On April 14, the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law hosted Abre’ L. Conner, Director of the Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at the NAACP for a public lecture on “Building Authentic Pathways for Environmental Justice Advocacy.”
A native of Lakeland, FL, Conner served as the directing attorney of health at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley where she led the litigation, direct legal services work and advocacy regarding health equity and the social determinants of health that impact historically excluded communities across the Silicon Valley. She previously worked as a staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and the Center on Race, Poverty,and the Environment in Delano, CA. In addition to her work with the NAACP she is also on the faculty in the Environmental Policy and Management Program at the University of California-Davis.
In her talk, Conner outlined the fundamentals of environmental and climate justice and the efforts to address the environmental harms disproportionately visited upon excluded and under-represented communities. Her talk weaved her personal experiences as an environmental justice advocate, working on issues ranging from the Jackson, Mississippi water crisis to the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment to urban wildfires in California, with a history of the movement and an examination of the key environmental issues, including climate change, that drive environmental justice work today. Among the projects she discussed was the development of a disaster resiliency hub that identifies and provides resources for those at risk from natural disasters. She explained the importance of ensuring resources are available to frontline communities and that trust networks are developed to provide credible information.