Jill:

This is the accidental safety pro brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded on October eighth 2020. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer and today I'm joined by Yodit. Born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Yodit is a 35 year old educator in sustainability practices. Yodit is currently coordinator of the environmental career worker training program at UCLA's Labor Occupational Safety and Health Division. She has a master's degree in urban sustainability and is also an educator, providing environmental justice and most recently, COVID-19 awareness for essential workers. Yodit also cultivates and develops relationships with organization and workforce development programs in LA, serving marginalized populations with job readiness training for careers in environmental, construction and other green industries. She's also a documentarian, having produced Immigrant, a 19 minute short documentary film featuring the perspectives of independent voices based in southern California.

The film provides an intimate look at immigration's narrative in the current United States political culture and sheds a new light on understanding migration and displacement as sustainability issue. Yodit is joining us today from Los Angeles. Welcome to the show, Yodit.

Yodit:

Thank you, Jill.

Jill:

I don't think we've ever had anyone on the show who's got a degree in urban sustainability before and certainly, I have never spoken with anyone who works in environmental justice. I am super interested to hear about both of those things today. But wondering, could you start like we do all of our podcasts with all of our guests and tell us how did you end up in the career in health and safety with the background that you have? What's your accidental story?

Yodit:

That's a great question. I recently actually had an opportunity to reflect on that same prompt that you brought up. Like you mentioned, I have a background in urban sustainability. I went to Antioch University in Los Angeles to get my master's in urban sustainability. The program is a brand new program, nationwide, I believe. I'm not surprised you haven't met anybody that has urban sustainability background or master's degree. I stumbled up on the program accidentally. I really wanted to do my master's degree in public administration, social justice, type of field. And when I found out and when I learned more about urban sustainability, encompasses a range of justice issues and ecosystems thinking and climate change, what our life and world is grappling with right now. I really was interested immediately, okay, this is exactly what I want to know more about and what I want to be a part of. Because the end game for that program, it's social change oriented, it was something that really attracted me. Two years program, towards the end I come across a position from UCLA Labor Occupational Safety and Health to facilitate and coordinate a worker training program that the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, NIEHS, a federal program.

Yodit:

It's a grant program, a worker training program that NIEHS provides. When I saw that there was some relevance to the program I've studied but my colleagues in the field have public health background, occupational safety and health background, a lot of them have industrial hygienist backgrounds, which is very specific to the work. Me, I come in with a lot of broad range of background. I have familiarity with the community based organizations that the program supports and I was intrigued by that. The rest was a learning journey for me, on the hob learning experience in terms of the nitty gritty of workforce development program.

Jill:

Wow. At UCLA, in the Labor Occupational Safety and Health Division, what's day to day life like there when you're doing education? Who's part of the program? What are people learning? What is it like?

Yodit:

We get this grant from NIEHS and we're part of Western Region Universities Consortium, that includes University of Washington, Arizona State University and UC Berkeley. The workforce development program is done in two programs under the University of Washington and us, in Los Angeles. How we do it is, we work with community based organizations and workforce development programs and even state agencies that have a job training program to support unemployed and underemployed individuals from marginalized communities. We essentially plug into these programs with our resources of trainers and resources of training that will allow these workers to do their jobs safely, to know their rights on the work and be able to go back to their families at the end of the day. We do support partner organizations that recruit students from marginalized communities, by providing them health and safety training.

Jill:

Fascinating.

Yodit:

Our programs are in Los Angeles City, of course. And under University of Washington supervision, we support programs in Portland, in Seattle and tribal communities in Alaska.

Jill:

Wow, quite a wide reach.

Yodit:

It is.

Jill:

You were finishing up your urban sustainability graduate degree, what did you think was the job that you might get or was interested in going after and then you came into this? Did you ever think safety might be part of your background?

Yodit:

No. Well, yeah, it's in the title of the organization, a little bit. But the position itself was advertised, as you know. My biggest attraction to it was, hey, you're going to be able to support people get a good clean, green, union job. That was like, I could do that. I have some staff augmentation background previously, I worked in a construction firm before that. And then, the environmental justice piece was an appeal to me, because that was what I was working on in grad school. I was like, yes okay, this is my stronger suits, this is what I can bring to the table. I can always coordinate the safety trainings, like the hazardous waste training programs or the OHSA certificate programs. I can always coordinate those and outsource those to outreach trainers.

Jill:

And then, along comes this pandemic. How did that impact the work that you're doing where you are right now? What shifted or changed?

Yodit:

The end goal for the work would be to place the students that we've trained in collaboration with the partner organization, be able to place them on the job. Right of the bat, because of all the shutdowns not only, we are having challenges to placing students to jobs but we also are facing with students losing their jobs. The students that we've already previously placed on construction and environmental career fields. It's a devastation all across the board. We are doing our best to support our programs above and beyond of what we would normally do. For example, we don't want training to stop, we're really trying to be very adaptable and flexible to switching some of the trainings to the virtual world, to online training. It is challenging, but there's a lot of learning and trials and errors that goes along with that. We're doing our best to become adaptable to the situation.

Jill:

Your work certainly hasn't slowed down because of the pandemic. It sounds like you're probably even more engaged because you have an additional thing to be training people on.

Yodit:

I wouldn't say it got more busy, like I said because we're not able to provide hands on trainings and some of these safety skills have to have hands on components in order to provide the training thoroughly. Some of our partners have shut down their doors because there was really nothing they can do about it. We are doing our best to convert some of the trainings to awareness level, just for those individuals that would go to essential works. There's a challenge with recruitment, there's a challenge with placements. We're just in the middle of those two scenarios trying to do the best that we can.

Jill:

And continue to ready the workforce.

Yodit:

And continue, exactly.

Jill:

I was interested to learn more about environmental justice and what that means in general. What does that mean, how does it impact your work and where do you see the intersectionality with health and safety in workplace?

Yodit:

Environmental justice is a component of urban sustainability. It's one of the three components of urban sustainability. For us to have a sustainable urban living life, we have environmental justice on one hand but we have social justice and economic justice.

Jill:

Okay, those are the three limbs.

Yodit:

Exactly. Those are the three pillars of urban sustainability and they're not separate from one another, they're deeply interrelated with one another. How we conduct our economy is essentially creating a lot of problems for the burdens of environmental injustice. And how we view society based on race, most specifically and more importantly, and based on class, also translates to environmental injustice. Before I go into that, the environment piece of the environmental justice is the air we breathe, the soil or the land that we live on and we live off of and the water. How we conduct our economy and what race and social status we preference to, impacts these things. The justice part of this is when for example, corporate and business practices that manufacture or produce goods that emit smoke, leak toxins and chemicals and when these industries are permitted or are unregulated to operate in the backyards of communities of color, that's where the justice piece comes from.

EJ, that's short for environmental justice. Just a little bit of background for the history of environmental justice-

Jill:

Yes, please. Take me to school, Yodit, I'm very fascinated to hear about this because I don't know and I bet much of our audience doesn't either. Please, take us to school.

Yodit:

Okay, thank you. Environmental justice is a movement. It became a movement in this country in the late 70s after an incident known as the PCB midnight dumping in North Carolina. Some truck driver was told to take chemicals to PCB chemicals. It was midnight, he decided to just dump it off the side of the highway road. When authorities discovered that, he went to jail. But now they have to deal with, okay, we need to remove this soil, this PCB, this chemical off the side of the road. And then, where should we put it? [inaudible 00:16:08] he's like, well, let's just dump it in the neighborhood where African Americans live. That was in 1978 and it took two decades and many fights to have that removed out of that neighborhood, to have the soil re-cleaned and be removed from the places where African Americans live.

From the 70s to the 90s, EJ was a fight, EJ was a movement. It became a federal law in the 90s after the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, which was in 91. This is an event placed environmental justice in the forefront of our socio-economic problems. Before that, environmentalism in America, it existed superficially. Meaning that the main focus of environmentalism was dealing with natures conversation, wilderness, national parks and so on. It didn't really deal with environment as a place where people or communities live in. Also, it was made up of these very elitist group of White men, there was a lack of diversity, which is the reason why environmental justice is something that affects communities, is a blindside for environmentalism. The summit that was conducted by the First National People of Color has changed that, it changed the landscape and how we think about environmental justice.

Jill:

Shining a light on the people that it impacts.

Yodit:

Exactly.

Jill:

And the economics of that and how it impacts the society as a whole.

Yodit:

That's exactly it.

Jill:

Okay.

Yodit:

Environmental justice is also a global phenomenon, because this is about discrimination. For example, in the US, segregation of the 1930s caused pollutions to be segregated as well because you're not going to put manufacturers or industries like oil refineries or the paper mill that was placed in Alabama for example in African American communities. You're not going to do that in an affluent White neighborhood. Because we segregate communities based on color, pollution is also segregated based on color. And environmental justice disproportionately affects Black, Indigenous, People of Color. But it is also a global phenomenon, because we have segregated countries as developing and developed countries. We have first world, second world, third world countries. One of the biggest historical events that created this disparity and wealth gap between the global [inaudible 00:19:56] and Western countries is colonization. Now, centuries later among other devastations and impacts of colonizations, it had also ensured that first world waste has a dumping site.

Our capitalist economy needs consumerism, we must buy. You buy a $900 phone, a year later, you have to throw it away and get a new one. That's how we govern our economy. Where does that go? Where does that one year old phone, one year old television or any electronic device, where do they go? What happens is about 80% of electronic waste is shipped, put in the container and shipped and just being thrown in the backyards of third world countries like China, Nigeria, India, Vietnam and Pakistan. These electronics have chemicals in them. They combust spontaneously in the backyards, they emit smoke and people are breathing these inhalents and these toxins, we just don't see faces or just don't know those faces of those people that are being impacted by this. Environmental justice is a movement and also it's a branch of a study that deals with all these injustices that we're grappling with. I will end that by saying, like I said, it's federal policies and regulations that involve with environmental justice. Since I live in California, when I provide this education I end with, there's a California statutory definition of environmental justice and it says, environmental justice means the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures and incomes with respect to the development, adoption, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies.

It is the fair treatment of people of all races and implementations of environmental laws, regulations and policies, need to involve people of all races. And it's an acknowledgement and an awareness to these conditions and how we segregate certain environmental injustices.

Jill:

Thank you for that. Really, appreciate it. What an interesting history. Not necessarily surprising to think about where we've been and where we are, but sad that it continues and that we have to continue to shine a light on this. When we were talking prior to our recording and getting to know one another and I was hearing a little bit about your background, we were talking a bit about the history of labor as it relates to environmental justice. And I'm wondering if maybe you can share a bit of that with our audience as well, when we think about workplace safety and health and the history of the labor movement in this country.

Yodit:

There's an interesting history of labor in this country. I don't think we can discuss any type of workforce economic activity without discussing slavery. Because truly, that is where the timeline begins. The economic production of this country was developed on the backs of Black people and on the lands of Indigenous Americans. And labor and union organizing has had several monumental changes since the abolishment of slavery. Several campaigns have been fought and it seems successes that shaped the labor laws we have today. Black workers have always been at the center of labor movements in this country in that they have fought for the right to work and right to be in a union every time. In the aftermath of slavery, 1866, National Labor Union for example, declared it would admit members regardless of color. But of course, it wasn't the case, because segregation and discrimination was very much the norm. And progressive leaders like Frederick Douglass brought forward this issue of segregated [inaudible 00:25:35] and discrimination which allowed for the implementation of the American Federation of Labor, AFL for short which revived the labor movement by organizing skilled workers.

Yodit:

However, again despite pledging to be fair to all workers regardless of color, creed or nationality, by 1895 around eight years maybe, the AFL reversed this position and allowed new affiliates of the unions to prohibit African Americans from joining their ranks. If we look at major historical events taking place simultaneously since then, we have World War One, we have the Great Depression in the 30s, then we have World War Two. Everybody was struggling with these crises, but Black people were fighting for the right to be treated fairly, for the right to be humans also on top of that. Then, in the 60s were the height of the civil rights movements. And this is when the labor movement begun to play a larger role for social justice. The labor movement organized 40 000 union members for their march on Washington for jobs and freedom. This is where you can see the social justice aspect of things.

Jill:

Yeah, it's coming together.

Yodit:

Coming together, yeah. Union members from United Auto Workers amalgamated meat cutters and butcher workmen. The National Association of Social Worker, the Chicago Teacher's Union, the America Newspaper Guild, these unions were huge backers of the civil rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King himself marched with the sanitation workers and he supported a strike that was organized by the International Chemical Workers. Worker right movements are movements for social justice and social change and also environment because inhaling chemicals, workers are part of communities. These workers working in refineries and industries that is affecting their health without any protection, without any benefits to their health, are a part of the communities that the same pollutant is affecting too.

Jill:

Both at work and at home.

Yodit:

Both at work and at home, exactly. It's a movement for social justice and social change. I think what most people miss on is that when a group of people organized to demand the betterment of their conditions, specific conditions, it always benefits the whole. It's for the betterment of society as a whole. This is evident in the recent racial uprising, followed by the killing of George Floyd, in that it wasn't just the city of Minneapolis that erupted, that exploded, that called injustice. It sparked an international outcry by people from all types of race and color, saying this is an injustice that we do not want to be part of, it's not just a Black people issue.

Yodit:

That's a little bit of a tangent, but I wanted to paint a picture of how labor movements is not an isolation of all these other movements that we're doing, we're all trying to uplift the better living conditions for our future generations. A better sustainable way of living amongst each other too.

Jill:

Listening to you talk about history of labor and who it includes and where it began, I have to say I think I need to change the way I talk about this. When I do training with employees at our company and I'm trying to teach them about workplace safety and health, I always start with a historical perspective because I think it's important to start to know where did we come from and how did we get where we are today. However, I haven't started back far enough. I haven't included far enough back. I usually start talking about the turn of the century and what was happening with the industrial movement and about where we didn't have worker rights, we didn't have safety and health laws, we didn't have labor laws, which is all true of course. And then I talk about, just as you did, these movements that were happening with civil rights and environmental rights and how everything came together with worker rights and OSHA is born.

But I need to back up, I need to back up really far if I'm going to be painting an accurate history of workplace safety and health and where it started. Thank you for that. I might have to call you back and say, okay, Yodit, I'm going to work on new employee onboarding again, I need some help framing this. Thank you for that.

Yodit:

Yeah, thank you.

Jill:

I'm wondering, you were talking about how shining a light on these issues when it comes to, as you framed up, urban sustainability being three pronged with economics and social justice and environmental justice, how it impacts all persons. When you're doing your work in education, how do you go about informing people whose lives may not be impacted by this to pay attention? I'm thinking of one thing in particular, learning about Michigan's water supply being contaminated for as long as it had been. Nobody knew about it, or at least I didn't know about it from my place of privilege. When things like this are happening, how does the work that you do, how do you reach people who may not know? Maybe didn't know that they needed to care about it, how do you go about educating people so that they can be helpful?

Yodit:

Our training is specific to worker health and safety but through these courses of environmental justice, we're trying to develop civic engagement from our students. We're inviting students to be aware of the systems that are causing underlying issues of health impacts and economic disparities. You're not going to learn environmental justice and directly apply it in the construction field. But, you are aware of the narratives that are playing out there, the dominant narrative that plays out in terms of, this is your fault you're sick, because you didn't do this, or you didn't put this on. Maybe another example would be, chemicals and plastics. We don't need to wrap individual oranges in plastics. We're crying, this is ending up in our oceans, this is crazy. But the chemical industry, the corporate industry, will put point fingers, it's not the plastic that's the problem, it's the waste management. Cities are not equipped to manage waste.

Jill:

In fact, we ship our plastics to other countries.

Yodit:

Yes, exactly.

Jill:

Our garbage is being shipped out of our eyesight.

Yodit:

Yeah. It's not the product. We really don't need this many plastics in every little thing. But it's how stories and narratives are framed, that makes people develop this certain perspective in a certain way. Shifting the narrative, listening to languages and communications is a story based strategy, this is what I focus on when I put education. Because, a lot of the times when I ask students, "What does environmental justice mean to you?" People don't really connect communities. People say exactly what the old environmentalism means and they come in with the expectation of, "Well, are you talking about nature? Are you talking about the polar bear?"

Jill:

We want to save the dolphins. Yeah, right.

Yodit:

It's like, "No." When we go deeper and deeper and we engage through education, people now all of a sudden are coming up with examples, it's like, "Yeah, I see. That's why I have food desert in my community, because affluent neighborhoods have Whole Foods and groceries with healthy food and Farmer's Market. We have fast foods blocks after blocks." Making that connection as an environmental injustice is huge. Now what are you going to do about it? Are you going to continue to be consumers of these harmful businesses or then you pull back and you're going to start maybe organizing within your communities, get a community-

Jill:

Building businesses.

Yodit:

Community lot, businesses, co-ops, maybe getting a community lot to put green vegetables in it to share within your community. You're going to start growing in your balcony. People come up with their own aha moments from these trainings. And what we provide is framing and how these systems are political and are intricate and are out there for the benefit and for the growth of capitalism. It's got nothing to do with people care or earth care, it's all profit driven. Giving that awareness or helping students connect the dots, is what our educational system is. It's called a popular education method or spiral method. We start from the individual's, the student's, the trainee's own empirical experience about the issue and then we build on that and have them connect the dots and have them come up with their own understanding of what environmental justice is and [inaudible 00:38:10].

Jill:

And on the job, are you also helping people be aware of hazards they may not know are hazards? Particularly, environmental ones and how it impacts their own personal health with regards to maybe specific work practices or ways to protect themselves and why it's important and how that can impact their whole lives not only on the job but at home or what they could be bringing back home as well, is that part of your education too?

Yodit:

Yeah. Not only that. Not only something as tangible as a chemical hazard, but individuals are able to connect. Mental health is also important, on the job stress and dealing with that type of aspect of our health. Individuals are even connecting just above and beyond of workplace hazard, before going to work and after going to work and how to develop holistic and wholesome health practices to protect themselves and their family.

Jill:

The whole human.

Yodit:

It's a whole human experience.

Jill:

A whole human approach to staying safe on the job, but also at home so that you can come back the next day and have a career and have a life. Fascinating. What an interesting career, Yodit. How many years have you been at this?

Yodit:

I've been at my job three years. I've been educating environmental justice for about two years and recently, through virtual training, I've been also providing awareness, COVID-19 awareness training as well.

Jill:

You had talked about your graduate degree, before that I'm curious, what's your undergrad degree in?

Yodit:

My undergrad degree, a long time ago, was in English from University of Washington in Seattle.

Jill:

What a jump. You went from an English degree to urban sustainability.

Yodit:

Yeah. It's interesting because when I first came into this country with my family, we settled in Seattle and I went to a community college. I really had a hard time navigating higher learning in this country, because of all the culture differences and just not knowing how to write the right questions to be where I want to be. And also being young and not having clear vision of what I want my career to be. I just ended up doing English because it felt neutral, because I was thinking about going to law school, I was thinking about several different career fields but that just didn't quite stick with me until I discovered urban sustainability. I've navigated social service career fields. I've worked for a domestic violence intervention program. After the urban sustainability program started, I worked for Disney to become an environmental steward for one of the feature film productions.

Jill:

Really?

Yodit:

Yeah.

Jill:

Disney is paying attention to environmental justice, is that what you're saying?

Yodit:

Yes, pleasantly so.

Jill:

How does that work? Tell us about that. What's that experience about?

Yodit:

It was for a feature film called, A Wrinkle in Time, direct by Ava DuVernay.

Jill:

Yeah, I've seen it.

Yodit:

Oh yeah?

Jill:

Yeah. It's wonderful

Yodit:

Yeah. Major studios for major $100 million plus productions have started incorporating initiatives, because it's one of the really wasteful industries. There's a lot going on in production and then once production starts to have 200, 300 crew members, just 16 hour a day work, a catering crew is part of the film production. Because you have to feed people there, they're not going to go out to find lunch somewhere else. Where does all of that go? They started incorporating sustainable practices and I was very pleased to discover that because the film industry's one of the oldest industries to now have developed awareness and recognizing the need to manage waste and to be conservative of energy use, is very important. And it just shows you that environmental awareness, environmental justice could be incorporated in all kinds of industries and is part of our lives. We donated food left over, unserved food to shelters and church and other programs daily so that it doesn't end up in landfill. We tried to promote composting although, because we hop on from different location to location, it's not always practical or ideal but we tried. So many different initiatives were introduced, recycling projects and energy conservators.

Yodit:

We were able also to donate a lot of materials from set to schools, art schools and children programs that can use it. Because normally, it would just end up in landfills.

Jill:

Fascinating work. What a nice thing to hear about the film industry. One of the guests that I've had on the podcast early on, for anyone who's listening if you remember I had a young woman named Carolina, who's the safety and health director at Disney Pixar Studios, located in California. There's hazards in all of our work environments and the film industry, of course, is one of those as well. And how to hear that they're leaders in this area, it sounds like, Yodit.

Yodit:

Yeah.

Jill:

You were talking about your early beginnings and your undergraduate degree, but it sounds like you've always had this passion for justice for a long time in the things that you did. You mentioned some of your work that you've done for women as well. Where did that fire come from in you? It sounds like throughout your life you had your focus on justice and it keeps going.

Yodit:

Yeah. I guess you're right. And I think I will blame my father for this. He's a very traditional father, so he really wanted me to be either a doctor or a lawyer. I really did think about, I'm not going to be a doctor. I'm not a science person at all, but I really did think about going into law school. But it wasn't there, because my father was a natural story teller. He is so deep into historical stories that puts human values in their premise. I grew up listening to him. I guess he didn't think that it would impact me, because he could just tell me that I have to be a lawyer and I could be that. But I was like, wait a minute, you put all of this now. I'm thinking about something else. I do really believe that their intersectionality exists between story telling and justice. Because as humans, we are made up of stories, we think in stories. We defend ourselves in stories, we decide, we put things up down, whatever. We are narrative and we love and we think and work with... When we assign meaning to certain things, is when we can put perspectives and values to that.

I'm really passionate about story telling because I've really believed that it could bring people together. And depending on how stories are framed, it could bring people together or put people apart. I choose to be on the side of storytelling by educating, by using strategies of framing and storytelling.

Jill:

We're kindred spirits there. Man, I love telling a good story. I love hearing a good story. No wonder I host a podcast. It's all about hearing people's stories. This is my favorite thing.

Yodit:

Exactly. You have a platform for bringing [inaudible 00:48:59] and values that our society is craving for.

Jill:

When you're telling stories, Yodit, particularly around environmental justice and your practice of urban sustainability, what's a story that's one that you often tell? Assuming you probably have many that you pull out like a bag of tricks almost. What's a story you often find yourself telling?

Yodit:

I was very fortunate enough to have been groomed and coached by great story tellers in urban sustainability program. One of my ecosystems thinking professor Gopal [inaudible 00:49:47], he's a great storyteller. I just could listen to him talk every day. Jane Paul [inaudible 00:49:55]. A lot of great teachers and educators have used and encouraged this storytelling and narrative framing. And that's why when I graduated from the program, my capstone was the documentary film about immigrants. It was very much encouraged, very much applicable in our program. One of the best ways, I think, to educate people about climate change, we have these climate change deniers for example, it's a thing now. One of the greatest stories that gave people this, oh I see, movement is ecosystems thinking. There's an activity, an exercise about a spiderweb that you can do with a group of students and it really brings forward the essence of what justice, sustainability... And we live in this one planet and we have a network of ecosystems that we need to think about, we're not just the masters of universe going around, going about our economy doing whatever we want to the environment. It does not work. We're going to land in a very bad place.

Either know and learn, be open to this reality or learn to breathe smoke, is the alternative where we are right now. I don't say that to students, but the premise of the ecosystems thinking and the activity with the spiderweb is one that I really like. You have students, you have a ball of yarn where students will throw to each other. You create a circle of students and you create this big web. And this is an activity from an organization called, Movement Generation, I should give credit for that. This is what I use in my training, when we have in person training. The spider's a volunteer, person who would play the spider role. Then I'll go around cutting strings and this is deforestation. This is us pulling mountains top off to do mining and different activities that our extractive economy is involved in. The spider person is life itself. It's going around tying those breakages, those threads that I'm breaking. But then I'll go faster. I'll go faster and faster, because that's what we do, we're operating this extractive economy at a scale that we as humans cannot keep up anymore. We cannot fix it. Nature doesn't have time to regenerate anymore, because we're doing it at a much bigger scale and we're also doing it faster.

That's the scenario. Now, when I'm going faster, the spider or the person who's playing the role of the spider cannot keep up anymore and the threads are falling down. That's a visual and story, narrative framing, of how we need to think about the environment and our sustainability.

Jill:

Wonderful. I remember, I did something like that with a group of third graders. This sounds crazy. I was a volunteer with an organization called, Junior Achievement for many years, which teaches kids living in community with one another and our economy. And I remember doing an exercise like that, but it was built around being part of a community, part of a city. And it really does make a great visual on how we are so interconnected, or not like you said, when you're cutting the threads and where it's all falling down.

Yodit:

It's adaptable to different scenarios [crosstalk 00:54:25] meanings in different places. Incidentally, a lot of us who studied urban sustainability believe that it should be incorporated in curriculums from K to 12 so that our future would not have to grapple with this, is it real, is it fake? Because we [inaudible 00:54:52] the science be embedded in our education.

Jill:

So interesting. Yodit, this has been quite an education for me and likely our listeners as well, to hear such an interesting take on workplace safety and health and this arm that we don't often talk about. We talk about environment, we're [inaudible 00:55:24] professionals, but what does that really mean? And where does it intersect with justice? I really appreciate the work that you're doing and thank you for the stories and sharing this with our audience today.

Yodit:

Thank you [crosstalk 00:55:43].

Jill:

Yodit, not only am I a story junkie, but I also love to listen to great speeches. Just this morning, I was thinking about you, because I was listening to this particular speech that was given in 1976. Now, you were talking earlier about this PCB midnight dumping in the 1970s. This is all before you were born. But I was listening to this speech today, given by the United States representative from Texas back then, Barbara Jordan. She said in her speech and I'm going to quote her, this is where I was thinking about you it says, "Many fear the future", she said. "Many are distressful of their leaders and believe that their voices are never heard. Many seek only to satisfy their private once, to satisfy their private interests. But this is a great danger America faces, that we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups. City against suburb, region against region, individual against individual, each seeking to satisfy private wants. If that happens, who then will speak for American? Who then will speak for the common good? This question, which must be answered." And that's the end of her quote.

Jill:

And what I was thinking when I heard that was the common good. And Yodit, that's your life's work right now. You are working for the common good as you framed up so beautifully how this impacts all of us. You're answering Barbara Jordan's call from way back in 1976, and so many others.

Yodit:

Wow.

Jill:

Thank you so much.

Yodit:

Thank you much for sharing that speech, it's beautiful. I think we all have to find our sphere of influence and we're not powerless. We all need to find out where we are most impactful and really use that to bring justice to people, to the world.

Jill:

Yeah. Yodit, before I let you go and before we say goodbye to our guest today, if people want to find your documentary, Immigrant, is it something that they can find on YouTube?

Yodit:

No. It's not on YouTube unfortunately, but it will be soon. And then I will share it to my social media when I do so.

Jill:

Very good. All right. I'll be watching for that. Thank you so much. And thank you for all of you for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good, making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you'd like to join the conversation about this episode or any of our previous episodes, you can follow our page and join the accidental safety pro community group on Facebook. If you're not subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player that you'd like. You can also find all of our episodes complete with transcripts at vividlearningsystems.com/podcast. We'd also love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes, it really helps us connect the show with more safety and health professionals like you. Special thanks to Will Moss, our podcast producer and until next time, thanks of listening.