A conversation with  Melissa Checker and Peggy Shepard, moderated by Shawn Rickenbacker

Zoom Link: https://ccny.zoom.us/j/83410503363?pwd=VzYxSXZkSUt5UCtENVUzWEQxb3VwZz09

Meeting ID: 834 1050 3363

Passcode: 587563

Studies show that black and brown Americans are exposed to 56% and 63% (respectively) more pollution than they produce. Conversely, white Americans are exposed to 17% less pollution than they produce. Are sustainability measures doing enough to redress such racial disparities? Using Harlem as a starting point, we explore the historic and contemporary reasons that communities of color bear the brunt of environmental risks, and we examine the unintended consequences of sustainability for environmental justice struggles. Looking forward, we also discuss new possibilities and paradigms for redressing environmental and climate-related inequalities in Harlem, in New York City, and across the country.

Melissa Checker is the Hagedorn Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College, and Associate Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research focuses on environmental justice activism in the U.S., urban sustainability and environmental gentrification. She is the author of The Sustainability Myth: Environmental Gentrification and the Politics of Justice (2020), and Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town (2005). She also coedited Sustainability in the Global City: Myth and Practice (Cambridge 2015) and Local Actions: Cultural Activism, Power, and Public Life (2004) and has published numerous articles in academic journals as well as mainstream publications. 

Peggy Shepard is co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice and has a long history of organizing and engaging Northern Manhattan residents in community-based planning and campaigns to address environmental protection and environmental health policy locally and nationally. She has successfully combined grassroots organizing, environmental advocacy, and environmental health community-based participatory research to become a national leader in advancing environmental policy and the perspective of environmental justice in urban communities — to ensure that the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment extends to all. She serves on the Executive Committee of the National Black Environmental Justice Network and the Board of Advisors of the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, and was the first female chair of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her work has received broad recognition: the Jane Jacobs Medal from the Rockefeller Foundation for Lifetime Achievement, the 10th Annual Heinz Award For the Environment, the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award from the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, and Honorary Doctorates from Smith College and Lawrence University.

Shawn L. Rickenbacker is a trained architect, urbanist and urban data researcher. He is currently the Director of the J. Max Bond Center for Urban Futures where he directs the Center's sponsored research and is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the CCNY Spitzer School of Architecture. His research and work at the Bond Center directly confronts the complex intersection of spatial equity and the social and economic impacts of place-based policies, programs and design through the lens of urban data, forensic and design research. He’s served as Senior Research Fellow at the Phyllis M. Taylor Institute for Social Innovation, where he researched ‘Artificial Intelligence and The Future of Social Urbanism’, The Favrot Chair in Architecture at Tulane University, Gensler Distinguished Professor at Cornell University and Director of the Motorola Sponsored Future Interactions Lab at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Design. His work and research have been published in The New York Times, NY Daily News and Global Architecture and exhibited at Studio Museum of Harlem and most recently at Temple University. As a frequent lecturer and presenter he's appeared at Regional Planning Association, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Southern California, Enterprise Community Partners Design Affordable Housing Leadership Institute, and New Museum - New Inc. Shawn holds a MA with a Certificate in American Urbanism from the University of Virginia where he was the Dupont Scholar and a BArch from Syracuse University.