Category Archives: justice

Composting in Chicago

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The Climate Reality Project’s Chicago Metro Chapter recently asked me to step up and be the co-leader (with my new pal, Florita) for the new Chicago (as opposed to suburban) Team. Our team has two main areas of activism for the near term – I’ll be taking point on composting, and Florita will be taking point on building decarbonization.

So, if you have any questions, thoughts, or concerns relating to how we can reduce the barriers to composting in Chicago and support a culture of composting, I’d love to hear from you!

Advocacy Groundwork: Manageable Steps Toward Climate-Friendly Investment/Divestment

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Many students and teachers interested in sustainability advocate divestment from fossil fuels as a way to defund unsustainable energy practices, take a symbolic stand, and help train new organizers. October’s Philosophers for Sustainability forum, which I’ll be co-leading, will involve thinking through some possibilities and strategies for divestment advocacy:

What strategies are in reach for overworked academics who endorse financial activism but work in settings where most people in power are (currently) indifferent or hostile to institutional divestment? In this forum, I’ll share some ideas from a recent mini-campaign and invite discussion about organizing. We’ll also have time to discuss other sustainability advocacy projects that may feel daunting in scope or low in likelihood of success.

The forum will be held by Zoom on Friday, October 7, 11am-noon ET (eastern USA and Canada time). Email me for the link. We look forward to seeing some of you there!

Philosophers for Sustainability

justice, philosophy,

In my book, philosophy isn’t something you have, but something you do. So philosophers aren’t just thinkers. We are doers.

And there is a lot that we can do, individually and collectively, by strategically using our particular skills, knowledge, and social locations, to help move humanity toward doing a better job of sustaining all the people, other living things, and ecosystems that can be found on this amazing and beautiful planet.

If you’ve already made a habit of choosing the relatively sustainable options in your personal life, one way to level up on your sustainability activism is to join the Philosophers for Sustainability. We’ve got various advocacy teams, workshops, and resources, and we welcome all comers, from casual participants to gung-ho experts and leaders.

Right now, our biggest area of momentum is the APA 2+1 campaign, a plan to shift 1 or 2 of the 3 divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association each year to an entirely online format, with the in-person meeting(s) rotating between divisions. Implementing this plan would dramatically cut our profession’s greenhouse gas emissions, save money, and make the meetings accessible to a wider range of philosophers.

Please consider signing and sharing the petition, if you aren’t already one of the 689 signatories so far!

I voted! Will you join me?

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To me, voting feels good. It feels good to have a voice and to use it. It feels good to try to get the future that I want for all of us. It feels good to engage with literally millions of other people in the big and important conversation about our shared values that is a national election.

I would love for you to vote, too! Will you make the time to vote in this year’s election?

Book Recommendation: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler

book recommendations, justice, philosophy

Oh, wow – it is great to end the summer with a really spectacular novel. Everyone should go out and read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler (and that goes double for any budding scholars interested in philosophy of mind and/or cognitive science).

Don’t read any blurbs or reviews first, just get straight into it!

Why? There is a significant surprise reveal midway through it, and it would be a real shame if you didn’t get the chance to figure things out on your own. This sometimes funny, often thought-provoking, and consistently well-written book starts out as just a regular story about growing up in a family of flawed people, but I’ll leave it for you to decide whether we can say that it ends that way …

Book recommendation: Bird Flu, by Michael Greger

book recommendations, food, justice

I started reading Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching for reasons that had nothing to do with COVID-19. But may I say that it could not be any more relevant to our lives at this particular time?

Dr. Michael Greger does a wonderful job of explaining the science of viruses in general, the history of pandemics (and our political/economic/public health/media responses to them), and the steps that we would need to take to reduce the terrible dangers that pandemic influenza poses to human life, health, economics, national security, and so on. His writing is clear, engaging, and accessible, while being grounded in meticulous research and including copious citations from all sorts of relevant experts around the world.

No joke: this is not good bedtime reading, but it is a great read!

It looks like the full text was available for free on the internet for some time, but that it is temporarily unavailable because Dr. Greger is updating it with new findings about COVID-19 for a new edition, so try checking back to http://www.birdflubook.org/ or https://drgreger.org/pages/selected-writings later to see more about that.

Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington: Digital Justice Gathering

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There are 140 million poor and low income people in America. But the interlocking, systemic injustices that create and perpetuate poverty negatively impact us all (in different ways).

It’s gone on far too long. We must ALL unite to fight poverty, not poor people.

The growing awareness of the disproportionate impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic on poor communities and communities of color, as well as the ongoing patterns of police brutality against people of color that have been getting so much more widespread attention recently, are motivating people of conscience to stand up and take action in a variety of ways. Please join us.

Due to the pandemic, the the massive slate of events known as the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington that have long been planned by The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival for June 20-21, 2020 have gone digital. There will be live-streamed speeches (in English, Spanish, and ASL) by all sorts of folks, opportunities to contact elected officials, a virtual rally, voter registration information, and merchandise.

Check out June2020.org for more information about how to get involved. (And be sure to note the impressive, inspiring list of mobilizing partners.)

Juneteenth!

justice, philosophy

In celebration of Juneteenth (today, 6/19, the day on which we who continue to work toward justice celebrate the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans), the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia has put together a two-part curated collection of previously published work by Black feminist scholars and made it freely available without subscription.

I encourage you to start by checking out Hypatia co-editor Camisha Russell’s introduction, then take a look at the article collections themselves. As Dr. Russell writes there, “Black thought matters.”

Book recommendation: Zoopolis, by Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka

book recommendations, food, justice, philosophy

I’ve always loved animals, but I don’t always see myself in other people’s vision of what it means to be an animal lover. For instance, I don’t keep pets, and lots of people would expect an animal lover to do so. However, I am a vegan, which might be (and I think should be, but often isn’t) expected of people who self-identify as animal lovers. Plus, I generally love learning about animals more than I love interacting with them, but I do find it deeply painful when I witness harm to animals, even in fiction. And I’m seriously committed to environmentalism, which many people think means choosing what is good for whole species and ecosystems, even if and when that means killing or otherwise harming various individual animals.

I suspect there are a lot of other people out there who love animals in some sense, but that maybe don’t fit into stereotypical ideas about what it means to be an animal lover.

For an awesome book that challenges all of us to rethink what it means to stand in an ethically good relationship to non-human animals, I strongly recommend Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s Zoopolis. They don’t frame their book in terms of being by or for animal lovers, (though their work clearly expresses love for animals, along with many more intellectual virtues). Instead, they make a powerful, extended argument that existing academic and activist work regarding animal ethics is limited in key ways that can be overcome by shifting to a political model of human/non-human animal engagement. Here’s some high praise from any philosopher: their insights and arguments really changed my mind about a lot of things!

And (bonus!) this is among the most engaging and accessible books in academic philosophy that I’ve had the pleasure to read. It is one of those unicorns that falls into both the “for fun” and “for work” categories that I often use to mentally sort books. Seriously, check it out.

Fridays for Future

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This semester, I’m joining with students and community members at noon every Friday under Ball State’s bell tower as part of the Fridays for Future climate strike movement.

Please join us! The students who are organizing and participating in these events are welcoming, thoughtful, and passionate young people who deserve our support and solidarity.

And thank you to all the passers-by who honk, wave, smile, or otherwise show us their encouragement!