March 28, Climate Anxiety
Thursday March 28: The SEI will host two experts in the area of “climate anxiety”. We continue to look at ways to address this critically important aspect of our students’ lives.
We are happy to have Eugenie Lewis, climate activist and licensed social worker, and Trevor Lehmann, whose practice in psychotherapy focuses on such challenges as climate anxiety. Trevor Lehmann will share some of his insights on how to confront the challenge and shift to a more constructive and personally rewarding role that can make a big change. This seminar will highlight solutions from the personal to the political.
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Women's History Month and the Environment
by George Leddy
This month, being Women’s History Month, we join many publications and organizations and focusing on women’s contributions in the protection of biodiversity, the study of natural habitats, and political activism.
Not many will recall Minerva Hamilton Hoyt and her tireless efforts on behalf of California desert protection. In fact, without her leadership, Joshua Tree National Park might never have become part of the National Park System.
Rachel Carson’s, whose most famous book, Silent Spring, changed the face of the environmental movement and exposed to dangers of an industrial and chemical world. As a consequence, we now value the importance of regulatory measures needed to address the worst aspects of pollution and waste. Thanks to Rachel Carson we have the EPA and a ban on DDT, the pesticide she exposed as a danger to all organisms in the food chain, especially birds.
In Love Canal New York, almost twenty years after Silent Spring, Lois Gibbs organized her community to force government to do something about the fact that houses there were built on a toxic waste dump that was poisoning her family and that of her neighbors. She had no special training or education, but her bold and direct action forced then president, Jimmy Carter to have the EPA to compensate the young families that had bought their first home over the buried poisons of the Hooker Chemical Co.
Women have presented a formidable and effective obstacle to polluting industries and the protection of urban spaces and safe places for children at play. The Mothers of East LA (MELA) was formed in the mid 1980s to oppose the building of a prison in Boyle Heights. MELA,, then moved on to stop an incinerator. That successful battle ended waste incineration in LA County.
In Los Angeles, Dorothy Green took her activism on water issues and coastal protection to found Health the Bay, a major regional coastal and environmental protection organization.
Cindy Montañez, whose activism brought increased protection for urban communities in California passed away last year With legislative accomplishments in Sacramento and her local focus on open space and parks in San Fernando and Pacoima, Cindy always brought joy and success to her community. She also led TreePeople, which she grew into an even larger organization and which she headed until last year.
Discover Wildlife has compiled a wonderful profile of ten women who have led environmental struggles throughout the world and in our lifetime. It includes Silvia Earle, Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, Leela Hazzah (East African animal protection), Marina Silva (Brazilian Amazon) Wangari Maathai (Kenya greenbelt movement) and many more.
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March on March:
Youth march on Sacramento March 7
to demand educational change
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On March 7th hundreds of students and educators marched on the state capitol in Sacramento under the banner of “Securing Students Future".
Students raised issues around the affordability of education, access to housing, and focused on environmental and climate justice issues as part of their vision of securing a sustainable future. Climate literacy education was on the list of student demands.
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Update on the Divestment Campaign |
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by Denise Robb
Senate Bill 252 continues to receive massive support from unions, teachers, and especially from LACCD. After the Pierce Academic Senate passed (by unanimous support) Lena Gonzalez' bill, SB 252 which will divest CalSTRS/PERS from fossil fuels by 2031, it was sent to the District Academic Senate. There too we received unanimous support. We intend to have every professor sign our petition. Please click this link to sign: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/yesonsb252
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PFAS - the forever chemicals that are everywhere
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Our Feb 29th seminar on “forever and everywhere chemicals” known as PFAS, is now posted on our website. This includes articles and a recording of the panel discussion (YouTube). Our panelists included Dr. Brian Johnston, Adventist Health Hospital, Dr. Sherlock Li, USC Keck School of Medicine, and Dr. Max Aung, USC Keck School of Medicine. Recent media attention to their research is due to the new and important findings on PFAS’ health impacts in working class and communities of color in East LA.
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The SEI Is excited to work with Lisa Williams the Sustainability and Utility Manager for the District.
Lisa Williams is six months into the Sustainability and Utility Manager position and is very excited to be working with the Los Angeles Community College District. She has a wide background in sustainability, from helping to launch the organics program for the City of Santa Barbara, expanding recycling for the City of Santa Fe, conducting the global greenhouse gas inventory for Macmillan Publishers, improving energy efficiency for NYC Department of Education, and most recently implementing nature-based play and campus ecology for LAUSD. She received her BA in Geography from UC Santa Barbara, and her MS in Sustainability Management from Columbia University. Lisa is a Long Beach native and very happy to be back on the west coast near her family and friends. You can find her on weekends taking "mini" hikes with her husband and toddler or working in her native plant and veggie garden.
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at WLAC
Jo Tavares, Director of the CCCCE
California Center for Climate Change Education is offering paid internships for students throughout LACCD who are interested in working on climate change related matters. Find more information about the Every Career is a Climate Career Green and Blue Workforce Development Program by visiting https://www.wlac.edu/academics/climate-center
Contact Program Coordinator and Career Center Director, Andrea Rodriguez- Blanco rodrigaa3@wlac.edu
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Books and Films
Staying with the Trouble
Making Kin in the Chthulucene
Published: September 2016
Last month a note appeared in this newsletter regarding “Staying with the Trouble”. The writing was, attributed to Beth Abels. This is an error. The note is a direct quote from the publisher’s page and was included in the newsletter and attributed accidentally. Since this is a good read and a fascinating author, it deserves more attention.
If you have been paying attention to the decision in February by Geological scholars not to refer to our current era as the Anthropocene- you may be interested in Haraway’s argument to use the term Chthulucene-(pronounced thoo-low-scene) The word cthulhu comes from the Greek khthonios, which means "coming from the earth" intended to suggest that the sustainability efforts ahead of us require we work in kinship with other other species, while staying with the trouble, Haraway includes real world examples of what that this work might look like as well as short fictional imaginings of the future.
Haraway introduces theories and solutions that may or may not be agreeable. She discusses in depth her feelings about population- which seem clumsy, off base, and not founded in evidence. On many other issues however, she tugs on, pokes, and challenges the practice of thinking in ways that are well worth the time.
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SEI Spring Semester Events
March 28 Climate anxiety (see above)
April 1-30 Earth Day Month Film Festival
April 25 Special Guest Didi Pershouse,
author of the Ecology of Care will discuss
The Biology of Climate in conjunction with CCCCE
May 16- Embedding climate literacy in curriculum across disciplines
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April 19, 12pm: Reclaim Earth Day, Global Climate Strike, Bike to the Climate Strike! LA City Hall South Lawn, Youth Climate Strike LA. See flyer.
April 22: 11:30am -3:00pm ASO presents Pierce College Earth Day in Rocky Young Park
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from the editors…
As always we invite your submissions to this newsletter. Write about environmental issues that are important to you. Let us know what projects you or your students are working on. Tell us what is happening on your campus or in your community,
Email the SEI staff with your proposed article or news brief, or calendar event.
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SEI@LACCD.Edu,
abelsbh@LACCD.edu, leddygs@LACCD.Edu, behlenxl@laccd.edu
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