Openings
On Friday, January 28th, the MIT HASTS Living Climate Futures Initiative launched with a virtual workshop. Climate and environmental justice leaders from across the country met with MIT HASTS faculty, fellows, and staff via Zoom to introduce ourselves and share our work for climate and environmental justice (EJ).
Our emerging group includes youth EJ leaders from George Washington High School in Chicago (and their teachers!) who shared their visions for joy as an essential part of resistance and showed us what solidarity looks like in campaigns to keep toxic industries out of neighborhoods. Longtime EJ leaders from Chicago's Southeast Environmental Task Force shared the challenges of living disconnected from the land after migrating from more rural communities where they were accustomed to growing food. Environmental justice activists from Chelsea, Massachusetts spoke of the public health effects of urban heat islands and air pollution in local neighborhoods. Urban farmers from Mansfield, Ohio shared stories of living in a food desert, without access to grocery stores, and described how urban agriculture can provide economic opportunities to local residents while also reducing the carbon footprint of long commodity chains. An Indigenous leader from the Lumbee tribal community (North Carolina) spoke of struggles to protect their lands from oil pipelines, while a leader from Lummi Nation (Northwest Washington) spoke of Lummi ways of living with the Earth and the extinction threats to Pacific salmon. Our first conversations were heartfelt and full of hopeful ideas for the months to come.
This spring semester, these community leaders are partnering with MIT faculty and fellows to embed the "imperative of justice" at the heart of MIT's Climate Action Plan. We are gathering community leaders at the forefront of urgent climate justice and environmental justice work to share their varied experiences and challenges. Together we will demonstrate how community-driven research is essential to addressing the uneven causes and repercussions of climate change. We will explore how academics and community practitioners can collaborate around climate and environmental justice research that centers community needs, experiences, and priorities. And we will demonstrate to the MIT community the essential role of the humanistic social sciences in climate change research and education.
Our work this semester will culminate in an Earth Day Symposium from April 22-24, 2022. We invite you to join us!