Personal Dialogue Proposal

Personal Dialogue Proposal

1. After great consideration as to what I would like to have my dialogue about, I have decided to talk about climate change and its effects on minority communities, such as communities of color. This issue is filled with complications, as it also is greatly influenced and affected by the political realm. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that to the right wing, climate change seems to be a ploy by liberals to make them appear further left, making it an even more difficult topic to navigate. I want to focus specifically on how both the lack of action, and action, would affect colored communities. In some ways, we can tell that changing to renewable energy would be extremely beneficial and would bring many more jobs. Then, we have to consider who would be the first to get these new sources of renewable energy, since colored communities typically live in places with the worst pollution. I am really interested in how peoples’ view of the climate and the earth has changed over time. I also would like to discuss the religious view of this in that in some parts of the bible (Genesis), the earth is described as man’s, and he is to do with it as he pleases, while other parts of Genesis talk about the earth as being precious and that it is meant to be under man’s care. I want to see how generational change, mixed with people shifting from religiosity to spirituality has to do with environmental change and its effects on colored communities. I hope to gain a broader understanding of how climate change is viewed from this dialogue. 2. I chose this topic because the environment is something that affects every single person on this earth. Yes, climate change will affect some more than others at first, but eventually, everyone will feel the harsh reality of climate change. Many other people my age and I feel an intense urgency and sadness when it comes to this topic. Looking at the facts is depressing, anxiety inducing, and absolutely terrifying. Within our world, there are still disputes about if climate change is even real, and so I feel that this is a crucial topic to be informed on and to know how to talk about. We see more and more in the news about natural disasters, intense weather high’s and low’s and increasingly worse conditions for living. I want this dialogue to be able to help me understand a wider range of what people believe about climate change and how it not only is caused by people, but that it affects people differently. My stake in the matter is that I live on this earth, and I am very familiar with the feeling of extreme urgency and panic that many other people my age and younger are feeling. Our world is being destroyed, and I can relate to the feeling of frustration that our political leaders don’t seem to care, nor take this seriously. One day, I want to have children, but honestly, I am not sure I want to anymore if I know the world is just going to continue to get worse. My stake in this is that I have been directly affected by climate change, being a part of a forest fire that burned down over 360 homes in my

neighborhood, including my own, because of Colorado’s increasingly rising dryness and temperatures. This topic is becoming increasingly salient for me to talk about, especially now being able to vote in the next presidential election. In the 2016 election, I was 17 and was not able to vote, but now I am able to have a voice in our political system and I intend to vote for someone who is going to do something about this problem. This is also so important for me to have a dialogue about because whenever someone disagrees about climate change being real or how it is affecting people, I never quite know what to say. As demonstrated in the readings about weightism, I came to realize how implicitly biased I am towards overweight people. I realize that this could also be how some older people feel about younger generations, or that older generations feel unjustly judged for “not caring about the world,” whereas in reality, I bet a lot of them did and still do. Understanding that implicit biases can come from all over, I want to do my best to learn as much as I can about what other people think. I fully believe that the way to change is to better understand people, so I know that talking about this topic is important for me to be able to, not just be a supporter of minority communities, but be a co-conspirator in making their lives better. 3. Looking at my identity, I am a straight, white woman (although I am commonly asked if I am another race), who has grown up in a well-off financial household, raised mostly by my mother. Even I have had issues raising my voice and being truly heard, and so I can see how it is so incredibly difficult for minority communities who are already “outsiders” and who also do not have financial influence in the world to have a voice. I live in a part of Colorado Springs on the side of a mountain, where we always have clean air and we have clean water that comes directly from the mountains. Just because I live in this lovely area does not mean that it is immune to mother nature, as seen by the fire that burned up the mountains right by my home that destroyed my neighborhood. That being said, although this neighborhood was devastated by that natural disaster, colored and poor communities would have had a much harder and slower time bouncing back. My experiences have opened my eyes to how much our world is being hurt by this. I have seen our state burn summer after summer, and I remember thinking to myself, “our whole state is just going to go up in flames”. Another experience I have had is I studied abroad in removed and went to Australia for about a week before I returned home. This was the time where Australia was experiencing record high dryness and heat, resulting in fire across the whole country. My mom and I saw the entire city of Sydney be covered in Orange smoke, making it impossible to see the hotel next to ours. I have friends that live there, and I related to the terror and fear they had, seeing their whole country burn in flames. That is an image that will never be able to be erased for them. I remember a time in class where my professor talked about the true statistics regarding climate change and the effects that it will have on us all. The overall feeling of the room felt heavy, filled with remorse, frustration, dread, and overall sadness. Students

started to cry as we realized the death of our world and how ignorance will hurt so many people. I will never forget that feeling that day in class and seeing my classmates cry over the future that is being destroyed not by our own doing. I have witnessed people not recycle, or not care about their own food waste. I have seen people fish for things they should not have and disregard the rule that they should throw them back. I have seen birds choke on balloon bits after a leftover college party. I have seen so many things that hurt our world, and so many people who either don’t understand the consequences, or just don’t care, and I want to be able to better understand why they think what they do, and find a way to respectfully share with them the urgency that I and so many other people my age feel. My experiences obviously affect my opinion on this topic, but I have also seen the devastation of other people who are not as privileged as me, and I want to help speak up for the world and for those who are the worst affected by this. 4. For this dialogue, I chose to talk to my mother. She was born in 1959 (don’t tell her I told you, she doesn’t like other people knowing), and so I feel that she will bring a really interesting view to the table. She has experienced what the world was like before a lot of environmental acts came into play. The Environmental Protection Agency, founded by President Nixon, was created in 1970. I want to see how much she remembers about when environmental acts were being created and how people reacted to them at the time. My generation praises these laws, and most even think they need to be stricter or held to higher standards, but I want to see how she felt about these new laws coming into play. I am so curious about if it was easy for people to accept these laws, if it was seen as “a pain”, or if people were excited about being able to have protection about air and water quality. My mom has voted as a republican before in her life but has now changed to a fairly strong liberal. I think it will be really interesting and helpful to hear how the republicans handled climate change before our country became so polarized. Richard Nixon was a Republican candidate, and so it is clear that something between then and now has changed drastically regarding the right wing of the US. I also feel like it will be beneficial to hear how her thought process of climate change and its effects on colored communities has changed over the years, in hopes that if I can see her own belief evolution, maybe I can help others get there too. My mother and I have a good relationship where we are able to sit down and have a discussion or dialogue with dinner. She is one of the people that have taught me to think critically and speak assertively about what I care about. My mom and I definitely agree that climate change is an extreme issue, although I find myself to be a little “greener” than she is. For example, I just bought this cookbook, Cooking with Scraps, and I am absolutely SO excited to cook the things in this book! One of the recipes shows how to make a cake from BANANA PEELS. Talk about zero waste. When I told her about it, she couldn’t quite get on board and told me very politely, “Removed, some things just

need to be thrown away.” I was sad she wasn’t as excited as I was about eating banana peels and carrot tops, but I know that generally, her and I definitely agree on this topic and that sustainability is so important in affecting the climate. Because of where we live, we can’t compost. We live in a neighborhood where bears, mountain lions, and deer are around all the time. So, we have strict rules in our neighborhood about not leaving out trash for more than three hours, or not having compost bins because it attracts bears. Because of that, my mom and I both understand how important it is to use up as much food as we can and to buy things that produce less waste, so I feel that this conversation will have a good spectrum of us agreeing and us being able to challenge each other to think bigger. This dialogue of climate change will cover so many topics, since we both know that many things contribute to it such as food production (the meat industry), food waste, carbon emissions, and nonrenewable resources. 5. In order to prepare my mom for this dialogue, I am going to ask that both of us do several things. First of all, I think it is important for us to both actually know what we are talking about. Yes, it is a dialogue based on experiences and feelings, but I think it will be beneficial for each of us to have a review of the EPA and the laws and acts they passed. Other than that, I am planning on showing my mom the PowerPoint that describes the difference between a dialogue and a discussion. My mom and I don’t really argue, so I am not worried about that, but I want my mom to feel as comfortable as possible and that she can share her feelings with me. She tends to feel like she “is on trial” when I ask her questions for school, so I am going to make this as casual as possible, while still making sure that it is a constructive dialogue. In order to help my mom be as comfortable and valued as possible, I will have the two of us sit in our family room on the couches that are next to each other. This way it is less formal. As we saw in the “Staying I(ra)n” reading, it sometimes can be even more difficult to tell your opinions and experiences to your family members. Understanding that my mom was quite traumatized by the fire, I am going to steer clear of that topic directly until she brings it up, if at all. I will also tell her my question a day or so ahead of time, so she has the ability to think through her experiences, beliefs, and identities and how they affect her opinion on this topic. Similarly, to question 3 on this proposal, that is the thought process that I hope she thinks through, as it was really helpful for me in realizing why I feel so passionately about this topic. In order to help us have an effective dialogue, I am going to emphasize the power of silence and how it will be really important for us to listen to each other and not interrupt. I will tell her how I appreciate it so much when she listens to me, because sometimes she tends to interrupt me, which can be frustrating sometimes. If she interrupts me, I will let her finish before saying what I wanted to say. For community agreements, (I bolded all of them so they are easy to count) I really like the ones we came up with as a class. I will present the agreements that while we are talking, we can have no other distractions (no phones, tv off, not looking at her

fitbit, etc). I also think it will be beneficial, as I said in the previous paragraph, to not interrupt each other. Although we generally agree on this topic and I want to hear a lot of how her experiences differ from mine, I want her to feel supported. I am going to teach her about how in conversations, it can be really helpful to restate what a person just said in your own words to make sure you understand. So, for example, Neda did this in class the other day. She explained the assignment, and then she asked us, in our own words, to describe the assignment. I would try to present this to her as a natural thing where if she isn’t quite sure she understood what I said, that she would be allowed to pause me and say, “so what I heard you say was…”. I think this can be really helpful in having there be no misunderstandings, and if there are misunderstandings, then it helps to understand how the speaker is heard and how the listener hears things. I also feel as though it is really important to “make space” if one of us is talking much more than the other, so this is another agreement I will present. As a final community agreement, mainly meant for me, I am going to avoid saying “your generation” vs. “my generation” because yes, I do believe older generations are more stubborn in changing things, but I do not associate her with that. I definitely don’t want to put her on the defense, so I am going to be very specific about how I am talking about the past generations and decisions. 6. Dialogue Questions:

a. Growing up, what were your experiences with how people viewed the state of the world and our climate? b. How have your views of the environment changed over your lifespan, and how much have they been influenced by our political leaders? c. What are your experiences with renewable energy, and what are your thoughts on changing solely to them? How do you feel this will affect poorer communities? d. Understanding how privilege helps people recover faster from natural disasters, do you think there should be reparations provided by our government to help these communities recover?