The words Ecology and Economy share the same Greek root, oikos, which mean a home or dwelling. Ecology studies relationships among organisms in a particular environment. Economy studies human interactions and exchanges in a multicultural environment.
Since relationships and home dwellings are familiar female territory, we hosted a great woman-to-woman conversation about threats to our planet and, more importantly, real solutions. A healthy climate, rich soil, and clean water and air are surely foundational to any economy's wellbeing, so come learn what's necessary and hopeful.
This Zoom of Our Own conversation was part of AEOO's 2024 Full-Bodied Economics Series, focused on the productive economy we all need for our lives and livelihoods. We're sharing little known ways an economy waged as war has created a ruthless culture of "privatization" and "financialization," indifferent to social outcomes. Its mystification of money, as if money alone creates value, makes a safe climate, good health care, healthy food, and affordable housing more and more difficult for more and more people. Does it need to be this way?
How might we apply Mother Earth's balance of nature to our economic exchanges? What can we do on the ground to enable a productive economy that better empowers all earth's bodies to flourish and be healthy? Tune in to find out.
Click here to access resources for further learning.
MEET OUR SPEAKERS
Dr. Cathy Day is a geographer and qualitative researcher who studies people's environmental interactions in agroecosystems challenged by climate change. Cathy has been working with farmers to understand their climate challenges for twenty years. Most recently, she was the Climate Policy coordinator for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. While based in Washington DC, she worked with members across the country to advocate for better federal agriculture policy in USDA's Farm Bill. She currently is a sustainability consultant.
Mary Grant is the Public Water for All Campaign Director at Food & Water Watch. Mary has authored numerous reports exposing the dangers of water privatization and the need for public investment in water infrastructure. Her original research exposed the scandal of Flint water users paying the highest rates in the country during the height of the city’s poisoned water crisis, and her research has been essential to the efforts in dozens of communities across the country to stop water privatization.
Marguerite Adelman is a retired non-profit administrator in education, social services, and government. A former Communications Director for the Cook County Department of Public Health in Illinois, she became interested in per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in 2019. For the past five years, she has served as Coordinator for the Vermont PFAS/Military Poisons Coalition. Marguerite has given PFAS presentations to citizen groups, WILPF branches across the US, and WILPF International's Earth Democracy Committee. The VT Coalition includes groups working for peace and social and economic eco-justice, collaborating to provide education on "forever chemicals" and advocate for legislation to ban PFAS forever.
Carmen Rios is the Digital Director of An Economy of Our Own.
What is a Zoom of Our Own?
This event was recorded live. As some feminist epistemologists (Gilligan, Belenky et al.) have taught us, seeing and seeking connections seems to be women’s ways of knowing and reasoning. Our economics is lived in tangible and complex communities. Our goal is to model how women can talk together and learn together about traditionally male territory still new to most women.
Our Zoom of Own Series brings women (and men!) together to construct a fuller knowledge and set of values now omitted from the mainstream “free market.” Together, we're flipping the script on a racist, sexist economy.