Environmental Justice: The Power of a Bold Vision of Change

In this presentation, David N. Pellow, PhD, will consider the long arc of environmental justice scholarship, activism and politics within and across spaces of academia and grassroots movements in the U.S. and globally. The cases featured will offer lessons for students, educators, researchers, administrators and community advocates seeking to engage with environmental and climate justice. Pellow will include analyses and hopeful reflections on struggles within communities of color and Indigenous communities fighting for liberation, sovereignty and access to recreational spaces in the face of threats from toxic waste facilities, carceral institutions, militarization and the effects of climate disruption.

Pellow is the Dehlsen and department chair of Environmental Studies and director of the Global Environmental Justice Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he teaches courses on environmental and social justice, race/class/gender and environmental conflict, human-animal conflicts, sustainability and social change movements that confront our socioenvironmental crises and social inequality. He has volunteered for and served on the boards of directors of several community-based, national and international organizations dedicated to improving the living and working environments for people of color, immigrants, Indigenous peoples and working-class communities, including the Global Action Research Center, Center for Urban Transformation, Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health, Global Response, Greenpeace USA and International Rivers.