Dr. Paloma Pavel is president and founder of the Earth House in Oakland, California and has decades of experience in working with community organizing and multi–racial leadership development and is passionate about promoting climate and environmental justice as well as healthy urban development.
– In the past we have thought about communities in a strictly placed based way, sort of located in certain locations, says Dr. Pavel.
This place–based understanding of communities is important, but Dr. Pavel emphasizes that if we are going to meet the entangled challenges of climate change and social justice, we still need to think relationally about how our communities are connected
– Placed–based communities, our regions, and how we are in relation not only to our self, but to one another and to the places that we reside in, and how we care for those, these are all connected, explains Dr. Pavel.
Dr. Pavel says that she has chosen the word ‘breakthrough’ to describe the communities she works with because the word can imply a sense of vitality and agency that is needed to meet the climate and resource challenges we are facing.
– It is important to see that we have agency and possibilities in the midst of these challenges that are going on around us, she adds.
A lot of the work Dr. Pavel and her partners have done have been about empowering communities to find their own strength and strategies for standing up to various injustices, as well as give them the tools to imagine other pathways for their community.
– A breakthrough community is one that has learned to act on its own behalf, not only to say no to things that are destructive or unraveling of the community, but also to say yes. What is it that we long for, such as clean air and clean water, access to food, affordable housing, or transportation.
We proceed at the speed of trust
The focus on community action as a strategy for environmental and social change has also been chosen to inspire a sense of shared belonging and cooperation between institutions and across divides in society.
When California passed The Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act in 2008, Dr. Pavel gathered resources and people in her network to figure out how to engage communities to develop these kinds of strategies. One of the challenges they met was getting people to come to the community meetings they organized.
– People are reluctant because they have felt a betrayal by public policy, or a sense of decisions being reversed in the past - broken treaties, says Dr. Pavel.
Dr. Pavel elaborates that one of the questions they had to ask was:
– How do we do this in a culturally friendly and inclusive manner even in beginning of the process?
– Can we make sure that every voice is heard?
They quickly realized that there are many practical, everyday constraints to overcome for people to be able to organize, such as childcare or transportation.
– It helps when there is food, it helps when they are occurring at a time when people actually can join, says Dr. Pavel.
Another central issue was that of translating between the expertise from universities and other agencies and the knowledge and expertise found in the communities themselves, as a foundation for beginning to do research within communities differently.
– People who are living in these frontlines have a genius and a knowledge of what works, and oftentimes it is a translation issue of how we get the resources and the technical support that translates that on the ground knowledge and expertise into action, she emphasizes.
Finding common alliances
Many social and environmental issues, whether linked to race, class, housing, or transportation, are intersecting and overlapping, and they cross juridical and geographical boundaries. Dr. Pavel found that change really starts happening when communities recognize this and scale up their activities.
– Often community groups haven’t thought of themselves as a system that can be planned and coordinated.
– As neighborhoods begin to link with other neighborhoods and start to create a regional scale, that is an exciting moment.
In addition to regional collaborations, Dr. Pavel stresses the importance of creating alliances and networks that are translocal, and even transnational.
– Often strategies being developed in one place can be utilized and accelerate change in another place or saying no in one place can prevented the damage just being exported to another country or another people who are maybe more vulnerable, says Dr. Pavel.
Listen to Dr. Paloma Pavel in conversation with Professor Karen O’Brien on community development and social and environmental justice with case examples from breakthrough communities throughout the US.