Studying Demographics

The second unit of Climates of Resistance explores Disparate Distribution. The purpose of this unit is to compare similarities and differences between the environmental inequities experienced by various marginalised people in the US and around the world, especially Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Pasifika, and diasporic Asian communities. The unit begins with an examination of demographics: the statistical study of human communities. Though the phrase “numbers don’t lie” suggests that quantitative measures are objective, the people and systems doing the measuring aren’t. This session considers how racism influences the collection and use of demographic data.

Shereen Marisol Meraji is the co-host and Senior Producer of NPR’s Code Switch. Meraji’s first job in college involved radio journalism, and she hasn’t been able to shake her passion for story telling since. The best career advice she ever received was from veteran radio journalist Alex Chadwick, who said, “When you see a herd of reporters chasing the same story, run in the opposite direction”. She’s invested in multiple pairs of running shoes and is wearing them out reporting for Code Switch. A graduate of San Francisco State with a BA in Raza Studies, Meraji is a native Californian with family roots in Puerto Rico and Iran. (Photograph by Nolwen Cifuentes for NPR.)

Kat Chow is a journalist and writer who has reported on what defines Native American identity, gentrification in New York City’s Chinatown, and the aftermath of a violent hate crime. Her cultural criticism has led her on explorations of racial representation in TV, film, and theatre; the post-election crisis that diversity trainers face; race and beauty standards; and gaslighting. Chow’s work has garnered her a national award from the Asian American Journalists Association, and she’s received a residency fellowship from the Millay Colony as well as the Yi Dae Up fellowship at the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat.

Dr Elizabeth Rule is the Director of the AT&T Center for Indigenous Politics and Policy, DC’s only university-based research center dedicated to American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian issues. She is also an Assistant Professor of Professional Studies, Director of the Native American Political Leadership Program and the INSPIRE PreCollege Program, and Faculty in Residence at George Washington University. Her forthcoming monograph, Reproducing Resistance: Gendered Violence and Indigenous Nationhood, links Native women’s reproductive justice issues and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis. Rule is an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation.

Savannah Maher covers Indigenous affairs for KUNM News and the Mountain West News Bureau. Previously, she worked on NPR’s midday show Here & Now, where her work explored everything from Native peoples’ fraught relationship with American elections to the erosion of press freedoms for tribal media outlets. A proud citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, Savannah got her start in journalism reporting for her hometown’s local newspaper (The Mashpee Enterprise) and public radio station (WCAI). She has and has since contributed to New Hampshire Public Radio, High Country News, and NPR’s Code Switch blog. Maher graduated from Dartmouth College in 2018.

Allegiance is Jay Kuo’s fourth full length musical. Allegiance held its World Premiere at San Diego’s Old Globe Theater, where it played to sold out audiences and broke that theatre’s 77-year ticket sales record. In addition to composing, Jay has produced several shows on Broadway. In addition to his degree from Stanford, Jay is also a graduate of the U.C. Berkeley’s School of Law and is an appellate litigator admitted to practice before the Ninth Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court. He is currently is Chief Creative Officer at The Social Edge, a digital publishing and social media company that generates one of the largest sources of traffic on the Internet.

Vann R Newkirk II is a journalist, editor, and data-centred policy analyst. He is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and health. He has covered the battles for voting rights since the 2013 Shelby County Supreme Court decision, the fate of communities on the front lines of climate change and disasters, and the Black vote in the 2018 and 2020 elections. He hosts the Floodlines podcast, a narrative series about Hurricane Katrina. His forthcoming book, Children of the Flood, chronicles Black America’s fight against climate crises.