Mission
Mendocino Coast Progressive Action Network exists to cultivate, promote, and support progressive leadership at the local level by leveraging timely progressive issues to get our local elected officials to take action on our behalf. At its core, MCPAN is about building ongoing, multi-issue progressive power at the local level: Power that can be effectively directed as necessary.
History
MCPAN was begun as an attempt to capture, store, and push forward the energy of the 2019 Climate Strike by Scott Menzies, long-time local progressive activist and progressive candidate in the 2016 Fort Bragg City Council election. MCPAN's current focus is on using petitions as movement-building tools to generate local power and get concrete results from local elected bodies, especially the Fort Bragg City Council, and often in concert with other organizations’ critical efforts. Past campaigns have resulted in concrete wins, including the formation of the Fort Bragg racial justice Task Force (with MendoCoast BIPOC) and helping instigate the development of a local Formula Retail Ordinance. Scott’s work is entirely volunteer. For more information, please or write MCPAN's general info email.
Who is behind MCPAN?
Scott Menzies is the Founder and Lead Organizer of MCPAN, but, over the years of working on progressive issues on the Mendocino Coast, Scott has developed a large personal network of progressive friends and colleagues, from whom he will ask for informal feedback on a mini-campaign he is considering running. As many of these folks work on different issues, it's often never the same group of people giving input on a given mini-campaign. And because every mini-campaign is put out in the form of a petition, every issue is pushed forward with people power from folks who believe in that particular issue. Anytime the word "we" is used for MCPAN, it refers to this whole collective of people behind every petition, pledge, questionnaire or issue that is presented to our local elected bodies.
Founder/Lead Organizer
Scott Menzies, M.A. (Environment & Community)
Scott is a community organizer, teacher, musician, and T'ai Chi Martial Arts instructor. He is also on the Steering Committee for the California Progressive Alliance (2022). He returned from seven years' residence in Asia in 2003 (starting in Peace Corps Nepal) because he felt compelled to work for social change in the aftermath of the 2000 Presidential election. In 2004 he was trained by seasoned Bay Area LGBTQ organizer Eric Rofes, PhD in the Midwest Academy's comprehensive activist manual Organizing for Social Change - a course which was eventually wrapped into his Environment & Community Masters at Humboldt State University (now Cal Poly Humboldt). He has relied on that training to engage in diverse campaigns, from small to large, over the last 16 years, including a run for Fort Bragg City Council in 2016. MCPAN is a multi-issue progressive effort that was started to support, store, and push forward the energy the 2019 Climate Strike.
Scott can be reached at MCPAN's General Email.