Vietnam veteran and teacher-practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, David Kidd first learned about the issue of global warming in 1988 and decided to do something about it. He discovered that tree seedlings were relatively cheap, and began to coordinate the planting of trees—not merely in the tens, nor the hundreds, nor even the thousands, but in the millions.
In eleven years, Kidd, along with over fifteen hundred schools and citizen groups throughout his native Ohio, managed to plant an astonishing 12 million trees. He ran as an independent candidate for the Ohio House of Representatives in 2002 and is a leading environmental activist, with projects in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska, with new projects underway each year. These projects are made available to community groups all over the world, as Kidd advocates local communities owning their own work.
Growing America is the story of an extraordinary man. It's about a man who made a commitment to be nonviolent when serving in Vietnam; a man who looked for solutions rather than be overwhelmed by global problems; a man who went against the advice of forestry services and bureaucracy and inspired ordinary citizens and local government to make a difference in their neighborhoods, communities, and throughout the state. More than that, Growing America is about civic involvement, of making communities vibrant and healthy, and inspiring all of us to help America flourish.
advertisement