As we are still in the midst of both a global pandemic that continues to affect the lives of everyone on the globe, multiple deadly conflicts in places such as Yemen, Syria, Ukraine and other locales, and the active stripping away of rights in the United States of America, we are glad to find inspiration and hope in the work of our student awardees. These students are dedicating time and effort to addressing not only environmental and climate injustice, but also advocating for democracy, civil rights, accessibility and methods to deal with trauma. We are proud to support the work of these amazing people and are happy to share their work with you. If you are interested in hearing more or want to further support their work, please feel free to reach out to us. And to all of the awardees, thank you for the time and commitment you put into your projects.

If you are a student at The New School and are interested in the Tishman Center Student Awards for the upcoming semester, please make sure to follow us on our social media channels (Twitter: @NewschoolTEDC, Instagram: @tishmancenter) and subscribe to our newsletter, which you can do at the bottom of this page.

Dillon Bernard, Journalism + Design, Eugene Lang: Content By Us Amplify Climate Strategy

Content By Us is a youth-led media lab created to empower young, multicultural storytellers who use digital media and narratives as a force for self-empowerment and transformative justice. On its mission to empower young Black and Brown content creators and cultural organizers, Content By Us is expanding the digital media infrastructure of social justice movements by providing critical digital amplification and content production support. As we accomplish this mission, we are developing an issue-specific amplification network for climate, dubbed #AmplifyClimate. We will complete an audit of the climate justice space by interviewing key communications team members from prospective and current partners about their views on what’s needed in terms of climate communications.

As part of this effort, we talked with several climate justice leaders to discuss the needs around communications needs, including the Executive Director of a youth-led climate organization and leader of a climate justice communications shop. What has emerged is a clear understanding that we need more strategic communications that expands the conversation we’re having with national audiences, which we've outlined as a detailed strategy and general plan as part of this deliverables. Inspired by our conversations, we have ideated a digital series that focuses on intergenerational dialogues between young people and adult allies.

The climate justice movement acknowledges that climate change can have differing social, economic, public health, and other severe impacts on underprivileged populations (Yale Climate Connections, 2020). Decisions about the climate and our planet’s wellbeing are constantly being made, but the options and choices vary depending on the generation. Our pursuit of climate justice seeks to recognize, address, and unpack the inequities of climate change head on.

Through this inaugural season of the series, we will engage members of different generations in meaningful conversations about their lived experiences, ideas, and feelings about what climate justice means. By the end of each episode, our aim is to collaboratively reimagine a sustainable future for our planet.

Cynthia Golembski, PhD in Urban and Social Policy, Milano: Carceral and Climate Crises: Advancing health equity solutions by addressing the impact of the climate crisis on people involved with the criminal legal system

Contributors:

Cynthia Golembeski, MPH, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar, PhD candidate at The New School, and JD candidate at Rutgers School of Law.

Andrea Armstrong, MPA, JD, professor at Loyola University, New Orleans, College of Law.

Ans Irfan, MD, EdD, DrPH, MPH, faculty member at George Washington University, director of Climate and Health Equity Practice Fellowship, an inducted member of the Harvard Climate Entrepreneur's Circle, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar.

Michael Méndez, PhD, assistant professor of environmental planning and policy at the University of California at Irvine, and a visiting scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Nicholas Shapiro, DPhil, assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, Institute for Society and Genetics, and director at Carceral Ecologies.

Julie Skarha, PhD, researcher at Brown University School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology and Brown University Institute for Environment and Society.

Our work focuses on the political determinants of contextual vulnerability to the twin forces of incarceration and climate change, independently and interdependently. Limited empirical evidence exists regarding the specific health effects of climate change and mass incarceration. Legal documents, media, and grey literature describe deaths in jails and prisons due to extreme temperature exposure, whereas systematic surveillance, tracking, and reporting is sorely lacking.

We have a book chapter in press, which assesses the political determinants of the twin anthropogenic forces of incarceration and climate change and related health inequities. We illustrate “contextual vulnerability” amidst climate-society interactions involving people in prison within these contexts: 1. Extreme heat, storms, and flooding in Louisiana; and 2. Wildfires and valley fever in California.

Golembeski, Cynthia, Andrea Armstrong, Ans Irfan, Michael Méndez, Nicholas Shapiro, and Julie Skarha. “Contextual vulnerability to climate change and incarceration: Extreme temperature, floods and storms, wildfires, and valley fever.” In Climate Change and Health Justice: Applying An Equity Approach, edited by Daniel E. Dawes, Maisha Standifer, Christian Amador, and Shaneeta Johnson, Chapter 18. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, In Press.

We also published this article for the Council of Foreign Relations Think Global Health initiative.

Golembeski, Cynthia, Andrea Armstrong, Ans Irfan, Michael Méndez, and Nicholas Shapiro. “Climate-Society Interactions and Differential Vulnerability While Incarcerated.” Council on Foreign Relations Think Global Health Initiative, 2022. https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/climate-change-and-incarceration

We aim to extend on this modest work to empirically examine climate vulnerability in association with people who are involved with the criminal legal system. We are so grateful for this support for our work.

Jimmy Jackson (front) with a work crew at Angola prison. Photo by Ron Levine/Prisoners of Age

https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/climate-change-and-incarceration

Evan Henritze, Clinical Psychology PhD, New School for Social Research & Sonora Goldman, Psychology MA, New School for Social Research: Moral Injury, Climate Trauma, and Pathways to Collective Action

Climate trauma, or clinically significant feelings of dread, uncertainty, and powerlessness, affects both people who do, and do not, identify as having exposure to distressing events related to climate change. One useful but understudied trauma framework is moral injury (MI), or how betrayals of “what’s right” can lead to feelings of guilt, shame, and anger. This framework addresses the psychological complexity of the crisis: we are each to varying degrees both individually complicit in contributing to carbon emissions and also embedded within systemic governance and cultural practices contributing to irreparable collective harm. Individuals can thus feel both responsible and powerless, leading to despair associated with inaction and anxiety.

Our project investigates the moral injuries of past, present and future climate trauma. We first launched a pilot survey of our climate trauma moral injury scale and analyzed the results to refine the items and develop additional methods to explain the various ways in which people experience care, responsibility, and betrayal as it relates to the climate crisis.

Currently, we are awaiting institutional review board approval to administer the most recent version of our scale along with related measures to over 700 participants representative of the United States population based on age, race, gender and political affiliation. We will then produce a network analysis to provide a visual depiction of the symptomatic profile of moral injury. We are interested in how people’s perceived access to political power impacts different experiences of responsibility and intuitional betrayal related to the climate crisis and in turn climate justice behaviors and mental health.

We have since received further funding from the New School to build on the work supported by the Tishman award. This additional support will be used to conduct an experiment that will assess predictive factors causing moral injury and the impacts of moral injury on collective and individual action.

We are proud that our project provides a climate justice informed psychological framework that reflects mental health difficulties without stigma and identifies pathways to restorative collective action. The Tishman award served as the catalyst for refining our ideas to be most effective for supporting future mental health interventions not divorced from political action.

Julián Muro, Master of Music Performer-Composer, College of Performing Arts: Mind Fields or La tierra, una criatura.

Multimedia, multidisciplinary work in progress that involves music, poetry, visual arts, field recordings, international collaborations, and a permanent online exhibition. A project that consists of field recordings that I gather during my travels to create soundscapes that are combined with visual poetry as a starting point for improvisation and creation. A creative process in which the Earth is the main collaborator that is a result of the intersection of narrative, composition, improvisation, and collaboration. I have been developing this project over the past year, encouraged by my graduate music and interdisciplinary studies at The New School in NY, and it already counts with collaborations by drummer Ches Smith (US), tuba player Magnus Løvseth (Norway), electronic musician viñu-vinu (Canada), while a collaboration with harpist Marina Mello Andrade (Brazil, Switzerland) is in the works. The wide spectrum of styles, genres, performance practice, career stages, and even the geographical origin of all these musicians is something I find fascinating and I think it holds a beautiful relationship with the main force driving the project.

The current state of the work is that of a rough demo and the only reason why I still haven’t developed this work further is because of the lack of funding.

Future steps: The visual/site-specific component

The project has developed to involve a visual site-specific aspect that I would like to explore in the year to come, and I am actively looking for opportunities to realize it. Creating a multimedia, immersive exhibition that combines audio with visuals and text is the goal. The exhibition of the visual poems as a thought-provoking element of aesthetic value departs from Augusto de Campos’ work, in this case, in interaction with and supported by soundscapes, music, and photography, all of which hold a relationship with each other as part of very specific landscapes where I’ve lived. Being fairly new to the particulars of an exhibition, I do have the technical and conceptual support of my father, the exhibition designer and visual artist Tam Muro.

➔ Side note: Unyoked presents Lazydaze . 001. 2022

Two of the pieces of this project, gathered in one track named "Los cencerros y las guitarras", has been released as the opening tune on this compilation, which is a collaboration between Australian label Unyoked records and DJ mix series and sound collective Lazydaze. The piece is a collaboration between myself and Montreal-based artist viñu-vinu and, most importantly, it features field recordings that I did in the Bavarian Alps. I produced this music from a room in the mountain cottage Kreuzeckhaus, which was my home and work in the last months of 2020.

Description of Works

Veronica Olivotto, PhD in Public and Urban Policy, Milano School for Urban Policy & Katinka Wijsman, PhD in Politics, New School for Social Research: Procedural Justice and Participation: Insights from theory and practice

What does participation mean theoretically and empirically? How do participation and justice relate?

Democratic participation is infused with procedural justice (PJ) issues. PJ is concerned with the norms, rules, and approaches that govern decision making which in turn inform the distribution of rights, liberties, and entitlements among social groups. The theoretical literature on PJ is scattered across many disciplines and underlying principles for PJ as well as their clear systematization across disparate literatures is lacking. Our project works on filling this void, by answering three questions: How can an interdisciplinary literature review of PJ inform what PJ principles matter in environmental work? What do empirical EJ studies say about what matters on a case by case basis, instead? How do EJ practitioners in NYC frame what matters for PJ in urban resilience to climate change and other environmental threats?

In this project we thus interrogate and explicate the different meanings that ‘participation’ can take, specifically its requirements and commitments to further justice. We qualify what ‘good’ participation looks like for EJ organizations through interviews and document analysis. We will in the future report on this through an academic article and policy brief to audiences. The outcomes of our research will help better prepare academics and policy makers seeking to engage in partnerships with EJ organizations, so that the leaders from the latter can focus on their work rather than explaining their core values time and again. Ultimately we hope that this work will contribute to solidarity and mutuality by sharing EJ organizations’ goals and values about PJ across groups and with policy makers.

Hanwei Su, BFA Fashion Design, Parsons & Ziyu Zhang, MPS Fashion Management, Parsons: “I’M BLIND, BUT I HAVE OCD OF COLOR-MATCHING"

With 300 pages of interview transcripts and hours of interview footage as references, this collection aims to educate: eliminate stereotypes towards visually impaired groups and show a multi-angle and in-depth image of the group. How can we re-interpret fashion, this most visual form of expression, into a message carrier of the visually impaired community is the core of our design challenge. Since last September, we have worked with 7 visually impaired individuals across 3 countries (the US, Canada, China), career varies from doctor / therapist / influencer / ice hockey player / drag queen / students. The collection also aims to incorporates technology as medium to communicate information (text/video/audio) to the audience in future stage. Due to the complexity of this system, the project so far is at the very beginning of a bigger picture, how to establish the "interaction" is what we will develop in the future as we accumulate more experience.

Some significant discoveries based on our conversations with the interviewee:

Blind people do SEE!

Most of the Blind community are "legally blind.,"

which means the majority still have different levels of vision left, such as light perception and can see color.

They like colors!

especially bright neon colors, but this can vary from individuals

They have a life. They enjoy life!

They embrace fashion, makeup, skincare, coffee making, "watching" movies, doing sports, etc.

Blindness is not that away from everyone.

All it takes is one accident.

Special thanks to:

Ezekiel | "Blind Gay Latino" | NYC

Erick Marinez | “ Young Independent Impaired Dominican College Student" | NYC

Britney Ellis | "Blind Beauty" | Baltimore

Clement |" The Blind Drag Queen Sienna Blaze ka The Visually Impaired Bitch Clement!" | Vancouver

Yang Yong Qian | Blind Senior Doctor. Former President of the Association for the Blind in Henan Province China

Yang Zhen | Blind Doctor in China Guangzhou Province China

Jeremy | High School Blind Ice Hockey Player | NYC

Ron Schankin | New York Metro Blind Hockey | NYC

New York Metro Blind Hockey Team

Enrique Valencia, MS International Affairs, Schools of Public Engagement: Evaluating Meaningful Engagement Under Environmental Justice Mandates: A Case Study of California’s SB1000 Implementation in Santa Ana

Technical Advisors: Madeleine Wander, University of California, Los Angeles and Michael Mendez, Ph.D., University of California, Irvine

Photo Credit

My project involved researching the implementation of California’s Senate Bill 1000 – a planning mandate that required the inclusion of environmental justice in municipal general plans – in Santa Ana, CA, to understand how the mandate impacted the engagement of environmental justice communities. I conducted a document review and 14 informant interviews with environmental justice activists and city officials and distilled these insights into a thematic analysis. I drew from scholarly and the Environmental Justice Movement’s definition of “environmental justice” and “meaningful engagement” to construct an analytic framework for evaluating SB1000’s implementation. My analysis found that SB1000 did not lead to the meaningful engagement of EJ communities in Santa Ana because the general plan framework was captured by NIMBYs, the City was unable to pivot to meet SB1000 mandates, and the City resisted activist and State demands to halt general plan adoption amid COVID-19. This research contributes to critical planning research that documents the influence of white supremacy in planning and it also provides insights into the impacts of pandemics on public participation in planning. I presented my research findings at the 2022 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in a session titled “Resilience and Adaptation.” Additionally, I submitted my paper to UCLA’s Critical Planning journal, vol. 26, and it is undergoing a secondary review. I am hopeful that the article will be published in in Critical Planning and when it does, I will reach out to the environmental justice organizers in Santa Ana to share my findings.

Product of the project:

1) Presentation of the research findings at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting 2022: https://aag-annualmeeting.secure-platform.com/a/solicitations/19/sessiongallery/3838

2) Journal article in Critical Planning (forthcoming)

The Tishman Center would like to extend a huge thank you and congratulations to this year’s student awardees and their community partners. Your commitment and curiosity continues to inspire us at the center, and we look forward to continue supporting students at The New School.

2021-2022 Student Award Recap