Photo by Ken Schles
Kim Fraczek,
Director
Kim leads our team and handles the day-to-day running of Sane Energy Project. Please contact Kim if you have an event, sign-on letter, or alliance you would like Sane to participate in.
Kim has been with Sane Energy Project since 2012. With a background in both corporate creative production and social justice, she has an unusual range of experience and perspective. Her integrity, creative talent and positive energy lends to Sane’s distinct brand of activism and high regard in the movement community.
Prior to leading Sane, Kim co-founded the allied group Occupy the Pipeline, which was active from 2012 through 2014, and produced street performances, art and music-filled rallies and marches, and direct actions that garnered significant media attention against the Spectra NY-NJ Expansion pipeline. Kim was also a member of The People’s Puppets, creating eye-catching art for a variety of social causes; and a leader of the arts team that made the 2014 People’s Climate March such a compelling media event.
Kim continues to spearhead imaginative strategies in all our campaigns and to instill activism with a spirit of community and joy. She is committed to using art as a tool for social engagement, and has brought a wise and considerate hand to all of our ongoing work.
Michael Paulson,
Associate Director
Michael Paulson is a climate organizer, educator, and life-long New Yorker committed to collective action to win the world we deserve.
He has worked on campaigns throughout New York State to advance an agenda of 100% publicly owned and democratically controlled renewable energy.
Before joining the Sane team he led Sarahana Shrestha’s victorious New York State Assembly campaign in the Mid Hudson Valley, which helped place the Build Public Renewables Act at the center of the Albany climate agenda.
He has also served as a lead organizer and strategist for the Public Power New York coalition in New York City.
Before becoming a fulltime organizer Michael taught writing and literature at Columbia University, where he helped organize SWC-UAW, the union for student workers. He holds a Ph.D. and B.A. from Columbia in English and Comparative Literature.
Priscilla Grim (she/her),
Director of Communications
Priscilla Grim (she/her) has worked to amplify causes, campaigns, and coalitions throughout her career. She has worked with Citizens Union and movement media efforts, including the Occupy Wall Street social media teams on Facebook and Twitter, The Occupied Wall Street Journal, and the We Are The 99 Percent Tumblr blog. She has been published with The Atlanta Community Press Collective, Scalawag, The Indypendent, and other publications. She served as a co-founder for RealPunkRadio.com in 2010. When not surfing a standing desk, you can find her gazing at graffiti and listening to music through headphones in the parks and beaches of NYC, typing in the hope of a tipping point benefiting all who live on earth.
JK Canepa,
Rockaway Outreach Coordinator
JK Canepa grew up in Pennsylvania (a place she grieves over for the devastation she saw as a child in the strip mining of coal and now re-experiences as fracking poisons the state). She moved to New York, which always felt like home. As a recovering computer programmer, she jumped into activism a while back and later learned how much fun and life-enhancing that can be when we throw our hearts into it, and how, with our loving energy, we can stand and fight for life on Earth. As John Seed says, “It’s the only game in town.” During the time of the legendary actions to save NYC’s beloved and threatened community gardens at the turn of the millenium; she was arrested in the Coqui, a giant (puppet) frog in Esperanza garden in Loisaida. El Coqui’s death by developers galvanized the city and resulted in protection to hundreds of community gardens. JK also joined a group of imaginative tricksters and we got NYC to stop purchasing tropical timber for boardwalks and park benches, a tragic choice that made our city the biggest end-user of rainforest wood in North America. Now she happily works and plays with Sane Energy Project on encouraging offshore wind and other renewables, fighting pipelines, and supporting community voices and power. She’s a denizen of the East Village, a Deep Ecologist, a member of the Eco-Logic collective on WBAI-FM, a community gardener, a cat lady, a cyclist, a dancer, a writer of strange things, a yoga practitioner, an advocate for adult home residents, and a grandmother.
Elliot Figman,
Senior Advisor
Elliot Figman (he/him) is a resident of the neighborhood immediately affected by the Spectra pipeline. Elliot was an early supporter of Sane Energy Project and later joined the leadership team. As the Executive Director Emeritus of Poets & Writers, the nation’s largest nonprofit organization serving creative writers, Elliot has brought his experience to bear in helping Sane grow and flourish.
Jeanne Bergman,
Senior Advisor on Policy and Sustainability
Jeanne Bergman is a long-time climate, HIV/AIDS, and social justice activist. Haunted and heartbroken by the burning and flooding of our beautiful Earth and surging hate, racism, and violence, Jeanne follows Joan Baez’s dictum that “action is the antidote to despair.” Jeanne is held by Sane Energy’s commitment to the just transformation of our energy system from one captured by the fossil fuel industry to a network of community-held, renewable, clean power, and by the team’s ability to meld meticulous technical analysis with courageous civil disobedience and joyous art and performance. Jeanne gardens in Saugerties and works in Manhattan, and holds advanced degrees in cultural anthropology and sustainability management.
Monica Hunken,
Action Organizer
Monica has been part of the Sane Energy family for years. As a performer, teacher and organizer, Monica has utilized theater at the center of her activism, working for a multitude of causes: fighting fracking infrastructure by co-founding Occupy The Pipeline and doing outreach for GasLand as a member of International WOW Theater Company; bicycle advocacy for Time’s Up!; performing with and acting as action captain for Reverend Billy and The Church of Stop Shopping for more than a decade; designing and orchestrating artistic interventions across the U.S. and Europe.
Monica is a creative direct action trainer with Beautiful Trouble and the training coordinator for Resist Spectra, as well as working with Second Response, using creative play to help children heal from trauma. She has devoted time to the refugee crisis, volunteering abroad and creating immersive plays that put the audience in the shoes of refugees entering a camp.
Nick Shearman,
Public Banking Organizer
Nick is a New Yorker born and raised. He cares deeply about protecting the state’s air, water, people, and land, and is working as a Sane volunteer to support a statewide just transition away from natural gas and fossil fuel infrastructure towards renewable energy. He is one of Sane’s representatives in the Public Bank NYC campaign, pushing for legislation at the city and state level to democratize banking and support funding tools for community-led renewable energy projects. As a community/urban planning professional in New York City, Nick aims to contribute his experience to help communities and New York residents become actively involved in the planning of renewable energy projects and campaigns.
Meaghan Burke,
Volunteer
Meaghan began volunteering with Sane Energy Project in early 2016. She was born and raised on Long Island. She holds a B.S. in Environmental Science from SUNY-ESF, a Master of Environmental Management from Duke University, and a Project Management Certificate from NYU. By day, Meaghan mostly focuses on the NYC stormwater system. She enjoys bringing art and music to environmental activism with her Sane Energy family.
Marianne Waldow,
Facebook
Marianne Waldow is a New Yorker at heart. Even more her heart knows sharing wins over accumulating. Marianne has been a member of Occupy the Pipeline working to spread the word about dangers of fracked and all natural gas, particularly in the Spectra Pipeline.
Now she is volunteering with Sane Energy Project to win with renewable energy and close the book on fossil fuels, including sharing on social media, and volunteering with NY Common Pantry to help distribute food to New Yorkers in need.