Climate Justice Forum and Conversations
The Climate Justice Forum started in 2018.
In 2023, Climate Justice Conversations (CJC) was born. CJC 2023 was the fourth rendition of the UCLA Climate Justice Forum, and transformed into a series of events across the month of April. The goal of CJC was and is to create a sense of community around climate justice and resilience at UCLA, inform the UCLA community about these issues and how to take action on them, and help make the available resources and groups here on campus that build resilience more accessible.
In 2023, Climate Justice Conversations (CJC) was born. CJC 2023 was the fourth rendition of the UCLA Climate Justice Forum, and transformed into a series of events across the month of April. The goal of CJC was and is to create a sense of community around climate justice and resilience at UCLA, inform the UCLA community about these issues and how to take action on them, and help make the available resources and groups here on campus that build resilience more accessible.
2024 Climate Justice Forum: Abolition Ecology
The 2024 Climate Justice Conversations has a theme of Envisioning Our Collective Future. The series will encourage attendees to envision a collective future through different lenses: an anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist lens during our swap event, an anti-colonial lens for our food justice event, a disability justice lens for our disability workshop, and abolition ecology for our Climate Justice Forum.
Our forum guest speakers are: Aishah Abdala (Community Development Associate of T.R.U.S.T. South LA), Ayasha Guerin (UCLA Assistant Professor, Department of World Arts & Cultures / Dance), Emiliano Lopez (Communications and Data Manager for Initiate Justice Action), Royal Ramey (Co-Founder of The Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program), and moderated by Farah Hamouda, (Palestinian scholar and artist, University of Oregon starting Fall 2024 PhD).
Abolition ecology is a framework that seeks to challenge and transform the existing social and ecological systems that perpetuate exploitation, oppression, and environmental degradation. It combines principles of environmental justice, social justice, and decolonization with an explicit focus on dismantling systems of power and control that perpetuate ecological harm. The ultimate goal of abolition ecology is to liberate people and the places where they live, work, learn, pray and play.
Our forum guest speakers are: Aishah Abdala (Community Development Associate of T.R.U.S.T. South LA), Ayasha Guerin (UCLA Assistant Professor, Department of World Arts & Cultures / Dance), Emiliano Lopez (Communications and Data Manager for Initiate Justice Action), Royal Ramey (Co-Founder of The Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program), and moderated by Farah Hamouda, (Palestinian scholar and artist, University of Oregon starting Fall 2024 PhD).
Abolition ecology is a framework that seeks to challenge and transform the existing social and ecological systems that perpetuate exploitation, oppression, and environmental degradation. It combines principles of environmental justice, social justice, and decolonization with an explicit focus on dismantling systems of power and control that perpetuate ecological harm. The ultimate goal of abolition ecology is to liberate people and the places where they live, work, learn, pray and play.
2023 Climate Justice Forum: Resilience
In 2023, Climate Justice Conversations and Forum theme was resilience. Resilience is the ability to survive and thrive through ecological transitions. Resilience reaches all scales–individual, community, and structural and systemic levels. Through our events series, we promoted individual and community resilience while pushing back against the normative framing of resilience at structural and systemic levels. Instead, we put forth Shalanda Baker’s “anti-resilience”: a term which recognizes that traditional approaches to resilience too often reify structural inequality and exacerbate vulnerabilities. Anti-resilience is a call for an antiracist and anti-oppression policy approach focused on the greater social and economic inclusion of people of color and low-income communities.
Our forum guest speakers were: Jason Foster (President & COO of Destination Crenshaw), Helen Campbell (Planning Director for LA Council District 1), Alesia Montgomery (UCLA IoES Assistant Professor), Annie Mendoza (UCLA Luskin PhD Candidate and Tongva water protector), and our moderator was Sebastián Solarte-Caicedo (UCLA IoES PhD Student).
Our forum guest speakers were: Jason Foster (President & COO of Destination Crenshaw), Helen Campbell (Planning Director for LA Council District 1), Alesia Montgomery (UCLA IoES Assistant Professor), Annie Mendoza (UCLA Luskin PhD Candidate and Tongva water protector), and our moderator was Sebastián Solarte-Caicedo (UCLA IoES PhD Student).
2022 Climate Justice Forum: Climate Optimism
In 2022 we explored whether it is realistic to navigate our uncertain future through the lens of climate optimism, as well as approaches to dealing with climate anxiety and feelings of paralysis in fighting for a healthy world. Our speakers were: Rosalinda Morales, Farmer Rishi, Gia Chinchilla, and Josiah Edwards.
Photos courtesy of Nurit Katz