Earth month 2024: Cultivating Care and Solidarity for Climate Justice

Join us during the month of April for a number of events to celebrate Earth Month at The New School.

These events will feature a critical discussion with the legendary Dr. Robert Bullard, the father of environmental justice, along with film screenings, climate healing conversations, and more activities related to the climate emergency from a lens of justice and urgency.

You can find more information and register for events below, and feel free to share this hub widely. Keep an eye on this hub to register and see when new events will be available. 

We look forward to seeing you and your community throughout our Earth Month calendar of events! 

If you have any questions, please reach out to us at tedc@newschool.edu.

Online | Healing by Choice Session (The New School Only)

APRIL 15, 2024, 11:00AM to 1:00PM

Join us to create a space to take a breath and just Be. Schantell Taylor and Marcia lee from Healing by Choice! will hold an interactive space to touch our grief and navigate these challenging and changing times with water and the wastelands as our mirrors. We will learn embodied practices and have space for self-reflection and small groups. Please be in a place where you listen to yourself and the earth. If possible, though not required, it would be lovely to be somewhere where you can touch this earth.

Please note, this event is only for The New School students, staff, and faculty. You will need to use your The New School email address to register. 

Space is very limited, so please sign up if you are sure you would like to join the session. 

Join us for a transformative Earth Month event highlighting the results and recommendations from an 18-month study to understand future climate change in New York City, commissioned by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice and Department of Citywide Administrative Services called the "Climate Vulnerability, Impact, and Adaptation Analysis (VIA)."  The study explores how current and emerging hazards such as flooding, sea level rise, and extreme heat pose substantial challenges to the city's infrastructure and communities. Learn more about this interdisciplinary effort bringing together expertise in academia, government, and the private sector, co-led by Professors Timon McPhearson and Joel Towers at The New School in partnership with NYC Interagency Collaborators. The results of the study will be used to inform development of the NYC Panel on Climate Change’s 4th Assessment. They focus on four key areas:

1) climate risk projections and compound or sequential hazards

2) climate-related extreme heavy rainfall projections

3) the economic and health implications of climate change in NYC

4) development of a flood vulnerability index

Join members of the VIA team as well as representatives from the Mayor's Office as they discuss the importance of this work to secure a resilient and sustainable future for New York City.

Speakers include:

Opening Remarks from Paul Lozito, Deputy Executive Director, MOCEJ

Panelists:

Deborah Balk, Professor, Baruch College, CUNY

Matthew Neidell, Professor, Columbia University

Timon McPhearson, Professor, The New School

Malgosia Madajewic, Professor, Columbia University
Bernice Rosenzweig, Professor, Sarah Lawrence College

Radley Horton, Professor, Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO)

Franco Montalto, Professor, Drexel University

Philip Orton, Professor, Cornell University

Hayley Elszasz, Climate Science Advisor, Mayors Office of Climate and Environmental Justice

Moderated by Joel Towers, Director, Tishman Environment and Design Center.

IN PERSON | Black Lands and the Poetics of Citizenship

April 19, 2024, 6:00PM to 8:00PM EDT

The story of land in what we refer to as the United States of America, is complex. We investigate land through many frames, including theft, domination, or stewardship, and still have an incomplete understanding of what the layers of fraught meaning and history associated with it. In this event, we shine a light on one slice of that story through the portal of Black history and practice.

Join us for Black Lands and the Poetics of Citizenship, a multimedia panel discussion about the contradictions and revelations of Black land ownership in rural America. The event will feature excerpts from the works of  Amy Godine (The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier), Paul A. Miller (Searching for Timbuctoo), and Dr. Gail Myers (Rhythms of the Land). New School Professors Drs. Kristin Reynolds and Mia Charlene White will moderate the conversation, joined by Mike Harrington, Director of Sustainability Engagement of the Tishman Environment and Design Center and Wendy Scheir, Director of The New School Archives & Special Collections.

We look forward to seeing you at Wollman Hall at The New School on Apr 19, 2024 at 6:00 PM! 

This is an in-person event, and will not be livestreamed.

The New School campus is wheelchair accessible and has elevator access to all floors. Service animals and assistive devices are welcome. If you have specific accommodation questions or needs, please contact us at least five days prior to the program at tedc@newschool.edu.

Masks are strongly recommended in indoor public settings on the campus, particularly in classrooms and other crowded indoor spaces. As we gather again after breaks, masks help mitigate increased risk for respiratory illnesses including COVID-19, flu, and RSV.

IN PERSON | US Climate Leadership: Equity and Justice in the Green Transition

APRIL 23, 2024, 7:30PM to 9:00PM EDT

Communities across the U.S. are taking community-driven climate action by updating their infrastructure to reduce emissions and make urban life safer, healthier, and greener for everyone. But equity advocates want to make sure that the process of “greening” America’s infrastructure prioritizes those who are most impacted by climate change and pollution. From updating electrical systems in dense residential areas, to ensuring that communities of color are prepared for the boom in climate-related careers, advocates are working toward building cities in which everyone can thrive. 

Join Mother Jones, Grist, and the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School for a discussion about equity, infrastructure, jobs, and the urban energy transition. Featuring the “father of environmental justice,” Dr. Robert Bullard (Texas Southern University, Bullard Center for Environmental & Climate Justice), Jade Begay (Indigenous Rights Advocate and Climate Researcher) and Leah Thomas (Intersectional Environmentalist), we’ll dig into the issues, opportunities, and solutions driving an equitable transformation for America.

We will have an option for both in-person tickets and a live stream option.

Masks are strongly recommended in indoor public settings on the campus, particularly in classrooms and other crowded indoor spaces. Masks help mitigate increased risk for respiratory illnesses including COVID-19, flu, and RSV.

ONLINE | Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters: A Multi-Media Book Panel

APRIL 26, 2024, 12:00PM to 2:00PM EDT

Music can be used to understand and communicate about social justice as it relates to food, agriculture, and the environment. Music can open the door for deeper understandings of inequity and justice in ways that step away from Eurocentric insistence on linear and written communication to teach, exchange knowledge, or debate. This event will explore these modes of understanding and resistance through a multi-media discussion of Lynnée Denise’s 2023 book Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters (University of Texas Press).

Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters “samples” elements of Thornton’s art—and, occasionally, the author’s own story—to create “a biography in essays” that explores the life of its subject as a DJ might dig through a crate of records. Denise connects Thornton’s vaudevillesque performances in Sammy Green’s Hot Harlem Revue to the vocal improvisations that made “Hound Dog” a hit for Peacock Records (and later for Elvis Presley), injecting music criticism into what’s often framed as a cautionary tale of record-industry racism. 

She interprets Thornton’s performing in men’s suits as both a sly, Little Richard–like queering of the Chitlin Circuit and a simple preference for pants over dresses that didn’t have a pocket for her harmonica. Most radical of all, she refers to her subject by her given name rather than "Big Mama," a nickname bestowed upon her by a white man. It's a deliberate and crucial act of reclamation because in the name of Willie Mae Thornton is the sound of Black musical resilience.”

 The Food Studies Program, The Tishman Environment and Design Center, and the Food and Social Justice Action Research Lab (FJAR)  at The New School are honored to present this multi-media panel event featuring author, sound practitioner, and DJ Lynnée Denise; artist, curator, mother, and producer Elissa Blount Moorhead; and Assistant Professor of Race and Media in the School of Media Studies at The New School Dr. Brittnay Proctor-Habil. The event is part of the Food Studies Program’s “Food, Foraging, and Social Justice” series and The New School’s Earth Month activities. It is also co-sponsored by the SexTech Lab and the Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute at The New School.

It will be moderated by Mike Harrington, Director of Sustainability Engagement at the Tishman Environment and Design Center, and Dr. Kristin Reynolds, Chair of Food Studies and Director of the FJAR Lab at The New School. Please join us online for a video feature, musical samples, and a discussion of this important work!

The book, Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters, may be purchased online through the University of Texas Press.

Past Celebrations