Things That Left Me Shook Week Seven

       This weeks readings can be summmed up with three main ideas: Trump’s admin is a yikes, Twitter is Good, and Idenitity Campaigns are the bad kind of spicy. I am not going to delve in too deep with the Trump readings because honestly we all know that the Trump admin hates science and has been actively trying to censor websites that deal with climate change and other environmental issues, this isn’t new to me and Ihighly doubt it is new to anyone that is taking this class, so instead I am going to be focusing on the latter two ideas. In “From Environmental Campaigns to Advancing the Public Dialougue: Environmental  Communication for Civic Engagement” Robert Brulle basically retells us that identity campaigns are problematic for four reasons: there is a questionable link between environmentalism and core progressive values, ecological modernization and the cooptation of environmentalism, elite-directed social change, and public disempowerment, and framing without mobilization. In simpler phrases he is basically arguing that identity campaigns are bad because: environmentalism isn’t simple, tech fixes are bad, cooptation puts the blame off of capitalism, a few people shouldn’t be able to decide what the public interest is and what the plan should be, and last but certainty not least ideas are reduced to issues of popularity instead of being from informed decisions. This argument makes a lot of sense to me because identity campaigns are all about the short term solution and doesn’t really look at the systematic issues because it is the people who gain from the system that are in charge of these campaigns. In “Seeking Visibility in a Big Tent: Digital Communication and The People’s Climate March” it is argued that the shift from collective action to connective action is a good one, but organizations aren’t trying hard enough to sit there and actively connect other participants and threads to eachother. This raises the question about orgs and celebs who just ride the wave and whether or not their presence does more harm than good in society. I for one think that using social media is key to gain support and spread awareness for a cause, and more orgs should try to use it but they definitely need to change the way they do. If organizations are about the people and trying to support intersectionality then they need to reflect that by reblogging various people involved in different spheres of the movement. The authors made a great point by using the example of Mark Ruffalo to show how orgs can be more effective on their social media game.
       In addition to the multiple readings, we were asked to listen to an episode of the Think 100% podcast. I chose to listen to the episode “Our Oceans X The Earth’s Lawyers” because I am a) a slut for anything related to the law and b) I have spent my whole life going from Birmingham to Pensacola so I have a very deep connection with the Ocean. There were several facts brought up in the podcast that made me extremely angry and upset, but the two that stood out most to me were the statistic about how in 15 years there will be more plastic than fish by weight comparison in the ocean and the win lose situation surrounding Bayou Bridge. I think that the podcast did an excellent job at presenting the topics, I actually really liked the speakers and how the convo was set up. I think the random song of the week in the middle of the podcast was interesting, but that is just because the podcasts I listen to don’t include something fun like that.
       The biggest emotion that came out of all this was anger, and honestly it was solely anger about the Entergy plant. I am currently trying to find a place to live in New Orleans, and I can’t rely on outside help so I am using solely my own means. I work four jobs and I can’t even find a place that is any way affordable with just rent without any utilities being paid. The fact that Entergy is trying to hike up energy bills is absolutely insane because I know for a damn fact the price is already too damn high and a lot of people are already living paycheck to paycheck. It just is not right.

Keywords:
1) Identity Campaigns: Professionals can easily influence public opinion by using cognitive science
2) Environmental Data Justice: Basically the public has access to Environmental data hat hasn’t been tampered with which can be used by communities.
3) Collective Action: Long term action is obtained by creating a shared identity and shared issues
4) Connective Action: Long term sustainability is obtained by loosely connecting different people together