The Action Mill Blog

The last year has been a very busy one for the Action Mill! Along with new Action Mill members and new clients we've also moved into our first official headquarters. If you're near Philadelphia on July 8th, please join us in our new space for an open house!

On Thursday, April 22nd, Jethro Heiko, Strategic Organizing Director for the Action Mill spoke at the Academy of Natural Sciences on planning and development issues facing the Delaware Riverfront. Jethro spoke about the value of resident participation, community organizing and planning in the successful efforts to save Fenway Park and related these experiences to the ongoing efforts to defeat casinos proposed for Philadelphia's waterfront while advancing a sustainable, public waterfront for Philadelphia.

Boston's Chinatown neighborhood has been without a library since 1956. In 2001, the Chinese Youth Initative of the Chinese Progressive Association started a campaign to bring a library back to Chinatown so that local residents can have access to the wide variety of services that a local branch offers. 

The Fundred Dollar Bill Project was started by artist Mel Chin when he visited New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina. Mel realized that the hurricane was only the latest disaster to hit the city, and he started talking with people about the grossly elevated levels of lead in the soil – levels that are doing serious damage to children every day. 

Rebar, A San Francisco art collective, started converting parking spaces into temporary public parks back in 2005. They discovered a loophole in the San Francisco County legal code that leaves open the possibility of occupying a metered space with something other than a car.

Unforeseen circumstances often shift our perception. Landscape is a particularly under-recognized area of thought, as we tend to ignore the fact that lawns (except our own) are in need of maintenance. They just get cut, and our city parks continue to be useful to us, without most ever acknowledging that it is a city worker's job to push that mower.

Note: For more on our work related to Iran, see the Enough Fear campaign. We're also collecting messages for Iranians at www.flickr.com/groups/messagestoiranians.