Day One

Homework Questions 1.1

1. What approaches do we want to use in this class to encourage and support as many students as possible to participate in class discussions?
   • Use emojis or type comments in the chat box
   • Raise hands on camera
   • Or just speak
   • calling on people
   • doing a speaking stack in the chat
   • using the reading questions as prompts
   • Cameras on at all times
   • Just turn off mute and talk
   • Don’t be afraid to talk
   • Breakout rooms
   • Using Chat
   • Emojis
   • Keeping track in you interrupt someone
   • Stack
   • Survey by calling folks by number – polling feature in zoom
2. What guidelines do we want to follow to create a safe and brave classroom space?
   • speak from i
   • one speaker at a time
   • be respectful
     • no put-downs
   • ask for examples from students
   • allow enough time for people to make their whole point
   • step up step back
   • come in with an open mind
   • personal truth
3. What approaches do we want to use to ensure that students are keeping up with assigned reading?
   • Discussing the readings both as a class and as small groups
     • Breakroom room discussions
   • Checking in with students and these questions
   • Tie in readings to all class discussions
4. What approaches do we want to use to maximize our individual and collective well being during the semester we are spending together as a group in this class?
   • I usually create a private WhatsApp group chat for students in the class. This establishes a cohort effect where students are able to interact outside of class and rely on one another for support and feedback.
   • I usually triage less valuable assignments to devote limited executive function where its most valuable.
5. What strategies are we using to support our mental and physical health during these challenging times?
   • Use scheduling and task management tools to block out time for all assignments at least a week ahead.
   • Use automated tools to insert any assignments into task and schedule management tools when the assignments are published.
   • Stretch your boddy
   • Do hobbies
   • Reading
   • Adopt a pet or foster a pet

Session Notes

• Netiquette
  • Private chats are public information.
  • Schools don’t have to tell you if they’re recording you.
• Professor is critical of mainstream environmental movement
• Racism and injustice are fundamental to environmental justice
• The Environmental Justice movement refers not just to the ecological perspective but also to the entire environment of where we live, work , etc.
• In the environmental justice movement, it’s very important to start with and acknowledge the indigenous people who lived first on the land.
  • Also all the other marginalized groups who were present in building the modern world we live in.

Day Two

Guiding Questions

In this session we will examine the strategies we are using to support ourselves and others during these troubling and challenging times. Guiding questions include:

1. Why is it important to support ourselves and others in troubling and challenging times?
   • Because urbanism is a process, and while someone will always be down while others are up, the positions will change with time, and the only way to make sure you have the help you need when you’re down is to help those who are down when you are up and to create systems which facilitate this help.
2. What does “support” look like/feel like?
   • Systemic oppression steals power and resources from marginalized groups to benefit privileged groups. Support means people in privileged groups working to give stolen power and resources back to people in marginalized groups.
3. How does “support” look different for different groups/settings/etc.
   • For racial oppression, power and resources are stolen on the basis of race, so the duty to subvert that system falls on groups with racial privilege.
   • For sexual oppression, power and resources are stolen on the basis of sex, so the duty to subvert that system falls on groups with sexual privilege.
   • etc
4. Should “support” be provided by government agencies or by individuals? If govt, what would support look like?
   • Both, and by NGOs. Kingdon’s three stream model for policy change requires grassroots activism paired with institutional activism to create background discussion and awareness of social problems in order to drive the political institutions to create policy changes in order to collectively overcome social problems.
5. What strategies are you using to support yourself and others during this time?
   • I am doing a great deal of leadership and volunteer work with nonprofits working to address the many disasters we are facing.
   • I have co-founded several community organizations dedicated to facilitating safe and rules-compliant outdoor physically-distant social gatherings for activities like kayaking and camping which are naturally inclined to physically-distant covid-safe meetups in order to support the vital need for human contact.
6. How can we support each other in this class over the course of the fall 2020 semester?
   • I usually create a private WhatsApp group chat for students in the class. This establishes a cohort effect where students are able to interact outside of class and rely on one another for support and feedback.
   • Use scheduling and task management tools to block out time for all assignments at least a week ahead.
   • Use automated tools to insert any assignments into task and schedule management tools when the assignments are published.
   • I usually triage less valuable assignments to devote limited executive function where its most valuable.

Homework Questions 1.2

1. Bring in written definitions of the following concepts and be prepared to discuss them: class, race, ethnicity, poverty, nature, environment, urban, right, prejudice, discrimination, racism, institutionalized racism, toxics, public health, protection from harm.
   • class:
     • the hierarchical classification of people based on wealth
     • the economic system of control within a society
   • race:
     • a social construct to categorize individuals
     • the hierarchical classification of people based on race
   • ethnicity: a social group that shares common religion, history, etc.
   • poverty: lacking sufficient resources to survive and flourish
   • nature:
     • all the plants and animals and the natural landscape
     • the collective physical world
     • if you subtract humans from the world, everything that’s left
   • environment: all the surrounding things including people, animals, etc which impact our lives.
   • urban: having to do with cities
   • right:
     • something to which someone is entitled
     • the right thing to do
   • prejudice: beliefs that some groups are better than other groups.
   • discrimination: acting on the basis of prejudice to steal power and/or resources from a marginalized group in order to benefit a privileged group.
   • racism: the collective theft of power and resources from racially marginalized groups to benefit racially privileged groups
   • institutionalized racism: one of the three levels of systemic racism, institutional racism includes racism in institutions like education, the police, and in hiring.
   • toxics: pollutants in the environment
   • public health: the policies and institutions dedicated to improving and maintaining the health of the public.
   • protection from harm: the way that privileged groups are protected by shifting risks and harms onto marginalized groups.
2. Bring in the names and emails of the congress people and senators that represent your district. 
   • House:
     • Doris Matsui (sacramento4doris@gmail.com)
   • Senate:
     • Dianne Feinstein (senator@feinstein.senate.gov)
     • Kamala Harris (senator@harris.senate.gov)

Session Notes