When: April, 18: 11 AM – 5 PM
Where: The Commons, Brooklyn
388 Atlantic Ave
Closest train stops:
Nevins St (2/3/4/5)
In this day-long series of workshops, we will attempt to highlight not only the ways in which climate change is connected to everyday issues, but also how we can talk to others (be they students, friends, family, neighbors, or fellow activists) and help build a movement to fight this global crisis. Using the new book A People’s Curriculum for the Earth, we will brainstorm and work together to bring this crucial discussion into our classrooms and our communities.
Climate change is a global emergency-not just a distant threat to our ways of life on this planet, but an immediate threat to our livelihoods. Communities around the world are reeling from natural disasters, loss of crops, droughts, and diseases due to increasing temperatures and pollution. Close to home, from the effects of Hurricane Sandy to skyrocketing asthma rates in the Bronx, we can clearly see the ways climate change plays out along lines of race and class.
More and more people are coming to the conclusion that these things are connected. In order to bring those people together and create the movement we need to fight back, we need to generate strategies for talking to our students, friends, and communities about how climate change connects to food security, racism, war, gentrification, and all sorts of other issues that are affecting us on a daily basis.
We hope this can be an important step in generating those strategies, and bringing together organizations and activists involved in different aspects of this important work!
Session One: Who’s to Blame for the Climate Crisis?
We’re often told about the benefits of checking our carbon footprint or taking shorter showers. But is our consumption really causing the crisis? In this session, participants will take part in an interactive mock trial on who should be held responsible for the climate crisis. They will also hear from activists fighting for ecosocialism.
Session Two: Environmental Justice
Because climate change affects us differently along lines of race and class, we have to fight not only for and end to climate change itself, but for environmental justice. In this session, participants will do a workshop on the impact of climate change on different communities and share their experiences of environmental racism.
Session Three: Teaching Climate Catastrophe
How can we bring talk of environmental justice into the classroom? In this session led by teachers, participants will explore how to bring the subject of climate justice into the classroom and discuss strategies for emphasizing the human impact of climate change as well as finding ways to inspire students to join the fight against it.
Sponsored by: Haymarket Books, System Change Not Climate Change (SCNCC), Rethinking Schools, NYCoRE, This Changes Everything, YAYA Network, International Socialist Organization (ISO)
**Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event for a discounted price of $16 and you can also purchase the book online using code APCED15. There will also be a wide range of other book titles on race, environmentalism, education, and more available from Haymarket Books.