Martis Valley Pact

One of the most fascinating and hopeful aspects of the Martis Valley settlement agreement is that it had the conservation community pushing for affordable housing. So often, too often, environmental interests are pitted against social justice interests. When progressive causes compete for a limited pool of resources, we lose the overall vision of the world we seek to create. The Martis Valley settlement secures a much larger pool of resources, and focuses attention on what we stand to gain through cooperation. Nearly all of the media around this settlement focuses on the millions of dollars secured for conservation, where as the truely remarkable part of the story is the social-environmental nexus created by it. Betony Jones