Week 6

It is absolutely crazy to me that we’re closing out week 6 already! I feel like I just got here. Working with Soulardarity has been so rewarding that I’m not sure how I’ll handle having to leave the incredible people I work with. These people are just so commendable in their constant efforts to “fight the good fight” and consistently stay positive. One thing I’d like to focus on in this post is an important lesson I learned this week on that topic of staying in the fight and working with your circumstances.

So my main role this summer has been researching and collecting data for a project called the Blueprint for Energy Democracy. I had a great meeting this week with my boss where we sat down and essentially wrote up what the end result will look like (we wrote an extensive outline, discussed the research so far and our conclusions, etc.). I was feeling really good about spending this week essentially filling out this blueprint when on Wednesday we receive an email from a contact of ours. He essentially says there’s this state law that gives utilities a vested right to operate in a city. So the city can make demands of a utility, but the utility doesn’t really have to comply because they’ll always be legally allowed to operate in the city. The main takeaway is that this state law essentially wrecked my entire life because I instantly thought that all our hardwork on researching city/utility contracts was for nothing because the utilities have no obligations whatsoever. Thankfully, my boss had a much more reasonable reaction and insinuated that we use this opportunity to potentially challenge this state law and have the city act as an example for other cities seeking to do what we’re doing. We could reach a greater audience and cities across the state could have their voices heard in this collective effort to challenge the system.

I’ve left out the boring legal details, but the moral of the story is that I think all of us are working on initiatives that overall take time to achieve their full potential and that even when you face major obstacles, you should try to look for ways to turn them into opportunities instead.