Over the past three years, our country has experienced a paradigm shift. All across the nation, diverse voices are beginning to rise to the climate and energy challenge, and they are all calling for immediate action. At this moment, our generation, a generation that elected a new President and Congress, has the opportunity to offer a bold new vision of our future.

From March 28-30 2009, the ReEnergize Texas Summit will bring hundreds of youth to Huston-Tillotson University in Austin to hold our elected officials in Texas accountable for repowering our economy and reclaiming our future through bold, immediate and comprehensive clean energy policy.

We will leverage the momentum we have built locally through campaigns to bring clean energy to our campuses and our electoral engagement campaign
Power Vote, which has built a base of 8000 students in Texas, to demand our state political leaders to take the action our generation and our future demands.

In the first two days of the ReEnergize Texas Summit, Mar 28-29, 2009, students and non-student youth will be inspired and informed by speakers, workshops, and trainings providing solutions for a new future that tackle economic failure, environmental and social injustice and climate change.  On Monday, Mar 30, we will march from Huston-Tillotson in East Austin across Interstate 35 to the Capitol Building where we will lobby the state legislature for clean and just energy legislation that creates new green jobs and protects our future.

We will engage and inspire each another with a bold vision for our future; a 100% clean and just energy based economy that overcomes the socio-economic and environmental challenges of our current dirty energy powered economy. Through our training and networking opportunities, we will empower our generation to make this vision a reality.

We are all in this together – one generation building a better world for our generation and future generations. Coming from all corners of the state and representing a diversity of races, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, and ideologies, the voice of our generation is clear: Now is the time for action.
Now is the time for boldness.

…and you can help. To reach our goal of uniting hundreds of young people at the ReEnergize Texas Summit, we need you to invite everyone you can in your own community to join us.  Click here for resources, ideas and tips on getting the word out.

Goals

At the 2009 ReEnergize Texas Summit We Will:

• Empower, engage and inspire 500 young people in Texas to take action on global warming with trainings, speakers and a coordinated lobby day.
• Strengthen the movement for real climate solutions, in a coordinated and effective manner.
• Connect youth with local community leaders and strengthen bonds between the youth climate movement and the environmental justice movement.
• Unify the youth climate movement with one voice and one vision for shifting our nation into a new energy future.
• Elevate the prophetic and morally compelling voices of America’s youth into the national debate about global warming and our energy future.
• Frame the global warming and energy debate as an opportunity to strengthen our economy and reestablish our state and our nation as global leaders in technology and energy production.

Significance

The ReEnergize Texas Summit will be the largest gathering of Texas youth around the issue of climate change. It is being organized by and for students. The ReEnergize Texas Summit is action focused and results oriented. Young people will walk away from ReEnergize Texas Summit with the tools, networks and resources which they will utilize to create change in their communities. ReEnergize Texas is a collaborative effort that will unite not only a diverse body of young people, but a diverse coalition of partners, organizations, and supporters.

The ReEnergize Texas Summit: Structure, Planning, Process

The ReEnergize Texas Summit is designed to engage and empower youth, not only at the conference itself, but also throughout the planning process. A planning committee of 20 young people from several campuses across the state are involved in every element of the planning process. The vision for The ReEnergize Texas Summit is being driven by a steering committee made up of four young leaders. Each of these leaders is responsible for sub-committees covering specific areas of the conference. The sub-committees are: recruitment, volunteers, housing, budgeting and fundraising, agenda, entertainment, lobby day, and media. Each sub-committee works closely with a staff mentor, who has expertise in the sub-committee’s working area. Staff mentors play a supportive and guiding role in the conference planning process.

Outreach and Recruitment Strategy

The recruitment strategy for the ReEnergize Texas Summit is based first and foremost upon the strategy developed for the Power Shift 2009 conference which brought over 10,000 young people from across the country to Washington DC to drive action on climate change. The strategy involves creating a "buzz" around the ReEnergize Texas Summit through new media and the internet, as well as the utilization of 40 campus recruiters.

While we have an explicit focus on energy, the ReEnergize Texas Summit also prides itself on its dedication to social justice. While many organizations active on climate issues limit themselves to narrowly defined environmental concerns, we emphasize social justice and the inequitable impacts of dirty energy and climate change. The first step in solving these inequities is to engage overlooked and marginalized voices as part of the movement. We are outreaching to audiences ranging in diversity from Historically Black Colleges and Universities to Baptist schools and others.

Conference Agenda and Conference Components

• Keynotes: Attendees will be energized by leaders of the climate movement such as Reverend Lennox Yearwood and Mark Ewall, as well as leaders from Texas such as Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck, State Legislator Kirk Watson, and Texas businessman Trammel Crow, Jr. (all invited)
• Workshops and Trainings: Conference attendees will learn best practices for organizing from Sierra Student Coalition trainers and others, including: campaign and event planning, recruitment, communications and media, lobbying, leadership development, coalition-building, and meeting with decision-makers.
• Speakers: Diverse speakers will enlighten youth about the connections between climate and faith, job creation, global health care, and many more presentations that will help build our movement and add new perspectives.
• Regional Breakouts: After splitting into geographically-based groups, youth will identify upcoming regional opportunities to realize tangible progress and plan coordinated campaigns and events. These will help establish networks in centers like Houston, Dallas, and Central Texas.
• Rally to ReEnergize: Administrators from leading universities will tout their transitions towards climate neutrality and demonstrate the capacity of youth to create meaningful change.
• 30th Anniversary of 3 Mile Island: Youth will learn about the issues surrounding nuclear power and uranium mining at a film screening party. At the event we will also provide youth with toolkits and resources to host film series on their own campuses.
• Youth Climate Digital Video: A central component of the lead up into and for the documentation of the conference, digital media trained youth will record their individual and shared stories to a broader audience.
• Texas Lobby Day: Students will have a day to meet their legislators and take the message of a clean energy economy to the Texas Capitol. Our goal is to have meetings between constituents and legislators representing half of the 150 House Districts in Texas.
• Art, Music, and Poetry: The conference will feature cultural components as well, allowing students to connect to the issue in vivid and inspiring ways.

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