LENS.cast
Stories of environmental justice and imagination in California and beyond, from UCLA's Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies. LENS.cast tells stories about environmental art, activism, policy, and imagination, with a focus on questions of environmental and multispecies justice. How do built and natural environments embody histories of oppression and possibilities for change? How do different communities value and protect the nonhuman beings they live with? How do artists and activists push us to think differently about our more-than-human relations? How can communities ensure that marginalized people and places are at the center of plans for ecological futures? What should you think when you see a coyote? What does it think of you?
LENS.cast
"Please Take Off Your Shoes"
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UCLA Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS)
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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In episode 2, we hear from activists in LA’s Little Tokyo working to ensure that their community has a voice in building a sustainable future. Investment in green infrastructure is an increasingly significant strategy for achieving sustainability goals, but if communities aren't involved, it can also lead to gentrification, displacement, and cultural erasure. In this episode, Scott Oshima, Grant Sunoo, and traci kato-kiriyama, along with Paul Ong of the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, discuss how “sustainability” can be redefined to include a focus on justice and to draw on the cultural histories of neighborhoods like Little Tokyo.