Four speakers from across Evanston and the greater Chicago area spoke at an Earth Day panel Thursday on environmental justice, the transition to renewable energy and how to build coalitions for effective local environmental advocacy.
Fossil Free Northwestern hosted the panel on campus, with similar events planned around the world this month in cooperation with EARTHDAY.ORG to inspire action for Earth Day on April 22.
Global health Prof. Elham Hoominfar, 350 Chicago Executive Director Larry Coble, an Evanston Township High School climate student activist and TdM Emerald Corp. Principal Tomás de’Medici served as panelists. They drew on personal experiences to explore the power of local communities through the lens of environmental justice.
Over the course of an hour and a half, panelists shared the personal experiences that brought them into activism and the lessons they learned over the years as activists.
“We are community builders,” Hoominfar said. “This is our community — of course our first step is to start from here, but not be limited there. We should go and make connections with other communities, but any structural, systemic changes start at the local level.”
The theme of community continued to play a role in the discussion as a way to stay motivated and grow the impact of advocacy work.
SESP junior Anusha Kumar organized the event and said she hoped attendees left the event feeling like there is “a lot of hope in the world.”
“There’s so much power in local coalition building,” Kumar said. “We can and should be working across different movements and different diverse groups to build coalitions in solidarity, to fight climate change and environmental injustice.”
Through coalition building, Coble said he hopes to work with other organizations to encourage the state of Illinois to divest from fossil fuels.
Currently, he said, 350 Chicago is working with 29 organizations. His goal is to build a coalition of 100.
“This coalition building that goes on helps to make the whole movement stronger and allows us to get more things done,” Coble said.
In addition to building coalitions with other advocacy organizations and learning to understand the perspective of employees at fossil fuel companies, de’Medici also said it’s important to communicate with communities who are directly impacted by environmental justice.
For de’Medici, that communication includes building trust.
“Authenticity truly is our own currency, and it’s the only way you’re going to be able to organize with them,” de’Medici said. “And you have to validate your experience first and recognize, ‘I don’t know everything.’ Because you are in a litany of people who have come saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to fix this.’ And that doesn’t happen.”
The same environmental crisis often affects communities and individuals from different backgrounds in different ways, Hoominfar said.
“We have the opportunity to learn how we can work together,” Hoominfar said. “The environmental justice movement is a collective journey, not a solo mission.”
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