The People Who Make it Happen

Leadership

Volunteers make the difference

The day to day work involved in movement building takes time and energy! These awesome people volunteer their time to be on the Steering Committee to make it all happen!

Katie Geiser - Eugene (secretary)

Retired with employment background in health-related fields as a Licensed Massage Therapist and Human Behavior Research Assistant. Additional employment as an Administrative Assistant at the University of Oregon Associated Students of UO. A fourth generation Oregonian with a love of the land and the preservation of its natural resources. She has been a volunteer with Community Rights Lane County (CRLC) since 2016 and a member of the CRLC Steering Committee since 2017. Favorite activities include hiking, biking, gardening, cooking, dancing, reading and handcrafts.

Michelle Holman - Deadwood

Michelle has lived in Western Lane County’s Coast Range (Deadwood) for more than 30 years and has been active in the anti-herbicide struggle since the late 1970’s. After many years of her community’s unsuccessful fight to stop government-protected aerial spraying of toxic chemicals by private logging companies, she renounced traditional activism and joined the Community Rights Movement. She is a founder of Community Rights Lane County and the Oregon Community Rights Network. She has served on the Mapleton School Board for 25 years, where more than 20 years ago, the school district stopped using toxic chemicals on school grounds.

David Tvedt - Eugene

David has been active in forest, environmental campaigns since the 1970s and human rights campaigns since the 1980s. He first went to Democracy School, sponsored by CELDF, in 2012, and attended Community Rights events as they began in Lane County a little later. He first started on the Steering Committee for Freedom from Aerial Herbicides Alliance, helping write the initiative, gathering signatures and working on getting the initiative on the ballot. Then in 2016, he joined the Steering Committee of CRLC and has been on it since.

Eron King - Triangle Lake

After living in the forests for 3 years, she saw helicopters spraying the mountains close by. Finding out it’s legal to spray pesticides on/over Oregon citizens, she started her environmental career by taking on the private timber industry. She spent close to 5 years commenting, rallying and attending state regulatory meetings, getting no where. In 2012 Eron was introduced to Community Rights-based lawmaking through the CELDF. Being empowered by this new path to ending corporate harm, she is very involved with the movement. A founding member of Community Rights Lane County, and serving on the Oregon Community Rights Network Board of Directors. She also is a founding member of Freedom from Aerial Herbicides Alliance and helped draft an aerial spray ban.

Rob Dickinson - Cottage Grove (president)

Rob is active in a variety of local and state level community rights organizations working to protect Oregon residents from different corporate harms. He serves on the Steering Committee of Community Rights Lane County, a 501c3 nonprofit focused on educating the public about community rights and advancing the local movement. He is also a member of two Lane County initiative campaign organizations: Freedom from Aerial Herbicides Alliance, which is fighting to end the abuses of aerial spraying of herbicides, and Our Community, Our Rights, which seeks to empower local community rights and people-powered local lawmaking to protect our health, safety, and welfare. He is also on the Steering Committee of Oregonians for Community Rights, the campaign organization for the Oregon state constitutional amendment initiative, and coordinates the petitioning efforts for the campaign.

Dee Tvedt - Eugene (treasurer)

Dee has been active in forest, environmental and human rights campaigns since the 1980s. After being exposed to Community Rights Lane County literally at its inception, she became more and more convinced that this way of protecting human and nature rights made sense. Her involvement started with being on the Steering Committee of Freedom from Aerial Herbicide Alliance – helping with writing the initiative, gathering signatures and continuing to work to get the initiative on the ballot. Dee joined the Steering Committee of CRLC in 2016 and became Board treasurer in 2019.

Brenda Kluhsman MSS, PHD - Past Board Member

Dr. Kluhsman is a retired Assistant Professor of Public Health Sciences at the Penn State University College of Medicine, Hershey, PA. She has over 20 years’ experience in public health research and program design, largely focused on reducing health disparities using community-based approaches to health promotion and disease prevention. After moving to Oregon in 2012, she served for 3½ years as a faculty member and Cooperative Education Coordinator at Lane Community College at Florence. She has been a volunteer with Community Rights Lane County (CRLC) since 2016 and a member of the CRLC Steering Committee since 2017.