Sarah van Gelder is an activist and storyteller. She is the author of The Revolution Where You Live: Stories from 12,000 Miles Journey Through A New America. She co-founded the award-winning YES! Magazine over 20 years ago and has been an editor and contributor ever since. She also writes for the Guardian, Huffington Post and other publications, speaks internationally and is a guest on radio and television. Sarah is passionate about highlighting the work that we the people are doing to reinvent our economy, grow local foods, solve the climate challenge, create alternatives to prisons, and more. She lives on the Suquamish Tribe’s reservation west of Seattle, where she collaborated with tribal leaders to secure the return of the land where Chief Seattle lived. She also paddles with the tribe on their annual canoe journey. Sarah has lived in India, China, and Central America. She was a founding board member and resident of Winslow Cohousing. In episode of RePlacing Church, she joins me to talk about:
- Why she took a 12,000 mile roadtrip and what she discovered
- What Native Americans teach us about place
- Stories of local communities combatting racism, environmental exploitation and economic disparity
- How “land speculation” is a threat to revitalization in economically distressed urban areas
- Why our politics must be rooted in the local
- Why we need a “culture of connection” instead of an “economy of extraction”
- How to cultivate local power
