With COVID-19 rapidly spreading across the globe and cities and nations “locking down” in part or in whole, we can anticipate growing pressures on human support systems — food, jobs, and basic services may become more scarce, leading to increases in unemployment, anxiety, crime, and general vulnerability and precarity.
Educational institutions are doing their best to maintain “business as usual” while shifting to online teaching and learning practices, but adding new (digital) skills to plates already full of concerns — kids at home, paychecks not arriving, food running out, loved ones getting ill — will likely not solve the long-run implications of this pandemic.
Many of us had been panning to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day with events celebrating the last 50 years of environmental activism and looking forward to the next 50. At this point, public gatherings have largely been cancelled, and on-campus teach-ins are out of the question.
EcoCultureLab is proposing that universities, learning institutions, and activist organizations band together to create a week-long online public event — an EarthDay+50 Pandemonium Teach-In. If you or your institution is interested in participating, please write us at ecoculturelab.net. And please watch this space for further information.