Alan Walts and Simone Lightfoot will be speaking to the class on Environmental Justice. Members of the University family are invited.
Alan Walts is the Environmental Justice Program Director of EPA Region 5 (Chicago). He is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and as a lawyer in the EPA regional environmental justice program, his role has been to assure that minorities and the poor are not disproportionately disadvantaged by pollution. He has spoken on environmental justice issues to my class for the past 3 years. In his past presentations he has effectively demonstrated how alternate dispute resolution techniques have been successful in resolving disputes in which environmental justice is a component.
Simone Lightfoot is a nationally recognized community organizer, public policy politico and a Detroit native. In her work with the National Wildlife Federation, she has collaborated with leaders in key urban centers throughout the Great Lakes Region to help strengthen the work being done on energy and sustainability, green job development, air and water quality, brown field and hazardous waste clean-up and environmental justice issues. She will also speak about her experience in negotiating resolutions of environmental justice issues.
Prof. Paul Mohai of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment. He teaches courses on environmental justice, environmental justice and health and environmental public opinion. He has been a major contributor to the growing body of research examining disproportionate environmental burdens and their consequences in low income and people of color communities. He is currently examining pollution burdens around public schools and and the links between such burdens and student performance and health.
Rhonda Anderson, Sierra Club Environmental Justice Organizer, Ms. Anderson has worked for decades with neighborhoods on a day to day basis in the City of Detroit. She is a passionate, effective and outspoken advocate for low income and minorities on issues of industrial pollution and its relationship to asthma, lung cancer and related disease.
