Tools of the Trade — Skills for Strategic Action
Temple Shalom, Dallas
Address: 6930 Alpha Rd, Dallas, TX 75240
THURSDAY, FEB 26, 2026 ▪️ 7:00-8:30 PM
Join us at Temple Shalom for the third session of ADVOCACY 101. This FREE EVENT is a four-part series designed to empower women to advocate for justice through community, conversation, and action. The series features community and faith leaders, local officials, and legislators.
This interactive seminar will cover:
- Powerful advocacy tactics
- How to speak truth to power with impact and integrity.
This is a FREE EVENT, but REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED.
MEET OUR GUEST SPEAKERS
JANIE CISNEROS—Singleton United/Unidos Leader
Janie Cisneros is a first-generation Latina leader and a founder of the Singleton United/Unidos neighborhood association in West Dallas. She is a leading voice for environmental justice, working to empower residents who have long borne the health impacts of industrial pollution.
In September 2021, Janie and her neighbors launched the GAF’s Gotta Go/GAF Vete Ya campaign to demand the removal of Dallas County’s largest sulfur dioxide and PM2.5 polluter—the GAF asphalt shingle manufacturing facility—from the heart of their community. Through her leadership, Janie has helped elevate the voices of families historically impacted by inequitable development and is committed to securing clean air and healthier futures for West Dallas.
JIM SCHERMBECK—Dean, College of Constructive Hell-Raising
Jim Schermbeck is a Fort Worth–born environmental advocate and documentary filmmaker. His work has influenced clean air policy, public health protections, and environmental justice efforts in North Texas for more than four decades.
Schermbeck began his activism in 1977, opposing the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant. Later, he served as DFW Program Director for Texans United, a statewide anti-toxics network. From 1994 to 2024, Schermbeck was Director of Downwinders at Risk, where he led successful campaigns to end toxic waste burning in Midlothian cement plants. Furthermore, he closed an illegal lead smelter in Frisco, effectively banned gas drilling in Dallas, and shut down the Shingle Mountain dump site.
Schermbeck also helped establish the nation’s first municipal green cement procurement ordinance, deploy North Texas’s first independent air-monitoring network, and support community environmental health surveys in Dallas. Before retiring, he helped guide Downwinders’ transition to an environmental justice organization led and staffed by People of Color.
As a filmmaker, Schermbeck co-wrote, co-directed, co-edited, and co-produced the documentaries Larry v. Lockney (PBS POV, 2003) and The Big Buy (2006).