Download the schedule as a PDF here:
Free University NYC_Decolonize Climate Justice_Schedule.
10:30am
Welcome/Opening Remarks
Ongoing/All day
Round Up – button making with Jonette Jamison (11am – 1pm)
This is a button-making workshop for Peoples Climate Marchers. All materials will be provided. For ages 5 and up. If you want to make a button showing WHO you are marching for, bring a copy of a photo no bigger than 2 inches in diameter.
Decolonizing The Word and the World: Writing Climate Justice
(A Portable Writing Center Virtual Writing Workshop) – Susan Naomi
On the third anniversary of the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street encampment, we remember an affirmation that energizes the movement still: “A better world is possible.” In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire offers connection to Occupy’s germinal moment: “The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible without love.”
What would it take to decolonize climate justice? What would we want to create instead? How would our senses experience decolonized climate justice? What would we hear, taste, smell, see, feel? For this writing prompt, imagine this world in writing. Include the bolded nouns as a starting point. Remember to include the underlined word possible. Read aloud to each other when finished and post them on the google.doc at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mfsycC7x-eWUAMJwl94wqZuaZmXCaoMUvtA6tTK46vI/
edit and/or email them to susan.naomi@gmail.com. I will collect and post the writing to the Free University facebook page and the Free University blog.
11am-12pm
Si, Se Pudo: Defeating the Gasoducto and Creating a Sustainable Puerto Rico – David Galarza
NY Contra el Gasoducto welcomes Dr. Arturo Massol, Biologist and professor at the University of Puerto Rico and an important member of Casa Puebo de Adjuntas, a community organization in the central mountains of Puerto Rico that defeated two multi-national mining companies 30 years ago and more recently the Government of Puerto Rico in its attempt to build a destructive 92-mile long gas pipeline. Local activist David Galarza will join Dr. Massol in discussing highlights of the campaign, the importance of solidarity, and future projects like the Model Forest and another to save the government millions in street lighting.
Direct Action Front for Palestine
We would like to talk about Palestine and climate in the ongoing struggle against apartheid, ethnic cleansing and settler colonization. We will go over how the Gaza war in part was ‘fueled’ by a desire to control natural gas and how the subjugation of the Palestinian people includes the pillaging of resources, the advancement of a neoliberal project, that forces Palestinians to pay a disproportionate cost for the benefits Israeli corporations.
The End of the Apocalypse. Imagining a Green Utopia – Nicholas Powers
The apocalyptic rhetoric of the environmental movement has had the unintended effect of making change difficult. In this workshop, we explore the origins of catastrophe imagery and possible utopian alternatives. Specifically looking at the Black Power Movement, Surrealism and the Gay Liberation Movement for examples of utopian politics.
Unkoch Your Campus – Rosie McGourty-Herring
Private Interests are taking over our campuses! David and Charles Koch are funneling millions into higher education in exchange to have their libertarian agenda taught to unknowing students!
Over 100 universities have been given $28,903,854 by corporate interests from 2010-2012. Our workshop aims to give students the tools necessary to create transparency and accountability policies within our universities to alleviate the problem.
12pm-1pm
Climate Debt: Obligations of Industrial Polluters to the Global South – Andrew Ross, George Caffentzis, Jim Costanzo (Aaron Burr Society)
The United Nations acknowledges that the world’s poorest nations will suffer the most from climate change. And it has been established that industrial polluters have a responsibility to help developing nations deal with the effects of global warming. This session will discuss these issues based on two perspectives of Climate Debt from the books “Creditocracy” and “Debt Resistance Operation Manuel.” There will also be frontline reports on the citizen’s revolution in Ecuador, the Mexican Zapatista movement, and Oilwatch’s international seminar on Capitalism and Oil from Ecuador. Sovereign Debt will also be discussed in relationship to climate change and economic justice.
Large Scale Mining and Indigenous Resistance – Elias Holtz
This workshop will explore how large-scale mining in our hemisphere is attacking indigenous land rights at the same time that it is destroying the environment in places like Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Peru and Bolivia.
There will be an emphasis on how we can forge hemispheric solidarity against our common enemy: capitalism.
The Beehive Design Collective presents Mesoamérica Resiste! – Emma McCumber
The Beehive Collective is an all-volunteer, activist arts collective dedicated to “cross-pollinating the grassroots” by creating collaborative, anti-copyright images for use as educational and organizing tools. The Bees will present Mesoamérica Resiste, the final installment in their trilogy about globalization in the Americas. They will share (and seek) stories of resistance to megaprojects, as well as community defense, autonomy, and cultural and ecological diversity. Using massive portable murals, they’ll explore ways people are fighting back against a global economy based on colonialism, land grabs, and exploitation, all over the globe – and draw connections to ongoing struggles in North America.
What is the Environmentalism of the Poor? Lessons from the Middlebury School of the Environment – Gregory Rosenthal & Co
Gregory Rosenthal (State University of New York at Stony Brook), Charlotte Ahern (Villanova University), and Marjeela Basij-Rasikh (Middlebury College) will talk about their experiences in the class “Environmentalism and the Poor” at the Middlebury School of the Environment in 2014. Copies of the course syllabus and our co-written report on forms of environmental resistance will be distributed. We will also talk about our service learning project on the topic of gleaning. We hope to engage workshop participants in a discussion on the themes of environment, poverty, and justice.
Non-Violent Direct Action – Isaac Martín (Ruckus Society)
For the group that is new to the concepts, this training provides an interactive introduction to Nonviolent Direct Action and Civil Disobedience. Participants identify the benefits of using NVDA, explore what makes an action effective, and clarify their personal beliefs about what nonviolence means.
1pm-2pm
The Commons: Building a Sustainable Environment and Economic Justice through Direct Democracy – Alexa Bradley, Dario Azzellini, Jim Costanzo, Marina Sitrin, Oscar Olivera, Susana Draper, Vicente Rubio
Around the world local communities are creating worker, food and other types of cooperatives while building new social and economic relationships. These relationships exist outside of corporate capitalism and are based on mutual aid and direct democracy. People realize that we live under a broken political economy that values profits over people and the environment. This session will address different movements from the perspective of the Global South and European nations living under IMF imposed austerity. Activist and writers will discuss current tactics of resistance and strategies for moving beyond capitalism to establish the Common Good based on our Commonwealth.
Ecosocialism 101 – Elias Holtz
Can we save the planet under capitalism? This workshop take an anti-capitalist look at the environmental crisis and puts for the idea of Ecosocialism – a planned democratic economy that ensures the health for all people as well as the planet.
The workshop will look at environmental issues from a feminist and working class lens, and touch on Environmental racism. We will put forth ideas like dismantling the Pentagon, the worlds #1 Polluter and explore Ecosocialist ideas beyond alternative energy.
Kapit Bisig Kabataan Network Reportback – Joelle Eliza Lingat
Kapit Bisig Kabataan means “Youth Link Arms” in Tagalog. It is a national Filipino American youth and student-led relief network built in response to Typhoon Haiyan and future disasters. Our aim is to support survivors of calamities in the Philippines by raising funds, organizing relief and rehabilitation missions, and advocating for long- term solutions to improve disaster preparedness. This workshop will center on our trip to the Philippines this past summer. Our experiences lie at the intersection of increased militarization and US imperialism, environmental degradation, and disaster capitalism.
Racism’s Role in the Colonialization of Eco-Systems in Communities of Color and Poor Communitiies – Lorraine Curreley
My workshop deals specifically with racism’s colonialization of eco-systems in communities of color and poor communities. We will as a workshop define, interpret and provide examples of its impact on our quality of life. We will look at the quality of air we breath, the ratio of specific illnesses to that of wealthier communities, the food we consume and the services or lack of to these communities.
2pm-3pm
Yasuni-ITT: Ecuador’s revolutionary environmental policy – Dave Backer
In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to give legal rights to ecological systems. Shortly thereafter, the country launched a revolutionary campaign called Yasuni-ITT. This initiative sought to protect a fifth of Ecuador’s Amazon Rain Forest from petroleum exploitation by asking rich countries who consume oil to pay the Ecuadorian government not to the drill the land. Ecuador said to the world: “We won’t ruin the lungs of the world if you compensate us half of the value of the oil that’s under the ground.” This workshop will study the Yasuni-ITT Initiative, why it failed, and explore possibilities for similar initiatives in the US and abroad.
El the Bronx river and stream health and poetry/Bronx River como torrente de salud – Miriam Ventura
El Bronx River ha convocado muchas voces de amor y gratitud, en diversos aspectos culturales, es tiempo de retornarle a sus aguas un espiritu distinto al de la simple limpieza de sus aguas, a la filantropia de grupos e instituciones que bien hacen por mantenerlo limpio, al Bronx River le hace falta la voz que sus aguas convocan: La musica, el ritmo, la identidad, la poesia. Como hacer poesia desde su pequeo pero significativo torrente, desde su extension a las mas de cinco ciudades que contempla, desde el Bronx en New York City hasta varias ciudades de Westchester County, como amasar poesia con toda la carga del Bronx River.
Climate and Diet – Moses Seenarine
US spends $38 billion each year to subsidize meat and dairy. We need national and global climate policy that recognizes that we will not be able to slow the pace of climate change without a dramatic shift in Western consumption patterns and a shift in direction in the East and Global South, curtailing rising rates of animal product consumption.
UnOccupy Corporate Control of Climate – Sumumba Sobukwe
This workshop will be about how deeply corporations influence policy that affects and INfects the climate and environment for ALL communities but particularly communities of color.
