Power In Diversity, United In Accessibility

In Spring 2024, students in WWU’s ENVS 499D: Readings in Environmental Justice are reading about climate hope and climate futures. This post reflects some of the group’s learning and discussion.

By Shilah Malaykhan and Brooklyn Wehr

[Image Description]: A collaborative, proud, diverse collective coming together to embrace the inclusivity of people of all identities, bodies, and existences. (Perce, 2021).

In Kate Darby’s Readings In Environmental Justice Class at Western Washington University, Shilah Malaykhan and Brooklyn Wehr facilitated a class-wide discussion about a few chapters from Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young-Lutunatabua’s Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story From Despair To Possibility. The discussion emphasized Disability, Power, Reflection/Discovery, and Land Reclamation. 

            I, Shilah Malaykhan, really tried to get my audience to feel something. The short stories we read held a lot of potential for literary discussion, but I felt a reflective discussion was more constructive. My goal as an environmentalist is to make a connection with the people before the planet. Personally, and from what I’ve witnessed, people tend to have greater motivation to achieve or participate in something when they can visualize themselves in a scenario of success, relation, or experience. I was asking questions about the finest of lines to try and awaken something within my peers and make them realize who they are in these stories.

            In one of the essays in this book, “To Hell With Drowning”, a quote stood out to me:  “…a future in which good people refuse to simply lie down and die, a future rooted in respect for possibility, a future with room for us all.” (Aguan, 2023, p. 96). I asked my audience how this quote related to a preceding statement of “We’re not drowning. We’re fighting.” (Aguan, 2023, p. 94), to which no one replied. It took a few minutes until a few people spoke up, but I fear that many people within the environmental field feel very tied to achieving something in the name of environmentalism as opposed to starting at the drawing board; we need to appreciate what we’re doing before we execute it. The only place that we can retain power or ability to do something is within, once we set our minds on something we are capable of much more than previously assumed. Never take that for granted, and understand that you are unique to this world and that whatever you bring into it will be worthwhile: you matter, especially in environmentalism.

The opening paragraph of the essay, “Shared Solutions Are Our Greatest Hope” by Gloria Walton was invigoratingly hopeful yet disappointing. As a critical disability studies student I (Brooklyn), was unsatisfied with the lack of representation of disability in these essays and the short stories from Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors.The opening paragraph of one of these essays describes a vision for the future that some might think of as utopic, “Every morning you wake up in an affordable, comfortable home that’s powered by sunlight. You walk outside, inhale fresh air, and catch the scent of leaves and trees that keep your close-knit neighborhood cool and safe in the summer.” (Walton, 2023, p. 52) While I can’t deny that this seems like a pretty good life, the emphasis on health and ability and the disappearance of disability from this short narrative was something I was unable to see past. Sadly, it was not surprising. Disability is too often forgotten or intentionally disappeared from visions for the future. In lots of utopic depictions of the future in which the author is envisioning some problem of society that is ‘solved,’ disability is magically gone too, which perpetuates the harmful misconception that disability is tragic. Disability is a part of life that is not only inevitable, you either become disabled or you die, but is also incredibly valuable to the existence of community and care within society. To quote the text, “Not a single sector can solve climate change alone.We need to center the values of community, care, and collaboration.” (Walton, 2023, p. 57) Disability justice needs to be included in this and it needs to be included in our visions for the future. Disability Justice as a movement and as a framework provide a lens that is inherently intersectional due to the oppressive forces of ableism in conjunction with race, class, war and genocide, and affects of the climate crisis. Consulting disability and including it in visions for the future is necessary to the success of these visions and the widening of the possibilities for the future. 

Sources:

Alguon, J. “To Hell with Drowning” in Solnit, R., & Young-Lutunatabua, T., eds. (2023). Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility. Haymarket Books.

Lewis, Talila A. “Working Definition of Ableism – January 2022 Update.” TALILA A. LEWIS, www.talilalewis.com/blog/working-definition-of-ableism-january-2022-update. Accessed 30 Apr. 2024. 

Perce, O., (2021). What is the difference between Diversity and Inclusion? Generations Recruitment. https://generationsrecruitment.com/what-is-the-difference-between-diversity-and-inclusion/

Walton, G. “Shared Solutions are Our Greatest Hope and Strength” in Solnit, R., & Young-Lutunatabua, T., eds. (2023). Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility. Haymarket Books.