Microseminar: The Quest for Environmental and Climate Justice

ENVIR 497  |  1 credit
Winter 2021  |  Three course meetings via Zoom
Facilitated by: Edd Hampton (Blaq Elephant Party and George Jackson Freedom Coalition), Melanie Malone (UW Bothell), JM Wong (APICAG/FIGHT family and FreeThemAll WA), and Megan Ybarra (UW Seattle)

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This seminar seeks to prepare for Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Katz Lecture at UW. Dr. Gilmore is an activist scholar who advocates for prison abolition --  not just the closing of prisons but also building up vital systems of support that many communities need. We think through the role of racial capitalism in building up new prisons and detention centers in order to understand Gilmore’s framework of “abolition geography” and think about how we can build strategic coalitions that bring communities together to support each other.
 
This micro-seminar has three goals:

1. To foster connections among abolitionist minded communities in the Seattle region
2. To learn what abolition geography means and how this normative framework can be applied to Washington state; and 
3. To workshop ideas that would apply the insights of abolition geography to Washington state.

We seek to facilitate dialogue with folks who are (1) community-based organizers (2) UW alumni working across university and community spaces; and (3) UW graduate students who are doing activist scholarship. We hope the seminar space will allow us to share strategies designed to advance abolition and community-building projects.

Defund Seattle Police
Image by Stat the Artist