While I understood this at the beginning of the quarter, I have a new understanding of what it means for environmental justice to be considered a human right (Capeheart & Milovanovic, 2007). Without a clean and safe environment, it is impossible to learn, live, and grow. I used to not care about this issue as passionately because I was not directly affected by many of the negative consequences of climate change or pollution. This was why I decided to focus on social justice action project on environmental justice in order to push myself to see it from a new perspective. I learned that I am affected by environmental racism because my actions are partly to blame, and I share a collective responsibility to fight environmental racism (Young, 2013). While I still have a long way to go, I feel passionate about creating change in my life and the communities around me to stop climate change and ensure that everyone can live in a healthy environment. Sometimes this feels like an impossible task and I feel incredibly guilty for my previous actions, but I know now that I can create small wins by challenging myself to limit my consumption habits, reduce pollution, and advocate for distributive environmental justice (Weick, 1984).
To summarize, for this project I took two types of action: proactive and reactive. I was proactive by monitoring my consumption habits and donating and procuring supplies. I was proactive by monitoring my trash, recycling and compost levels, trying to generate less each week, donating a variety of lightly used clothes and houseware to Goodwill, tracking my use of public transportation, and running a local supply drive for colleges serving homeless and/or low-income students. I was reactive by calling politicians, signing petitions, and speaking to my friends and family about the importance of caring about not only our earth, but those who live on it. I signed the petition to allow the water warriors to continue protecting their water and land. I also called local and federal politicians to advocate for the Affordable Care Act to ensure that if you are harmed by your environment, you can heal. Then, I spoke to friends and family to make sure that they would act too, showing my own actions by taking part in Facebook protests and sharing relevant articles that said things better than I ever could. This way, I wouldn’t just create a quick fix solution, but I would use small wins to begin to institutionalize change on a micro and macro level (Weick, 1984). By engaging in transformative justice, I am not only responding to the immediacy of the injustices or harm caused by climate change and pollution, I am addressing the structural issues that caused them to negatively affect certain communities of people (e.g. low-income people of color) (Capeheart & Milovanovic, 2007).
As a student affairs professional and social justice educator, I learned that I cannot only pay attention to the issues that affect students similar to me, but I must also address injustices that affect those who are different than me. Since we live in a social world and cannot separate ourselves from society, so we have a moral requirement to learn to exist together and advocate for each other (Capeheart & Milovanovic, 2007). I must use my experiences of privilege and oppression to fuel my actions and empathize with wide range of students of multiple levels to help them understand that in order to advocate for social justice, we just advocate for environmental justice as well.
References:
Capehart, L., & Milovanovic, D. (2007). Social justice: Theories, issues and movements. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Weick, K.E. (1984). Small wins: Redefining the scale of social problems. American Psychologist, 39(1), 40-49.
Young, I.M. (2013). Responsibility for justice. New York: Oxford University Press.
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