Analyze

Youth's brilliance and their fascination with the wickedness of plastic pollution are forming shoals of abundant possibility and collective futurity amid the rising tides of environmental destruction hitting Bahía de los Ángeles, México. Working in an entangled community with professional scientists, government conservationists, traditional outdoor educators, store owners, school principals, chefs, artists, and family this group of youth (ages 7-17) labor and dream as scientists and cartographers of the future. They voice unpopular questions and concerns, embody lives they mourn leaving behind but understand can't persist, demand more from adults and tourists, labor for imperfect data that they hope will hold community accountability, and (re)map community infrastructure, tracts of refuse, flows of water, chains of fossil fuel transport, food systems, and fishing practices. Despite these undeniable contributions, often adult partners in this work are still slow to take youth thinking and resistance seriously---it is easier to mediate on shortcomings or flaws in youths' epistemologies. Ignoring these sophisticated shoals is a flagrant dismissal of the pluralist thought and perspective required to attend, nonetheless halt, environmental injustices. As adults labor on/for youths' futures there should be a constant disruption of who holds expertise and why and rigorous attention given to youth voice.

Fowler, Kelsie. 2023. "Youth and Community Knowledges Create Thick Shoals of Abundance Amid the Plastiocene." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

 In 1991, the Public Health Service articulated a vision for primary prevention in Strategic Plan for the Elimination of Childhood Lead Poisoning, a departure from previous federal policy focused on finding and treating lead-poisoned children. This publication detailed a 15-year strategy for primary prevention and offered a cost-benefit analysis to demonstrate the monetized benefits of this approach. A strong national effort to follow this strategy developed but was eventually abandoned.

The organized campaign against universal screening began in California, where letters questioning the reported prevalence of elevated BLL began appearing in pediatric journals and newspapers. These letters acknowledged receiving editorial assistance from Kaiser Permanente Foundation Hospitals and argued that money spent on screening, treatment and abatement would be harmful to more worthy public health efforts. The AAP president took up this attack on universal screening as well, and efforts for universal screening were gradually eroded. 

Needleman identifies racism and the belief that lead poisoning “is a product of poor mothering, not of environmental pollution” as a driving factor shaping lead detection and prevention efforts (or the lack thereof) … “this weighting of personal choice or behavior over environment is a tool used to shift responsibility away from health authorities or polluters and onto the victim” (1875).

The Grassroots Global Alliance provides a strategy for just transition to a regenerative economy. For the policy makers, this organizations has come up with these questions as guidance: 

1. Who tells the story? 

2. Who makes the decision? 

3. Who benefits and how? 

4. What else will this impact? 

5. How will this build or shift power? 

Framework: Protect, Repair, Invest, Transform. Under each category, this organization presents their demands and solutions. 

Five points of intervention: the Narratives, Base Building and Organizing, Policy Development, Electoralization and Implementation, Direct Action.