Notes on Environmental Justice Unit done in Africa American Studies Course by Willie Williams:

(notes written by P. Hayes)

What was done:

The week-long unit was framed by three basic questions:

1) What is meant by the term "environmental justice"?

2) What does evidence of it look like?

3) What solutions are being used and what solutions do you suggest?

The world wide web was used as a major tool for the research and students developed basic competence in using it. Students worked in teams to find, research, and present examples of environmental injustice on the local, regional, national, and world scale.

For the session on solutions, the class joined up with the Global Village course. Presentations on solutions were made, and community members whose professional work is preventing, identifying, and helping solve environmental injustice listened and commented on the suggestions along with describing their work.

What Was Gained:

It appears that students gained:

an appreciation that the "environment" is truly everything around us and that the intersection of questions of race, human health and treatment of land is a serious issue which affects us all,

knowledge of specific cases of environmental injustice,

experience in gathering information, analyzing it, and proposing possible solutions,

experience in the often intertwined questions of race, ethnicity, and class.

first-hand familiarity with people whose professional work focuses on environmental justice.

What Helped:

Since information on this topic is only fairly recently available, the WWW was a good source of information.

The topic fit logically and well into the context of the course; most students seemed to be suprised to find a linkage where they did not expect to find one.

Materials collected for similar work by faculty the previous year provided useful background material.

Local professionals were enthusiastic about helping with the unit.

What Hindered:

The time allotted for the unit was only marginally adequate, so that it was more rushed than ideal.

Having more materials to work with.

Material on the WWW is scattered and fragmentary at best, and highly prone to bias and inaccuracy.