Very few activists and civil society leaders focused on zoning until they began to understand its immense power to shape our cities. Far too often zoning boards in the pockets of corporate interests make decisions that lead to exclusion and extraction. Zoning plays a key role in who bears the burdens and who reaps the benefits of development, including deciding where toxic facilities are sited and if affordable housing is possible. It has proven incredibly challenging, even for cities that want to do the right thing, to bring Environmental Justice issues and historically disenfranchised communities into planning processes with equity, collaboration, and transparency.

In 2016, California adopted a landmark law (SB1000) requiring every city in the state to adopt an Environmental Justice Element of its general plan. As a result, for the last decade cities across the state have been challenged to acknowledge environmental racism and injustice and to make plans to address them. Berkeley is in the midst of this, with the Ecology Center leading an Equitable Community Engagement process designed to upend one-way, transactional, and extractive planning and to build a model for trust-building, deep listening, relationship building, and accountability.

            In this session, local community activists, city planners, and grassroots community members will share the new approaches at play in Berkeley, and how other communities can draw from its process to listen, engage, and respond to those most often left out of and most impacted. As the saying goes: ” If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” Hosted by Martin Bourque, Executive Director, Ecology Center. With: Pilar Zuñiga, Community Engagement Program Director, Ecology Center; Alene Pearson, Deputy Director for the Planning and Development Department at the City of Berkeley; Pastor Michael Smith, founder of the Center for Food, Faith & Justice; and Wilhelmenia Wilson, Executive Director of Healthy Black Families.