Author Archives: Tracy Perkins

Does containing climate change come at the expense of California’s most vulnerable?

Posted in Climate change, Environmental justice by

Does containing climate change come at the expense of poor people and people of color in California?  According to a statewide coalition of environmental justice advocates, the answer is yes.  Therefore, they have sued the the California Air Resources Board over the way the state proposes to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmental justice advocates were involved in the creation of the Global Warming Solutions Act, which was passed through the California legislature in 2006.  Advocates were involved in the legislative process not just to help create a solution to climate change, but also to make sure that reducing greenhouse gases at the statewide level would not increase them unfairly at local levels.  But since the Global Warming Solutions Act was passed, they argue that the plan developed by the California Air Resources Board to actually carry out the legislation has moved in a different direction.

The implementation plan proposes a number of different tools to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California. Although they support many of these tools, environmental justice advocates are worried about one of the biggest hitters on the list: a market-based approach to containing greenhouse gas emissions called “cap-and-trade.” As I understand it, using cap-and-trade is like giving all the polluters a deck of cards in which each card enables its bearer to emit a certain amount of pollution.  Then they can trade the cards among themselves to their satisfaction.  But in a twist to how most games work, players can also buy more pollution cards from people not part of the game at all.  For example, a California polluter could continue to pollute by paying people in Mexico to plant trees, or by paying a lumber company in Canada for the tree-planting they routinely do after a clear-cut operation.  This means business as usual, and continued high air pollution levels, for the people who live closest to polluters here in California.  Local air pollution levels could get even worse over time under cap-and-trade policies in the likely event that polluting facilities decide to expand, and make up for their increased emissions by purchasing more pollution cards, or “offsets,” from elsewhere. This would exacerbate the existing distribution of pollution, which poor people and people of color get the worst of.  On the other hand, directly regulating polluters could mean local reductions in greenhouse gas emissions AND the associated air pollutants. (My recent article mentions another way that the Global Warming Solutions Act could worsen air pollution locally, though not through the cap-and-trade policy.)

Environmental justice groups eventually sued the California Air Resources Board over the implementation plan.  The motivation for the case is based partly on the fact that there is a significant overlap between greenhouse gases, which contribute to climate change for everyone, and  air pollution, which causes health problems for the people who live closest to it. The effort by the Environmental Defense Fund to intervene in the suit on behalf of the state reveals the continuing tensions in the environmental movement about how to respond to climate change.  Should we compromise with industry to get solutions that prioritize countering global warming at the planetary level?  Or should we champion more politically challenging solutions that include the poor and people of color as immediate beneficiaries in any solution to climate change?  In this case, the Environmental Defense Fund’s petition was thrown out, and last week the environmental justice advocates won part of their case.  The judge’s decision found that the California Air Resources Board emphasized the cap-and-trade plan without adequately adhering to the law, which required the Air Resources Board to considering an array of possible solutions beyond just cap and trade, and to allow for public comment and deliberation on the various options available.

UCSC alum and lawyer Brent Newell will be visiting my university next week to give us his insider’s perspective.  His organization is one of two representing the plaintiffs in this case.  The title of his talk is “Climate Justice:  Global Climate Disruption and the Struggle for Environmental Justice.” He’ll be talking about the case above, as well as another climate justice case in Alaska.  Those of you who are local can come hear him speak at the Environmental Studies Department’s weekly seminar: April 4th, from 12:30-2:00 at the Interdisciplinary Sciences Building, room 221.

Press:

Scholarly studies:

The plaintiffs:

The lawyers:

Other:

And here’s a copy of the judge’s 35 page decision, as shared by the LA times

The spring break that was

Posted in University life by

This spring break I:

  • graded 180 one page essays and another 160 pages worth of research proposals
  • made my peace (I think) with my university’s intricate purchasing and hiring process…
  • gratefully watched my neighbors chop up and cart away the massive section of a redwood tree that made its way from their yard to mine during a big storm
  • read about the Wisconsin Republican Party’s attempt to get environmental historian William Cronon’s e-mail correspondence through a Freedom of Information Act request (here, and in his own words here)
  • expressed my undying thanks, again, to the geniuses at the Apple Genius Bar
  • worked on getting an article ready to send out for publication – after a much-needed kick in the pants from a former advisor
  • cancelled my day-trip to the hot springs in Big Sur after the highway between here and there fell into the ocean  : (
  • contemplated doing my taxes
  • watched an awesome movie about pastry chefs competing for France’s top pastry-chef honors.  The suspense almost killed me!
  • stocked my freezer with 6 jars of Vegetable Jalfrezi made from the recipe in this cookbook
  • cleaned and renovated my chicken coop, and moved in four adorable new little fluffballs!  : )

(inspired by my friend Annie’s regular The Week that Was posts on Bird and Little Bird)

Playback Theater for environmental justice – slideshow

Posted in Environmental justice, Participation, public sociology & campus-community collaboration, Photography, San Joaquin Valley, Voices from the Valley by

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Over the last two years, I’ve been part of several Playback Theater performances designed to honor environmental justice advocates and share their stories.  Not as an actress, mind you, but as someone helping to bring together the actors, activists and audience so the magic can happen.

Playback Theater is a unique type of theater that asks audience members to shape the performance by sharing stories from their lives.   The director solicits personal stories from the audience, invites a volunteer up to the stage to tell their story, and asks a few follow-up questions to get more details.  The story-teller then choses one of the actors to play herself, the actors take a moment to wordlessly soak up the story, and then re-enact it on stage. It is all based on improv: nobody knows who will share what stories or how the actors will interpret them until it happens on stage.  In some cases the director will also ask for reactions to the story from the audience, and the actors briefly interpret those reactions too. When it works it is electrifying.

I can’t say what it was like for the environmental justice activists who shared their stories to see their lives retold on stage. But I know from seeing my own stories brought to life during rehearsals that having so much respect, care and attention given to your own experiences can be deeply meaningful.  And I can attest that a number of the audience members unfamiliar with the issues found the performances profoundly moving, and still carry those memories with them.

The idea for doing these shows came from my very talented friend John Chung, who some of you know as Jiwon. John and I were having dinner at a great Korean restaurant in Oakland one night while I was chewing over the usual grad student dilemma of how to do research that actually has some real impact in the world.  I had already developed the basic idea of doing oral history interviews with women environmental justice leaders from the Central Valley, which I could analyze for my academic writing and also edit into stories to help educate the public (more on this later). John suggested adding Playback Theater performances into the mix,  and I thought it was a great idea.   I had some familiarity with the technique through having seen him perform as part of the Living Arts Playback Theater Ensemble, and from having attended a workshop series on Theater of the Oppressed taught by John and other members of the Bay Area Theater of the Oppressed Lab. (Those of you familiar with popular education will be particularly interested in Theater of the Oppressed. It was developed by Augusto Boal, a Brazilian contemporary of Paulo Freire.)

The photos above were taken by Peter John Olandt and myself.  They depict three separate performances at:

Putting this slideshow together has been a lovely way for me to remember what a special experience the performances were.  I hope they give the rest of you a taste of what transpired.  Thank you again to the Kairos Theater Ensemble for making it all happen.  Their work is truly a labor of love.

Kairos Theater Ensemble:

Ben Rivers (Actor)
Dara Kaufmann-Ledonne (Actress)
Deborah French Frischer (Actress)
Jason Agar (Actor)
Veronica Haro (Actress)
John Kadyk (Musician)
Jiwon Chung (Artistic Director – contact him at jiwonchung at sksm dot edu to schedule your own performance.  Or try and get into one of his Theater of the Oppressed classes at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley)

View from Nob Hill, San Francisco, circa 1300 AD

Posted in What I'm reading by
How many of you have admired one of California’s many stunning views and thought to yourself, I wonder what this would have looked like a few hundred years ago?  I spent last night enjoyably looking through a book my Dad shared with me that did just that.  “A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California” combines scientist Laura Cunninham’s field notes, sketches, paintings and prose into a rich exploration of California’s natural heritage.  I was delighted to see so many familiar places transformed through her expert eye. A painting of San Jose before there was San Jose, the South Bay before there were the salt ponds, before and after pictures of El Cerrito Hill and Lake Merritt, overlays of the Sacramento River in 1874 and 1974…. I also enjoyed geeking out on some of her nice charts and diagrams, and mentally comparing them to similar illustrations I’ve designed.  While it is sad to see these vanished landscapes brought to life so vividly, it would be sadder still not to even know what we’ve lost.

Advice for working with environmental justice groups

Posted in Environmental justice, Participation, public sociology & campus-community collaboration, Public speaking, Teaching by

I gave a “virtual guest-lecture” this week for Liz Shapiro’s class on community-based environmental management at Duke University.  The class is part of one of the more appealing distance learning programs I’ve come across in a while.  The students are environmental professionals from various parts of the globe who are earning masters degrees in Environmental Management while continuing their careers.  Our class session had students participating from California, Hawaii, Chile, Texas, North Carolina, and who knows how many other places.

About two minutes before our time was up, someone asked for advice on how to work with environmental justice groups.  There is often tension between environmental groups and environmental justice groups, so it was an important question.  I did my best to answer it, but a question like that deserves more than 120 seconds worth of response time.  Here’s a slightly longer reply, drawn from things I’ve seen, done or heard about:

Find out about their experience with people like you. Whether you are a researcher, a planner, a scientist, an elected official, or some other kind of professional, it is likely that the environmental justice group will have had experience with someone more or less “like you” in the past.  Environmental justice groups make a point of claiming the expertise that comes from their lived experience of the issues, and don’t take well to professionals who try to talk over them or pull rank based on their professional credentials.  Learn from the successes and mistakes of these prior experiences.

Don’t hurry the getting to know you process.  Don’t approach a community group you don’t know with a project right before the grant proposal for it is due.  Take time to build strong relationships and meaningfully discuss how to collaborate before jumping into a new project.

Make time for face-time. Especially in the beginning, make an effort to meet and talk in person instead of on the phone or by e-mail.

Plan meetings that people can attend. Hold meetings on their turf rather than yours, in their language, at times of day convenient to them.  Provide child-care and food when possible.  If you are asking people to travel a long distance to attend, reimburse them the cost of getting there.

Be willing to change your plans. If you aren’t willing to actually change your plans based on their input, there’s no point in trying to work with environmental justice groups in the first place.

Don’t compete for funding. Prioritize applying for grants that the environmental justice group aren’t eligible for.  Apply for grants they are eligible for together.

Communicate, communicate, communicate. Don’t start a project and then leave them wondering what came of it. Seek input on your plans and activities as much as possible.

Don’t be afraid to get personal. Knowing the people you are partnering with personally makes it a lot more likely that you will trust each other, work well together, and overcome the inevitable bumps in the road.  Plus, it’s a lot more fun!

Don’t use, co-opt or tokenize. Successful partnerships are built on a sincere desire for collaboration, not a belief that it is something you need to do just to get the grant, the political good-will, or to look good.

The environmental justice advocates that I’ve gotten to know in my own work over the last few years have enriched my life enormously, and seem to be willing to forgive me when I make mistakes (I hope some of them will send in suggestions to improve this list!).  I wish you luck in your own endeavors!

Poetry to help you keep on keepin’ on

Posted in Sustenance by

Doing social change work inevitably puts you in touch with a great deal of human suffering, and we all have to find ways to stay the course in spite of the sorrows it sometimes brings to us.   I came across this beautiful poem by Mary Oliver last night, and I loved the last stanza: “When it’s over, I want to say:  all my life/ I was a bride married to amazement. / I was the bridgeroom, taking the world into my arms…”  What a graceful way to describing choosing also to see the infinite joys and mysteries that also make up the world we live in.

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut…
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular…
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say:  all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridgeroom, taking the world into my arms…

– Mary Oliver

Answering the “What can we do about it?” question

Posted in Environmental justice, Participation, public sociology & campus-community collaboration, Public speaking, Teaching by

Last week I gave a talk to a student-taught class at UC Berkeley studying the Central Valley and planning a service-learning trip there for their spring break.  I was excited to speak with them not just because of the content matter but also because their class is run through the Democratic Education at Cal program (DeCal).  I taught several DeCal classes when I was an undergrad at UC Berkeley and fell in love with college teaching, which directly led to me being in a PhD program now.

I remember being frustrated as an undergrad that so much of my education was focused on learning about social problems and so little was focused on learning how to fix them. Knowing that I was addressing an action-oriented class, I tried to plan my talk last week accordingly.  Still, the shoe was on the other foot when I gave my own somewhat tongue-tied response to the inevitable “What can we do about it?” question at the end of my talk.  I did a little better than the generic “get involved” or “call your senator” response, but not by much. Here’s what I wish I had said instead:

Connect with organizations already working to solve the problem. You can’t solve complex social problems single-handedly.  Working in groups is almost always a better way to go, especially when you are new to a particular issue.  Find out what work is already being done before trying to launch your own campaign or project.

Learn how the political process works. I attended the Labor Summer program at UC Berkeley, which any UC student can apply to.  I’ve also heard good things about the Movement Activist Apprenticeship Program (for people of color) and the Women’s Policy Institute (for women already actively engaged in social change work).

Plan for the long haul. Social change doesn’t happen quickly, so find ways to sustain your engagement throughout your life.  This might mean training yourself for a career that makes a difference in the issues you care about.  It might mean finding a meaningful volunteer opportunity that you can do regularly with friends.  It might mean researching and making artsy voter guides for elections with friends.  It definitely means making the work as much fun as possible!

Keep the faith. I think of working for a better future in ways that I imagine religious people think about God.  Sometimes you can’t prove that your work makes a difference, but it is important to keep doing it anyway.

New article by yours truly!

Posted in Environmental justice, Participation, public sociology & campus-community collaboration, Photography, Research & writing, San Joaquin Valley, Voices from the Valley by

I’ve got an article coming out today in the inaugural edition of the new UC Press journal Boom: A Journal of California.  I wrote it with one of my Master’s advisors from UC Davis, Julie Sze.  I’m excited because Boom is designed to be a cross-over publication read by scholars and the general public alike, so among other things, it looks beautiful and some of the articles are available for free online (hard-copies are also for sale in some news outlets and bookstores).  The editors also tried to make it “count” for academic contributors by putting it through the usual scholarly peer review process.  I wish this new publication every success and hope to see more like it in the future!

Our piece features a short article on environmental justice in the Central Valley, some of my photos from the 25 Stories from the Central Valley exhibit, and excerpts from my interviews with Teresa DeAnda (Earlimart), Mary Lou Mares (Kettleman City) and Debbie Reyes (Fresno).  I’ll be attending one of the launch events at the Oakland Museum tomorrow night.

Here’s the intro text:

When Californians think of the Central Valley, they often think of its problems: poverty, pesticides, disputes over the allocation of irrigation water, farmworker deaths, and, most recently, a cluster of babies born with birth defects in the small town of Kettleman City. These are some of the ways this region makes the statewide news. But the Central Valley also has a rich history of community organizing and its own stark beauty. These photographs by Tracy Perkins and the oral histories she collected to accompany them document an important aspect of life there: environmental-health problems and the diverse network of advocates who are fighting to solve them.

Practically speaking, the Central Valley is all but invisible to those who live outside it. Over the course of the twentieth century, legislators and growers turned this 500-mile-long stretch of land into one of the most intensively farmed regions in the world, watered by one of the world’s most ambitious irrigation systems. Although California leads the nation in agricultural production, many Californians have little sense of what goes on in the agricultural regions of their state. This invisibility helps to explain why California has located two of the state’s three hazardous-waste landfills and many of its prisons there, while also continuing to allow high levels of toxicity in the air and water…

Read the complete article for free on the Boom website here, or to get the full impact of the beautiful print version, download the pdf here.