I took a step back during the past month to reflect on what I am learning about environmental equity and community listening, and what each means to me. All of this is a learning work-in-progress.
I am starting to frame environmental equity as a challenge consisting of two types of work:
- Repair work: Intentional re-investment to repair the damage created by historical discrimination and disinvestment.
- Inclusion work: Ensuring design of new programs (and resulting opportunities) attend to the needs and desires of communities affected by historical discrimination and disinvestment.
Community listening is a set of activities in which community groups and organizations involved in environmental equity (and larger climate change issues) must engage. I see it as three activities, each necessary for the other. (Read more in My three elements of community listening work.)
- How a group facilitates listening to the community members it serves. Key question: How do we use the resources we have to invite the community to share their experiences and know-how?
- How a group helps community members make sense of what it is learning. Key question: How do we use the resources we have to help synthesize data, stories and experiences with community members?
- How a group facilitates co-designing solutions with the community members it serves. Key question: How do we use the resources we have to share power with community members in designing solutions and distributing its benefits?
In Notepad: Thinking through how to teach environmental equity, I wrote that I realized, out of habit, that the way I was thinking about environmental equity comes from how I might teach it. It’s the same for community listening.
My pedagogical muscles are tuned to start by defining clear, real challenges that have no single right answer. Then a group (community) of learners goes about exploring the challenge, tapping into research and resources, and eventually converging on a few hypotheses upon which they can test potential solutions. It’s pedagogy that rhymes with design process and practice.
Both my pedagogical and design approaches rest on an other-focused mindset. The instructor is not the expert or decision maker. The instructor’s role is to support the group in discovering testable potential solutions and then figuring out how to move forward on solutions that demonstrate potential to deliver positive outcomes. Swap “instructor” with “design professional” – someone with design practice expertise – and you can see how teaching and design rhyme.
Doing this well means we do need to have some legitimate, basic understanding of the issues at hand and the context in which we all live. I still have a lot to learn there but am fortunate to be connected to folks who have deep experience and insights on environmental equity and climate change. See Notes on Evanston environmental equity and Finding (people) capacity for climate change.
This is a long learning journey. And we are in batshit times. It’s challenging to keep focus with so much going on. In Revisited: What if everybody’s job is to do repair? I go back to some advice I’ve heard again and again. Get involved in a local community issue that you care about and trust that your new community connections serve a dual purpose: Creating solutions to real local problems while also serving as nodes in a larger resistance network. That is exactly what is happening in my case.
Jeff Merrell 