Earlier this month, environmental justice champion Nia Robinson engaged and energized about 200 Five College students, faculty members and community activists around issues having to do with race, the environment and reproductive rights.
Robinson was the inaugural Five College Social Justice Policy Practitioner-in-Residence. The residency program is part of a growing effort to enhance collaboration among Five College faculty and students interested in curricula, research and outreach related to public policy. It offers members of the local academic community unique opportunities to engage with and learn from individuals who have hands-on policymaking experience.
During Robinson’s two-week residency, she led a teach-in on race and the environment at Mount Holyoke College; spoke with a Hampshire College group about reproductive politics; gave a workshop during a Hampshire College student activism conference; participated in a panel discussion at UMass on race and the environment; was interviewed on WAMC’s Midday Magazine and WMUA’s TRGGR Radio; met with community activists in Springfield; and spoke during some classes at UMass, Hampshire and Smith colleges. Though the focus of each event was slightly different, Robinson worked throughout her residency to highlight the connections between racial justice, environmental justice and reproductive justice.
“Women of color and poor women need to no longer be the mules on which the rest of the world develops,” Robinson said during the climate justice panel, a public event that brought about 45 people from across the Five Colleges and the community to the Center for Public Policy and Administration.
Robinson currently works as the environmental justice representative for SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. From 2006 to 2011, she served as director of the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, bringing the voices of low-income communities, people of color and indigenous communities to the debate over national climate policy. She is the co-author of A Climate of Change: African Americans, Global Warming and a Just Climate Policy in the U.S. Robinson also has worked as part of the National Wildlife Federation’s Earth Tomorrow program and served as an organizer for the Service Employees International Union.
In October, Kim Gandy will serve as the next resident in this Five College program, which has been made possible by a generous grant from Five Colleges, Incorporated, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Gandy is the vice president and general counsel of the Feminist Majority and served as president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) from 2001 to 2009. More information about Gandy’s residency will be coming soon.