Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program - Environmental Studies - Antioch University New England

The Progressive Caucus

Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program

In 2007, ANE’s Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program launched a congressional fellowship in cooperation with the 72-member US Congressional Progressive Caucus. Antioch’s Fellowship allows at least one EAOP student to work in Washington DC for the Caucus and its members every summer. “This is the start of a great, mutually beneficial collaboration between the CPC and ANE students and faculty,” CPC Co-Chair U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) noted. “ANE’s Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program graduate students help CPC Members address a wide variety of environmental challenges from global warming to environmental justice.”

Fellowship Recipients

Morey Burnham - 2008

Morey will work with Representative Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ,), who chairs the house subcommittee on national parks, forests, and public lands. Congressman Grijalva also serves as vice chair of the progressive caucus and heads its environment task force and has been recognized as a leader in environmental conservation by the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife.

Morey hails from West Hartford, Connecticut. After graduating from the University of Connecticut with a degree in English literature, Morey worked on an organic coffee farm in Hawaii, was a volunteer English teacher for Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford and in China with WorldTeach. He spent last summer in Belize, working with Sustainable Harvest International on sustainable agriculture and community development projects. During his studies at Antioch New England, Morey also worked on advocacy projects for the Western Shoshone Defense Project and the New Hampshire Rivers Council. Read Morey's journal entries here.

Chrissy Heide - 2007

The first Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program student to be selected by the US Congressional Caucus to serve as a Fellow was Crissy Heide, who worked with Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ, 7th Congressional District), who chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources’s Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands. Rep. Grijalva also heads the Progressive Caucus’s Environment Task Force and has been recognized as a leader in environmental conservation by the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife. As he said of Crissy, “I am honored to participate with the Congressional Progressive Caucus in Antioch University’s Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program’s Fellowship, and I welcome this year’s Fellow, Crissy Heide.”

Crissy came to Antioch’s EAOP after two years of working in the field of environmental education in rural New Jersey. During her graduate studies, she organized Keene’s Earth Day Festival, the Step It Up Congress Rally in Keene, worked on Sierra Club’s Cool Cities Campaign, chaired Antioch’s Student Alliance, and has worked with Rhode Island’s Valley Alliance for Smart Growth to ensure wetlands protection on lands slated for big-box-store development. Crissy was raised in Indiana, where she graduated from Lafayette Jefferson High School and received a BS in Wildlife Science from Purdue University. View Chrissy's journal entries and photos, sharing her summer of learning and legislative activism in our nation’s capitol.