 Welcome everyone to our featured speaker event for Arlington Eco Week and the kickoff for the spring series of community conversations. I'm Rachel Oliveri, School Sustainability Coordinator for the Arlington Public Schools and one of the Eco Week organizers. For those who are new to Eco Week, this is an annual celebration raising awareness and inspiring action on behalf of our planet. Eco Week continues through this Saturday, May 15th and includes both outdoor and online activities. During Eco Week, you can learn about local climate resiliency projects, opt up for more renewable energy through Arlington Community Electricity, discover what is happening locally, nationally and globally to stop plastic pollution, participate in litter cleanups and enjoy plant sales and bake sales to support our school gardens and student green teams. I encourage everyone to see our full list of activities at ArlingtonMA.gov slash Eco Week. Great, thanks Rachel. And so I'm Jill Harvey, I am the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Division Director for the town of Arlington. And I just want to thank everyone for tuning in tonight and I'm really excited for this opportunity to collaborate with Eco Week to feature Parker McMillan Bushman. And so this is also the kickoff for the community conversations, which is some programming that started last year when we took an effort to sort of dive into some of the more difficult conversations about racism and reforms and what's needed. And so I'm really looking forward to bringing back that series and having Parker here tonight to assist with kicking that off. We've got a couple more events lined up that'll take place in June and July. So look out for those. But now I'm going to introduce you to Parker. So we're really excited to have you here and you're joining us from Colorado, where she lives and works, and Parker has a passion for equity and inclusion and conservation and the outdoors. Her interest in justice, accessibility and equity issues developed from her personal experiences facing the unequal representation of people of color in nonprofit and environmental organizations. Parker tackles these complex issues by addressing them through head on activism and education. In Colorado, she works with environmental organizations to aid them in building culturally diverse and culturally competent organizations that are representative of the populations that they hope to reach and serve. In addition to Parker's role at Colorado State University Extension. She is also the founder of a DEI consulting firm called inclusive, the creator of Queen work. And Queen stands for keeping, no keep widening environmental engagement narratives, and the co founder of inclusive journeys. So thank you Parker for joining us in Arlington this evening. And it's all yours. Oh, just a few more tips. Sorry. We do have closed captioning available so if you need that you should be able to see that on the bottom part of your zoom. That should also be next to either the chat button or the Q&A. We do ask if you have questions which we're going to say to the end, please start to put them in the Q&A box. So we'll save those and we'll discuss those in chat with Parker after her presentation. Now the floor is yours. Alright, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here this evening. I'd like to acknowledge that I'm coming to you from the ancestral homelands of the Arapaho Cheyenne, and you nations and people. These are the original stewards of the land that I occupy here in Colorado. And I also would like to acknowledge all other indigenous tribes and nations that call Colorado home. I'm so excited to be here this evening and I'm going to be sharing my screen with you to share some slides. So we are going to be talking about the importance of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion to conservation efforts, right, and outdoor and environmental engagement. Once again, Parker McMullen Bushman, my pronouns are she, her, hers. And I want to start off by telling you a little bit about myself, my background, how I came to this work. I am, like Jill already said, I am currently the director of extension through Colorado State University for the city and county of Denver. I also sit on a number of national and local boards that have a lot in common and that they deal with people and the outdoors and nature, and often have goals around diversity, equity and inclusion in those spaces. So to my day job and professional jobs. I also have a number of what my dad calls my side hustles. I on social media have the name Queen work, and I post about and talk about this kind of intersection of social justice movements and the outdoors and why does it matter right when we are talking about the environment. I'm also the founder of eco inclusive. I've been working in the conservation and outdoor recreation field for a long time and along the way as I noticed that organizations were working to tackle these issues of inclusion in these spaces. You know, I formed this organization to do just that to help organizations in their journey. I'm the co founder of inclusive journeys and inclusive journeys is an interesting. It's a tech startup. If you'd asked me three years ago, if I would have been the co founder of a tech startup I would have said no, but inclusive journeys is a tech startup and we are actually going to be launching, starting in the Denver metro area this summer. And what it is is it's basically a review website for inclusion. We're hoping to do for diversity and inclusion what Yelp has done for customer service. So people are going to be able to go on to the site and rank the places that they visit rank the businesses that they, they visit outdoor spaces that they visit for how welcome they felt how safe they felt how celebrated in regards to their identity when visiting these spaces. And so we're really excited about how we've developed this website and the launch. I am also the founder of summit for action which is a yearly summit where we tackle justice and inclusion issues. I have a family and I always like to brag on them I've got three kids and me and my husband are both environmental educators so we spent a lot of time in the outdoors with our children and we love nature. So much that we actually named our kids after trees so they're cypress cedar and conifer, our three little saplings. Earlier I have been in this career around conservation environmental education outdoor recreation for the past 24 years now, and I've gotten the opportunity to work all over the United States at lots of different organizations. It's been an interesting journey. And along the way, there was often a question that that I got asked, right, no matter where I was was working. And that was, you know, how did you get here. How did you come come to this profession how did you get here. Right, they weren't asking, like, did you drive that day. Did you fly in. They wanted to know how did I, as a woman of color, make it into a field where there weren't a whole lot of people that looked like me, honestly. And it wasn't a silly question because I often was on teams like these where I was the only person of color. So I started to wonder myself right, I started to look around me and say, Oh, there aren't a whole lot of people of color doing education in the environmental realm and why, why is that why was I often the only one and didn't see other people that look like me. And what was it that led me to this field maybe, maybe the answer was in what how I got here right and that's certainly what other people thought. But it wasn't such a clear shot for me because actually, I never considered myself an environmentalist I never considered myself an outdoorsy type person for many, many years and so when I examine my background, and I started to think about how my journey to nature came right I started to say what is what was the thing that brought me here and what was my first connection to what I now understand is the natural world. And that first connection came from my mother. So, my mother was born in Charleston, South Carolina. She grew up on a little farm out there on James Island on a piece of land that was sandwiched in between two pieces of marsh. She ran around barefoot she got to play outdoors and she loved being outdoors. When she got older, she decided to move and she took, you know, it I love this picture of her on the right because she just looks so sassy with her rolled up her rolled up bell bottom genes. Right, she decided to move to New York she moved to the Bronx, and in the Bronx she met my dad, and they got married and they had three kids. They raised us on the city street just like, like this. I was the oldest of three, you can see I'm in the back with the kind of puff side puff on this on my head. And we spent a lot of time, even though we were growing up in the city and it looked like this we spent a lot of time outside. Right, so it was important to my parents my dad was from Georgia to get us into the outdoors, even though we weren't living in a very what people, most people would consider to be a natural area. Okay, that's where I got my first connection to nature and my sense of place. So even though I was growing up in the city I climbed trees my mom was notorious for pulling up a picnic blanket anywhere there was a spot of grass and that's us in the back of a building. On my highway getting ready to have a picnic. Right, I would walk for miles with my father, and he was always collecting aluminum cans because you could get money. That was back in the day when you could turn your aluminum cannon for five cents. And so we would walk for miles while he collected these cans and I kind of looked at the environment around me and I, I noticed the trees and, and the sky and the insects on the ground and, you know, I started to get a connection to my neighborhood to my city. I noticed things like in my neighborhood in the Bronx you could easily find cans on the ground, right discarded aluminum cans but when we went into nicer parts of the city, you would have to dig through trash, or something to get the cans they weren't just on the ground and that started to concern me I started to worry about, you know why my neighborhood was different while why there was so much trash on the ground in my neighborhood. I began to ask my parents right because once you connect a kid to the environment to an understanding of their, the place around them they've got questions and I had questions. I asked my parents you know why there was so much trash and what we could do and you know they didn't know what to tell me, but they kind of knew how to empower me and so my mom said, I don't know why don't you write a letter to the New York Times. And I did, when I was nine years old, I wrote this letter to the New York Times, and you can see that I was very, very passionate as a nine year old dear people, we are polluting our earth, right. I wrote several versions of this letter and actually took it to multiple newspaper, take papers, typing it up on my dad's typewriter. And you would think okay. She had parents that grew up in a very natural area. She was raised in the Bronx but still had a connection in nature and still had a connection to her environment enough that she wrote this letter as a nine year old. So, you would think that, of course, I knew that I was destined for my career in environmental education, but actually I didn't. I didn't know and I didn't feel connected when I thought of someone who was outdoorsy, I didn't picture myself. Now I had this woman as a role model. This again is my mother and I got the chance to take her on her very first kayaking trip after becoming an environmental educator and leading kayaking tours on the Georgia coast and she took to it just like she she loved anything about being in nature. I didn't know I had this like very adventurous role model, right, who had a connection to the outdoors. I, when I pictured someone who was an environmentalist or someone who was outdoorsy, right, I pictured folks like this. I pictured white folks. And, you know, that is the predominant representation that we have in in our society when we show people involved in the outdoors this is just a Google search of outdoor activities these are the first results that came up. And I think that it is mostly, if not all people who I would think probably identifies white. And, you know, they're kind of doing either, they're doing some group activities but a lot of solo activities. Right. I thought of pictures like this and people using the outdoors it always seemed like much more adventurous than I ever thought that I would be right. And, even when they were doing things that looked like something that we did of course my family went fishing right. It seemed a little bit more class here right classier than this picture here my uncle sitting on an upside down. You know, five gallon bucket next to a creek next to a sign that definitely says do not fish here right. We had, when we use the outdoors it was like hanging out in the streets waiting for someone to crack open a fire hydrant church picnics hanging out in the backyard with our with our family, and that for several years seem to be different things to me. So after being in the environmental education field for a while I decided, you know, I wanted to learn about why it took me so long to make this connection, and how I could maybe help to make it easier for other folks I went back. I got my masters of science and natural resources with a focus on interpretation and environmental education, and my project was about watershed education on the eastern shore of Virginia, and how. How to work with community to do effective community engagement how we make very inclusive science communication that everyone could see themselves in everyone could understand everyone could feel represented. And out of this this research and this project I ended up forming ego inclusive. So, over the years I've learned a few things about, you know, what do we need to be doing to make access and enjoyment of the outdoors equitable. Right, one thing I learned is that representation is very, very important and we're going to get more into that what does representation mean. I've also learned that we can't ignore systems right we can't ignore our background our history we can't ignore bias that's built into the system. Social justice is definitely a part of thinking about the outdoors and the environment, right and this is all a part of this larger conversation about conservation and environmentalism. I also learned that organizations that are really making an effort to be culturally competent are better able to create spaces where community feels welcome feels included feels represented, and where community members have an authentic voice. So, let's start off by talking about representation, right representation really means that your communities are better able to speak for themselves that they have a voice and decision making processes that they are at the table, when these decisions are being made but not only like, oh you've been brought in for the day because we're making the decision but they're a holistic part from start to end and embedded in the organization. Representation is vital when we talk about spaces like parks and open space, because our country is changing. Now a lot of people don't realize how quickly our country's demographics are changing. You see, within the next two years, our country more than half of all of our children in our country will be children that identify as minorities. Right, that is a large change and when we look at the last 30 years, we can see that our population statistics and demographics have really shifted back in 1990, our non Hispanic white population was almost 76% of the population. In 2019, that was down to 59.5% and our fastest growing demographic is our Latin X or Hispanic demographic. When we look, this was the last 30 years. When we look forward to the next 30 years, we see that that demographic is going to grow even more. And that our non Hispanic white demographic is going to have a lesser share of the pie so by the time we make it to 2050 right we're going to be what some people are calling a majority minority nation. We're having this conversation for a while right these these changes didn't happen overnight and people has have seen that our demographics are shifting. So it's not a new conversation, but we have disparities we see again and again that our organizations are not really representative of that change within our communities. So when we look at the makeup of conservation organizations in the United States, like the green 2.0 report came out a few years back and it did a survey and kind of a deep dive in the 300 conservation based and preservation based organizations in the US. And it found that many of the people of color, as far as demographics had not broken that 12 to 16%, what they call green ceiling within these organizations. This is such a great report and you should definitely check out the green 2.0 website because they didn't stop at this report. Right, they have created several reports since that talk about Oh, why is that and why are people leaving organizations when people of color get into organizations. Why don't they stay. Why do they leave. This also showed that when you look at an organization. And we when we do have people of color, they are mostly represented in the internships and entry level positions. And as people make their way up the ladder through organizations there is less and less opportunity for them less and less are they promoted. And by the time you make it to executive level positions board level positions, we're back down to 4.6% of people of color represented in those leadership positions. We also see this reflected in our National Park Service, right. We see that the majority of our National Park Service employees are non Hispanic white people. And that is also reflected in who is visiting our National Parks who is involved in our National Parks right, which when we talk about preservation of land and getting people to care about the environment right, we want them to have those connections. And if they are not visiting these spaces, right if they don't feel welcome in these spaces, then it could very well be that they are, they don't feel that, then urge to protect to conserve later on. So, we have to start having conversations about. Why do we still have these disparities, right. Why if we've been talking about this. If we've had what happened last summer with George Floyd right was not the first discussion that we've had about civil rights and social justice. And so if we've been having this conversation for several years. Why do we still have these stark disparities. And I'm going to actually throw that question out to you all I would love it if you open the chat and responded with what you think might be some of the issues that we face to making our organizations and our spaces as inclusive as we want them to be time to give it just a second for that. Right I see one response, coming in that says power and power is definitely an interesting thing right. There can be a lot of connotations to that right who's in power, who might want to maintain power who is affected by certain systems and dynamics. Are there any other thoughts as to why we might still have these disparities. There is the question, is there an imbalance in population of people of color in urban versus rural areas. Another thing, another comment said, a lack of feeling a lack of feeling like you belong right lack of belonging, feeling belonging. So, you know, these all are things that could contribute to who's involved if there's an if there are more people of color. I'm wondering if the thought is if there are more people of color in urban areas, right maybe. If we're moving out into the outdoors. I would say that there's still outdoors and urban areas right. And so I think there is still that possibility, like I did as a child to make those connections but we don't often. When we talk about nature we don't often talk about urban nature, and I feel like we are lacking in who we connect to this conversation by leaving that out right. So you might not feel safe when you're in spaces and definitely I have heard that that people and some of my own family, you know my grandmother used to say don't go into the woods by yourself. And she was kind of calling on that understanding and that knowledge of that background of lynching and people being taken into the woods for awful things to happen to them, right. So understanding our real history and how people of color belong to it. Black jogger black joggers birdwatchers even mushroom foragers feel singled out is not belonging and sometimes are targeted, having role models. These are all great responses, right. So, all of these things kind of play in to this thought about what why we haven't gotten to where we want to be. Right. And one of the, I want to talk about two parts of this right we say diversity. So I've talked a little bit about diversity and representation, but that's not the only letter in this alphabet soup right we also have equity, and we also have inclusion. And now more and more people are talking about justice. So I want to talk about those three things starting with inclusion. People hear the word inclusion, oftentimes they think of when they define inclusion, they are actually defining the word diversity right when I asked people what does the word inclusion mean sometimes folks will say oh you know it's including lots of different people from lots of different backgrounds right that's their idea of what inclusion is but that's actually the definition of diversity right and inclusion is a little bit is a little bit deeper. You are involving and valuing people, regardless of their differences, but inclusion takes it a step further. And inclusion allows people to have a voice in the conversation right so if, let's say we're an organization and we're inviting everyone to our organizational dinner table, right. Diversity is having representation all around our dinner table of lots of different types of people that's diversity. And inclusion is giving everyone a say in the menu in what's being served right your programming, everyone has a voice in that, and those voices are weighted equally. Sometimes as organizations, we invite people to our organizational dinner table, and we say. Eat what we're serving. This is what we have and someone's like oh I can't eat this it makes me sick I'm gluten free I'm vegan and we're like this is all we have and if you don't want it then we can't serve you right often that's kind of how we do our programs we have pre defined programming. And a lot of times it's thought of by the people who create the organization, and not by the community. An organization that is really trying to be inclusive has a variety of different voices at the table, and we work to serve those different people so if someone says I'm gluten free. I'm vegan right um then we say we either you can do it one of two one of two ways you can create the most delicious. We have a vegan pepperoni pizza right with your faux pepperoni and gluten free crusts right that is so good. It's food or program so good that it serves everyone's needs right or we create programming or dishes that serve individuals your little individual pan pizza right because certain groups might need different things and create different programming to meet those needs. Another thing to consider when we talk about inclusion is this thought of are we allowing people to show up as they are right so for a long time we've gone with this understanding of America as being a melting pot right that's the metaphor we use that people come in we melt them down to one delicious stew called America. But really we should be thinking of our country and thinking of our organizations and our communities as salad bowls. So instead of melting people down right in a salad, everything maintains its integrity, you want your lettuce to be crisp and crunchy and cold. You want your onions to be the little tart and stinging you want your raisins to be plump and juicy. You want your croutons to be dry and crunchy right everything kind of maintains its own uniqueness and the different flavors work together to create something that is really delicious. So when we talk about our communities and our organizations, you know, we want to invite that difference. We don't want to say if someone is different that, oh you don't fit into our organizational culture. Right. Instead, we want to provide a culture an organizational culture where everyone can thrive, no matter who they are. Right. And we have to be really open and intentional about that. I think about as how myself getting into environmental education, you know, as a as a young woman I used to wear my hair in head wraps all the time. When I started getting into environmental education I stopped because it was it was not the culture right and I did not feel like that was acceptable. I had even been in situations where people were questioning my hair because it was different and so I knew that I needed to assimilate right I knew I needed to get a fleece quick. If I was going to fit in. And so I worked and really left pieces of myself behind to assimilate into this kind of outdoor recreation and environmentalism culture. And it took me several years to be able to come back to myself and to push back on things and to say no you know I'm not I'm not going to give up pieces of myself to be accepted because I should be accepted as I am right. So when we think of our organizations when we think of our movements or communities, we need to think of it more as a salad bowl and less of that melting pot. So that's inclusion. Next, I want to talk about equity right equity is the fair treatment and advancement of all people. Regardless of their identities, right and it equity actually eliminates barriers that may have prevented people from certain populations and some groups from being on getting to that equal footing right. So when we think of equity and equality as the same thing but they're actually not the same thing right equality means that we are giving everyone the exact same resources exact same thing without consideration of the historical disparities within the system right. So if someone the same resources but if they're starting out in a whole right then they don't actually have the same resources or the same ability as someone who's starting out on level Graham. So equity takes those things into account and provides people what they need to participate fully right what they need to be comfortable. There can be a variety you can tackle this a variety of different ways right equity could be as simple as I've worked at some organizations that have provided gear lockers right understanding that outdoor gear is really expensive. And so we're going to provide a gear locker so that if someone doesn't have what they need to fully participate in our event then they can borrow something right that's one end of equity. I've seen the all totally all the way to the other end of equity. I know one organization that actually has an equity officer as a part of their staff. They're an organization that works with teens, and they work with low income teams of color to teach them about the outdoors and to give them skills outdoor recreation skills and job experience to get them into this field. They're working with that that group they do after school programs in the school year in the summertime, they are teaching them how to be river guides, white water river guides, and their equity officers job is to deal with anything that would prevent a student from being able to participate fully in the program. So let's say a student stops showing up because their lights their electricity got turned off at home because their parents couldn't pay the bill. And they didn't want to take cold showers they couldn't wash their clothes so they just stopped showing up because they were too embarrassed. That equity officer would work with that student and work with that students family to help find a solution for that issue because it is impeding that student from being able to participate fully. Right. So there's a whole spectrum of how we can think about equity in our organizations, and we just have to have that conversation and figure out where we stand. I have another question to you because we've talked about diversity. We've talked about equity, and we've talked about inclusion. My question to you would be, why does justice, the word justice matter. When we talk about the environment in the outdoors. Why does the word justice matter when we talk about the environment in the outdoors. And I would invite you to put that into the chat. And while you do that. And I wait, I'm going to take a sip of water. I see that we're kind of quiet in our chat right. Oh, here we go. The communities have always been targeted to be dumping grounds and bear the burden of environmental degradation in our country, and also stealing land and labor. This is hard, someone else said which it's true it is really hard. Outdoors was taken from people who are now marginalized outdoors and nature or health giving and cause longevity. The outdoors belongs to everyone in our economic system and culture treats it as private property belonging to the few. And this is not just thank you all for your input on this. It's a lot harder. When we have this conversation around justice and the environment to make those ties right and it's less clean, but I want to helpfully give you some background to dealing to thinking about this to make it a bit cleaner. Let's go. So I want to talk to you about environmental justice, right and environmental justice is that fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in environmental issues, especially ones that have to do with their, their life right so development implementation enforcement of environmental laws and regulations. The environmental justice movement actually was started out of the civil civil rights movements, and it was started by people of color, who needed to address the inequities of environmental protection services in their communities. So in a little bit of background, there are a few benchmarks that are an events that wide are widely recognized as the founding of the environmental justice movement. One was, you know, the public conversation around environmental racism that started emerging between the civil rights movement and the 1982 wave of grassroots protests in response to the siting of several landfills in communities of color. Those protests became the launching point for two major studies that would solidify what the environmental justice movement became. And those studies were able to confirm patterns of environmental injustice that were already patterns that were clear to the people who were living in those communities. Robert Bullard is the father of the environmental justice movement, and he headed some of these studies that show this relationship between minority communities institutional power and environmental hazards. About 30 years ago, he started out on the scene writing his groundbreaking book, dumping in Dixie race class and environmental quality, which underscored the importance of race as a factor in citing unwanted toxic producing facilities. And so he, he worked with scientists, he's a professor at the university, I think the University of Texas or University in Texas, and you know they found that great race was the single biggest determining factor on if you were next to pollution causing areas. So it was a bigger determining factor than social economic status, meaning that a middle class black person was more likely to be located in an area like that than a poor white person. So, out of this out of this conversation this struggle came the 17 principles of environmental justice. And there are 17 but a couple of my favorite ones are these environmental justice demands that public policy be based on mutual respect and justice for all people free from any form of discrimination and bias. Environmental justice demands the right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision making, including needs assessment planning implementation enforcement and evaluation right that's true inclusion. Environmental justice calls for the education of present and future generations with emphasis towards social and environmental issues, based on our experiences and an appreciation of our diverse cultural perspectives. Right, so these principles and you can find them easily online we're really kind of should be the foundation of what we think of when we talk about justice in the environment and the work that we want to do being inclusive of all people. One really important line in the definition for environmental justice is that fair treatment right fair treatment of all people. This means when you talk about fair treatment. No one should bear the brunt or disproportionate share of negative environmental consequences. However, when we examine this right we see again and again that that's not the case. We don't all breathe the same air and study after study has just shown that when we look at who's exposed to these environmental hazards that people of color are bearing that brunt. There is having a long term effect on their health right how they live their lives. There was a study that came out two years ago that was a really interesting study they studied kind of that. There was a life line or lifespan of products in our society from where they are created to where they are purchased, and they found that some of the highest polluting products right were disproportionately consumed by white Americans, those goods and services, but that was the source where those products were created, right and where the toxins that were developed from the consumption of those goods and services were disproportionately inhaled by black and brown Americans. So, it's interesting who is on the receiving end of these inequities. And when we talk about that it causes health problems like asthma, right heart disease, all of these things, it lung cancer. And it gives that statement that has come out of this social justice movement of I can't breathe a whole new meaning. Right when saying when someone is saying I can't breathe they're saying, I am lacking something essential to live a successful right healthy life, I can't breathe. So, we have to start having conversations around things like environmental racism, right environmental justice is definitely tied to the social justice movement that has come out of this national conversation. When we look at racism and structural inequalities we can't leave out environmental racism, and we see again and again, these inequitable distribution of environmental hazards based on race. We see that our structures and our systems are kind of perpetuating these inequities throughout several levels of our society. We cannot close our eyes we cannot be blind to the fact that there is a legacy of racism, right we want to feel like what happened before with our ancestors is totally in the past, and we don't need to worry about it now. But unfortunately that just is not the case. Right. The effects of past institutions that leave a racial or ethnic group in a disadvantaged social position, right, and can still continue into today and that's what legacy racism is. That is when these institutions that were created in the past, still have an effect on how people live today so you think about something like redlining right a policy that put into place it was a historic disinvestment in black and brown communities, right people drew red lines around the urban parts of the city that were areas that were predominantly occupied by black and brown citizens and said, we are, we are not going to lend money to certain people in these areas if you're a white person and you want to start a business. In that neighborhood, we're not going to give you the funds to start a business in that neighborhood you could start it somewhere else. If you were a black and brown person, you might get loans but there were exorbitant pre payment penalties, there were high interest rates higher than anywhere else, which really kind of tamp down and discourage people from starting businesses in communities. Right. Those communities were often targeted later on for these things like like factories and other produced pollution producing things. And all of this right is still has an effect today. When we think about those areas that have food deserts we think about those areas that don't have resources, right and how did it get that way why why is that area doesn't have the same resources as other areas that is a legacy of a racist policy and practice. So it's important for us to start to put these things together in our head, right. And I have the opportunity to go to a talk a few months back by Dr. Robert Bullard himself, the father of environmental justice, and he just did this amazing thing and he showed a series of maps that overlaid with one another to show how we still have that legacy and the effects that it still has today so I want to show you some maps because it was really impactful for me. The next map I would like to show you is this one. Right. So this is the United States in 1860. And you can see that we've got our freed states our slave states are somewhere in between states. The United States is predominantly where you would find black folks and where predominantly black people still live today right we were brought over. We worked in those states as slaves and then a lot of people stayed. So we look in flat flash forward, almost 100 years and you can see that those same states are the states that were under Jim Crow laws were where the same states were segregation was required by law. We have that that history that legacy of racism, still shown. And you think a lot of people think, Oh, because we, we weren't a part of those states, right, then we're we're all good, right, but that's not the case. Things like the green book, right, which was the historic Negro motorist guide that helped black people to travel safely across the country by listing the safe spaces to stop and the spaces that were not safe to stop. And that book was not created for southern states, because in the south, you states were very cities, communities towns were very open, right, and they had things labeled if it was a sundown town. There was a sign going in the town that it was a sundown town and if you were a person of color, you better get out right before the sun went down. And in the other states in the north and in the West, where there still was rampant racism, but it was less well marked, right, and so people needed that guide to be able to get across safely. So we look at these two slave states, we look at segregation, and we look at where black people are today, right, and we're still in those areas. We look at people living in poverty areas in the United States and that mimics, right, those same states. We look forward at resources where where people the red is, you know where indicates where people do not have access to things like a supermarket and also don't have cars to get them there. Right, we have lung cancer distribution in the United States, starting to see a pattern right where where we have a disinvestment in communities where we have high concentration of people of color, we have high concentration of diseases and so lung cancer. Heart disease, right, same states, stroke, right. And then all of this leads to a shorter life expectancy overall. We think about when we talk about why should this matter long term, right, well people have are not healthy they are not able to live a long life because of these systems of oppression that are still affecting them today. Right, and you can actually look up life expectancy in your particular state I'm going to show you an example I'm going to stop this share and I'm going to bring over another share because the CDC actually has a life expectancy map of the United States. And so you can go here and like I go to Colorado, and I can see that my state. So it shows you your state life expectancy which is the one on the bottom is 80 years right 80.5 years that's the average life expectancy for this state. So if I go into this is the Denver metro area. Right, so I go over to the Denver metro area. And I can see that even though the states life expectancy is 80 years you go to this track which this area is called globe Villalaria Swansea, and it is one of the most polluted zip codes in the United States. Right, it's kind of the intersection of several things we've got factories we've got highways right all intersecting in this area, and the life expectancy is down to 72 years right so an eight year difference right between the two. They're living across town to one in a more wealthy areas across town and they're actually they're living longer than the state's life expectancy right at at 85.6 years. And so that's a big difference between 72 years and 85 years. That's a lot of living, right that's a lot more life, and these environmental hazards and pollutants, right in these low income, often black and brown areas are shortening people's life span slide back. So, when we think about when we think about all of these things right the picture starts to become clearer for the importance of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion to environmental movements. Right, when we talk about the difference in who is provided protections, right we're all we're, we love the outdoors we love the environment right and one thing that we know is that the environment is an ecosystem. We're all tied together. Right, so we might think that we are safe, because what's happening in those black and brown neighborhoods aren't isn't happening in our neighborhood. But really, that's only we're only safer for a short time. Right, because we're connected ecosystem we see the issues that are happening to our planet. Right, we see the effects of climate change. We see the effect of all of these things and what happens is the reason why those spaces are allowed to exist because we have certain people in our community that we think of unconsciously right, but they're self thought of as disposable. We're not going to have that factory in my not in my backyard, but it can go somewhere else. Right, and when we have disposable people. Right, then we create disposable pieces of land. Right, and that's where those environmental injustices happen. The solution to environmental injustice is not to continually relocate toxic waste and pollution to different neighborhoods of our planet. Right, the real call from environmental justice advocates and educators is to re examine the impact on our urban environments. And to claim right what has happened to our planet in the face of modernization right and claim the earth below. When I think of the statement of loving my neighbor, as my own, I feel like it means that we understand that our future is interconnected with the lives of others. And what has led us to this moment. Right, is that disconnection, and we have to be reconnected to one another. We're not different groups. Right, we're one group we're one race and we have to gain that connection to one another. Organizations also have to be willing to examine the roots of their founding right they have to be willing to look back and say what part of social injustice oppression right how do we play a role in this and what is the work that we're doing to dismantle it. So my next question to you all is, how could you start to integrate justice, equity and inclusion into your community into the work that you do. How would you start to integrate those things and I would love it if you could put it into the chat. So remember we're going to have some questions and answers. At the end, so if you have questions, please put them into the Q&A, so that when as I wrap up in just a few minutes we can get to sharing and have a conversation. Okay, as people think about this, you know how might I start to integrate this what does this mean for the work that I do or my place in my community. I want to share some things for you to think about. One way that we can start to have this conversation. Right, is to build our own self awareness. We have to be aware of our own culture. And oftentimes we don't think of ourselves as having culture we think of other people who are different from us as having the culture. But we all have culture. Right and we have to understand that, you know, we are kind of bound by or have been bound by our culture by maybe unconscious bias that we have. But we also need to understand what are the limitations of our worldview and our experience and how do we expand that through connection, right. We also have to really value diversity as a half to have, not a nice to have, not a, oh, it's, it's okay. Right, we have to stop making excuses about why we aren't inclusive why we aren't diverse, and really value diversity as something that we have to have within our communities in our organization and work towards that goal. We need to be interacting with diverse groups. Right, and it's really it's interesting when I talk with people sometimes they say, you know what we don't. We don't have diverse groups within our within our community, right, you have diverse group and it, it is diversity is a wide topic right a wide deal. So we talk a lot about racial diversity, because that's what's changing our country that's changing our nation, but there's lots of different diversity around ability disability, sexual orientation, so on so forth right lots of things that make us make up who we are. And so we need to be interacting with people who are different from us we need to be seeking out groups that we can learn from. We also have to assess the barriers in our communities what is keeping people from accessing our resources, right what are preventing people, and we need to make community driven solutions to those barriers. We also have to assess our rules and regulations because oftentimes we create rules and regulations that are related to how we view the world. Right, so if someone. Excuse me, so if someone sees that big green field of grass and those side they might be thinking soccer, right, but we say keep off the grass. Right, no, no, no games over here. Right, we have don't wear your street clothes in the pool. Think about that rule, right so that rule is probably set up because they don't want people coming in with dirty clothes and getting into the pool with it right but is street clothes really the term that we want to use because some people don't own bathing suits. So, would it be better to say where clean clothes into the pool so that we are more inclusive of people who may not have certain swimwear, right, how can we evaluate what messages we are sending. We also need to be willing to do our homework and represent diverse champions for the outdoors there are people out there we tell the same story about the same three white men who were our founding fathers of the outdoor movement. Right, and there is such it is so more much more complex and diverse, and we can tell those stories. We also need to think about different ways that people use the outdoors. It's not just all climbing mountains. Right, it's not just all hikes. Right, we've got different ways that people use the outdoors and the only thing that is necessary for something to be considered an outdoor activity is for it to be taking place outside. Right, so we don't need as a part of that, we need to think about how we define nature, because nature isn't something that's far out there. Nature is something that's all around us, right that we are all a part of, and we need to celebrate that we need to redefine that, so that we kind of cast a wider lens toward who's involved in this conversation. So that little old me as a nine year old and Bronx, New York who wrote that letter in the New York to the New York Times right but still didn't think of herself as an environmentalist because that's not what I saw represented. Right, we need to widen that net so we can bring more people into this conversation. So I see that we have lots of really great suggestions and thoughts in our chat, and I would like to leave you with this last question. What would you like to do what is going to be your tangible action to make the outdoors, your communities and your organizations more inclusive. Right, there's several steps that we can take there's lots that we can do. And the first first step right we got to decide what's that first step in our, our 1000 mile journey. Right, we just have to walk forward. So, I'm going to leave you with this. This is 2022 2020 and 2021 right. There's been a lot smell a little bit going on. Right, it's been a time of, of struggle of unrest of deep conversations, but moments like the conversations that we've been having in the last year can amplify and lay bare structural inequities. And so, galvanize us to make change. This is a brave new world, and we can create a space where everyone feels welcome, everyone feels connected where everyone can breathe. Right, because we have dealt with the structural and in systemic inequities and oppression. Right, it just takes us saying that yes, I'm going to do my part to make change where I can, and when I can. So I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to come and speak with you today. I urge you to stay connected if you are on social media. Please follow me my handle is Queen work spelled KW EEN WERK. You can find me across tick tock, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. You can also follow my work with inclusive journeys and eco inclusive cross platforms as well. I hope that this isn't the last time our paths cross. And now we're going to roll into questions so I'm going to stop my screen share so that we can hopefully have a conversation. Hello, hello. Hi, that was so wonderful and informative, and I'm just letting everything marinate in my brain. I just like hit repeat and play it again right now. Thank you so much Parker for that presentation it truly was phenomenal. I don't know if you want to say anything Rachel before we might take some questions. Yeah I also just wanted to thank you so much Parker that's so inspiring and has really pushed my thinking as someone who works with students in our public school system and and the green teams and it's really making me think about who we're reaching who are not and who I'd like to really reach out to more and so I really appreciate you kind of pushing us in that way thank you so much. My pleasure. I didn't have any questions so folks who are tuned in, if you have some send them in the Q&A, but I have one. So, I'll ask it, because I think it's an area that not only I struggle with in my role but I think across the town and different departments, but that idea of outreach and communications and reaching folks who we don't really hear from who are probably in some of these spaces and conversations. Do you have any suggestions or recommendations on how to start to tackle that outreach. Yeah. Well, a couple of things. So organizations spend a lot of time trying to get people to come to them, right, rather than being willing to go go to them. And so, if there are community parts of our community that we're not reaching. There are organizations that are, right, whether that's the local church, right, or youth group, or whatever the pool hall, wherever like, we have to be willing to go outside the walls, right, of our organizations and make connections. Also community connection isn't one way right it's not about you just come to my this is what I'm offering. I want you to come here right but it's all it's about building relationships, getting ourselves to be trusted, showing for the things that matter to them, right, so that they'll show up for what matters to us, right, we have to show that we really care and are connected to our community. Thank you. Lots of relationship building shall be in the works. A couple audience questions come through. I'll be the first one so it's, are there any environmentalists you can share about that you think middle school kids would particularly find inspirational. You know, I think that there are quite a few right if you want to just think about who's involved in outdoor spaces some fun ones though are ones that we don't necessarily think of right so folks like Harriet Tubman, right, who definitely knew, knew her plants, knew her birds, right was was a naturalist, right but we don't talk about her in in those terms buffalo soldiers right these kind of historic figures that if we can think about the work that folks have done differently, and then there's contemporary folks you know that are working all over and so, and anyone. We can talk about Teddy Roosevelt we can talk about anyone. I'm looking at the next one. Someone's asking about the municipal vulnerability program. If you know about that if you have any thoughts on it, and it leans into projects addressing inequity. I don't know about that program. I'm trying to looking right now online. I'm not sure that I would have enough information without maybe kind of going through this Massachusetts dot gov. explanation of what the program is. Rachel do you want to tackle some of the questions in the chat. I think. Sure. So it looks like we had a question about do you think gardening can be an easier activity or space to gather in a more inclusive way. versus nature exploration I'm saying it goes on here a different way to connect with nature including reference to foods. I think it's definitely, you know, my grandmother garden garden gardening was a part of my my background and my family what was taught to us and lots of people of color have that in their their background. And we don't necessarily think of it as an outdoor activity and it definitely is right. I think there are so many things that fit under that umbrella, right I think about my grandmother, who not only garden washed her clothes by hand hung them out on the line we used her Tupperware containers we used her ziploc bags and washed them turn them inside out to dry. So I think there are some things that were conservation efforts and if people had no no one told her she was a conservationist or an environmentalist right my uncle who rode his bike to work every day 20 miles because he didn't have a car right no one told him he was preserving the environment fighting climate change right because we have this kind of disconnect between activities that are done out of necessity and activities that are done for for fun and for leisure. And so I think it's important that we have that conversation when we think about what are activities that are going to appeal to people and that are more inclusive, what are folks doing already that we can talk about we can bring to the forefront and that we can let them know that that that's that's over here to that's a part of outdoor recreation that's a part of our tent of environmentalism you belong here and let's have a conversation. Looks like a couple more questions came through the q&a. One question was, could you connect outreach by meeting folks at food banks and soup kitchens and form groups for sharing information. Yeah, so, um, let's see. I'll look at that question some more some more. So I'm looking over the answer. Can you connect outreach by meeting folks so yeah you can definitely, if you're trying to get out in the community meet people in those those spaces, right and share information in those spaces, but also, like I urged before right it's not for for their thing and sometimes you have to do that a little bit before you expect any type of a return right so not just there to drop off flyers but because I want to build a relationship with you and understand what is the work you're doing and it's important for me as much as it's important to you because I'm a part of this community to And we've got another one. So it's hard to figure out how to make some of these asks that you've been talking about and finding out what a more diverse breadth of our population might care about environmentally in our community. Can you help us think through how we could carry something out here, some kind of survey or public meeting or something more fun. So, okay that it so the first part of the question is that it can be hard to do these types of things or find out what our community members need right so how might we go about doing that. I think, figuring out what community members interest might be that we're not hearing from. Um, well you know there there are. I think I think again it goes back to those relationships and having people as a part of your organization or involved in the work that you're doing from the beginning it's not a. It's not easy, right, building those relationships, especially when you're like, I don't, I don't know I don't know anybody, I don't know any black people. I was supposed to build that relationship that I know that can be hard and I know that can be scary, and I know that it's a long process right we have to be willing to go out there and make those authentic connections and bring people in because really what is the most. The ideal is that before we're doing something like a survey or a public meeting right that we already have those those voices it's not that someone is, I'm not calling someone from the community you're over there I'm over here and now we're going to bring them in so I can hear your thoughts in this space and now we're separated again but you're are making the community a part of the work that you do through that relationship building and so. What I've seen is organizations that go into parts of the community that they aren't well role serving right show up at their so they said public meeting show up at their public meeting, and, you know, ask them in their space where they're wanting to know more about what are things they can help them with and taking that to do projects within the community again going with them so like I know a local. recycling organization went to community that has been really hardly hard impacted by coven several community members dying it is a low income community of color. They, on top of that with the unrest last summer had several community members that had been involved in shootings and deaths by gun violence, and they wanted to do something to clean to reclaim to clean their community and so they did a trash pickup recycling day in their local park eight because the community members were involved in it and invested in it and they wanted to clean their their neighborhood that lots of community members showed up. They had, they decorated all of the sidewalks in the park during the day so while people were out collecting kids were in the park doing this side sidewalk chalk art they had music going on and it was really a community driven event that was created by what the community felt like they needed at that time. Let us another question in the chat. One of the attendees asked, I like to welcome people of color to our little preserve, but our mostly white community makes me reluctant to do so any advice. So, you know, um, I think, if you are located in a mostly white community a lot of people talk about that and talk about how we might not even have any community any people of color come through right. Your job is to make your place as inclusive and as welcoming as possible for anyone who might stumble across right so a lot of times studies have shown that populations of color that maybe aren't usually out in the outdoors do so or have some of their first recreation adventures when they are traveling right there, they're going cross country. They hear something about oh you have to stop at this space and then they do it it might be there one and they haven't been to nearby nature, right but they might be there one for a out into the outdoors and so like with that thought even though we may not have a community that's very diverse we are bound to have people come through and we want that experience to be really powerful as for the community around you I don't know if you're saying that maybe the community itself won't be welcoming right but I, it's going to be your job just to think about your organization I once had a boss that told me they almost didn't hire me because the community was that I was coming into was a very white community and they were worried about my ability to if I would be welcomed if I would be able to communicate with all of the water men and the farmers and, you know, I got there, and I, I thrive within like I had people bringing me dear I learned how to, you know, waterfowl hunt like all of these things right. And so we shouldn't underestimate people's ability to persevere in situations that might seem like they may not totally be welcomed. But I think we're, we have one question. Also, that was a minute but I think your last response kind of touched upon that, you know, really working to just make your space inclusive and as welcoming. If you're looking to include other people. I think that addresses that. And I think we are just about wrapping up on time. So, I just want to say thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. So wonderful and I love, you know, one thing that COVID has done is brought us closer together across the air airwaves and having this ability to come and be with you there even when I'm all the way over here has been wonderful so thank you for the opportunity. And Rachel, I don't know if you want to say a couple words. Yes, just want to thank you so much Parker for joining us and this has been such an inspiring conversation and we really invite everyone to continue joining us for our eco week events they run through this Saturday as I said May 15 Arlington MA dot gov slash eco week please join us for more programming there's a great panel tomorrow evening on plastic production and how we can stop that. We'd love to see you at all our remaining events so thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for training and everyone have a good night.