Join Tuesday's Solutionary Perspectives interview, July 3rd, 5pm/8pm (Pacific/Eastern) as Neil Seldman discusses local self control, the local economy and economic democracy and how Solutionary Rail can be part of our community local self reliance. RSVP below (scroll to the bottom of this page) to receive email instructions for accessing the call. 

Neil Seldman is co founder and President of Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR). Since 1974, ILSR has championed local self-reliance, a strategy that underscores the need for humanly scaled institutions and economies and the widest possible distribution of ownership. Neil will inspire us with true stories featuring ilsr.org. He will speak to the promise of local economies and local organizing, with insights from communities across the country. He will also explore with us how a Solutionary Rail vision for transport/transmission infrastructure could be a key piece of that. 

About the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR): ILSR seeks to empower communities to take charge of their own future through its work across the economy. Its mission is to provide innovative strategies, working models and timely information to support environmentally sound and equitable community development. To this end, ILSR works with citizens, activists, policymakers and entrepreneurs to design systems, policies, and enterprises that meet local or regional needs; to maximize human, material, natural and financial resources; and to ensure that the benefits of these systems and resources accrue to all local citizens. Every week, ILSR produces original research packaged in easy-to-read articles, podcasts, reports, and videos that are distributed across the ideological spectrum. Through its work across the economy, ILSR seeks to empower communities to take charge of their own future.

About Neil Seldman: As part of his leadership at ILSR, Neil serves as director of the Waste to Wealth Initiative. The goal of this initiative is to help cities, communities and small businesses recover more materials and to add value to these materials through processing and manufacturing in the local and regional economy. He has been a pioneering campaigner against garbage incineration, for Zero Waste and Environmental Justice who works with hundreds of organizations throughout the US and internationally. Under Seldman's direction, ILSR has helped community and environmental organizations stop waste incineration plants from being built. In Los Angeles, Austin, King County, WA and Alachua County, FL, these local governments then hired ILSR to plan and implement alternative recycling, reuse and composting programs and help recruit new companies and expand existing ones in the $100 billion sector of the US economy. Prior to work at ILSR, Seldman was a manufacturer in New York City and professor of political science at The George Washington University in Washington, DC. Selected writings include: The History of the US Recycling Movement, Wasting and Recycling in the US 2000, Extended Producer Responsibility: The Good, Bad and the Ugly.

A short overview about ILSR is here Break the Chains, Build Local Power.