The Environmental Justice Movement & the Miseducation of a Fifth-Grade Maritime Philosopher

Hello LinkedIn! According to my African mother, I do not post enough or showcase my professional milestones like my other "friends" (you must say this in the African mother tone). So to commemorate my 2022 professional milestones, I will be posting a series of presentations I had the privilege of delivering this year.?

YWCA Canada Think Big! Lead Now! National Leadership Program invited me to present on environmental racism and the environmental justice movement in the Maritimes. The presentation was merely a minuscule fragment of the environmental justice movement and its significance in the Maritimes (y'all, there is a lot to unpack here, and it cannot be completed in 90 minutes). During this presentation, I had the opportunity to detail my experiences, having grown up in a low-income subsidized housing community and witnessing how authorities orchestrate systemic approaches to weaponize the environment. As a child, my eyes would notice and question certain situations. Some I had names for, and others I did not. The first name I designated was in response to an inescapable food desert. The lack of grocery stores in my community that sold fresh produce, the journey families had to take to reach the nearest grocery store, and the scarcity, I nicknamed The Sahara. Community programs such as the “food bus,” we nicknamed, offered a speck of relief. The program consisted of a white mobile bus decorated with cartoon-like vegetables travelling between clusters of government housing units across the city, providing free bagged meals. Each evening I watched as a crystal spring appeared, only to dry up once more. This particular presentation served as an opportunity to present the intersections within environmental justice and confront the chapters of my story.?

Here is a high-level summary of some topics covered:

Dr. Robert Bullard and Dr. Ingrid Waldron. Both researchers gave separate public presentations at my university, effectively altering the course of my academic interests. Their presentations demonstrated the connection between one’s health/well-being and the environment. They showed the connection between factors such as the absence of grocery stores, green spaces and the overwhelming presence of hazardous waste in marginalized communities, particularly low-income, immigrant and communities of colour. Suddenly, I possessed the terminology and theories to explain and reflect on the situations I had witnessed in my community. Hence, my miseducation.

• The 60s environmental movement was a mass social movement adjacent to and often intertwined with the counterculture or so-called hippie movement. Drawing on a culture of political activism, thousands of middle-class white youth became involved with environmental politics. However, the movement lacked intersectionality and failed to highlight how communities of colour were often at the forefront of environmental issues. For most, it was life or death.?
• Milestones within the environmental justice movement included the first National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. At the Summit, the term environment was restructured with a new definition which skillfully defined the environment as where one lived, worked, studied, played, and prayed - furthering the idea that the environment encompassed a range of issues from housing and transportation to worker safety and toxic pollution.?
• Case studies presented include Boat Harbour, Africville, and Guysborough.?
• The ENRICH Project - a collaborative community-based research and engagement project on environmental racism in Mi’kmaq and African Nova Scotian communities.?
• A National Strategy to Redress Environmental Racism?(Bill C-230)

My maternal grandmother used to tell me that our ancestors were storytellers. It is how they made sense of the world, describing it so intimately, each detail cascading into the next was in the form of stories. The storytelling theme has appeared throughout my life and echoes my presentations. The storyboard serving as a backdrop to this presentation was my year in fifth grade. Fifth grade was a defining moment. The middle school I attended was in the same neighbourhood I grew up. Most of the kids I attended school with had similar socio-economic backgrounds. However, my family opted to place me in a new program for fifth grade. The program was in a school and neighbourhood that presented stark differences from mine regarding socio-economic status. Each day the bus would go up this massive hill toward the school, and the scenery would change before my eyes.?

That same year, my mother shared a newspaper clipping with me of protests in a neighbouring community. Interestingly enough, I would continue to follow the story during my bus rides to my new school, with the morning news blaring over the radio. In an Indigenous community 45 min away, activists were protesting shale gas exploration in the area. Each morning my eyes would widen in horror as I heard reports of Indigenous activists and heroes beaten, brutalized and jailed with racial slurs hurled at them by RCMP. To this day, I still remember the line spoken by an activist; their voice boomed over the radio, slicing through the static and hitting me at my core.

"Can't eat a dollar bill, and you can't drink a dollar bill either.”?

See, our social and economic realms exist within the confines of the environment, and thus the environment is used as an instrument to oppress, deprive and further colonization. Yes, fifth grade was a defining year.?