Today, we are doing something different.
We are turning our organizing model inside out by handing the keys of our campaign over to you. Why? We’re ready for a 100% community-led path to 100% clean, renewable energy -- and we believe that’s only possible when that path is by, for, and of the people in your community.
We’ve compiled a comprehensive set of tools and resources that we’re calling the Ready For 100 Activist Toolkit. The toolkit can be used by anyone, anywhere, to deepen community organizing in support of a vision of clean energy for all.
Check out the RF100 Activist Toolkit!
If there’s anything that 2020 taught us, it’s that the world needs reimagining. Business as usual is causing and deepening harm to our planet, and especially to the most oppressed and vulnerable communities. Through four years of an adversarial federal administration, some of the biggest environmental and social justice victories have been fought and won through the collective power of people. It’s time the people decide what our future looks like. Achieving a clean power system requires people power -- and Ready For 100 created this toolkit so we can build both together.
What is the Ready For 100 Activist Toolkit, and how do I use it?
The Ready For 100 Activist Toolkit is a one-stop shop for people who want to move their community to 100% clean, renewable energy. It is a values-driven, action-oriented blueprint for building a local campaign around clean energy for all and gaining skills needed to score grassroots wins. This resource is meant for everyone who wants to help achieve a just and equitable transition toward a future where everyone can thrive.
The toolkit is organized into different sections, including a step-by-step guide to building a team and running a clean energy campaign called the Campaign Roadmap, and skill-building sections on online organizing and communications. A searchable resource library contains tools, guides, templates, sample materials, and more that will help you do everything from write a press release to hold a community dialogue.
Click here to learn more about the toolkit and how to use it.
Why did we create this toolkit?
We want to transform the way we organize. We believe how we get to 100% clean energy is just as important as getting there. The Jemez Principles -- especially the emphasis on bottom-up organizing and working in mutuality with our partners and within our communities -- were foundational to our decision to democratize our tools and learnings for anyone to draw from.
To build healthier, more affordable, more resilient, and more equitable communities, no one person or group can -- or should -- be setting the vision for our collective future. For too long, we and other well-resourced organizations have dominated the landscape of environmental advocacy. And while we have fought for clean air and water, ditching fossil fuels, protecting public lands, and building sustainable communities, we know we can't and don't speak for everyone. That’s why coalitions and locally based grassroots organizing are so powerful -- and why we are honored to participate in these collective efforts.
The Ready For 100 campaign spent the last year compiling everything we know about how to build local power to win local clean energy victories. We’ve learned a lot since the campaign kicked off in 2016. Today, we are making the product of that work, our Activist Toolkit, available to all. We’re turning over everything we know to you, to everyone, for use anywhere.
Ready For 100 created this toolkit to transform the way we organize. We believe how we get to 100% clean energy is just as important as getting there.
Who is the toolkit for?
If you’re reading this, the toolkit is for you. Yes, you! We designed this toolkit so that anyone who wants to move their community to clean energy for all can find useful how-to guides, stories, skill-building tools, and other resources in it. Whether you are a seasoned organizer, a first-time activist, a policy aficionado, a storyteller, or someone who cares but is not sure where to start, you’ll find the modules within the toolkit have something to offer.
Black, Indigenous, and people of color-led organizations often cite resources and capacity as top needs to achieving the outcomes they are fighting for in their communities. In collecting and distributing resources like this toolkit, we are sharing what our activists have learned with the hope that our blueprints can help move the needle forward in the collective struggle for climate justice and liberation for everyone.
How will the toolkit help achieve 100% clean energy for all?
The toolkit does two major things. It not only helps chart a path toward 100% clean energy in communities by laying out tried-and-true strategies to key milestones but also is meant to build the skills and people power necessary to ensure the clean energy transition doesn’t leave anyone behind.
Ready For 100 has stumbled and endured losses, but we have also won big victories. For four years, local advocates ran campaigns city-by-city, and their cumulative efforts have paid off: 100% clean, renewable energy is the new bar for climate ambition. We’ve seen 173 cities, 14 counties, and 10 states/jurisdictions set a goal and begin charting a path to ditch fossil fuels and develop a community-informed path toward 100% clean energy for all. And even if they haven’t formally set a 100% goal, many others are grappling with hard questions about the energy transition -- ensuring that the most vulnerable not only stop getting saddled with dirty air and high energy bills but also receive a fair share of the benefits of a clean energy economy.
In 2020, a year unlike any other, we still saw massive renewable energy victories across the country, thanks to activists working in their communities. This spring, the state of Virginia committed to clean electricity through the Virginia Clean Economy Act. In November, Columbus and Grove City, Ohio, said they’re ready for community-based clean energy and will be creating community-choice aggregation programs to reach 100% clean electricity by 2022. And, 100% clean energy was the hallmark of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s winning climate platform. Make no mistake: All of this is possible because people have decided to get organized and get working toward a common goal of making 100% clean energy the new normal from coast to coast.
Ready For 100 has always been a distributed campaign, meaning anyone anywhere could pick up the campaign and run it locally to get their own city to move toward 100% clean, renewable energy. But there are so many ways to organize and so many ways to run a successful campaign. We’ve learned a thing or two in the last few years that have led to the victories on the scale that we’ve seen, and this toolkit contains what we know -- but by no means does it include everything. Our aim is this toolkit will continue to help communities build power and a collective vision for a just future, the product of which will be a just transition for all.
We hope you’ll sign our campaign principles and walk this journey with us. But no matter what your interests and strengths are, there’s something in this movement for you -- and we need you.
Check out our toolkit here and start organizing! Have questions or feedback about the toolkit and its contents? Contact us here.