Every day and every action
matters. Even if you can’t fix the world’s water crisis by taking shorter
showers, it is still important to live by the standards and morals you value.
Positive actions also have a way of creating a ripple effect, and doing a good
deed or being kind to someone can spread to that person in the form of their
own kind actions, and then to more people, and so on to an unknown number.
“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world”
(Howard Zinn). Being kind and making the effort to recognize individual
privileges and powers, and making the conscious effort not to cause harm or to
acknowledge and help if you do unintentionally cause harm, is inherently an
effort toward social change.
The ENST Capstone has connected
me with the Pacific Union Elementary garden where Madi and I do garden
maintenance with our supervisor Jesse. We have come up with a few projects to
make the garden more kid/user-friendly, and Madi and I are working on lesson
plans to teach the PU students about gardening, food, health, the Earth,
biology, history, art, and more. Although I’m not in charge of this project, I
am contributing to Jesse’s vision of an interdisciplinary, garden-based
learning program for every grade level from K-8th that incorporates
aspects of social and environmental justice. I’m passionate about youth
education and empowerment, and even though this project is a small commitment
on my part (just the 30 hours), it aligns with my vision of a more just world.
From my own childhood through
to 18, I was a member of Girl Scouts Heart of Central California, and for any
faults that organization may have it is one of the biggest reasons I care about
the Earth and other people, and why I am in this major. I learned that girls
are strong and we can support one another, I developed incredible friendships,
leadership and communication skills, went out into the forest my town was
situated in and saw new cities and places, and I had a chance to serve my
community. Last summer I worked at a girl scout camp instilling some of those
same ideas, dreams, and values into girls ages 6-17 from the same California
branch of Girl Scouts, watching them fall in love with the forest around Camp
Menzies and hearing declarations like “I want to be a scientist!”, “I didn’t
know nature could be so much fun!”, or “I didn’t know I could do that!”. There
are no words to describe the feelings that came from being a part of those
girl’s lives and their recognition of their own agency (however small the
recognitions may have been).
I’ve also been a writing tutor
for a few years and this, along with ENST, lead me to a teaching position at
the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology (CCAT). Last semester I taught the
Green Building class with Ivan Soto and this semester I’m teaching with Kelsey
Summers, and the topics range from trash-to-treasure to building structures out
of cobb and hempcrete. We discuss the terms “appropriate technology” and “green
building” addressing the issues of power and privilege associated with “green”
technologies, and define “appropriate” as being determined by the community and
people for whom the technology will be made/used by. Most importantly, the
class serves as a space for HSU students, community members, and the teachers
to learn together and share knowledge.
Being involved with various
campus resources such as CCAT has allowed me to expand my academic spheres of
influence beyond the classes I take for my ENST degree. A wide range of majors
take the Green Building class and bring their own discipline-specific knowledge
and opinions to the class. Similarly, the Writing Studio and Learning Center
force me to connect with students who are interested in a wide variety of
majors and issues, and having conversations with this variety of students
provides the opportunity to interject some social and environmental justice
concepts where they may not have been included otherwise. More and more I’m
realizing that I don’t have to work in a traditionally “environmental” field in
order to be a change agent, I can incorporate social and environmental justice
into anything that I do. Even at the Writing Studio in something as simple as
the social media pages I manage, I can use that space to connect students to
campus resources and support other campus groups like CheckIt or the ENST Club
and spread the word to more people about what is available at HSU. That’s a
very small and narrowly connected example, but regardless, in my future work I
can incorporate the values learned in ENST.
In Power/Privilege &
Environment, Environmental Studies Research & Analysis, Ecofeminism, Women
& Development, and Social Justice I learned about systems of power,
privilege, and oppression. These systems stem from globalization, capitalism,
neoliberalism, modernization, violence, exploitation, marginalization, cultural
imperialism, and so many more that I want to cry at the thought. I learned that
structural intersectionality means that I can feel both the oppression of being
a woman and growing up below the poverty line at the same time that I feel the
privilege of being white and having been born in the United States. Just as
many kinds of oppression take the form of slow violence, i.e. climate change, a
community built on leeching toxins, or the removal of non-dominant cultures,
“revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment” (Howard Zinn),
this revolution we are working toward is a slow change.
When I think about the effort
we’re all trying to make toward that revolution through ENST, I am reminded of
the movie Cloud Atlas. At the climax of the movie after learning that his
daughter is leaving with her husband to work with abolitionists, the “bad guy”
says to the main character (the husband) “there is a natural order to this
world and those who try to upend it do not fare well, this movement will never
survive. Your family will never survive… and for what? No matter what you do it
will never amount to anything more than a single drop in a limitless ocean.” To
this the main character replies, “what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
(David Mitchell, 2012). All of us who choose to fight against inequality must
face the fact that our actions alone will not save the world, and in ENST we
have discussed this as the “Arc of ENST”, but that collectively we can make a
difference. We have power when we work together.
Individually, I have the power
to choose to fight for what I believe in every day, and to try to protect the
people, places, creatures that I love. I can choose to recognize both my own
oppression and privilege and understand that “the living world is not “out
there” somewhere, but in [my own] heart” (Paul Hawken). The environment and
people in need are not separate from myself. And I must “forget that this task
of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by
people who know what is not possible” (Paul Hawken). And when they laugh
or tell me that my effort makes no difference, saving the world is impossible,
I’ll simply say “why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things
before breakfast” (Alice in Wonderland, Alice to the Queen), and continue on my
path.
I am not scared to graduate, I
am happy to take what I have learned beyond the boundary of HSU and apply it
wherever I end up (right now that’s looking like North Caroline, with their
Girl Scout Council developing environmental education and camping programs).
And although the current power regime in the US is terrifying and the systemic
hegemonies and oppressive powers are vast and greater than my individual self,
I’m not scared of them either because I only can do what I can do anyway. My plan is to love, and to be angry about the corruption/abuse/overuse
of the things that I love, and to fight against these abuses to hopefully move
in the direction of my own vision of a more just world.
No comments:
Post a Comment