Talking Water
Talking Water is an offering by Walking Water ...
Walking Water, born from a vision received in Payahuunadü - "the place where the water flows" on the ancestral homelands of the Paiute-Shoshone people - is a project and a prayer that centers water as teacher, guide, and sacred source.
We began as a three-year pilgrimage along the natural and human-made waterways between Mono Lake and Los Angeles, CA, partnering with local and global communities to collectively bear witness to the situation of water in our world. Following the path of water from source to end-user, we witnessed histories and current realities of destruction, violence, harm and extraction. Alongside the stories of grief, we celebrated those of beauty and resilience - possibilities for the healing and regeneration of waters, landscapes, and communities.
We continue to listen to the guidance and orientation of water, for how Walking Water might serve as one tributary within a global and intergenerational movement to restore relations with waters, lands and peoples. We move with the question: what world is possible if human beings devote themselves - personally, politically, spiritually - to that which gives life? We understand how essential it is for us to recognize and honor the leadership of Indigenous peoples and communities of color who have been protecting the waters and the lands from extraction and exploitation for hundreds of years -whose life ways, languages and cultures offer profound teachings for how to grow into right relationship.
A commitment to healing waters asks each of us to find our role in movements that struggle to dismantle oppressive systems that commodify waters, lands and peoples in pursuit of power and profit. And as we carry the dream of justice for waters and peoples alike, we strive to uplift and support those individuals and communities who are "acupuncture points" of healing and possibility, actively living towards that more beautiful and liberated world.
For more info go to: https://walking-water.org
To support the work of Walking Water go to: https://walking-water.org/donate/
Walking Water is a fiscally sponsored project of Weaving Earth
Banner photo by Teena Pugliese
Talking Water
Water Learning Series: Los Angeles - Session Six with Council for Watershed Health
“Redesign LA puts people at the forefront. Those projects that are being funded are not coming from the cities…These are the needs in our community.”
–Carlos Moran, Sr. Program Manager, from the Council for Watershed Health
Welcome to Session Six of the “Water Learning Series: Los Angeles.” We’re honored to be joined by Carlos Moran, Senior Program Manager from the Council for Watershed Health whose mission is to advance the health and sustainability of the Los Angeles region’s watersheds, rivers, streams and habitat - both in natural areas and urban neighborhoods. Carlos shares his intimate knowledge into the complexity of the siloed municipalities and agencies in the Los Angeles water space. Carlos talks about how the Council’s innovative work connects people and provides assistance to communities and tribes to access public funding for environmental justice and public health around water issues. Carlos shares the history and inner workings of LA County’s Safe Clean Water Program and how the Council’s initiatives, such as Redesign LA, are creating sustainable models for community organizations and tribes to voice their concerns, pose solutions, and access funding from Los Angeles County. Carlos highlights tangible results of the Council’s projects and shows that communities and tribes can have agency in the multi-layered web of LA’s water space.
Carlos Moran, Sr. Program Manager, Council for Watershed Health. With advanced degrees in social work, Carlos Moran’s experience includes designing and implementing high impact strategies that intersect mental health, public health and environmental justice. He regularly engages diverse stakeholders to advance placed based solutions that drive large scale, multi-benefit investments in LA’s most economically, environmentally and health stressed communities.
His macro social work experience includes environmental justice planning, environmental justice, community organizing, mental health, public health, program and budget design, needs assessments & evaluation, social and environmental policy, management, project development and financing.
He regularly engages local Cities, County, and State agencies and elected officials to address global climate change at the local level through policy change, policy implementation, and placed based solutions that drive large scale infrastructure investments in urban areas.
Carlos has played a role in advancing large scale multi-benefit projects throughout the LA Region. In addition to environmental justice planning he has also led teams that engaged tens of thousands of Angelenos and especially those from the most environmentally and economically stressed communities to plant thousands of trees, capture stormwater, and become stewards of their environment. Previously he led a partnership of community-based organizations that empowered children, youth and families to transform an abandoned bread factory in South Los Angeles into a multi-service social service center serving over 3,000 beneficiaries per year.
Hosted by: Kate Bunney
Produced & Edited by: Anne Carol Mitchell
Intro music by: Mamuse 'River Run Free' - featuring Walter Strauss
If you feel inspired by Talking Water please consider a donation - our work relies on the community. You can donate here. https://walking-water.org/donate/
For more info go to Walking Water website. https://walking-water.org/
