Black Reconstructions: Environmental Justice

How do climate change and racism intersect in American cities and towns to produce risk and harm, as well as possibilities for transformation in Black spaces? What visions for environmental and climate justice have Black communities imagined and enacted?

This conversation brings architects, climate activists, and audience members together around key questions raised in the exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America at the Museum of Modern Art. We will consider the environment as not only land, water, and air, but also the built spaces that we inhabit every day, and which are marked by systemic inequality. The discussion will be moderated by David Naguib Pellow.

This event is free, open to all, and takes place over Zoom meeting.

Speakers:

David Naguib Pellow is the department chair of Environmental Studies and director of the Global Environmental Justice Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he teaches courses on environmental and social justice, race/class/gender and environmental conflict, human-animal conflicts, sustainability, and social change movements that confront our socio-environmental crises and social inequality.

Emanuel Admassu is a founding partner of AD—WO and an associate professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he teaches design studios and theory seminars. Admassu’s teaching, research, and design practices examine the international constellation of Afrodiasporic spaces.

Savonala Horne is the Executive Director of the Land Loss Prevention Project in North Carolina. She uses the power of the law to keep African Americans farmers from losing their land to indebtedness, legal challenges, and gentrification, while offering technical support for farmers to make their enterprises economically viable and environmentally sustainable.

Olalekan Jeyifous is an architect and visual artist. His work in public art, installation, drawing, collage, and design explores the past and potential futures of urban environments. Jeyifous has exhibited widely and has created large-scale public artworks in Brooklyn, Chicago, Durham, and Cleveland.