Opportunities and Possible Challenges for Restorative Environmental J.E.D.I. (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) Approaches within an Oakland, CA Public Park System

• In Event: “Antiracist Science”: Interrogating Knowledge Production, Interrupting Racism

Abstract

Historically national parks have been understood as spaces in which US citizens can invoked their Americaness, while city parks like Central Park were said to create spaces to cultivate citizens, particularly among the new European immigrants arriving at Ellis Island. These parks also have a historical legacy of displacement and/or genocide of our Native American and African American populations. This is to acknowledge that parks are not innocent landscapes or a panacea for all our social ills on their own, but fought and contested landscapes. Oakland, CA has a long history of racial and environmental discord aided by the unevenly valued and bifurcated geographical landscapes of the hills and the flats. From the perspective of a scholar-activist and commissioner for the City of Oakland Park and Recreation Advisory Commission, this paper examines the opportunities and possible challenges for implementing a restorative environmental justice approach on a municipal park system scale. By invoking the way of the J.E.D.I. (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) and using online opensource data like CalEnvironScreen, this work questions how using science-fiction along with science facts can create pathways for environmentally and socially just futures. In a time of gentrification in which both desperate and disparate communities are vying for the same public park space with divergent understandings on communal use and with different social, economic, and political power, this research questions where are the entry points to do this work of mitigating environmental harms, both historical and new formations?

Author

• Chryl Natasha Elaine Corbin, UC Berkeley ESPM