James S. Turner, Esq. is the chair of Citizens for Health, a national nonprofit consumer advocacy group working to broaden health care options, create an integrative health system based on wellness, and advance the freedom to make health choices. One of the original Nader’s Raiders and long-time advocate of informed choice for safe food, drugs and other consumer products, he has authored two best-selling books, The Chemical Feast: The Nader Report on Food Protection at the Food and Drug Administration and Making Your Own Baby Food. As a partner in the Washington D.C. law firm of Swankin & Turner (organized in 1973), Jim represents businesses as well as individuals and consumer groups in a wide variety of regulatory matters concerning food, drug, health, environmental and product-safety matters. He has appeared before and/or advised the Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Consumer Product Safety Commission and Federal Trade Commission, as well as the Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health. He has served as Special Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Food, Nutrition, and Health, and to the Senate Government Operations Subcommittee on Government Research. Jim helped organize the successful campaign to lobby Congress for passage of the Organic Food Production Act of 1990 and lead the legal team that in 1996 persuaded the FDA to reclassify acupuncture needles as safe and effective for legal U.S. importation and distribution. He is a graduate of the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University (1969), holds a B.A. in history and political science from Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences (1962) and served as a gunnery and nuclear weapons handling officer on ships in the U.S. Navy from 1962 to 1966.
Jim’s Presentation:
Conscious Activism
Over the years, many activist templates have been developed in successful campaigns to influence social policy and public opinion. One of the most successful templates has been developed and utilized by James S. Turner, Esq. , one of the original Nader’s Raiders and author of The Chemical Feast: The Nader Report on Food Protection at the Food and Drug Administration (1970) , an example of the template, and Making Your Own Baby Food (1977), an integrated muckraking and activist self-help book for parents that draws on the template. The many successes that Jim has been involved in include passage of the Organic Food Protection Act of 1990, a four-year campaign on the dangers of artificial sweeteners (Nutrasweet, Saccharin, Aspartame, and Splenda), and the campaign to block Swine Flu vaccination (1976). He also led the legal and scientific team that persuaded the FDA to reclassify acupuncture needles as safe and effective for legal U.S. importation and distribution (1996).Learn to recognize the habitual structures in society which limit our ability to be effective, and the additional structures – often, if not usually overlooked -which enhance and empower effectiveness if you are congruent with their bedrock reality. Explore the basis of and learn to use this activist template, the backbone of successful campaigns that resulted in intentional, positive social change.
The focus of this program is on the following:
- How the habitual cultural structures have blocked marginalized groups from success over the years.
- Five examples of how this process has been successfully applied and five campaigns that are currently facing similar challenges.
- How you are grounded in conscious activism and how conscious activism is grounded in you.
- Turning minority opinions into majority actions.
- Practice, theory, strategies and tactics for: (1) the strong, adaptable and open-minded realist; (2) the stressed, burnt-out and overworked idealist and (3) the conscious pragmatist who skillfully integrates realism and idealism.
- Introduction to a new modality for strategic planning that has been utilized in successful political campaigns and by others in need of identifying systemic strengths and weaknesses.
This program was originally offered as a 2.5 hour, invitation-only, highly-interactive online workshop for serious childbirth activists. It has been cropped, but not fully edited, in order for observers to get the greatest benefit of Jim’s Turner’s workshop style.
Cost: $15.00
Continuing Education Units available for some professionals. Certificate of Completion (optional) : $7.50 (completion of post-session questionnaire required). Click here for more information.