The Last (but not final) Reflection

One of my objectives this past semester, my final one as an undergraduate, centered around integration. My usual modus operandi in the race to a diploma - bowl over the unnecessary gen eds that stood in my way, pass with the bare minimum of efforts, living's easy with eyes closed kinda thing. Just handle the busy work, cross the stage, and enter the exciting world of unemployment! Something about this course's description rattled me from my non-major-oriented slumber. What if, as proponents of a liberal arts education have been sayin', I took this one as seriously as my philosophy courses or Portuguese classes? What if I could integrate the material of Geography 125 into my day-to-day, like I do pragmatism and language? Surely it would make what seems like a meaningless L&S requirement into a worthwhile endeavor in which I'm a responsible and concerned participant, not as an A-seeking student, but as a resident of Milwaukee with literal skin in the game. The service-learning option intensified what I had originally planned to do via text book. Volunteering at the Urban Ecology Center made this class personal.

As I mentioned in the first post, I already frequented the UEC every Tuesday and Thursday as a appreciator of free coffee and day-old pastries. Going on walk-alongs with third graders on field trip, helping to clear rubble from the Milwaukee River Greenway, tending to the locally reconstructed ecosystems along the Oak Leaf Trail, all with the love and smiles of my fellow community members has transformed my position in the city that raised me. It's turned me into an actionable community member. While I've served in other ways - from running a local sheriff's political campaign, to organizing demonstrations, teaching free community music classes, etc, there's been something rather unique in my experience with the UEC - the pure joy of working with my community, without recognition or praise, to simply enjoy and enhance our shared space. It's been an incredibly gratifying semester, one of connecting dots, dirt in fingernails, and participating in the breath of Milwaukee for no other motive than to simply be a part of it.

I believe the challenges which the Urban Ecology Center confronts have been importantly framed as community ones. Their solutions, by definition, must be community-oriented. Their success lies in their ability to mobilize members of the community into action. Small steps aimed at contributing positively to a sustainable, thriving Milwaukee. Their land stewardship program has been a great accomplishment. Their education and citizen science projects develop partnerships and expand the web of environmentally-conscious actors in Milwaukee. From what I can tell, any issues which present themselves to the UEC can be solved due to their wonderful reputation, strategic partnerships, skilled service members, and their genuine concern for improving the ecological and social footprint of the city, one ecosystem at a time.

http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2013/01/09/rise-of-the-urban-ecology-center/

Geographic Dimensions

Founded unofficially in 1991 out of a double-wide trailer, the Urban Ecology Center (UEC) now operates in three locations all situated in the city of Milwaukee. The anecdote pasted on their "About" section highlights the center's commitment to keeping it personal. Born out of response to rising crime rates and the blight of litter, a group of neighborhood residents near Riverside Park employed the ecological equivalent of the broken windows theory: combat crime and physical degradation through community actions focused on clean-up, restoration, environmental education, volunteerism, and stewardship. The idea was to encourage civic engagement at the neighborhood level designed for the inclusion and empowerment of its residents, highlighting positively-charged spaces as the actionable deterrent to crime and the apathetic stance towards the environmental and social deterioration of their community.

Again, the motivation has been strictly local. Each of its three locations - Riverside Park, Washington Park, and Menomonee Valley -  dedicate their services and programming to the specific geographical needs of each community. The fact that the center has expanded from the double-wide classroom to three thriving citizen centers is itself an indication of the scope of the ecological health issue which Milwaukee faces. These three locations, however, are not copy and paste jobs. Their designs and activities importantly reflect the unique spatial and social dynamics of their respective sites. Which is to say, while the problems of soil erosion, water pollution, or the loss of biodiversity are commonly afflictions exhibited across many areas of Milwaukee, their solutions require community-based approaches, meaning the fine-tuning of agendas to meet the needs of those spaces. To put words in the mouths of the UEC staff, I believe they would field the "causes" question with an understanding of the intimate interconnectivity of local and regional ecosystems. That solving or restoring the health of one has generative effects on the surrounding systems, but the street is two ways. Which is why programs like the Neighborhood Environmental Education Project (NEEP) - year-long partnerships offered to schools in a two-mile radius of all three centers - become that much more relevant to the conversation about causes. Initiating early environmental contact and awareness helps to shed light on not only the various causes which threaten Milwaukee's ecological health, put also stimulate engagement towards uprooting their destructive presence. The invasive species issue foregrounds the impact of education and awareness. While the initial introduction of invasive exotics - from garlic mustard to lily-of-the-valley - is not necessarily preventable by educating schoolchildren of the effect they can exert upon local ecosystems, it is nonetheless a measure which assists in limiting its spread, while enhancing an acute appreciation for the natural "lay of the land", so to speak.

The issues to which the Urban Ecology Center devotes itself are by no means unique to Milwaukee alone, in the sense that the usual suspects can be called out - rapid urbanization, non-point source pollution, soil erosion, salinization, groundwater contamination. Every one of the UEC's environmental education programs and 350.org meetings I've attended inevitably situate Milwaukee within the larger context of sustainability and the global environmental threat. It can't be stressed enough, however, that the UEC sees the struggle as a highly local and communal one. Or rather, that the solutions demand grassroots attention, education, and an ongoing celebration of our connectedness to nature. My (one) time was been spent with the land stewardship squad along the river tending to the black landscape fabric that was laid down last year to smother invasive species. A third grade class from Escuela Fratney was exploring around the area and I ended up joining them for a nature hike along the Oak Leaf Trail. I was as wide-eyed as they were running through the recently restored prairie, and when they asked me what I was doing anyway, I replied, "Same as y'all. Enjoying our common backyard and learning as we go!"

I'm excited to be able to devote more time to volunteering in the coming weeks now that my internship has finished.

More than just free coffee and pastries?!

The Urban Ecology Center is essentially an extension of my front yard. I run by the black landscape fabric stretched out along the Oak Leaf Trail snaking its way along the Milwaukee River Corridor. In addition to spending most Tuesday and Thursday mornings at the renown "green" building before class - fresh coffee and day-old pastries makes it a natural early morning study destination - the UEC finds its way into the Mount Rushmore list of recommendations to anyone and everyone, whether visiting Milwaukee for the first time or life-long residents. It's that wonderful.

When my brother and his family still lived in town, the Riverside Park location was the #1 hang site for me and my 4 year-old nephew. (I'm not gonna say the secret entrance slide had nothing to do with it). When it came time to select a service-learning site, the choice basically made itself: a place whose mission statement looks to foster community engagement through ecologically conscious practices sensitive to local environmental issues while incorporating education, volunteerism, stewardship and recreation at a neighborhood level - and free coffee!

Land stewardship will be the name of the game. The Riverside Park location is responsible for about 70 acres of urban land and set about restoring ecosystems through the removal of invasive species along the Milwaukee River Corridor which will then allow for the reconstruction of locally extinct plant communities. They've already made remarkable strides in this direction, noticeable ones just walking through the different habitats which coexist in Riverside Park - the prairie, the oak-savannah and the maple-basswood forest. This directly from their site and I reckon there's merit to it: the "improved natural areas in turn have greater historical, educational, and inspirational value. Restoring and managing natural areas to better represent the diversity of life forms and communities once native to this region serve to enrich outdoor learning experiences for students of all ages."


A visit to the site almost guarantees a visit in person:

http://urbanecologycenter.org/

Serge Lavoie is Plastic and Sarcastic

Apparently, plastics have an image problem! It seems we’ve been misled to believe that their stubbornly slow biodegradability, miserably low rate of actual recyclability, not to mention the fatal threat they pose to wildlife should be causes for ecological alarm which trigger some pretty simple consumer behavioral adjustments. Which is pure anti-plastic propaganda distracting us from the truth that the of “the attributes of [plastic’s] permanence work to the advantage of the environment.”  

Canadian Plastics Industry Association’s president and CEO, Serge Lavoie, tells it to us straight: “our economy is based on consumption, the conversation about how much consumption is a conversation we need to have.” He then turns to the brilliant comparison with other things we consume, like shoes and food, to ask the rhetorical question sarcastically, why don’t we start a movement to ban those things, too? So, even though I generally side emotionally with the girl with the “I’m NOT a smug twat” handbag, the smiling insistence of the plastics industry (a splinter of the oil and gas companies) to stick to their guns knowing the more “distant” crises their product causes - from the flying toilets in the slums of Nairobi to the clogged sewer drains in Mumbai - is unnerving. 

It’s the promotion and practice of “ecologically destructive behavior” and according to Tim Kastner, our consumer behavior psychologist, it’s explained in large part by the developed world’s disconnectedness from the consequences of such behavior. Which is why documentaries like “Battle of the Bag” end up playing an important role as a public service announcement, a reminder that our actions have consequences and that we can choose to boycott the very behaviors which threaten the health of our shared global ecosystem. 

I'm was sure hoping the 2012 CBC documentary "Battle of the Bag" was going for a balanced sizing-up of the warring factions over the use of plastic bags, because that would heighten the piece's overall hilarity. The open and closing credits "It's a bad, mad, plastic bag world!" added to the schmaltzy veneer. There were moments, especially during the interview segments with good ol’ Serge Lavoie, that I swore the camera would turn to reveal Aasif Mandvi, Samantha Bee or Jason Jones holding their Comedy Central-sponsored Daily Show microphones. It played like a piece of satire intending to pass for a genuine effort to encourage the viewer to make their own decision regarding the motion on the plastic bag. But with “Battle of the Bag,” the fix is in - aside from the dude that cast lone “nay” vote in the San Francisco legislature and Mr. Lavoie, I don’t know who’s coming out of this thing defending the plastic bags. I believe the film achieves some success in highlighting the difference in culture and policy towards plastic bags between the highly industrialized countries (UK, Canada and US) and their rapidly developing onlookers (Kenya, India, China), where the problematic ecological visibility of their abundance prompts legislative bans with enforcement mechanisms. Bag raids are hard to imagine in San Francisco or Birmingham, UK, which points to the important ways in which states assess responsibility and threat vis-à-vis the environmental challenges of the 21st century.