Promoting Civic Competency in the Detroit Area Through EcoJustice Education

Ethan LowensteinCenter for Engaged Democracy, July 18, 2013

EcoJustice Education at Eastern Michigan UniversitySoutheast Michigan Stewardship Coalition (SEMIS)Doctoral and MA students involved as GAs and interns with SEMISOnline MA in EcoJustice EducationClasses that use an EcoJustice FrameworkClasses that engage in AS-L Experiences with SEMISYearly Public Exhibition of EcoJustice Learning at EMUAnnual EcoJustice and Activism Conference

IntroductionLaunched in 2008 as part of the Great Lakes

Stewardship Initiative GLSI) One of 8 regional hubs: Flint, Lansing, Traverse City,

Kent Co, Western UP, Alpena, Ypsilanti, Muskegon The GLSI has been recognized by leaders in Place-

Based Education as the only statewide initiative in the Country that focuses on helping young people become active stewards through hands on learning.

GLSI Overview:The GLSI supports the hubs efforts to

integrate three strategies into their work. Place Based Education Sustained professional development School-community partnerships

10 School PartnersAnn Arbor Learning Community (Ann Arbor, K-8 Charter)

Birmingham Seaholm H.S.—Flex (Birmingham Public Schools)Detroit Community Schools (Detroit, K-12 Charter)Detroit Institute of Technology at Cody H.S. (Detroit, DPS)Experiencia Preparatory Academy (Detroit, K-12 Charter)James and Grace Leee Boggs School (Detroit, K-8 Charter)John Paul II Catholic School (Lincoln Park, Private Religious)Honey Creek Community School (Ann Arbor, K-8 Charter)Hope of Detroit Academy (Detroit, K-8 Charter)Neinas Elementary (Detroit, DPS)

Plus: Affiliated teachers (e.g., from the former Nsoroma Institute, Stout Middle School in Dearborn Public Schools)

31 community partners and growing…

Buhr Park Children’s Wet Meadow ProjectCass Community ServicesCenter for EcoJustice EducationDetroit Youth Energy Squad (Warm Training Center)Dreamseeding Art Show, UofMEarth ForceEcology Center, Ann ArborHuron River Watershed CouncilGreat Lakes Environmental Law CenterGreening of DetroitGrowing HopeJames and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nourish Community LeadershipKeystone Youth Policy SummitLeslie Science and Nature Center, Ann ArborMatrix Theatre Company

Lake Erie MetroparkMichigan Coalition of Essential SchoolsMichigan Department of Environmental QualityNielsen Education ConsultingMichigan Sea GrantNortheast Hub of the GLSIPlantwise Native LandscapingRap for FoodRiver Raisin InstituteSarah HalsonSlow Food Huron ValleySE Michigan Sierra ClubSW Detroit Environmental VisionThe Giving Garden, EMUThe Stewardship NetworkUM-Dearborn Environmental Interpretive Center

32 community partners and growing…

The EcoJustice Framework asks us to reframe our thinking:

Lupinacci, J. (2013). The Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition: A deep design of eco-democratic reform that is situational, local, and in support of living systems. Eastern Michigan University. Ypsilanti, MI.

Language matters…“…symbolic maps we make are like a road map to understanding the world. But, just as a road map leaves out much of the reality of the land it maps so the symbolic maps (our words and concepts) only reveal part of the world—or as Bateson puts it ‘the map is not the territory.’”

(Martusewicz, Edmondson, and Lupinacci, 2011, 54-55)

Backing into the EcoJustice Framework through looking at place

To better understand our place in relation to who is included and who is excluded in our our “community,” let’s look at some maps of our place…

Mystic River Watershed OrganizationMap of Mystic River Watershed

An EcoJustice Framework leads us to ask…What do the maps (symbolic systems) that we just

looked at illuminate? What do they obscure?What they obscure: What ways of thinking have

allowed this to happen? What are the cultural causes of the environmental degradation we saw? Where is there knowledge in this community for how to live sustainably?

How could we layer on cultural maps that chart:What ways of thinking support the web of life? What

ways of thinking damage it?What beliefs and practices do we want to conserve?What beliefs and practices do we want to abandon?

An EcoJustice FrameworkCenturies-Old Cultural Discourses

AnthropocentrismCommodificationIndividualismEthnocentrismAndrocentrismMechanism“Progress” and “Growth”Scientism

One strand of an EcoJustice Framework:

Attention to Local Communities

It is not quite imaginable that people will exert themselves greatly to defend creatures and places that they have dispassionately studied. It is altogether imaginable that they will greatly exert themselves to defend creatures and places that they have involved their lives in.

~Wendell Berry

Is the language of civics as we currently use it anthropocentric?

Democracy δημοκρατία (dēmokratía) "rule of the people” (Wikipedia)

A republic affairs of state are a "public matter" (Latin: res publica) (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Public directly from Latin publicus "of the people; of the state; done for the state,” (Online Etymology Dictionary)

What if we used different language to describe community, different metaphors….

Ecology: From the root “Oikos” meaning “home”A strong emphasis on relationships and

interdependenceDisrupts the managerial model introduced mid-

20th C. where science is applied to manage and control problems “out there.”

How might going from “Democratic” to “Eco-Democratic,” Or from “Democracy” to “Earth Democracy” change our thinking and behavior?

An EcoJustice FrameworkIndustrial civilization is incompatible with life. It is systematically destroying life on this planet, undercutting its very basis. This culture is, to put it bluntly, murdering the earth. Unless it’s stopped –whether we intentionally stop it or the natural world does, through ecological collapse or other means—it will kill every living being.

We need to stop it. Derek Jensen and Aric

McBay

Recommendations to the Committee….Please look at the Core Competencies with

our conversation in mind.Are the Core Competencies in Civic

Engagement Anthropocentric? How might the use of an EcoJustice

Framework inform the further development of this document?