From: Marla Perez Lugo
Dear friends:
I hope this email finds you well. In light of the recent seismic activity
in PR, we write this message in an attempt to activate a community of
interest within the RISE Network to participate in strategic activities of
service to the people of PR. As you know, the RISE Network is supposed to
work as a mesonet of universities serving as radars of local and regional
vulnerabilities to leave “no blind spots”. We have an opportunity to act
in a preemptive manner:
1. Identifying relevant expertise that can have an impact at this time of
high uncertainty in the island;
2. Engage universities that have been doing work in PR post Maria to gather
information and knowledge about vulnerabilities found on the ground, either
in terms of physical infrastructure and/or social organization, etc.;
3. Put together a rapid response team that can make itself available to
local colleagues, managers, communities, etc, to collaborate in activities
such as public service announcements, press conferences, consulting, or
other activities that local stakeholders see appropriate.
I feel we have a lot to offer in this time of uncertainty. This is what the
RISE Network is meant to do. We are on our way to Washington DC to
participate in the NCSE Annual Conference. If you would like to be a part
of this effort, please contact us as soon as possible. We will connect you
with a group of local experts which is already designing educational,
capacity building and public outreach efforts.
Take care and see you soon
Marla and Cecilio
On Sat, Dec 7, 2019 at 6:25 PM Cecilio Ortiz García
wrote:
> Good evening colleagues. I hope you all are well. Right now the
> centrifugal forces of our multiple institutional commitments suck us back
> in to finish the semester. The grading, putting out reports and
> visualizing what the Spring of 2020 brings, overtake our agendas. While we
> do not have a class load (thanks to Penn State) we are working hard to turn
> all the data generated by RISE 2019 into a usable report. As such, we will
> be convening several debrief sessions and analysis activities in the next
> few weeks. I want to take a minute of your time to thank each and everyone
> of you from the bottom of our hearts for the countless hours of
> conversation, debate, arguments, proposals, presentations, meetings, etc.
> all of you have so elegantly afforded us. After all the travels and visits
> made to our friends in this email list, we are thankful that those
> collaborative efforts have now been validated by the kind of successful
> activity we all enjoyed at RISE 2019. I am forever in debt to President
> Rodriguez and the outstanding Albany team and for Michelle and Valerie at
> NCSE who’s unyielding level of commitment convinced us to take this leap of
> faith along with our family. In fact, by virtue of the tremendous
> investment in RISE 2019, President Rodriguez should have the honor of
> passing the ceremonial “baton” to the next President that steps up to
> continue the journey on the path he has so gallantly helped set RISE on.
>
> Today I do not want to talk about money. No funding euphemisms, business
> models, fiscal schemes or financial arrangements.
> I want to talk to you, our RISE close circle of friends and colleagues
> that have either suggested hosting a workshop/observatory activity or
> stepped up to support the sustainability of our fellowship. I would like to
> have a conversation about concrete steps that with all of you we need to
> take to successfully accelerate the obvious momentum the conference has
> generated generated.
>
> I call your attention to several opportunities:
>
> 1) Our colleagues Dr. Daniel Soto (Sonoma State) and Cheri Chastain
> (Sustainability Officer, UC-Chico) have made a call for the RISE Network to
> design a workshop activity around socio-demographics pressures associated
> to wildfires (Daniel and Cheri please correct me if I am missing the
> correct issue definition) to occur this Spring 2020 in California before
> the next wildfire season. This particular issue is a particularly wicked
> one, connecting fire, water, energy, housing, migration, across
> jurisdictions, social stakeholder groups and communities. We could
> accompany our colleagues to make a call to the UC system and offer the RISE
> Network’s collaboration. Certainly exploring wildfires as socio-ecological
> hazards, have a lot to offer in the co production of new knowledge about
> community resilience.
>
> 2) Professor Jacob Mans is spearheading an effort to bring the RISE
> Network to collaborate around the serious issue of homelessness in
> Minneapolis-Saint Paul Metro Area. Issues of energy security and justice,
> housing, migration, public health, etc. convergence to make the
> homelessness issue a nation wide threat to the health and wellbeing of our
> communities. Similar the the wildfires, homelessness is a boundary object
> with direct impact on community resilience.
