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#64: Unions and Conservation
66 Plays5 years ago
In this episode of The Accidental Safety Pro Podcast, Series host Jill James interviews Yodit. Yodit was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and is a 35-year-old educator in sustainability practices. She is also currently the coordinator of the environmental career worker training program at UCLA’s Labor Occupational Safety and Health Division. Come listen to them talk about safety, unions, and sustainability.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:09
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded on October 8, 2020. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer, and today I'm joined by Yodit. Born and raised in Addis, Ababa, Ethiopia, Yodit is a 35-year-old educator in sustainability practices.
00:00:30
Speaker
Yodit is currently coordinator of the Environmental Career Worker Training Program at UCLA's Labor Occupational Safety and Health Division. She has a master's degree in urban sustainability and is also an educator providing environmental justice and most recently COVID-19 awareness for essential
Yodit's Documentary and Accidental Journey
00:00:48
Speaker
workers.
00:00:48
Speaker
Yodit also cultivates and develops relationships with organizations and workforce development programs in LA, serving marginalized populations with job readiness training for careers in environmental, construction and other green industries.
00:01:03
Speaker
She's also a documentarian having produced Immigrant, a 19 minute short documentary film featuring the perspectives of independent voices based in Southern California. The film provides an intimate look at immigration's narrative in the current United States political culture and sheds a new light on understanding migration and displacement as sustainability issue. Yodit is joining us today from Los Angeles. Welcome to the show, Yodit.
00:01:31
Speaker
Thank you, Jill. So I don't think I've ever had anyone on the show who's got a degree in urban sustainability before. And certainly I have never spoken with anyone who works in environmental justice. So I am super interested to hear about both of those things today.
00:01:51
Speaker
But wondering, could you start like we do all of our podcasts with all of our guests and tell us how did you end up in the career in health and safety with the background that you have? What's your accidental story? Yeah, that's a great question. I recently actually had an opportunity to
00:02:13
Speaker
on that same prompt that you have brought up. Like you mentioned, I have a background in urban sustainability. I went to Antioch University in Los Angeles to get my master's in urban sustainability.
00:02:34
Speaker
The program is a brand new program nationwide, I believe, so I'm not surprised you haven't met anybody that has a sustainability background or master's program, master's degree. So yeah, I stumbled up on the program kind of accidentally. I really wanted to do my master's degree in kind of
00:03:00
Speaker
public administration, social justice type of field. And when I found out and when I learned more about urban sustainability kind of encompasses a range of
00:03:15
Speaker
justice issues and ecosystem stinking and climate change, kind of like what our life and world is grappling with right now. So I really was interested immediately to like, okay, this is exactly what I want to know more about and what I want to be part of. Because the end game for that program is to, you know, it's change oriented, social change
Role at UCLA and Impact of Pandemic
00:03:42
Speaker
oriented. So
00:03:43
Speaker
This was something that really attracted me. So two years program, towards the end, I've come across a position from UCLA Labor Occupational Safety and Health to facilitate and coordinate a worker training program that the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, NIHS, a federal program
00:04:12
Speaker
Um, um, it's a grant program, a worker training program that NHS provides. So, uh, when I saw that there were some relevance, um, uh, relevance to, to the program I've studied, but I really, you know, my colleagues in the field have public health background, um, occupational safety and health background. Uh, a lot of them have industrial hygiene background, which is very specific.
00:04:40
Speaker
to the work, me, I come in with a lot of like, you know, broad range of backgrounds. So it was, I have familiarity with the community based organizations that the program supports. And I was intrigued by that. So the rest was a learning journey for me on the job learning experience to in terms of, you know, the specific the nitty gritty of workforce development program.
00:05:10
Speaker
Yeah, wow. And so at UCLA in the Labor Occupational Safety and Health Division, what's day-to-day life like there when you're doing education? Like who's part of the program? What are people learning? What is it like? Yeah, so we get this grant from NIHS and we have a
00:05:36
Speaker
a consortium, we're part of a consortium, a university, Western regions, universities consortium that includes University of Washington, Arizona State University, and UC Berkeley. And the workforce development program is done in two cities and under the University of, I'm sorry, and two programs.
00:06:00
Speaker
under the University of Washington in Los Angeles. So how we do it is that we work with community-based organizations and workforce development programs and even state agencies that are working or have a job training program to support unemployed and underemployed individuals
00:06:29
Speaker
from a marginalized communities. So we essentially plug into these programs with our resources of trainers and resources of training that will allow these workers to do their jobs safely, to know their rights on the work,
00:06:55
Speaker
And, you know, be able to go back to their families at the end of the day.
Environmental Justice and Marginalized Communities
00:07:00
Speaker
So we do support partner organizations that recruit students from marginalized communities by providing them health and safety training. Fascinating. Yeah. So our programs are in Los Angeles City, of course, and we have
00:07:19
Speaker
under the University of Washington Supervision, we support programs in Portland and Seattle and tribal communities in Alaska. Wow, so quite a wide reach. It is, yeah. So you were finishing up your urban sustainability graduate degree. What did you think was the job that you might get or was interested in going after and then you came into this? Did you ever think safety might be part of your background?
00:07:49
Speaker
No, well, yeah, I mean, it's in the title of the organization. Yeah, a little bit. But the organization, the position itself was advertised as, you know, my biggest attraction to it was like, hey, you're going to be able to support
00:08:07
Speaker
people get a good clean green union jobs, right? So I was like, I could do that. I have some staff augmentation background previously, I worked in a construction firm before that. And then, you know, the environmental justice piece was an appeal to me, because that was what I was working on in grad school. So I was like, yes, okay, so this is my strongest suits, I can
00:08:34
Speaker
you know, this is what I can bring to the table. And then the safety piece wasn't part of the, like I can always coordinate the safety trainings.
00:08:46
Speaker
kind of like, you know, the hazardous waste training programs or the OSHA certificate programs, I can always coordinate those and outsource those two outreach trainers. Yeah. And then along comes this pandemic.
00:09:07
Speaker
And so how did, yeah, so how did that impact the work that you're doing at the, you know, where you are right now? What shifted or changed? Yeah, the work I'm doing, you know, the end goal for the work would be to place the students that we've trained in collaboration with the partner organization.
00:09:38
Speaker
right off the bat, because of all the shutdowns, not only we are having, you know, challenges to placing students to jobs, but we also kind of are facing with students losing their jobs, the students that we've already previously placed on construction and environmental career fields. So yeah, it's a, I mean, it's a devastation all across across the board. So
00:09:59
Speaker
be able to place them on the job.
00:10:07
Speaker
We are doing our best to support our programs, you know, above and beyond of what we would normally do. For example, we don't want training to stop. So we are, you know, we're really trying to be very adaptable and flexible to switching some of the trainings to virtual.
00:10:34
Speaker
Um, to the virtual world, you know, to online training. So it is challenging, but it's also, there's a lot of learning, um, learnings and trials and errors that goes along with that. So we're doing our best to, uh, become adaptable to the situation.
00:10:54
Speaker
Yeah. So your work certainly hasn't slowed down because of the pandemic. It sounds like you're probably even more engaged because you have an additional thing to be training people on. Well, I wouldn't say it got more easy because, like I said, because we're not able to train him, not able to provide hands-on training
00:11:20
Speaker
Sure. And some of these safety skills have to have hands-on components in order to provide the training thoroughly.
00:11:31
Speaker
we have shut, some of our partners have shut down their doors because there is really nothing they can do about it. But we are doing our best to convert some of the trainings to awareness level, just for those individuals that would go to essential works, right? So, yeah, there's a challenge with recruitment, there's a challenge with placement. We're just in the middle of
00:12:01
Speaker
those two scenarios trying to do the best that we can. And continue to ready the workforce. Exactly.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah, so I was interested to learn more about environmental justice and what that means in general. What does that mean? How does it impact your work? And where do you see the intersectionality with health and safety in the workplace? Yeah, so environmental justice
00:12:42
Speaker
Is a component of urban sustainability is 1 of the 3 components of urban sustainability. So, for us to have a sustainable urban living life, we have.
00:12:57
Speaker
environmental justice on one hand, but we have social justice and economic justice, right? Okay, so those are the three limbs. Exactly. Those are the three pillars of urban sustainability, and they're not separate from one another. They're deeply, deeply interrelated with one another.
00:13:14
Speaker
So how we how we conduct our economy is creating essentially creating a lot of problems for the burdens of environmental injustice and how we view society and how we you know based on race most specifically and more importantly and based on class is also
00:13:42
Speaker
translates to environmental injustice. So before I go into that, the environment piece of the environmental justice is the air we breathe, the soil or the land that we live on and we live off of in the water, right? So how we conduct our economy and how
00:14:05
Speaker
you know, what's race and social status we reference to impacts these things. So the the justest part of this is when, for example, corporate and business practices that manufacture or produce goods that emit smoke, leak toxins and chemicals. And when these industries are permitted
00:14:34
Speaker
or are unregulated to operate in the backyards of communities of color. So that's where the justice piece comes from. So the EJ, that's short for Environmental Justice. Thank you. Okay, so just a little bit of background for the history of environmental justice. Yes, please. Yes, please.
00:15:03
Speaker
Yeah, take me to school, Yodita. I'm very fascinated to hear about this because I don't know and I bet much of our audience doesn't either. So please take us to school. OK, thank you. So environmental justice is a movement. So it became a movement in this country in the late 70s after an incident known as the PCB Midnight Dumping in North Carolina. Wow. So
00:15:31
Speaker
Some truck driver was told to take chemicals to PCB chemicals, and he decided it was night it was midnight so he decided to just dump it off the side of a highway road. So, when the authorities discovered that.
00:15:50
Speaker
He went to jail, but now they have to deal with like, okay, we need to remove this soil, this PCB, this chemicals off the side of the road. And then like, where should we put it? Right? So immediately it's like, well, let's just dump it in the neighborhood where African-Americans live.
00:16:07
Speaker
So that was in 1978 and it took two decades and many fights to have that removed out of that neighborhood, to have the soil be cleaned and be removed from places where African-Americans live. So from the 70s to the 90s,
00:16:33
Speaker
EJ was a fight, EJ was a movement, and it became kind of like a federal law in the 90s after the first National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, which was in 91. And this is an event that kind of placed environmental justice in the forefront of our societal
00:17:03
Speaker
socioeconomic problems, right? So before that, environmentalism in America was kind of, it existed kind of sort of superficially, meaning that the main focus of environmentalism was dealing with
00:17:21
Speaker
nature's conservation, wilderness, national parks, and so on. It didn't really deal with environment as a place where people or communities live in.
00:17:37
Speaker
And also it was made up of these very elitist group of white men. So there was a lack of diversity, which kind of is the reason why environmental justice has kind of been put on the body.
00:17:52
Speaker
like environmental justice as something that affects communities is a blind sight for this movement, for environmentalism. So the Senate that was conducted by the first national people of color has changed that. It kind of changed the landscape of and how we think about environmental justice. Shining a light on the people that it impacts. Exactly.
Global Perspective on Environmental Justice
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah, and the economics of that and how it impacts the society as a whole. That's exactly it. Okay. So globally, environmental justice is also a global phenomenon because this is about discrimination, right? Like, for example, in the US,
00:18:48
Speaker
segregation of the 1930s kind of caused pollutions to be segregated as well because you're not going to put manufacturers or industries like oil refineries or like the paper mill that they that was placed in Alabama, for example, in African American communities, you're not going to do that in an affluent white neighborhood.
00:19:14
Speaker
So because we segregate communities based on color, pollution is also segregated based on color and environmental justice disproportionately affects black indigenous people of color. But it's also a global phenomenon because we have segregated countries as developing and developed countries. We have first world, second world, third world countries.
00:19:41
Speaker
So one of the biggest historical events that created this disparity in wealth gap between the global South and Western countries is colonization, right? So now centuries later, among other devastations and impacts of colonizations, it had also ensured that first world waste has a dumping site.
00:20:12
Speaker
Our capitalist economy needs consumerism. We must buy, buy, buy, buy. You buy a $900 phone, a year later, you have to throw it away and get a new one. That's how we govern our economy.
00:20:36
Speaker
Where does that go? Where does that one year old phone, one year old television or any like electronic device, where do they go? Right. So, um, what happens is like about 80% of, uh, electronic waste, um, is, you know, shipped, put in the container and shipped and just being thrown in the backyard. So third world countries like China, Nigeria, India, Vietnam, and Pakistan.
00:21:06
Speaker
And so, you know, these electronics have chemicals in them. They combust spontaneously in the backyards. They emit smoke and people are breathing these inhalants and just toxins. We just don't see faces or just don't.
00:21:26
Speaker
know those faces of those people that are being impacted by this. So environmental justice is a movement and it's also a branch of a study that deals with all these injustices that we're grappling with. So I will end that by saying, you know, like I said, it's now recognized as a, and it's a federal
00:21:53
Speaker
policies and regulations that involved with environmental justice. So since I live in California, when I provide this education, I kind of end with, you know, okay, so there's a California statutory definition of environmental justice. And it says, environmental justice means the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures,
00:22:21
Speaker
and incomes with respect to the development, adoption, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies. So it is the fair treatment of people of all races and implementations of environmental laws, regulations and policies need to involve people of all races. And it's a, you know,
00:22:51
Speaker
an acknowledgement and an awareness to these conditions and how we segregate certain environmental injustices.
00:23:04
Speaker
Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Really appreciate it. What an interesting history. Not necessarily surprising to think about where we've been and where we are, but sad that it continues and that we have to continue to shine a light on this.
00:23:26
Speaker
You know, when we were talking prior to our recording and getting to know one another, and I was hearing a little bit about your background, we were talking a bit about the history of labor.
00:23:42
Speaker
as it relates to environmental justice. And I'm wondering if maybe you can share a bit of that with our audience as well, when we think about workplace safety and health and the history of the labor movement in this country. Yeah. So there's an interesting history of labor in this country.
00:24:08
Speaker
I don't think we can discuss any type of workforce economic activity without discussing slavery, right?
Connection with Labor and Social Justice Movements
00:24:16
Speaker
Because truly, that is where the timeline begins. The economic production of this country was developed on the backs of black people and on the lands of indigenous Americans. And labor and union organizing has had several monumental changes since
00:24:37
Speaker
the abolishment of slavery. Several campaigns have been fought and seen successes that shaped the labor laws we have today. So Black workers have always been at the center of labor movements in this country and that they have fought for the right to work and right to be in a union every time. So in the aftermath of slavery, 1866,
00:25:06
Speaker
the National Labor Union, for example, declared it would admit members regardless of color. But of course, it wasn't the case, right? Because segregation and discrimination was very much the norm. And progressive leaders like Frederick Douglass brought forward this issue of segregated unionization and discrimination, which
00:25:33
Speaker
allowed for the implementation of the American Federation of Labor, AFL, for short, kind of revived the labor, the labor movement by organizing skilled workers. However, again, you know, despite pledging to be fair to all workers, regardless of color, creed or nationality, by 1895, like, you know, around
00:26:02
Speaker
eight years maybe, so kind of the AFL kind of reversed this position and allowed new affiliates of the unions to prohibit African Americans from joining their ranks. So if we look at major historical events taking place simultaneously, since we have World War I, we have
00:26:26
Speaker
the Great Depression in the 30s, then we have World War II. And so everybody was struggling with these crises, but black people were fighting for the right to be treated, for the right to be humans also, you know, on top of that.
00:26:46
Speaker
Um, then in the sixties, um, where, you know, we're the height of the civil rights movements. Um, and this is when the labor movement began to play a larger role for social justice. So the labor movement, um, organized 40,000 union members for the March on Washington for jobs and freedom. Um,
00:27:11
Speaker
And this is, you know, this is where you can see like the social justice aspect of things. Yeah, it's coming together. Coming together. Yeah. So, you know, union members from United Auto Workers, amalgamated meat cutters and butcher workmen.
00:27:31
Speaker
the National Association of Social Workers, the Chicago Teachers Union, the American newspaper guild. So these unions were like huge backers of the civil rights movement. And Dr. Martin Luther King himself marched with the sanitation workers and he supported a strike that was organized by the international chemical workers.
00:27:57
Speaker
So worker right movements are movements for social justice and social change. And also environment, so because like breathing chemicals, inhaling chemicals, workers are part of communities, right? These workers working in refineries and industries that is affecting their health without any protection, without any benefits to their health.
00:28:25
Speaker
are part of the communities that the same pollutant is affecting too, right? Yeah, so both at work and at home. Both at work and at home, exactly. So it's a movement for social justice and social change.
00:28:42
Speaker
And I think what most people miss on is that when a group of people organize to demand the betterment of their conditions, like specific conditions, it always benefits the whole, like it's for the betterment of society as a whole.
00:28:59
Speaker
Um, so this is evident in the recent racial uprising, um, uh, like, followed by the killing of George Floyd and that it wasn't just the city of monopolist that that was, uh, you know, that erupted that exploded that cold injustice.
00:29:17
Speaker
It sparked an international outcry by people from all types of race and color saying like this is an injustice that we do not want to be part of. It's not just a black people issue. That's a little bit of a tangent but I wanted to kind of paint a picture of how labor movements is not like an isolation
00:29:41
Speaker
of all these other movements that we're doing, we're all trying to uplift up better living conditions for our future generations.
00:29:50
Speaker
sustainable way of living amongst each other too, right? Yeah, you know, when listening to you talk about history of labor and you know, who it includes and where it began. It's, I have to say, I think I need to change the way I talk about this. When I do training with employees at our company,
00:30:19
Speaker
and I'm trying to teach them about workplace safety and health. I always start with a historical perspective because I think it's important to start to know where did we come from and how did we get where we are today. However, I haven't started back far enough. I haven't included far enough back. I usually start talking about
00:30:41
Speaker
you know, the turn of the century and what was happening with the industrial movement and about, you know, where we didn't have worker rights, we didn't have safety and health laws, we didn't have labor laws, which is all true, of course. And then I talk about just as you did, you know, like these movements that were happening with civil rights and environmental rights and how everything kind of came together with worker rights and, you know, OSHA is born.
00:31:09
Speaker
But I need to back up. I need to back up really far if I'm going to be, you know, painting an accurate history of, you know, workplace safety and health and where it started. So thank you for that. I might have to call you back and say, okay, Odeet, you know, I'm going to work on, you know, new employee onboarding again. You know, I need some help framing this. So thank you for that.
00:31:36
Speaker
I'm wondering, you were talking about how shining a light on these issues when it comes to, as you framed up, urban sustainability being three pronged with economics and social justice and environmental justice, how it impacts all persons. When you're doing your work in education,
00:32:00
Speaker
You know how, how do you go about informing people whose lives may not be impacted by this to pay attention, you know, I mean, I'm thinking of, I'm thinking of like one thing in particular.
00:32:18
Speaker
learning about Michigan's water supply being contaminated for as long as it had been. Nobody knew about it, or at least I didn't know about it from my place of privilege. When things like this are happening, how does the work that you do, how do you reach people who may not know, maybe didn't know that they needed to care about it? How do you go about educating people?
00:32:45
Speaker
So that they can be, you know, helpful. Yeah. So we you know our training is specific to work or health and safety but through these these forces of environmental justice and
Education and Awareness in Environmental Justice
00:33:02
Speaker
Um, you know, we're trying to develop civic engagement from our students. Um, we're inviting students to be aware of the systems that are causing, um, um, like underlying issues of health, you know, impacts in economic disparities. So these are not like.
00:33:24
Speaker
Like you're not going to learn environmental justice and like directly apply it in a construction field. But you are aware of the broader, you know, the narratives that are playing out there, the dominant narrative that that plays out in terms of, you know, this is your fault, you're sick because you didn't do this, or you didn't put this on. Or, you know, and
00:33:51
Speaker
Like maybe another example would be, you know, chemicals and plastics being, like we don't need to wrap individual oranges and plastics, right? Like we keep, we're crying. Like this is ending up in our oceans. This is crazy, but the chemical industry, the corporate industry will like point fingers. It's not the plastic that's the problem. It's the waste management.
00:34:15
Speaker
cities are not equipped to manage waste. In fact, we ship our plastics to other countries, right? Yeah, exactly. Our garbage is being shipped out of our eyesight. Yeah, so it's not the product. We really don't need this many plastics in every little thing, but it's how stories and narratives are framed that makes
00:34:44
Speaker
people kind of develop a certain perspective in a certain way. So shifting the narrative, listening to languages and communications is kind of like a story-based strategy is what kind of like what we focus on, what I focus on when I put education because a lot of the times, for example, when I ask students, what does environmental justice mean to you?
00:35:13
Speaker
Uh, people don't really connect, um, um, like, you know, um, communities, like, you know, people say exactly what the old, old, old environmentalism means. And they come in with the expectation of like, well, are you talking about nature? Are you talking about like the polar bear? We want to save the dolphins. Yeah, right. So it's like, no, no, no. So when we go deeper and deeper and we, you know, engage through education.
00:35:43
Speaker
people now all of a sudden are coming up with examples. It's like, yeah, I see. That's why I have food desert in my community because, you know, affluent neighborhoods have whole foods and groceries with healthy food and farmers market. We have fast food blocks after blocks after blocks. So making that connection as an environmental injustice is kind of huge, right? Like now you're going to be
00:36:13
Speaker
Like, what are you going to do about it? Like, are you going to continue to be consumers of these harmful businesses, or then you pull back and you're going to start maybe organizing within your communities, get a community lot, build businesses, co-ops, or maybe getting a community lot to put green vegetables in it, like, right, to share within your community.
00:36:39
Speaker
you're gonna start growing in your balcony some, I don't know. So people come up with their own like, aha moments from from these trainings. And it's what we provide is, you know, framing and like how, how systems are, you know, how these systems are political and are intricate and are out there for the benefit. And for the
00:37:05
Speaker
you know, growth of capitalism, and like, it's got nothing to do with people care or care. Yes, it's all profit driven. So like giving that awareness or helping students connect the dots is kind of what what our educational system is. It's actually it's called a popular education method or spiral method. So we start from
00:37:32
Speaker
the individuals, the trainer, I'm sorry, the students, the trainees own empirical experience about the issue. And then we build on that and then have them connect the dots and have them come up with their own kind of like understanding of
00:37:51
Speaker
what environmental justice is. Yeah, and on the job, are you also helping people be aware of hazards they may not know are hazards, particularly environmental ones and how it impacts their own personal health with regard to maybe specific work practices or ways to protect themselves and why it's important
00:38:16
Speaker
you know, and how that can impact their whole lives, not only on the job, but at home or what they could be bringing back home as well as that part of your education too. Yeah, not only that, not only like, you know, something as tangible as a chemical hazard, but individuals are able to connect and draw like, you know,
00:38:40
Speaker
mental health is also important, like, right, like to like on the job stress and dealing with that type of health aspect of our health. So individuals are even connecting, like just above and beyond of workplace hazard, but like before going to work and after going to work and like how to develop a
00:39:08
Speaker
holistic and wholesome health practices to then to protect themselves and their family. Like that's, yeah, that's kind of the whole human. It's a whole, yeah, it's a whole human experience. Yeah, a whole human approach to, to, to staying self safe on the job, but also, but also at home so that you can come back the next day and have a have a career and have a life. Yeah, yeah, fascinating.
00:39:39
Speaker
What an interesting career, Yody. I mean, how many years have you been at this? I've been at my job three years.
Personal Journey and Storytelling in Education
00:39:50
Speaker
So I've been educating urban environmental justice for about two years. And recently through virtual training up and also providing awareness, COVID-19 awareness training as well.
00:40:08
Speaker
Yeah. You had talked about your graduate degree. Before that, I'm curious, what's your undergrad degree in? My undergrad degree a long, long time ago was in English from University of Washington in Seattle. So what a jump, right? So you went from an English degree to urban sustainability.
00:40:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting because when I first came into this country with my family, we settled in Seattle and I went to a community college. I really had a hard time navigating like higher learning in this country because of all the like the culture.
00:40:51
Speaker
differences and just like not, not knowing how to write the right questions to be where I want to be like, and also being young and not having like a clear vision of what my, what I want my career to be. So I just ended up doing English because it was kind of felt like neutral because I was thinking about going to law school. I was thinking about, you know, several different, um, um, few career fields, but that just didn't
00:41:19
Speaker
quiet stick with me until like discovered urban sustainability. So I've navigated like social service career fields and like, you know, I had a, I've been, I've worked for a domestic violence intervention program.
00:41:40
Speaker
I worked for, you know, after actually after the urban sustainability program started, I worked for Disney for to become an environmental steward for one of the feature film productions. Really? Yeah, yeah.
00:41:59
Speaker
So Disney is paying attention to environmental justice, is that what you're saying? Yes, playfully so. Yeah, so how does that work? Tell us about that. What's that experience about? Yeah, so it was for a feature film called A Wrinkle in Time, directed by Ayla different name. Yeah, I've seen it. Oh yeah. Yeah, it's wonderful.
00:42:24
Speaker
So yeah, yeah. So studios, actually major studios for major like this hundred million dollar plus productions have started incorporating initiatives to be because it's one of the really wasteful industries, right? So there's a lot going on in production. And then once production starts, you have 200, 300 crew members just daily.
00:42:54
Speaker
16 hour a day work. So they eat, like there's a food catering crews part of the film production and because you have to feed people there, they're not going to go out to find lunch somewhere else, right? So where does all of that go? So they brought in, they started incorporating sustainable practices. And I was very pleased to
00:43:20
Speaker
to discover that because the film industry is one of the oldest industries to now, you know, have developed awareness and the need like recognizing the need to be to manage waste and to be conservative of energy use is very important. And it just shows you that, you know, environmental awareness, environmental justice could be incorporated in
00:43:46
Speaker
all kinds of industries and it's part of our lives, right? So yeah, we've donated food, left over and served food to shelters and churches and other programs daily so that it doesn't end up in Luntville.
00:44:05
Speaker
We tried to promote composting, although because we hop on from different location to location, it's not always a practical or ideal, but we've tried so many different initiatives. We introduced recycling projects and energy conservatives and kind of, yeah, we were able also to donate a lot of
00:44:30
Speaker
materials from set to schools that, you know, art schools and children programs that that can use it because normally it would just end up in landfill.
00:44:43
Speaker
Yeah, fascinating, fascinating work. And what a nice thing to hear about the film industry. I know one of the guests that I've had on the podcast early on for anyone who's listening, if you remember, I had a young woman named Carolina.
00:45:02
Speaker
who's the safety and health director at Disney Pixar Studios located in California. And so there's hazards in all of our work environments, and the film industry, of course, is one of those as well. And how nice to hear that they're leaders in this area, it sounds like, Yodit. Yeah, yeah. Hmm.
00:45:26
Speaker
So you were talking about, you know, kind of how you, you know, your early beginnings and your undergraduate degree, but it also, I'm getting this, it sounds like you've always had this passion for justice for a long time in the things that you did. You mentioned some of your work that you've done with, for women as well.
00:45:54
Speaker
where did that where did that fire come from in you that you know it sounds like it sounds like throughout your throughout your life you had this um your your your focus on your focus on justice and it keeps going yeah um
00:46:12
Speaker
I guess you're right. I think I would blame my father for this. Although he really wanted me to be, he's a very traditional father, so he really wanted me to be either a doctor or a lawyer. I really did think about, I'm not going to be a doctor, I'm not a scientist.
00:46:33
Speaker
you know, person at all, but I really did think about going into law school, but it wasn't there because my father was a natural storyteller, like he is so deep into historical, you know, stories that puts values, like human values in their premise. So I grew up listening to him
00:47:00
Speaker
So I guess he didn't think that it would impact me because he could just tell me that I have to be a lawyer and I could be that, but I was like, wait a minute, you put all of this now. So I'm thinking about something else. So I do really believe that their intersectionality exists between storytelling and
00:47:23
Speaker
and justice because as humans, we are made up of stories. We think in stories, we defend ourselves in stories, we decide, we put things up, down, whatever. We are native people and we love and we think and we work with when we assign meaning to certain things is when we can put
00:47:50
Speaker
perspectives and values to that. So I'm really passionate about storytelling, because I really believe that it could bring people together. And depending on how stories are framed, it could bring people together or put people apart. So I choose to be on the side of storytelling, like educating by strategies of
00:48:18
Speaker
using strategies of framing and storytelling. We're kindred spirits there. Man, I love telling a good story. I love hearing a good story. No wonder I host a podcast, right? It's all about hearing people's stories. This is like my favorite thing. Exactly. You have a platform for bringing thoughts of justice and
00:48:44
Speaker
and values that our society is craving for. When you're telling stories, Yodhi, particularly around environmental justice and your practice of urban sustainability, what's a story that's one that you often tell? Assuming you probably have many that you pull out like a bag of tricks almost, right? But yeah, what's a story you often find yourself telling?
00:49:13
Speaker
Yeah, so I was very fortunate enough to have been, you know, groomed and coached by great storytellers in my urban sustainability programs. So one of my ecosystems, thank you, Professor Gopal.
00:49:30
Speaker
He's a great storyteller. I just could listen to him talk every day. Jane Paul, Gilda, a lot of great, great teachers and educators have used and encouraged this storytelling and framing, narrative framing. And that's why I did my, you know, and I
00:49:53
Speaker
graduated from the program, my capstone was the documentary film about immigrants, right? So yes, it was very much encouraged and very much applicable in our program. And so one of the best ways, I think, to educate people about climate change, right, like we have these climate change deniers, for example, it's a thing that I like. So one of the greatest stories that, that, you know, that
00:50:23
Speaker
that gave us people this like, oh, I see kind of movement is ecosystems thinking, right? Like, so there's an activity and exercise about a spider web.
00:50:33
Speaker
that you can do with a group of students. And it really brings forth the essence of what justice, sustainability and like, you know, we live in this one planet and we have a network of ecosystems that we need to think about. We're not just like the masters of universe.
00:50:53
Speaker
going around, going about our economy, doing whatever we want to the environment does not work. We're going to land in a very, very bad place. So either, you know, know and learn be open to these reality or learn to breathe smoke is kind of like the alternative where we are right now. Right. So yeah, I don't say that to students, but the premise of
Sustainability Education in Schools and Conclusion
00:51:23
Speaker
of the, you know, the ecosystems thinking and the activity with the spider web is one that I really like. So you have students, you have a, like a, a yarn, a ball of yarn where, you know, students will throw one, you know, to each other. Like, so you make that you create a circle of students and you create this big web.
00:51:47
Speaker
And this is an activity from an organization called movements generation. So I should give credit for that. So this is kind of like what I use in my training when we have in-person training. And so, you know, the spiders are volunteer, a person who would play the spider role. So then I'll go around cutting strings.
00:52:09
Speaker
And this is deforestation. This is us pulling mountains top off to do mining and, you know, different activities that our extractive economy is involved in. And so the spider person is life itself, right? So it's going around tying those breakages, those, those threads that I'm breaking
00:52:32
Speaker
But then I'll go faster. I'll go faster and faster and faster because that's what we're doing. We're operating this extractive economy at a scale that we as humans cannot keep up anymore. We cannot fix it. The nature doesn't have time.
00:52:49
Speaker
to regenerate anymore because we're doing it at a much bigger scale and we're also doing it faster. So that's kind of like the scenarios like, so now when I'm going faster, the spider or the person who's playing the role of spider cannot keep up anymore. And like the treads are falling down. So like, that's a, that's, you know, yeah. So that's a visual and story, like near your framing of how, how we need to think about environment and our, our systemic.
00:53:18
Speaker
Yeah, wonderful, wonderful. I remember I did something like that with a group of third graders. This sounds crazy. I was a volunteer with an organization called Junior Achievement for many years, which teaches kids
00:53:38
Speaker
Yeah, you know, living in community with one another and our economy. And I remember doing an exercise like that, but it was built around, you know, like being part of a community, part of a city. And and yeah, really, it it really does make a great visual on how we are so interconnected or not, like you said, when you're cutting the threads and where it's all falling down.
00:54:04
Speaker
Yeah, so it's adaptable to different scenarios. Yeah, it's different. Right. In different places. Yeah, incidentally, a lot of us who studied urban sustainability believe that it should be incorporated in in curriculums from, you know, K to 12. Right. So that, you know, our future
00:54:27
Speaker
would not have to grapple with this. Is it real? Is it fake? Is it, you know, so yeah, because we have the science will be embedded in our education. Right, right. So interesting.
00:54:45
Speaker
Yodit, this has been quite an education for me and likely our listeners as well to hear such an interesting take on workplace safety and health.
00:55:01
Speaker
you know, this arm that we don't often talk about. We talk about environment, right? Like we're EH&S professionals, but what does that really mean? And where does it intersect with justice? I really appreciate the work that you're doing. And thank you for the stories and sharing this with our audience today. I was
00:55:24
Speaker
Yeah. So, Yodita, I'm not only am I a story junkie, but I also love to listen to great speeches. And I was just this morning, I was thinking about you because I was listening to this particular speech that was given in 1976
00:55:47
Speaker
Now, you were talking earlier about this PCB midnight dumping in the 1970s. This is all before you were born. But I was listening to this speech today given by the United States representative from Texas back then, Barbara Jordan. And she said in her speech, and I'm going to quote her. This is where I was thinking about you. It says, many fear the future, she said.
00:56:16
Speaker
Many are distrustful of their leaders and believe that their voices are never heard. Many seek only to satisfy their private work, wants to satisfy their private interests. But this is a great danger America faces, that we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups, city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual, each seeking to satisfy private wants.
00:56:43
Speaker
If that happens, who then will speak for America? Who then will speak for the common good? This question which must be answered. And that's the end of her quote. And what I was thinking when I heard that was the common good. And Yodit, that's your life's work right now. You are working for the common good as you framed up so beautifully how this impacts all of us.
00:57:12
Speaker
So you're answering Barbara Jordan's call from way back in 1976 and so many others. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing that speech. It's beautiful. Yeah, I think we all have to find our sphere of influence and we're not power powerless, right? That's right to find out where we are.
00:57:40
Speaker
most impactful and kind of really use that to bring justice to people, to the world. Yeah, yeah. Yodip, before I let you go, and before we say goodbye to our guests today, if people want to find your documentary immigrant, is it something that they can find on YouTube?
00:58:04
Speaker
No, it's not on YouTube, unfortunately, but it will be soon. OK. And then I will share it through my social media when I do so. Very good. Very good. All right. We'll be watching for that. Thank you so much.
00:58:22
Speaker
And thank you for all of you for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good, making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you'd like to join the conversation about this episode or any of our previous episodes, you can follow our page and join the Accidental Safety Pro Community Group on Facebook. If you're not subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player that you'd like.
00:58:52
Speaker
You can also find all of our episodes complete with transcripts at vividlearningsystems.com slash podcast. We'd also love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more safety and health professionals like you. Special thanks to Will Moss, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.