How We Work
We believe that the transition to a renewable and democratic energy system requires a powerful grassroots movement of skilled, informed, and diverse people. Our style of organizing builds a knowledgeable and engaged base and creates strong bonds within and across communities battling fossil fuel projects across New York State.
Sane Energy has built genuine, joyful relationships with grassroots groups across the state. We organize hyper-local campaigns that empower community leaders and local groups to coordinate with statewide coalitions, transforming local fights into collective power that passes crucial legislation, drives policy change within state agencies, and shapes the future of New York’s energy system.
Through this strategy, Sane Energy and our partners have helped pass landmark legislation and secure critical policy decisions at state agencies that constrain fossil fuel expansion and advance climate and energy justice. Together, we have halted construction of three pipelines, one LNG port, and three fracked-gas power plants in New York. In other cases, when we haven’t permanently stopped a project, we’ve delayed construction, burdening fossil fuel companies and utilities with additional costs while creating space for long-term systemic change.
Staff
Kim Fraczek,
Director (she/her)
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 corporate creative production and social justice, she has an unusual range of experience and perspective. Her integrity, creative talent, and positive energy lend 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 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 (he/him)
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.
Claire Lebowitz King,
Operations Associate (she/her)
Claire is an actor, writer, director, and teacher. Originally from Upstate New York, she has recently relocated back to NYC from the UK and is excited to fight for a sustainable future. Claire's creative work explores themes of social justice and systemic change.
Her most recent play, Outside The Gate, which she both wrote and performed in, explored the challenges of raising children in an age of impending climate doom in an atmosphere unfriendly to foreigners. The play received high praise at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and was selected by the festival for discussion with teachers in Scotland.
Claire has taught theater, civics, writing, and speaking to students around the world, including those in Afghanistan, India, Ethiopia, and the UK. As an artist and organizer with Occupy Wall Street, she established many connections and social justice networks that continue to enrich her life today and led her to the Sane Energy Project. Currently, she is an initiate in the Dogon Mystery School at the Earth Center, where she is learning to decolonize her education and worldview and live more harmoniously with nature.
Advisors
Elliot Figman,
Senior Advisor (he/him)
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.
JK Canepa,
Coordinator (she/her)
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.
Volunteers
Volunteers are at the heart of everything we do. Our work is grounded in service to residents, supporting people in building a communal understanding of the issues that affect our lives, and empowering us to take meaningful action. We welcome people at every level of experience, and build a growing local base to fight for a renewable, equitable, and accountable energy system led by community power.
