Land
This common tall plant provides shade, absorbs carbon dioxide, improves air quality, captures and filters water, provides shelter for animals, deflects sun rays, and improves urban quality of life.
What is a tree?
The water we use to drink, cook, wash dishes, bathe, and play.
What is safe drinking water?
Energy from a source that is not depleted when used.
What is renewable energy?
The removal of barriers to success.
What is liberation?
This branch of government enforces the laws of the nation.
What is the executive branch?
A shared space where a group of people grow and maintain plants, producing food for the neighborhood. One example is Down Bottom Farms in Newark.
What is a community garden?
The continual process of water as it evaporates from land and oceans, enters the atmosphere, condenses and precipitates, and moves underground.
What is the water cycle?
A type of energy that comes from the sun, which is transformed into heat or electricity.
What is solar energy?
A video we watched together, in which a high school student discovers plans for a toxic waste site in her neighborhood and joins a community organization to prevent siting.
What is Mayah's Lot?
This level of government is the most powerful in the nation.
What is the federal government?
The rights of Indigenous peoples to control their land and natural resources.
What is land sovereignty?
Even minimal amounts of this toxic metal in drinking water poses a health risk.
What is lead?
A form of energy that comes from burning coal, oil, or gas. This form of energy is largely responsible for human greenhouse gas emissions.
What is fossil fuel energy?
A waste facility that releases methane, a toxic gas that impacts air quality.
What is a landfill?
This person is the head of city/township government.
What is a mayor?
Bonus points if you can name the mayor of your town.
The right for people to control their food systems at all stages, including food production and waste management.
What is food sovereignty?
A body of water polluted by a Newark manufacturing facility (now superfund site) that produced Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
What is the Passaic River?
Also accepted: the Newark Bay
This type of energy comes from heat within the earth. Hot water and steam, heated by Earth's core, are used as a form of renewable energy.
What is geothermal energy?
A community that meets one or more of the following requirements:
- At least 35% of the households qualify as low-income
- At least 40% of the residents identify as a minority or from a Tribal group
- At least 40% of the households are not proficient in English
What is an overburdened community?
This piece of legislation is a proposal to create a new law or change an existing law. It is introduced to both chambers of Congress, and once approved, it goes to the President to approve or deny.
What is a bill?
The movement of people based on changing climates. Current examples include people from Florida, the Gulf Coast, Bangladesh, and Somalia.
What is climate migration?
The right of all people to have access to clean water, and collectively control local water sources.
What is water justice?
A shift from the fossil fuel economy to community-governed renewable energy sources.
What is an energy democracy?
Name 3 overburdened communities in NJ.
Newark, Camden, Trenton, Atlantic City, Edison, Paterson, Asbury Park, Cape May, New Brunswick, Irvington, Jersey City, Linden, Woodbridge, Long Branch, Cherry Hill, Egg Harbor, Elizabeth, etc.
NJ state law passed in 2020 that requires the Department of Environmental Protection to evaluate the environmental and public health impacts on overburdened communities when reviewing permit applications for certain facilities.
What is the New Jersey Environmental Justice Law?