July 9th 2010
Started off the day by watching some environmental videos. The first one was Environmental Justice in San Francisco’s Bay View Hunters point: Welcome to the Neighborhood presented by LEJ (Literacy for Environmental Justice). This video was a glance at some of the environmental justice work that is being done by youth our age, and how they are using art and media to get their message across. This was eye opening to me and it allowed me to learn about different ways you can fight environmental injustices. I think that the youth got a lot out of the video I know some of the questions going into the movie is can young people really do something about the injustices in our communities and I really feel like their question was answered.
The second video was “The Story of Stuff” This video just tickled my fancy. It talked about over-consumption and the vicious cycle that occurs behind the scenes and who is affected because of it. Anne Leonard portrayed America as selfish, greedy and naïve which I have to say I don’t necessarily disagree with.
The video was very informative and made me think about how I contribute to the vicious cycle. The cycle consists of:
1. Extraction/depleting of natural resources.
2. Unnecessary amounts of manufacturing.
3. Mass Advertisement/ making you feel like you need the newest model when the old one is just fine
4. Consumption/ over consumption.
5. TRASH- we throw everything away…(Within 6 months 99% of the things we buy are no longer in use)… Coincidence, I think not… Are you a major contributor to this vicious cycle?
The last video was another youth-made film by the Conscious Youth Media Crew called What is Green? This helped us break down this term "green" that we hear all the time now, but weren't quite sure exactly was it mean.
After that we rode public transportation to the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project which in a nut shell is an organization that’s acts as an environmental protection advocate for West Oakland in issues concerning:
1. Port of Oakland diesel particulates
2. Diesel Truck Pollution/ routes
3. Polluting factories etc…
They also monitor the air quality using equipment that can track the size and quantity of particulate pollution. We actually had the privilege to do use these monitors and we had our tallest student and our shortest student put on this back pack with the air monitoring device and a GPS system that tracks our coordinates every second, and walked all over the “Lower Bottoms” which is the community closest to the Port of Oakland and the rail yard stations.
After we did that we had to complete a questionnaire asking if we walked past any smokers, diesel trucks, or any other sources of pollution in the air to accurately track what is was that was going on in the neighborhood where the monitor took its reading.
It was very important that we had a disparity in height because WOEIP has a theory that air quality is different for people with different heights. They could actually be on to something… If they’re able to prove this then we can began seeing patterns in why children and elderly are always affected the most by Air Pollution.
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