Jackson Koeppel is the Organizational Facilitator for Soulardarity, a chapter of Grand Aspirations empowering residents of Highland Park, MI to build self-determination through the collective planning and cooperative ownership of 200 solar streetlights, replacing those repossessed by the local utility. He grew up in New York City, and went to school at Oberlin College in Ohio. He attended the March on Blair Mountain in West Virginia, and has done some work supporting resistance to shale development (hydro-fracking) on and around his campus. After coming to Highland Park in the summer of 2012, he took technical trainings and hands-on courses in solar electric through the Midwest Renewable Energy Association. He’s working on Soulardarity out of a belief that people need alternatives to fossil fuels, and that social justice is a necessary dimension of those alternatives.