2016 Social Justice Research Paper Award Winners

2016 Graduate Winner: Tyler Short (Anthropology), “La Minga as a Model of Food Justice?”

Abstract: Progressive and radical stakeholders in local food systems call for forms of agricultural production and distribution that dialectically oppose the dominant paradigm of corporate-controlled industrial agribusiness. This essay is based on primary and secondary data collected for my Master’s thesis project. My ethnographic research engages with the question of whether La Minga Cooperative Farm is a model of food justice. First, I analyze the local food scene and argue that activists need an intersectional approach to understanding the problem of food injustice. Next, I provide historical background to the farm, which is ten and a half acres and located on the Wallace family’s 600-acre conservation easement in Prospect. Third, I analyze the La Minga model. After highlighting the etymology of minga, I discuss the central values and procedures of the nonprofit organization. My conclusion summarizes the main claim of this paper, that the farm project constitutes a small-scale example of immigrants and native citizens exercising their human right to produce healthy foods for self-determined purposes.  

2016 Graduate Honorable Mention: Steven Harris, “Green Washes of Hate: Disguising Anti-Immigration Sentiments as Heroic Environmental Concerns.”

Abstract: This paper examines the distributing trend in the environmental movement that has allowed for the entire movement to become a platform for anti-immigration politics. Disguising their xenophobic beliefs as a concern for the nation's limited space and resources, extreme conservatives have hijacked the conservation about environmental policies. Many aspiring politicians promise that their anti-immigration policies are actually beneficial to the environment.  Unfortunately, many voters have yet to catch on to the glaring logical fallacies in these promises and arguments.

For example, many of these  "environmental friendly" politicians are in support  of building a Mexican-American border wall, despite that the fact that construction of a  wall  will result int the destruction of entire eco-systems in the American south-west. In addition, the attempts to hide aggressive anti-immigration policies behind environmental practices  is actually a  perversion of the entire environmental movement. Despite their being hundreds of "pro immigrant" actions by the EPA in the past, this new wave of politicians have successfully distracted the majority from those facts via fear mongering.  In order for the environmental movement to take back their identity, they will have to take a stand against this movement and actively combat the false allegations that are being tossed around in the media. Failure to do so will result in the eradication of the environmental movement's original goals.   

2016 Graduate Honorable Mention: Jacob Burress, “The Colored Librarian: Thomas F. Blue and the Louisville Free Public Library's Colored Department, 1905-1935.”

Abstract:This thesis examines the role of Reverend Thomas F. Blue and the Colored Department at the Louisville Free Public Library played in generating social uplift for African Americans in Louisville, Kentucky in the first third of the twentieth century.  Working from the philosophical framework of intellectuals Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, Blue created the first free Colored Library Department in the nation and used that department as a nexus in Louisville’s African American community.  The Introduction outlines the central argument of the paper and sets up the intellectual debates between Washington and Du Bois.  The second section dives into these intellectual debates and the impetus for the Colored Department’s founding.  The third section examines Blue and his ideas of how the library should operate and function in society.  In the Conclusion, Blue provided an area for the fostering of racial uplift and social progress in the city through the Library’s books and reference materials, educational programs, and community spaces.”

2016 Undergraduate Winner: Jamitra Fulleord, “Black Votes Matter: Why Disenfranchisement Laws Should be Illegal.”

This paper examines the distributing trend in the environmental movement that has allowed for the entire movement to become a platform for anti-immigration politics. Disguising their xenophobic beliefs as a concern for the nation's limited space and resources, extreme conservatives have hijacked the conservation about environmental policies. Many aspiring politicians promise that their anti-immigration policies are actually beneficial to the environment.  Unfortunately, many voters have yet to catch on to the glaring logical fallacies in these promises and arguments.

For example, many of these  "environmental friendly" politicians are in support  of building a Mexican-American border wall, despite that the fact that construction of a  wall  will result int the destruction of entire eco-systems in the American south-west. In addition, the attempts to hide aggressive anti-immigration policies behind environmental practices  is actually a  perversion of the entire environmental movement. Despite their being hundreds of "pro immigrant" actions by the EPA in the past, this new wave of politicians have successfully distracted the majority from those facts via fear mongering.  In order for the environmental movement to take back their identity, they will have to take a stand against this movement and actively combat the false allegations that are being tossed around in the media. Failure to do so will result in the eradication of the environmental movement's original goals.