Environmental Justice: Social Movements

Environmental justice is an interdisciplinary area of study that examines the ways in which communities of color and other historically marginalized groups are disproportionately burdened with environmental hazards. Environmental justice is part of a movement that treats access to safe and healthy living environments as a vital civil right. Social movements for environmental justice are typically led by the communities most directly impacted by these issues, particularly low-income BIPOC communities.

This course will build off of the Fall course (Environmental Justice: History and Sociology) and not only examines how racism (and other systems of oppression) have disproportionately affected communities of color with toxic chemical exposure and other hazards, but also brings an asset-based lens to environmental justice by studying the knowledge, wisdom, resiliency, and leadership of communities of color and how their knowledge has contributed to mainstream movements for environmentalism. Indeed, many of the common organizing approaches in environmentalism, like the use of community land trusts to protect ecosystems and agroecological farming practices, were first developed by Indigenous and Black communities. Course topics will include: histories of environmental justice social movements, contemporary social movements working for environmental justice at local, national, and international levels, especially those led by BIPOC and other frontline communities; Indigenous sovereignty movements; and Black environmentalism and the ways in which Black community organizing has laid vital foundations in mainstream environmentalist movements.

This course will be taught entirely online with synchronous class meetings on Zoom and weekly asynchronous modules on Canvas.

This is the second of three courses that comprise the Environmental Justice Certificate at Evergreen. Courses are designed to be taken sequentially.

Anticipated Course Equivalencies:

4 - Environmental Justice: Social Movements