, and local schools in rural northern California formed an alliance to save the local salmon from extinction. The community's struggle toward consensus was an attempt to abandon the polarization that arises from power struggles. Local nonprofessionals were…

To alert the community to the impact of a proposed parkway that would divide the largest remaining greenspace in Charlottesville (Virginia), an architect, a photographer, and students from a private high school dedicated to ecology and art lined the proposed route with tires. The project garnered a lot of publicity, and to date the parkway has not…