Name: Harvey F. Mollison

Social Justice Group: Global Warming (A)

Date of Fieldwork: January 24, 2025

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Museum of the City of New York

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:

We visited the museum of New York City and learned about various activists who fought for different causes and rights. When I looked at the way others had persevered through hard times, I made a strong connection with the current climate change crisis. I thought about how despite the fact so many people had struggled with their activism, they were able to push through and ensure that their cause was fought for.

When you put this into the context of climate change it has a different type of feeling simply because disability rights affect an enormous amount of people but they don’t quite encompass the entire world as climate change does. However, that does not eliminate the comparison, you can still think of climate change in a similar way that you would women’s rights because they both are instances of people fighting for something that they believe in. This is not to dismiss the weight and importance of these issues but simply to put this into perspective. If you combine every civil rights movement ever, they still affect less people than climate change.

Something about women’s rights particularly struck me because the way that so many people can come together as one to fight for a cause is truly incredible. Despite the comments I have made above, women do truly encompass a lot of the world and are an irreplaceable part of the human race. To be able to all agree on a set of ideals is really impressive. This serves to me as an example of although we can’t all have the same ideals when it comes to climate change, there is surely some middle ground we can reach when it comes to this issue.