By Bella Decrescenzo and Lauren Frank
For The Diamondback
Maryland community members gathered at the College Park Marriott Hotel & Conference Center last week for the 10th annual Environmental Justice Symposium.
The four-day symposium, which took place from Wednesday to Saturday, was organized by the Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health Center at the University of Maryland’s public health school. Each day featured keynote speakers and panelists focused on amplifying the voices of historically marginalized communities who are most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change and natural disasters.
Sacoby Wilson, the center’s founder and director, said he launched the symposium to create a space for people in the mid-Atlantic region to discuss environmental justice issues.
“The symposium is like the connective tissue for a lot of the [environmental justice] work in this region,” Wilson, a professor in this university’s global environmental and occupational health department and epidemiology and biostatistics department, said.
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Wilson highlighted the importance of the environmental justice movement by analyzing the impact of an individual’s zip code on their life expectancy in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
Some communities have limited access to the infrastructure and housing necessary to grapple with detrimental environmental effects, Wilson said. This can lead to a decline in community members’ health, he added.
Vernice Miller-Travis, the executive vice president of the Metropolitan Group — an agency that supports other organizations in driving societal changes — attended the symposium and gave a keynote speech on Saturday.
Miller-Travis told The Diamondback how racial and class-based segregation has forced marginalized communities into areas that have fewer protections from the consequences of extreme weather, such as flooding.
She highlighted the importance of this university confronting environmental vulnerabilities by reaching out to local communities.
“Over the last 10 years, I have seen a lot more engagement by this university and our county, but also in our state and looking at issues of vulnerability on a variety of different platforms,” Miller-Travis said. “I’m really happy to know that.”
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The symposium also featured a panel of high school and college activists who are environmental justice leaders in their communities.
Damilola Folorunso, a sophomore public health science major at this university, was one of the panelists at the event and highlighted her personal growth while interning at the center as a young advocate.
Folorunso interacted with Prince George’s County community members while working with the center. Folorunso added that older movement members have taught her how to tackle the environmental justice issues that impact her local community.
“There are so many people who have been doing this before I was even born, so I think respecting that and trying to listen and understand that perspective is very important,” Folorunso said.
Like Folorunso, Evelyn Hoon, a medical anthropology doctoral student at the University of Cambridge, attended the symposium panel session and reiterated the importance of honoring and learning from the older members of the environmental justice movement.
Hoon said she admires the knowledge from experts such as Wilson who have taught environmental justice advocates how to respond to the community’s needs effectively.
“It’s been so important hearing and listening to things that Sacoby Wilson has been saying about how we position that we do, so that the work we do truly is beneficial — not exploitative — based on what the community needs and guided by the community,” Hoon said. “So not just responding to the needs and doing it ourselves, but having the community lead that work and choose that work themselves.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated that Vernice Miller-Travis gave her keynote speech on Friday. Miller-Travis gave her keynote speech on Saturday. This story has been updated.
