Black Earth Podcast

Valerie Novack is an incredible policy researcher working at the intersections of disability justice, emergency management response and inclusive city design.

In today’s episode, we dive deep into disability justice and the connections with Earth care. We explore some core elements of disability justice including rest, sustainability, the ability to learn and interdependence and why they are key to helping us reimagine the environmental movement. 

Valerie also explains why our definition of community should include our more-than-human beings and how that is connected to disability justice.

This episode is not one to be missed! 

00:00 Introduction

03:12 Valerie’s relationship with nature 

06:27 How Valerie got into disability justice 

16:18 What is disability justice

23:40 How rest and sustainability enables disability justice in Earth care

30:02 How the ability to learn enables disability justice in Earth care 

31:37 How interdependence is crucial for disability justice

35:32 How and why ableism shows up in Earth care

39:50 Individual action versus systems change

46:18 Why our definition of community should include our relationships with other species 

52:15 How disability justice invites us to live values aligned with Earth care

59:55 Disability and wholeness 

01:07:00 How to support Valerie and Valerie’s work

01:09:00 How to support Black Earth Podcast

Valerie on X - https://twitter.com/MADtastically 

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