History of the ORGANIZATION
Not In our Lifetime was created in June 2019 in Beaverton/Portland, Oregon. It started as a small group of people from the application Nextdoor, and grew in numbers in a matter of weeks to 105 people. The goal was to advocate for a development by a company by the name of Lifetime Fitness to include more sustainable infrastructure into their project.
The map on the right shows the location of the desired location of the Gym. |
My Role in Not in our lifetime
My role as the founder of the organization meant that I had to create my goals, and implement and develop plans and due dates. I had two other community members who contributed about 15 hours of times as well as $25 dollars. The recruiting process for signatures on a document to the city required roughly 100 hours over 3 weeks, and $250 of my own money for ads and street signs, website development, google voice set up, and email domain purchasing. I gathered signatures and started a petition using the organization Moveon, and I attended City Council meetings with members of my group and spoke to a council member at their home. We received the final notice that of the appeal process 3 weeks before the ultimate approval of the project so time was a sensitivity in my efforts.
Plan of action
"Start somewhere, follow it everywhere"
Could be described as my process. Having never done this before I followed what worked and what I felt to be right. I could best describe "feels right" by saying what invigorated me to keep going was what I did. I will lay out in detail as to what I did from day 1 until now. And it all started on the App Nextdoor.
Could be described as my process. Having never done this before I followed what worked and what I felt to be right. I could best describe "feels right" by saying what invigorated me to keep going was what I did. I will lay out in detail as to what I did from day 1 until now. And it all started on the App Nextdoor.
I have to admit, I hate Nextdoor. It's highly political, or is mundane and a place for people to rant about hooligans and the local coyotes. But I knew that people did not want lifetime fitness in our neighborhood, they just didn't know exactly why. I knew that this development was the start of an 80 acer development plan, and we had to do all we could to mitigate the effects of the foreseen impacts on climate change. Mainly I focused on water, and the ecosystem services provided by the field itself. Explaining that the development as it was did not maintain the integrity or make up for the lost ecosystem services. In turn, the cost of the lost ecosystem services would be passed onto tax payers if the unfettered unsustainable development continued. I had the knowledge of water rights, sustainable buildings and a knack for doing research incredibly fast. So I decided to post my findings, and do the research needed to make sure that the city planners were doing everything they could to mitigate the impacts of this development on less privileged community members.
Here are some of the problems we had with this development: - Their sustainability goals were elementary in their application - Gyms use millions of gallons of water a year and we have been in drought for 10 years in Beaverton, Hillsboro and Tigard. -The size and material of the building could increase the temperatures of the neighborhood by 8-20 degrees because of the heat island effect. -Flooding in Beaverton is a historical tragedy. The property is within 1/2 mile of a 100 year flood plain, and they did not invest enough in flood mitigation infrastructure. |
I realized that the public comments were not being responded to by individual community members. I called the city planner in charge of the project Jana Fox, and asked her why they were not replying. Her answer, the complaints were not founded in code violations, and city planners cannot stop a development if there is not legal claims. This made me realize I had a lot of reading to do.
Resources I used
Beaverton Development Code which includes 1000s of pages of codes
Architecture Designs from Lifetime Fitness Landscape architecture from Lifetime Fitness Hathaway and Larson Law Firm Gave some advice DOGAMI(Department of Geology and Mineral Industries) for Liquefaction maps Beaverton Sustainability goals website |
This is what Codes look like
I compared the codes I thought they might be violating, and the design plans to form a document to send to the planning commission.
Mean while.....
I started getting a lot of hate mail, particularly from one person that wanted the gym to be put in. Finding out that he was a millionaire accused rapist made the situation a lot scarier. Eventually leading to me blocking him and telling him to never contact me again.
Mean while.....
I started getting a lot of hate mail, particularly from one person that wanted the gym to be put in. Finding out that he was a millionaire accused rapist made the situation a lot scarier. Eventually leading to me blocking him and telling him to never contact me again.
Website development, networking, LEGITIMACY building and protecting myself.
I developed a website using Weebly that gave information on the effects of the development on our environment. It also included a document signing widget that allowed people to request to be added to the document being sent to the city. The document included all of the signatures(105 people) and the expected code or ethical violations by the company. At this point we were all waiting to see if the lawyers for a company against the project were going to file an appeal, if they didn't our efforts would be for nothing. I called the lawyers I found on the public comment forums and told them we would show up to support the denial of the permits and showed him the documents to show their clients. They liked the idea and convinced their client that they should do an appeal (This saved us 2300 dollars)
Website: https://not-in-our-lifetime.weebly.com
Document: I used the lawyers ORIGINAL public comment as a template to make it look professional.
I made the mistake of giving out my personal number to people want to ask questions about the development. So I made a Google Voice Account, then my email was getting swamped, so I bought the domain [email protected]
This reduced my harassing calls to my personal device and emails and helped separate my work(research) from this project.
This reduced my harassing calls to my personal device and emails and helped separate my work(research) from this project.
Printed Signs around the neighborhood
I payed 145 dollars to have signs expedited, this turned out to be the biggest waste of money because opponents stole the signs, and I wasted a lot of time talking to city officials who deal with code for advertisements, and hours riding around on my bike placing them. However, one sign survived until the very end in a very busy intersection.
Build partnerships
Organizations I called include:
- 1000 friends of Oregon
- Beaverton Diversity and Inclusion council
- Audubon society.
- Beaverton Hispanic Center
and a few others that never called me back
None of the organizations had the resources to help, or they were not interested. 1,000 Friends of Oregon said they would partner with us in the future.
I found out that the Diversity Council does not have anything to do with developments, so they wished me the best and that was it.
- 1000 friends of Oregon
- Beaverton Diversity and Inclusion council
- Audubon society.
- Beaverton Hispanic Center
and a few others that never called me back
None of the organizations had the resources to help, or they were not interested. 1,000 Friends of Oregon said they would partner with us in the future.
I found out that the Diversity Council does not have anything to do with developments, so they wished me the best and that was it.
Growing goals
I had 5 goals at this point
- Get 105 signatures
- Get 10 people to come and speak at the city council
- Speak the city Council myself
- Speak at the CPO meeting
- Make even one change to the development.
- Get 105 signatures
- Get 10 people to come and speak at the city council
- Speak the city Council myself
- Speak at the CPO meeting
- Make even one change to the development.
Public Speaking Events
The second appearance I had was with the City Council meeting. Myself and 5 others showed up (a lot less than we wanted) and I had 5 minutes to speak. I pause multiple times because I am holding back tears because of the seriousness of my knowledge about what is to come with climate change. I felt that the impact was exactly what we needed to move forward with mitigating the effects of future development. |
City Council member Cate Arnold cried at the end of my public testimony, stating that her hands were tied and that she could not do anything to make this development more sustainable because the lack of code. She stated that moving into the future we need to do better. After the meeting we scheduled a follow up on July 26th, where we talked about what the city can do better to combat the effects of climate change the first of many to come. |
Reflection
When all was said and done the city planners used our suggestions for planting more native flora. The original plan the company only included 2 out of 28 species to be native and drought resistant. The city is now requiring them to include at least 50% native species. But all of our suggestions were shut down for being non code related.
This was all an incredibly emotional journey for me, not just because the job at hand, but in my personal life I was struggling with difficult personal obstacles. My girlfriend of 6 years moved out of our living situation to de-stress which left me lonely, I have struggled with my mental health, and I had just lost my health insurance since I turned 26. The challenges I faced compartmentalizing this project, and my personal life put me in emotional positions I had never faced before. The negativity of harassers online was compounded by feelings of inadequacy, and nihilism about climate change.
There are a number of things I would have done differently if given the chance to rewind. I would have asked more of my 2 other leaders as to give myself the vacation I was supposed to take during this time. I would not have printed the signs, as they were costly and ultimately not very effective. I would have believed in myself more and taken more time to prepare my speeches and do research on how to give better public testimony, and I would have liked to have thrown a party. Ultimately my journey was guided under the restriction of time, in the 3 weeks we had before the last hearing we grew from 1 to 105 people gained public attention and found community partners that will help us going into the future to create sustainable development. I honestly can't say if I will continue this project because I will be applying for PhD programs around the world and leaving Portland/Beaverton shortly after.
My calling is to be part of the global narrative on climate change. I want to influence those in power, and force space for those who struggle to or are not given space to speak. I don't know what I am doing, and only have a vague idea of how to get there. But eventually I will use these skills I learned to empower others to speak for themselves, and I will eventually be using the public speaking experience I had to speak on the floor of the UN.
This was all an incredibly emotional journey for me, not just because the job at hand, but in my personal life I was struggling with difficult personal obstacles. My girlfriend of 6 years moved out of our living situation to de-stress which left me lonely, I have struggled with my mental health, and I had just lost my health insurance since I turned 26. The challenges I faced compartmentalizing this project, and my personal life put me in emotional positions I had never faced before. The negativity of harassers online was compounded by feelings of inadequacy, and nihilism about climate change.
There are a number of things I would have done differently if given the chance to rewind. I would have asked more of my 2 other leaders as to give myself the vacation I was supposed to take during this time. I would not have printed the signs, as they were costly and ultimately not very effective. I would have believed in myself more and taken more time to prepare my speeches and do research on how to give better public testimony, and I would have liked to have thrown a party. Ultimately my journey was guided under the restriction of time, in the 3 weeks we had before the last hearing we grew from 1 to 105 people gained public attention and found community partners that will help us going into the future to create sustainable development. I honestly can't say if I will continue this project because I will be applying for PhD programs around the world and leaving Portland/Beaverton shortly after.
My calling is to be part of the global narrative on climate change. I want to influence those in power, and force space for those who struggle to or are not given space to speak. I don't know what I am doing, and only have a vague idea of how to get there. But eventually I will use these skills I learned to empower others to speak for themselves, and I will eventually be using the public speaking experience I had to speak on the floor of the UN.