Embedded Files
Session Objective: to value each other’s perspectives and agree upon shared principles for engagement with these issues
The goal of this session is to lay the groundwork for a meaningful experience in this course. We will do that by getting to know each other, familiarising ourselves with the class themes, and reflecting on our goals for the next few months. During your first meeting with your discussion section, you will get to know your colleagues through personal introductions and a consensus-building exercise creating community guidelines for dialogue.
Before you meet with your group, you are asked to spend a bit of time preparing your first Learning Log. Work through the material below and record your thoughts using the Google Form at the end. When you submit your answers, you will automatically receive a copy of them in your email. That email will include a link allowing you to edit your entries in response to group discussion and new insights throughout the course, so you can keep a running journal documenting your learning and making notes of things you want to follow up on. If you have any technical issues, get in touch with the Teaching Team.
Meet: The Spring 2022 “Climates of Resistance” Teaching Team, who will be facilitating the course this semester.
Watch: The introductory videos below reviewing the course themes and thinking about anti-racist learning. Transcripts of each video are available - click on the titles above the videos clip if you would like to read them.
Environmental Racism & Justice
This course is about environmental racism, taught through the lens of environmental justice. For starters, then: what do these two terms mean?
Racism is everywhere, in all of our systems. That includes environmental policies and planning.
In the United States, for example, landfills, factories, and toxic areas are likely to be located near predominantly Black, Indigenous, and communities of colour. At the same time, Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Colour are more likely than their white counterparts to live in a food desert – an area with limited access to nutritious and affordable food.
Racism impacts your environmental risk and your environmental access. Simply put, that’s environmental racism.
As a field of study, environmental justice works to understand those patterns. Theories of justice are concerned with both outcomes and processes - what does the world look like, and why? How did it get that way? Why does it stay that way? What could change it?
Because we don’t just want to study things that are unfair. Environmental justice is also a framework for action. It is a movement that addresses environmental racism. Environmental justice is about ensuring that human interaction with nature is equitable. Through environmental justice, communities claim power to change unjust outcomes and demand fairer processes.
When we work on environmental justice, we can think about three main issues:
Distribution. Who is benefitting from the environment? Who is carrying environmental costs? Those are usually different groups – the people emitting the most carbon and contributing most to climate change, for example, are the least vulnerable to its negative impacts like sea level rise, extreme weather, and pollution.
Recognition. Who are we thinking about when we make environmental policies? Corporate elites or those who are marginalised? Citizens of our own country, or all persons? Only those alive today, or also future generations? And what about non-human animals and nature itself?
Participation. Who gets to make decisions about nature and resource use? Who is excluded from decision-making and the corridors of power? How can we create not only outcomes but also processes that recognise the diversity of stakeholders and their contributions?
Racism is everywhere. But it doesn’t have to be. Environmental justice is about changing that reality.
Anti-Racist Learning
As we begin exploring complex issues that can be challenging, I would like to take a few minutes to reflect on what anti-racist learning can look like, and highlight some tools on the course website to aid this process.
This class is designed to help us critically reflect on deeply personal, political subjects. Tackling topics of racism, bias, and inequality isn’t always very fun - especially when we start to realise the ways we benefit from injustice and inadvertently support oppression. You’re probably going to have a few uncomfortable moments. That’s okay. We’re here to learn together and support each other as we figure things out.
One of the first things we’ll do as a class is create guidelines for our conversations. We’ll talk openly and decide together how we want to address concerns about biased language, disagreements between us, and other issues that arise.
A few starting ideas that are important to remember:
We’re all learning. None of us are experts. We come to this class knowing a lot based on our own experience, but missing a lot as well. We’ll learn best if we respectful share our own perspectives while valuing others, and always acknowledging the reality of systemic injustice.
We’re all oppressed. Each one of us has some part of our identity that is disadvantaged in this world. But we’re all also oppressor. We all have aspects that benefit us, relative to others. We need to recognise that duality, and actively empower ourselves to use our privilege without abusing it.
We’re all imperfect. We’re going to mess up. That includes me. We are so surrounded by these issues that we all hold prejudices, even if they’re unintentional and unconscious. We need to work to confront and unlearn them - and we want this class to be a place where we hold each other accountable, without attacking people for mistakes.
We’re all practicing. Anti-racism is a lifelong process of learning and growing, no matter who we are. We’re not going to suddenly arrive at a magical destination at the end of this class, and have sorted ourselves out. But together, we can get in the habit of practicing often, and hopefully, getting really good.
The “Course Policies” page on our class website has more details about anti-racist learning, and resources to help us identify and rectify our own language, which can accidentally enforce everyday ableism and bias.
If at any time in this course you experience or witness bias, are concerned with any language being used, or are trying to figure something out, the website also has a Feedback Form and Concern Card. This can be entirely anonymous. Please use it anytime you aren’t sure, or would like to bring attention to a problem. There is also an Anonymous Ask & Answer Board on the website. Use that page to ask clarifying questions about terms and get clarity on anything you have always wondered about but been a bit hesitant to ask. The Teaching Team will regularly reply, and we’ll sign our names - but you can also answer each others’ questions, anonymously if you like, to share wider perspectives.
I hold open office hours. Times are posted in my Virtual Office, where you can also explore other resources and get to know me a little better. My office hours are open to everyone - you don’t have to be formally enrolled in my Syracuse class to come. And my office hours are for anything you want to talk through; it doesn’t have to be obviously connected to this class. If my usual times don’t work for you, please just email, and we’ll find a time.
Lastly: I know there are things I could be doing better. Please always feel free to tell me, and thank you for your patience and your guidance as I keep exploring anti-racism and how to be a better ally. I feel really honoured to be learning from you, and I’m grateful for your commitment to this course.
Discover: more about “Climates of Resistance” through the course description and accompanying spoken word piece.
This interdisciplinary course critiques systemic environmental inequalities with particular attention to the experiences – and active resistance – of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour in the 21st century. Students will start by examining the concepts of intersectionality and systemic injustice to position themselves within current structures. The course’s three main units are then structured around key pillars in the environmental justice movement: distribution, recognition, and participation.
Participants will explore a variety of contexts and can choose to focus on particular issues and/or communities through their work. Case studies range from anti-gold mining efforts in Pascua-Lama on the Chilean border with Argentina to Indigenous Islanders fighting sea level rise in Oceania; guest speakers represent anti-racist projects as diverse as fog-harvesting in rural Morocco and urban gardening in the southern United States.
This spoken word piece summarises the environmental justice framework and ethos guiding “Climates of Resistance”.
Course Poem
(click to read transcript)
In my country:
Latinx Americans are twice as likely as their white counterparts to face toxic pollution
Black men are overrepresented by a factor of three in our criminal “justice” institution
And colonialism forced Indigenous Nations onto contaminated land as a “solution”
It’s time to dismantle disparate distribution
In this world:
It is assumed that women, queer folx, disabled people, children, and men of Color will take a place of submission
Acknowledging marginalised stakeholders somehow requires someone else’s permission
Concern for non-human animals and the needs of future generations seems a guaranteed omission
It’s time to realise radical recognition
In our communities:
No longer are we willing to wait for change, breath bated in anticipation
Because we know that we have had to fight for every stage of emancipation
And making space for equitable decision-making is an ally’s true occupation
It’s time to promote public participation
Welcome to “Climates of Resistance”
This class is inspired
by America’s March on Washington and Australia’s Aboriginal Tent Embassy
legislative protests that have left us a legacy
by disabled organisers at the 504 Sit-In
demonstrating how good laws are written
by the Black trans womxn of Stonewall
They who planted seeds that have grown, tall
in the face of oppression, knowing the persistence of resistance isn’t in question
by the Freedom Riders, providers of a history
promising us the mystery of justice,
and that it’s not just us
As the Indigenous youth of Standing Rock create a landing block for defiance
We know diversity
doesn’t mean adversity
Struggles are connected,
wrongs must be corrected,
rights can be collected
When we follow in the wake of these giants
And that is what this class means to do
To uncover the patriarchal white supremacy that exists
While acknowledging the power within us that resists
We use art to teach
Because we know art can reach
The parts of us others would have silenced –
Knowing they’re the parts of us able to end this violence
We were born into a world decayed
But from the moment we were born, we remade it
Even as we were conceived, we swayed it
And now the ideas we conceive can aid it
Because this world is ill-conceived
But we believe
We can unweave the mess
We can achieve redress
We can perceive success
And that is what we swear today
Promising we can share a way
To a future where we care to play
By rules that let us dare to say:
“Is this a class or a movement?”
This is our existence.
This is our insistence.
Welcome, to “Climates of Resistance”.
Review: the Course Policies for Climates of Resistance, especially the Principles for Anti-Racist Learning reproduced below and discussed in one of the above videos.
Climates of Resistance involves critical and open discussion and introspection about a number of deeply personal, political, and difficult subjects. When approaching such topics, it is important to acknowledge ‘the wiggle factor’. Discomfort from course readings or discussions may mean that problematic preconceptions or implicit biases are being challenged. These ‘growing pains’ are positive, productive, and to be encouraged. Personal attacks or targeting, on the other hand, will not be tolerated. Respect and empathy are critical for a productive learning environment. During the first in-person meeting, the group will create principles for discussion through consensus-building. These guidelines will inform community interaction for the semester. As a starting point, the instructor will suggest that:
we all come as learners, not experts, holding our own understandings based on lived experience and exposure – and we learn best when we respectfully share ours, value others’, and acknowledge the reality of systemic patterns demonstrated through evidence-based science;
we all are both oppressor and oppressed within complex systems that build on multiple factors of identity and experience to produce patterns of marginalisation, unequal access and oppression;
we all hold a number of prejudices, both conscious and unconscious, and must work to confront and unlearn them; and
we all must diligently and regularly practice solidarity, realising that anti-racist action is a lifelong process of learning and growing, rather than the arrival at a set destination.
Consider: what is important for you to feel welcome, supported, and challenged in this course? In your first Learning Log form below, make a note of any objections to or questions about these principles.
You can also type up any additional ideas you would like to raise for community consideration, thinking about:how dialogue should take place on Zoom,
how you would like to hold each other accountable, and
how you want the group to handle any disagreements or tensions.
The Give and Take (Mixed Media on Canvas, 2017)
“This painting is about the give and take you experience in relationships.”
In keeping with this course’s anti-racist stance and environmental justice theory’s focus on recognition, all required materials for Climates of Resistance originate from Black, Indigenous, People of Colour, and minority voices. Acknowledging valued heritage and effective tactics for collective action within marginalised communities, a piece of BIPOC-produced visual art that relates to the session’s theme will be highlighted in each Learning Log entry. Today’s piece is titled “The Give and Take”, reflecting an invitation to build mutually beneficial relationships through this anti-racist community of learning.
About the Artist: Jessica Matier explores humanity’s relationship towards nature and society, the preordinance of existence versus free will, and the knowledge of wisdom. In trying to distill human and individual experience outside of gender, politics, and other temporal characteristics, Matier’s work intends to provide a deeply personal and unique experience while simultaneously building a feeling of inclusivity to the human race.
Write: a “Statement of Purpose” about your participation in this course. In addition to helping with introductions during the first Discussion Group meeting, this write-up will serve as a useful ‘self baseline’. You will return to it during our last week, reflecting on what you’ve learned and what you’d like to continuing exploring after this community course is done.
As you’re writing, you might think about:what motivated you to invest in this opportunity?
what makes you most excited - and most apprehensive - about participating in this Community Audit?
what do you feel you already know about environmental racism?
what are some of the biggest questions in your mind about environmental justice?
what is something you’re hoping to change or better understand as a result of this course?
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