Metropolitan State University Center for Teaching & Learning

1. “Bridging the Social Justice/Environmental Justice Divide: Resources for Teachers of Literature, Writing, Ethnic & Women’s Studies Metropolitan State University Center for Teaching & Learning Fall Faculty Conference – Sept. 13, 2008 “Learning to be Green” Dr. Greta Gaard, Community Faculty in Women’s Studies

2. Starting Questions • What are some social justice issues addressed in your courses? • What can be done about these issues? • What have you/your students done? • What environmental issues are (or could be) addressed in your courses? • What can be done about these issues? • What have you/your students done?

3. Drawing the Nexus: ethical contents and contexts Social Justice Environmental • Hunger • Food costs, quality • War, migrations, struggle over resources • Police brutality • Prison reform • Terrorism and national security • Immigration • Marriage rights & benefits • Housing • Health Care • Women, children, and welfare • Industrial animal agriculture • Biotechnology, agro-chemicals • Global warming • Water quality • Healthy forests • Species loss • Waste sites • Desertification • Energy production • Vivisection • Asbestos, lead paints, heavy metals

4. Two Intersectional Analyses • Ecofeminism – starting with the insight that the oppression of women and of nature are interdependent…an analysis that has tended to foreground gender and nature • Environmental Justice – began by politicizing the co-occurrence of toxic waste & communities of color…an analysis that has tended to foreground race, then class, and defined environment as the places “where we live, work, and play”

5. Ecofeminist Movement Chronology • 1980 & 1981 – Women’s Pentagon Actions • 1981 – First West Coast Ecofeminist Conference • 1982 – Feminists for Animal Rights founded • 1983 – Reclaim the Earth: Women Speak Out for Life on Earth (Caldecott & Leland, eds., England) • 1986 – WomanEarth Feminist Peace Institute founded by Starhawk & Ynestra King • 1987 – USC Ecofeminist Conference (papers published as Reweaving the World, ed. Diamond & Orenstein, in 1990) • 1991 – Women’s Environment and Development Organization founded by Bella Abzug & Mim Kelber • 1991 – Ecofeminist Visions Emerging (EVE) forms in NYC with Cathleen & Colleen McGuire

6. EcoFeminism: noticing domination based on difference • Sexism: male over female • Racism: white over black • Classism: wealthy over working class • Heterosexism: heterosexuals over GLBTQ • Ageism: adult youth over children & elders • Ableism: temporarily abled over differently abled • Speciesism: human over other animal species • Anthropocentrism: culture over nature

7. Ecofeminists on culture/natureWhatever is defined as “nature” -> subordinated/resource for “culture” • Wealthy urban centers commanding water, energy (coal, nuclear, hydro), food resources – privileged consumption • Struggling rural areas used as resources for urban centers • Wild environments (forests, rivers, mountains) used as resources (lumber, hydro-power, coal-fired power plants, nuclear power) and as waste depositories • Third-World countries used as resources for First-World countries • Indigenous and rural people and their lands exploited as resources for Third-world elites and First-World consumers

8. Ecofeminist Critique of the Logic of domination--requires/relies on alienation, hierarchy, domination • Perspective Valued Self Devalued Other • Speciesism Human animals Nonhuman animals • Sexism Men Women • Racism Whites People of Color • Classism Wealthy Working Class / Poor • Heterosexism Heterosexuals GLBTQ • Ageism Adult Youth Young & elders • Ableism Temporarily abled Differently abled • Anthropocentrism Culture Nature Urban Rural Civilized Wild • Feminism & • Animal Rights* Reason Emotion, empathy *Marjory Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery *Carol Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat *Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her *Greta Gaard, Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature *Josephine Donovan & Carol Adams, The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics

9. Environmental Justice: Responding to environmental racism, defined as • The deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste disposal and the siting of polluting industries: • Radioactive waste on Native lands • Landfills and hazardous wastes in African American and Latino communities • Banned pesticides exported to Third World • Toxic labor conditions for farmworkers, maquila workers, sweatshop workers • Economic extortion: want jobs/income?...

10. Environmental Racism in Native North America • Over 700 Native nations on North America • 317 reservations in the U.S. threatened by env. Hazards, toxic wastes, clearcuts • Colonization & Env. Racism on Native lands • Siting of toxic wastes (nuclear waste dumps) • Power generation • Hydro – James Bay I & II, Hydro-Quebec • Nuclear power & nuclear waste • Nevada Test Site & Western Shoshone • Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant – NSP • Yucca Mountain – nation’s dumpsite for nuclear waste • Coal – Northern Cheyenne & AMAX • Militarization – Hawai’i

11. Events leading to The Environmental Justice movement • 1982 – Warren County, NC predominantly black and poor residents oppose a polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) disposal landfill in their community. • 1987 – Toxic Wastes and Race, a study commissioned by the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice • Correlating waste facility sites and demographics, the study found race was the most powerful variable predicting location. • Other variables were poverty, land values, and home ownership. • 1991 – First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit – 4 days in Washington D.C.

12. 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit(2nd summit in 2002) • Broadened the EJ movement beyond the anti-toxics focus to include • Public health • Worker safety • Land use • Transportation • Housing • Resource allocation • Community empowerment • Built a multi-racial grassroots movement around environmental & economic justice • Created a 17-point “Principles of Environmental Justice” http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/princej.html

13. The Vision of environmental justice • Equal access to natural resources • Universal human right to clean air and water, adequate health care, affordable shelter, safe workplaces • Requires eliminating institutional racism and classism that results in • locating toxic waste in poor & minority communities, • unsafe workplaces (pesticides in the fields, chemicals and radiation in the factories), and • women’s disadvantaged position in the workforce (leading to reproductive hazards in the workplace) • Requires restructuring of the entire social order

14. Bringing these intersectional perspectives to the disciplines • English: Literature, Composition, Creative Writing, Rhetoric • Ethnic Studies • Women’s Studies • Course Content & Course Contexts • Experiential learning • Service learning • Community education

15. Resources for Literature & Writing Ecocriticism • http://www.asle.org/ • http://www.asle.org/site/resources/ecocritical-library/ • Ecocriticism Reader. Ed. Glotfelty & Fromm, 1996. • Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. Ed. Gaard & Murphy, 1998. Ecocomposition • Dobrin, S. & C. Weisser. Ecocomposition:Theoretical & Pedagogical Approaches (2001). • Natural discourse: Toward Ecocomposition. (2002) • Writing Environments (2005). • Course Readers (next slide)

16. Ecocomposition Course Readers • Chris Anderson & Lex Runciman, A Forest of Voices, 2nd ed. (McGraw-Hill, 2000) • Lorraine Anderson, Scott Slovic, and John O'Grady, eds. Literature and the Environment (Longman, 1998) • Terrell Dixon & Scott Slovic, eds., Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers (Longman, 1992) • Sid Dobrin, Saving Place: An Ecocomposition Reader (McGraw-Hill, 2004) • Melissa Walker, Reading the Environment (W.W. Norton, 1994)

17. Resources for Environmental Rhetoric • Coppola, Nancy W., & Bill Karis, eds. Technical Communication, Deliberative Rhetoric, and Environmental Discourse: Connections and Directions. ATTW/Ablex, 2000. • DeLuca, Kevin Michael. Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism. Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005. • Fill, Alwin, and Peter Mulhausler, eds. Ecolinguistics Reader: Language, Ecology, and Environment. Continuum, 2001. • Herndl, Carl G. and Stuart C. Brown, eds. Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.) • Killingsworth, M. Jimmie and Jacqueline S. Palmer. Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1992.) • Waddell, Craig, ed. Landmark Essays on Rhetoric and the Environment. (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998.) .

18. Resources for Ethnic Studies / Environmental Justice • Southwest Network for Economic and Env. Justice http://www.sneej.org/ • Center for HealthEnv. & Justice http://www.chej.org/ • Southwest Organizing Project http://www.swop.net/ • Indigenous Env. Network http://www.ienearth.org/ Environmental Justice Resource Center @ Clark Atlanta Univ. http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/ EJ Resources (MI) http://www.mapcruzin.com/environmental_justice.htm Nat’l Black EJ Network http://www.nbejn.org/ EJ & Climate Change http://www.ejcc.org/

19. Key Texts on Environmental Justice • Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color (R.D. Bullard 1997) • The Environmental Justice Reader: Politics, Poetics, Pedagogy (Joni Adamson, Mei Mei Evans, Rachel Stein, eds., 2002) • New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality, and Activism (Rachel Stein, ed., 2004) • Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement (D.N. Pellow & R.J. Brulle, 2005) • Mexican Americans & the Environment: Tierra y Vida (Devon Pena 2005) • Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry (Hightower et al, 2006) • Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice (D.N. Pellow, 2008)

20. Resources for Women’s Studies • Eve Online: http://eve.enviroweb.org/ • Women’s Environment and Development Institute http://www.wedo.org • Introductory bibliography to Ecofeminism http://womenst.library.wisc.edu/bibliogs/ecofem.html • Activist-educative hub for ecofeminism http://www.ecofem.org/ • Eastern Shore Sanctuary & Education Center http://www.bravebirds.org/ • Boston Ecofeminist Action http://www.geocities.com/bostonecofem/ • Women’s Voices for the Earth • http://www.womenandenvironment.org/

21. Green Education Resources • Second Nature: education for sustainability http://www.secondnature.org/index.htm • MN Next Step for Education http://www.nextstep.state.mn.us/section.cfm?topic=16 • Upper Midwest Association for Campus Sustainability http://www.umacs.org/

22. Ecofeminist & EJ Service Learning (MN) • Environmental Justice Associates of MN http://www.ejamn.org/ (site under construction) • MN Center for Environmental Advocacy http://www.mncenter.org/ • MN Environmental Partnership http://www.mepartnership.org/ • Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy http://www.iatp.org/ • Organic Consumers Association http://www.organicconsumers.org/index.htm • SEEK MN Home for Environmental Education http://www.seek.state.mn.us/res_dir.cfm • Women’s Environmental Institute http://www.w-e-i.org/ • Fresh Energy http://www.fresh-energy.org/

23. Why “Green” Education? There’s an urgent need for ecological, economic, and social justice on all levels: • Interspecies • Ecological • Social (inclusive of all human diversities) • Economic • International What’s the alternative? Ppt. available at http://gretagaard.efoliomn2.com/