Climate Justice and New Mexico: Community Based Approaches

Instructor/Project Lead: Silas Grant, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of American Studies, University of New Mexico. Collaborating Partners: Los Jardines Institute (LJI) and No False Solutions (NFS).

With Ortiz Center funding support for speakers's cost, the Fall 2026, AMST 400/509 (Climate Justice and New Mexico) is partnering with Los Jardines Institute (LJI) and New Mexico No False Solutions (NM NFS). Together, we are building shared analyses of the root causes of climate and environmental injustice and learning about the solutions that communities in New Mexico and beyond are already imagining and implementing. In teams, students are working alongside LJI and NM NFS to complete projects that support the organizations’ ongoing efforts.

In this mixed undergraduate-graduate class,students come from many fields and interdisciplinary backgrounds, including American Studies, Chicana andChicano Studies, Geography & Environmental Studies, Public Policy, Political Science, Sociology, and more!Students are bringing their different skills and experiences to collaborate and learn from one another.

Students working with LJI are supporting the organization’s new environmental justice archival initiative.They are doing archival research about how the work of the Black Berets in Albuquerque was documented in regional newspapers from the late 1960s onwards.

Students working with NM NFS are 1) creating a zine about the risks and harms of AI and data centerexpansion in New Mexico; and 2) creating a map of false climate solutions in the state that NM NFS canuse in popular education efforts.