Understanding and Transforming the Medical Industrial Complex Part 2: Climate Justice Edition
Spring Political Ed Series 2024
Please note that this offering has passed
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Series Overview
Join us for the Health Justice Commons' Spring Course starting March 14th, 2024!
This series focuses on the intersections of ableism, medical racism, and environmental racism and their entanglements with the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC). It explores the historic and ongoing connections of big pharma with corporate polluters and legacies of eugenics and genocide around the globe. The series also examines how settler-colonialism underpins the climate crisis and profound, ongoing violence and harm. You do not have to have taken part 1 to enroll in and benefit from part 2, we’ll provide resources to catch you up!
The Spring Pol Ed series explores how the MIC – as a primary site of racialized and gendered medical ableism and violence – has been complicit with, profited from, and has played a significant role in causing climate crisis. It will also explore the many ways these patterns have intensified during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and mounting US and global trends of fascism, costing millions of lives. This is more urgent with the ongoing genocidal siege on Palestine being paid for by US tax dollars and abetted by israeli doctors and many major US health institutions.
We’ll learn about the current conditions in Palestine and the Global South from a climate and disability justice lens and support participants to take action. We will also look at the latest research revealing climate crisis and pollution’s causative roles in the rise of multiple diseases, and learn in-depth how many institutions and industries within the MIC profit from the very diseases they cause.
Health Justice Commons’ work centers three main approaches:
An intersectional social justice lens with a deep grounding in and commitment to Disability and Climate Justice
An abolitionist mindset to healthcare and healing
A peoples’ science lens. Learn more about people’s science here.
to understand and critique the MIC historically and currently.
Image description: a dark pink graphic of a fist raised in the air with a sense of strength and power.
Series Details
WHEN: Starts Thursday March 14th and runs through April 18th (Six Consecutive Thursdays). The time is the same on each Thursday session: 5p - 7p PST | 7p - 9p CST | 8p - 10p EST.
WHERE: Online via Zoom. Attend from anywhere!
COST: $185 - $295, work exchanges and scholarships available. No one turned away for lack of funds. If you are able, please consider using the 'cover fees option' for your enrollment contribution, as FlipCause detracts credit card fees (like all online payment platforms). We are a small, disabled/crip, therefore whatever you can give supports the participation of others with less access to funds. Thank you!!!
INFO ON FACILITATORS: This course will be co-facilitated by a team of amazing co-facilitators including Movement Generation’s Angela Aguilar and Rise and Mordecai Cohen Ettinger of the Health Justice Commons.
WORK EXCHANGE/ SCHOLARSHIP: Work exchanges and partial to full scholarships are available based on participant needs. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. You can request a work exchange or scholarship on the enrollment form here!
ACCESS INFO: All sessions will provide ASL, English to Spanish interpretation, and live closed captioning. All sessions will be recorded (with participant permission) for the use of participants.
A dark pink graphic of a wheelchair user with their left fist raised in the air and a loudspeaker in their right hand.
What you’ll learn
The settler-colonialist roots of the MIC and its ongoing complicity with genocide, eugenics, intersectional oppression and racialized/ gendered medical ableism, all of which continue to be entangled with and reinforce settler-colonialist violence.
The role of medical ableism, racialized ableism, environmental racism and classism in intensifying COVID-19 pandemic denialism.
The toxicity, medical ableism, and violence of prisons and other institutions of confinement connected to the MIC.
Environmental Racism: From Gaza, Palestine to Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, to Indigenous Tribal Land, Bhopal, India, and
Flint, MI. Exploring settler-colonialist ecocide, environmental toxicology and the neurobiology of intergenerational harm.
Contested Bodies/ Contested Illnesses: What they reveal about the MIC’s complicity with corporate polluters, climate crisis and disease causation.
Contested toxins: the hidden history of big pharma and its entanglement with big agro, the global war machine, imperialism, eugenics and genocide.
Ways forward to decolonize healthcare. Tools for disrupting and transforming the MIC, and incubating alternatives that you can practice in your own life, work, and communities including the Disability Justice framework and 10 principles.
“The course met all the learning goals. You are equipped with understanding root causes of harm within the MIC. And you will find those same ugly tropes that make up the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) carceral system: racism, ableism, sexism, white supremacy. The training will "build a fire" in you to take action.”
- Lisa, former series participant.
Meet the series co-facilitators
Rise, a Black disabled femme, is pictured from the chest up in a black hoodie and a leopard print headwrap. Jelly, a black cockapoo, is sitting on their forearm in a teal hoodie. They are both looking forward into the camera.
Rise (they/them) is a queer, Black, disabled writer, poet, and artist living on Potowatomi Land (Chicago). They are a Trauma and Disability Justice facilitator. They are also a meditation facilitator and Birth / Abortion / Grief & Loss Care Worker. Rise is deeply invested in disability justice, access, centering wellness for Black queer folk, trauma education, and rest. When they are not doing the most, they are daydreaming and hanging with their support pup, Jelly Ferocious.
A photograph of Angela (she/they/we), a neurodiverse, melanated Xicana Indigena with wavy dark hair wearing a black top sitting in front of a burnt orange wall. Copper hoop earrings peek through her hair on one side, and a cute plant peeks into the frame on the other side.
Angela Aguilar (she/ they / we) is a neurodiverse mama, healing arts practitioner, writer, researcher, activist and facilitator. She is an Indigenous Xicana with lineage rooted in N’de and Dine lands of New Mexico, Arizona, and Jalisco, Mexico, and she comes to Oakland/Huichin, Ohlone Lands by way of Tongva Lands. Angela is an alum of Indigenous Permaculture’s Green Community Leader program, an ethnic studies practitioner with an M.A. in Ethnic Studies, and a community health researcher with a Masters in Public Health. Angela is honored to continue her life work by deepening into cultural strategy for ecological justice as a Movement Generation collective member.
Image Description: A sweet-faced white Jewish nonbinary trans person with short hair, sitting in a wooden chair in a luscious garden space with California poppies in the foreground. They are wearing a gray argyle sweater, gray pants and silvery sneakers, with a furry little light brown dog on their lap.
Mordecai Cohen Ettinger (they / them) has nearly 30 years experience as a multi-sector social justice activist and organizer, holistic healer, radical scholar, and educator. Mordecai co-founded the TGI Justice Project, served as an Interim Co-Director at Justice Now, and as Interim Executive Director at Caduceus Outreach Services, a radical mental health organization. They are adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Lean more about their background here.
Meet the Guest Presenters
A photo of Dr. Ghannam speaking outdoors at a Palestine solidarity rally at the Oakland Children’s Hospital on 11/20/23. He is wearing a white coat with a keffiyeh around his neck, and holding a mic in one hand. In the foreground is a white sign with the text: “healthcare workers demand: stop bombing hospitals”
Dr. Jess Ghannam is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences in the School of Medicine at UCSF. His research areas include evaluating the long-term health consequences of war on displaced communities and the psychological and psychiatric effects of armed conflict on children. Dr. Ghannam has developed community health clinics in the Middle East that focus on developing community-based treatment programs for families in crisis.
He is also a consultant with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Reprieve and other international NGO's that work with torture survivors. Locally he works to promote and enhance the health and wellness of refugee, displaced, and immigrant populations from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia and has established a community-based Mental Health Treatment Programs to support these communities.
At UCSF Dr. Ghannam develops culturally competency training programs for staff, students and faculty working with patients from the Middle East. He has served on the Chancellor's Council of Campus Climate, Culture and Inclusion and is a member of the UCP, University and Community Partnerships Committee. He works with medical students and residents across disciplines to promote and enhance their clinical and research skills. Dr. Ghannam specializes in working with chronic illness, including chronic pain and cancer. He also works and does research in the area of Global Health and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Dr. Ghannam is also a Qualified Medical Examiner (QME) for the State of California.
He is past president of the Arab Cultural and Community Center and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in San Francisco.
A photo of Lujain looking into the camera and smiling widely. They have short, brown curly hair with highlights, and are wearing gold hoop earrings and a tan jacket with a black shirt. Lujain is standing outdoors, and, behind her, everything is cast in the pale blue hue of the sun setting.
Lujain Al-Saleh is a member leader of the Arab Resource & Organizing Center/AROC, which serves poor and working class Arabs and Muslims across the San Francisco Bay Area, while organizing to overturn racism, forced migration, and militarism. Lujain is also a former Education/Organizing Associate at Frontline Catalysts, a climate justice leadership development program for youth in Oakland, where she supported the development and implementation of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and community projects in partnership with community-based organizations and academic institutions.
Prior to joining the Frontline Catalysts team, Lujain served as the East Oakland Clean Air Project Coordinator for Communities for a Better Environment to support the development of a Community Emissions Reduction Plan in East Oakland. Lujain first became involved in organizing around climate justice issues in middle school and was a part of a youth-led group called Kids Versus Global Warming that started the Sea Level Awareness Project in her hometown of Ventura, California. Lujain holds a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science & Management and minors in Middle East & South Asia Studies and Professional Writing from UC Davis. She also received her Master of Public Health from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health in 2020.
Image description: a dark pink graphic of a fist raised in the air with a sense of strength and power.
What you’ll receive
An extensive syllabus containing up to date and historical, intersectional and multi-media resources collected over 10 years to equip you with an expansive understanding of the MIC.
Video and audio recordings of each session with embedded live captions in English and ASL.
Live community discussion space for participants to process and reflect together on what they’ve learned, and to share further resources.
Curated readings on topics presented to further your understanding of the MIC.
An English transcript for each session. Spanish transcripts are available upon request.
“I have been working on Health accessibility for over 20 years and I live for days when I take classes that shake my mind as this class did.
The historical context and the different frameworks were key to wrapping my head around the topic as well as important resources that will help me pass the information to others. I appreciate HJC so much, the fact that spaces like these exist for us to find each other and center us while centering others.”
- Jacoba, former series participant.
FAQ
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This series is designed to deliver extensive information and resources on the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC) for anyone interested in developing an in-depth understanding of its history, how it functions, its entanglements with other industries, such as Big Pharma, corporate polluters, and the prison system, and paths forward for transformation and creating alternatives.
This includes, but is not limited to, all of us impacted by the MIC – disabled, sick, neurodivergent and chronically ill people – and those of us who work within the MIC, adjacent to it, or are healers and healthcare workers such as anyone that is an Activist / Organizer, Therapist, Social Worker, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Mental Health Worker/ Practitioner, Healer, Curandera/x, Energy Worker, Acupuncturist, Herbalist, Midwife, Ayurvedic Doctor, Nurse, Nurse Practitioner, Physician, Physician's Assistant, Medical Student.
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All the sessions are recorded, so attending live is not necessary!
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Work exchanges and partial to full scholarships are available based on participant needs. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. You can request a work exchange or scholarship on the enrollment form linked below!