Activists striving to create more livable shared futures are increasingly struggling with the discriminatory force of data. We need new practices and principles to wrestle with the fraught politics of data in justice work, including environmental justice. Even as we may need to work with data, data is always messy, partial, political and provisional. What frameworks and lessons might guide us?

We invite you to participate in creating the visions and values of what we might call “Environmental Data Justice.” This is an open online event for community organizers, practitioners, researchers, and students working at the front lines of environmental and data justice struggles. All are welcome.

We hope that Environmental Data Justice might become a useful framework that ties together principles of Environmental Justice and Digital Justice in ways that help raise and address important issues of access, anti-racism, sovereignty, consent, and community control in response to increased surveillance and discrimination through data.  Building on the principles of environmental justice, this event defines environment broadly to include urban spaces and issues of community conditions shaping life and public well-being, in addition to important questions of pollution.

We invite you to join us in this co-learning event to share the lessons, tools, frameworks, and guiding values from your Environmental and Data Justice projects.

When: Thursday, February 28, 2019 at 7-9pm EST/ 4-6pm PST.  

What: An online workshop sharing lessons learned and frameworks for environmental and data justice work.

Where: Register to receive a link.

Who is invited: Community organizers, practitioners, environmental justice organizers, data justice organizers, academics, students, and anyone interested.

Format: The evening will be organized through panels of invited speakers who will give short talks to ignite our conversation and learning. This event will be recorded and shareable online.

Schedule:

Opening: Bringing Environmental and Data Justice Together

Panel 1: Sharing Frameworks Across Struggles

Kristyn Sonnenberg, Detroit Community Technology Project
Nasma Ahmed, Director, Digital Justice Lab
Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear, U.S. Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network

Panel 2: Sharing Lessons from Projects

Olga Bautista: Ban Petcoke, Southeast Environmental Taskforce, Poor Peoples’ Movement
Laura Perovich and ECO Youth Crew, Greenroots Chelsea
Erin McElroy, Cofounder, Anti-Eviction Mapping Project

Final Discussion:  Next Steps

Aims:

• Start a co-learning community around Environmental Data Justice
• Build towards the development of a Environmental Data Justice inspired by the principles of Environmental Justice and Data Justice.
• Create a syllabus that can be shared online.

Topics for possible discussion:

• Surveillance and Counter-surveillance
• Consent and Refusal
• Ownership of data and data infrastructures
• Access
• Flawed and incomplete data (e.g., industry-produced data)
• Community-generated data, community science, and monitoring
• Data sovereignty
• Use of health, housing, and personal data
• Practices of community review of data
• Data scoring like risk assessment

EDGI Code of Conduct.

About EDGI

The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) is a network of academics, practitioners, and non-profits addressing potential threats to United States federal environmental and energy policy, and to the scientific research infrastructure built to investigate, inform, and enforce them. EDGI is a distributed collaboration operating under the fiscal sponsorship of the non-profit, Public Lab, with volunteer members across North America.