Centering the voices of leading Chicagoland environmental justice advocates, the Evanston Environmental Justice Conversation (EEJC) Series provides a biannual, accessible community forum fostering rich conversations between community members, environmental justice advocates, and civic, religious, and academic leaders from the Evanston community and beyond. The Series focuses on local and national issues shaping the contemporary struggle for environmental justice. It is made possible through a partnership with the Stead Center for Ethics and Values at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and the Evanston/North Shore branch of the NAACP.
On October 4, 2025, we co-hosted the third annual EEJC. The event featured keynotes from Nia Willams, co-Founder the Evanston West End Garden and Evanston Fight for Black Life (BLM) and Minister Candace Simpson, the Faith Mattering Dialogue on Science, Religion, and Ethics, Research Fellow. They were joined by moderator, Rev. Dr. Michael C. R. Nabors, President of Evanston/North Shore NAACP and panelists Rev. Deborah Y. Scott, Pastor of Ebenezer AME Church-Evanston and Baxter Swilley, Community Impact Director at Evanston Cradle to Career.
We also had the opportunity to highlight the Air Quality monitoring Library of Things at the Evanston Public Library [1], a program we collaborated on to promote citizen science. The AQ Library of Things was made possible by a community justice grant from the Unitarian Church of Evanston.
We provided participants with hard copies of our newly released “Faith Mattering: Community-based Initatives to Measure Environmental Racism” which was developed with the support of a Climate Science in Theological Education grant from the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to Dr. Kate Ott, Professor of Christian Ethics and Rev. Dr. Andrew Wymer, Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Click here to download a pdf copy of the guidebook [2].