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Austin Green Festival '03, Oct. 11-12

Another weekend, another festival. Today on the Drag I stumbled across a stack of fat little programs for an event I'd never heard of, the Austin Green Festival scheduled for the Convention Center on October 11-12.

The event is being put on by GreenFestivals.org which in turn is a joint project of Co-op America and Global Exchange, both venerable NGOs. Green Festivals' first event was last year in San Francisco and this year it's happening again there on Nov. 8-9 as well as here in Austin. (Note that these are little-g green festivals, not Green festivals.)

My feelings about events like this are mixed. I still have a mild case of post-traumatic stress left over from the conference I helped put on 13 years ago, The Other Economic Summit (TOES) '90 held opposite Bush Sr.'s G-7 summit in Houston. But Green Festivals appears to be better organized and funded than we were, with local and national corporate sponsorship, a professionally printed program, a real venue, 100+ exhibitors and 50 speakers (although TOES may have exceeded the latter number by having a zillion panel discussions). I tend to turn up my nose at the new-age-ier of the exhibitors and speakers -- the exhibitors hawking hemp, skin care products and vitamin supplements, the speakers trying to connect activism with meditation, herbs, and "ecopsychology". One of the sponsors is New Dimensions, the pseudoscientific scourge of public radio, and it shows.

Nevertheless, there are some pretty interesting speakers on the bill. I'd like to hear Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, old appropriate technology heroes like Pliny Fisk and Hunter Lovins, and some of the national and local environmentalists, green architects, organic gardeners and such. For the good ones I'm sure I'll regret that they only have 45 minutes. The exhibit hall will have enough reputable environmental organizations to balance the quacks and they're even promising an "organic beer garden". I'm looking forward to seeing what the swag is like, particularly that from Doctors Opposing Circumcision (hey, more power to them, I wish they'd been around 44 years ago). I'd say it should be worth the 10 bucks admission provided I remember to take my anti-nausea medication first.

causes 2003.09.18 link