9/27 Alice Li Blog

This week's guest speaker is Susana De Anda. Susana co-founded and co-directs the Community Water Center. She has taken her passion for social justice and turned it into an effort to assist members of her community by providing access to clean drinking water. Susana is determined and a true leader. These traits are apparent during her presentation. Despite the challenges with the drought and shortage, she still works to make sure the community has a seat at the table and that human health is a priority. She started ten years ago by knocking on doors and through her persistence, she now helps low-income residents fight for water and their own health in the San Joaquin Valley.

10/6 Diverse Voices Lecture

Although dependent on the branch of art being analyzed, it typically is mostly performed and watched by people of higher social status. This is especially true when considering events such as plays and art exhibitions, but no matter where you come from virtually everyone has a form of art in their life. For example, most of us enjoy listening to some type of  music - regardless of what this is, it can help bring people closer together. This is what Vernita is trying to do. The arts are an extremely powerful tool, as she proves through some of her scientific studies, and can be used as an element in which important messages are relayed. While Vernita did not have the driving and determined personality that some of our previous lecturers had - like Sussana de Anda - she can get away without having one. It is clear that Vernita is extremely well-versed in this area of study, and has a range of personal experiences to reinforce this. After working in more than 20 countries, and visiting tens of others, she has immersed herself in many different cultures and was able to see the importance of the arts on every single one. It will not be surprising to see Vernita succeed with the unique yet crucial work she is involved with.

9/27 Diverse Voices Lecture

The most surprising thing I learned in this lecture was that thousands of people in California have no access to water, and the government was doing virtually nothing about it before Susanna's effort. I always assumed that water rights were issues seen in developing countries, but never in a place advanced as the United States. What scares me is that after more than a decade, tap water has still not been restored to many of this people, which just goes to show how slow moving the government can be. For the type of work that she does, I believe her personality is very beneficial. Susanna is fierce yet justly determined to get what she wants and what everyone deserves. Not only does is convince the general public that what she's doing is effective and moral, but also will ensure that government actually listens to what she's fighting for. This has appeared to work well for her, since she is now officially partnered with the government ensuring the problem is resolved.

Aisha Sharhan 9/13/2016

Aisha Sharhan

Today went to go meet the panel of the first day of the diverse voices.  This group of panelist were all from Cali, now Michael Mendez mentioned the questions as to why California and that because its an important site of inquiry, it has a  long history of success, they have green house gases solution. Daniel Nepstaib gave a presenting on taking enviornmental justice to scale through international offsets. I feel as though he gave a great introduction as to the topic and at the same time voice his options and still give valuable information as to how the environment is in california along which other panelist. Mari rose taruc asked an important question "will this policy help or hurt kids with asthma?" which then connects to environmental issues/ justice, incourged after getting kicked out of the protects against REDD. She also talked about AB32 is supposed to lower emissions pollution in low income communities.They suffer more during extreme weathers events and breath dirter air. She also mentioned that there are three E's :equity, environment, economy.

Dante Frazer 9/27/16

Dante Frazer 
9/27/16
Environmental Leader

This week the environmental leaders had a panel speaker by the name of Susana De Anda. Susana co-founded and co-directs the Community Water Center. The Community Water Center helps which helps build strategic grassroots capacity to address water challenges in low income communities. She has dedicated over 15 years of her life for this cause. Her discussion was very thought provoking and her passion inspired me as an environmental leader to do more in my community.

Dante Frazer 9/13/16

Dante Frazer
9/13/16
Environmental Leader


This week the environmental leaders had a panel speaker that all had opposing voice on cap and trade. Cap and trade is the most environmentally and economically sensible approach to controlling greenhouse gas emissions. The primary driver of global  emission is greenhouse emission. I agreed mostly with Daniel Nepstaib because his plan was the most comprehensive. Everyone had very good points and are passionate about the environment, even if its in different ways.

9/20 Diverse Voices Lecture

In Sudha's lecture, she descriptively explained the role of environmental justice in Seattle, Washington. Like many other major cities, the discrepancy between where people of low socioeconomic status live and where the wealthy do is huge, and brings to light some serious environmental inequality. In Seattle, areas of high poverty often contain much higher levels of pollution in the atmosphere and in their water. Unsurprisingly, the majority of the people here are people of color, and this is partly due to the extremely large income gap found in the city. Sudha's job is to come together with community leaders who represent people from all over the metro, and figure out the real problems the people are facing, and make them aware to everyone. The official environmental leaders in our country are often apart of the wealthy white class. Sudha want to makes these problems more accessible to the general public, especially when many of the problems trying to be fixed are affecting them the most - the most effective solutions will not be found if these voices are not heard.