Event Description:

The purpose is to braid the intersections of Environmentalism and Mass Criminalization while Building People Power. The purpose of this workshop is to focus on the philosophical underpinnings and practices that are necessary towards uplifting community leadership, civic engagement, and land conservation efforts. This workshop will spark conversations and dialogues about our cultural inheritance of being in relationship with nature and with each other. Furthermore, this workshop will provide a historical context on how the first recorded acts of environmental racism were acts of classism and racism, and how that ideology has persisted in this western colonial society that continues to keep us separated. This can be seen most notably through the racist and transactional policies that have degraded the central valley, and have also served to funnel many people of color into the prison industrial complex ie: The expansion of the prison economy through “Prison Alley”. Participants will  leave with a shared understanding of the importance of civic engagement, policy advocacy that centers our humanization, healing, and upward mobility. 

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