Events
Learn more about upcoming events, webinars, and workshops designed to empower and educate food council members and supporters. Read MLFCN's community agreements to learn more about how we interact with each other to create a safe and empowering space where we put people over agendas, practice generative conflict, attend to intent as well as impact, and acknowledge that we will make mistakes together in this process.
MLFCN Monthly Meetings
Join the Michigan Local Food Council Network for our monthly phone/video conference, featuring topics and speakers relevant to the work of councils across the state. We will share federal and state legislative updates and include time to discuss offers, requests and connections among councils. Monthly meetings are held on the 3rd Thursday of each month from 10:00-11:30 a.m. Join us on zoom with this link using MLFCN as the password.
Grassroots Organizing Coaching Group
The MLFCN Grassroots Organizing Coaching Group supported local food councils and other MI Good Food Charter partners to learn grassroots organizing and advocacy campaign skills.
Skills practiced included:
- One-on-one organizing conversations to mobilize community members to act
- Uncovering community issues and building community power
- Hosting community conversations that call in our most impacted communities to collaborate on issue identification and creative solutions
- Leadership development of local leaders
- Elevating your voice to legislators via storytelling, phone calls, letter writing and other actions
- Community power analysis
- Building collaboration infrastructure for racial equity
- Other skills related to leveraging strategic grassroots organizing campaigns
The coaching group was led by Jordan Lindsay, and met on a twice monthly basis and provided a powerful opportunity for a small group to come together around a common purpose through coaching and peer support.
MLFCN Monthly Meetings
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Jan 16
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Feb 20
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Mar 20
MLFCN Community Agreements
- We acknowledge that perfectionism and fear are characteristics of white supremacy culture and often get in the way of taking risks together and making mistakes that lead to valuable learning and transformation. We agree to be courageous in this space for our collective learning and relationship building. That includes bringing up uncomfortable topics, sharing when harm occurs, and attending to that harm, even when we’re not sure how.
- We acknowledge that often when harm is done, it is unintentional. While we want to operate under the understanding that everyone in our network has good intentions, we also want to tend to the impact of harm no matter the intentions.
- We understand that white supremacy culture has conditioned us to fear open conflict and to think of it as a negative thing. We know that conflict can be generative and want to embrace that in the network so that we may learn from new perspectives and challenge our ways of thinking so our work can be most effective.
- To make space for these kinds of conversations, we agree to value our people alongside the agenda. If we need to adjust our agenda on the fly due to emergent needs, we will name this in the group and make space for that which best serves the group’s growth and learning. We encourage all participants to express their needs – to the group or via private chat to facilitators – and facilitators will focus on tending to the needs of the group.
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