Professor, activist, writer. These three titles are all used to classify David Pellow. He is sitting right beside me, but we are face to face. He has a wide smile on, which portrays a welcoming aura. His office is located in the Bren building, which is a building dedicated to the environmental studies program as well as the graduate program. It is one of the furthest buildings on campus and it faces the ocean. There is a window that had a view of some roofs and part of the ocean.
Pellow has a Wikipedia page, which is where I got the beginning information about him from. I wondered and asked if he was involved in anything else besides being a professor, activist, writer. I knew him because I have taken a class with him before and he also happens to be my advisor for my senior thesis project. During the interview, Pellow portrayed a sense of humbleness. “No, I think that’s about it. I’m not that creative. That’s kind of what I’ve done all my life. Sorry to disappoint” he said, with a smile on his face. Although he seemed to brush off all of these titles, they each have their own responsibilities and he has taken on each of them willingly.
Environmental justice versus environmental injustice. What is the difference? Pellow prefers using the term environmental injustice because there is not enough justice in the world, though that is what the end goal is. He would love to use the term justice, but the movement is just not at that level yet. More work needs to be done to get more equality for the movement to be called “environmental justice.” To achieve environmental justice, we have to confront environmental injustice.
Beliefs and Values to Action
Pellow has considered himself to be part of the activist community all his life. His parents were activists in the civil rights movement. They instilled in him, since the beginning, the values of human rights, civil rights, and social justice. They believed in speaking up and standing up for what you believed in. They made him understand and realize that in this “Western, rigid, individualistic society, the reality is that we are living in a multispecies ecosystem so we are all interdependent.” He realized that we have to rely on one another and help each other because there is no success without coming together as a whole. They instilled in him the power of activism, social change and putting your values into motion.
His dad got him involved in the outdoors – swimming, hiking, camping. He was always looking for salamanders and frogs to take them home as pets but his parents would never let him take them home, which he now says was good on their part. Pellow loved being outdoors. At one point, he realized that he cannot be out in nature and not protect it. Once he noticed that the air, land, water, rivers, oceans, etc. was being threatened, he said to himself “Wait, we need to protect them. We need to protect them not only because they deserve to be protected, but because we are part of those systems as well. We need it for our survival.”
What is an environmental activist?
Everyone has their own meaning behind being an environmental activist. Pellow believes that an environmental activist is someone who connects a concern over our life support system with concerns with human health. A goal is to preserve, defend, enhance and protect both the ecosystem and human health. The ecosystem and human health are connected, so to ensure environmental equality, you have to take into consideration both perspectives.
Pellow has done several things throughout his life that would classify him as an environmental activist. He co-coordinated the publication of a manual aimed for community activists fighting against predatory mining companies. The manual was translated into six languages and used by communities that were facing similar problems all over the world. He has also produced a report, with the help of several UCSB undergraduates, detailing the linkages between environmental health concerns and incarceration in the U.S. The report has been spread all around the country to increase awareness. You can find both guides online.
Words Can Make a Change
As a writer, I asked Pellow what role writing played in his life as an activist. He stated that writing gives you a chance to reflect and meditate on the meaning of the struggle that you are focusing on and enforces you to rethink the stakes and implications of the work. “It also allows you to reframe the entire issue in language, words, images, and ideas that can inspire, rejuvenate, and motivate people to seek change.” Pellow believes that articles and books have the ability to change the world and if anyone were to doubt him, he would simply mention Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Alex Haley’s “Autobiography of Malcom X,” or Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and how they had the ability to truly create change.
(Lack of) Opposition
Being an activist, there is often opposition coming from the other side of the argument or even from government officials. Pellow has not recognized much opposition other than in the academy. “In general, the idea is that you’re supposed to be dispassionate and objective, but by being an activist scholar, it has sometimes created some problems.” Pellow has noticed that over time, many people have embraced this idea of environmental activism. He was talking to a dean at UCSB that said “David, one of the most important missions at UCSB is sustainability. In order for us to be serious about achieving that mission, that requires us to support and engage in advocacy.” This conversation caught Pellow off-guard because it proved that UCSB is biased in a way that protects and enhances our life support system, which Pellow strongly agrees with, “If that’s being biased, then I’m all for being biased!” In Pellow’s personal experience, pushback has been fading as more and more people are accepting activism in the academic sense. The real pushback, Pellow believes, is government, industries, individuals and groups who want to continue to defile and destroy the life support systems and who’s way of life are dependent on that. Historical evidence has proven that the fossil fuel industry will stop at nothing. “We have to confront them peacefully, not lovingly and nonviolently, but they have to be stopped. This is where most of the opposition will continue to come from.”
Inspirations
As a person with such passionate values and ideologies, Pellow has to have gotten his inspiration from somewhere. When asked about who his role models were, he mentioned Robert Bullard, his parents, and UCSB students. Robert Bullard is often described as the founding father of environmental justice and also sometimes known as the founding father of the environmental justice movement. He has written 18 books addressing a variety of environmental justice issues. His parents were civil rights activists and scholars, both were professors, which has led him to being an activist scholar today. Pellow has been at UCSB for 2 and a half years and as a result of that, he realized that the students here at UCSB inspire him every day. They are always able to teach him something new every day.
Civically Engaged
When asked whether Pellow considered himself to be civically engaged and what that meant to him, he answered “Yes. It means listening to people everywhere and borrowing and reshaping ideas to change my own behavior and the behaviors of others. It means reorienting the resources of powerful institutions like a university toward doing good and work to build and support ecologically sustainable and socially just communities.” This part of the interview resonated with me. Pellow put an emphasis on the ability to change your own behavior as well as others. This is important because as each day passes, new information will come up and it may change your mind set about something, and that is okay. It has been proven that not everything is set in stone.
Advice for the Younger Generation
Some advice that Pellow had for the younger generation that want to make a difference would be to take a look at history. He says to look at every time someone said “making this change you like to see is impossible. Be realistic. We can’t do it.” Almost every single time someone has said that, significant change has followed. “There’s no way we can get rid of slavery.” “There’s no way women will ever be able to vote.” “There’s no way we can have marriage equality.” Well, in each of those cases, we have succeeded. Pellow has noticed that every time someone say no, other people say yes. People have the ability to create, imagine, and vision these new realities.
Some final thoughts would be to not do it on your own. Find organizations or create your own organization. There is always more power in numbers because we are a social species. We do things best collectively, we solve problems best collectively. People have come up with best and most creative ideas working in groups. You can truly create change if you wanted to, you just simply have to try.