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Reconnecting Education and Nature
Welcome to Truth and Reckoning, a newsletter from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). We are organizers, lawyers, and revolutionaries who educate and agitate to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s relationship with the Earth.
For more than 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate power, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-governance grounded in ecological balance.
Radical Visions: Reconnecting Academia and Nature, held in March, was CELDF’s second truth, reckoning, and right-relationship convergence (TRRR).
The two-day gathering was aimed at advancing community resistance and resilience by digging into the deeper systems that shape how we learn, how we teach, how we act, and who our education ultimately serves.
An intentionally intergenerational, transdisciplinary and immersive experience., students and faculty from several educational institutions in the greater Cleveland area gave powerful testimony on how the current system is set up to prepare them for corporate labor needs rather than for critical thinking, creativity or civic power.
Through testimony, art and roundtable conversations on topics about connections to local food systems and technology and AI and the harms to not just the environment, but to the physical and mental harms to the students of the future it became clear that no one on the university campuses were talking about these issues, let alone connecting them to the larger system.
What Radical Visions revealed is that the current environment, culture, and business of academia has led to profound student alienation, disengagement and anxiety. The framework of educational nurturing no longer supports deeply intertwined connections with nature, place and humanity, but has been supplanted with “information management”, replaceable “skills” and superficial “credentials”.
This convergence was not just an academic or climate event, but it was a reckoning with the structures that disconnect us from each other, from our histories and from the natural world.
Radical Visions was a direct offshoot from the first CELDF truth, reckoning, and right-relationship with the Great Lakes held in 2023/2024. CELDF’s consulting director began meeting with a few students in July of 2025 to conceive of, plan for, and create this convergence.
And to help expose many others to the TRRR framework, CELDF is working on a TRRR Guidebook as a resource for communities to use as a model for community building, in spite of the single issues and labels that have divided us for too long. What both these gatherings highlighted was that intentional divisions through politics, cultural labels and even educational institutions, were keeping people in place-based communities fragmented when in reality there are a lot of common frustrations and shared values.
The TRRR model is a way to help people figure out ways to connect and re-establish community to work together on creating resilient, healthy communities into the future.
So much of what CELDF does is about relationships. Through those relationships, connections are made and actions ensue. Besides funding needed to develop the TRRR Guidebook into a powerful tool, CELDF also needs your dollars to keep reaching out, making new connections, and nurturing relationships.
The video of this event can also be found on YouTube:
About the Truth and Reckoning Podcast
In this show, we learn from front-line organizers and communities fighting against environmental destruction. We explore different perspectives and innovative strategies for movement building, the potency and potential of rights of nature, and effective action in defense of our communities. And, we share inspiring stories of people working towards right relationship with the land and each other. The show is hosted by CELDF Community Resistance and Resilience Program Co-Director Max Wilbert.
You can find the show on:
* Apple Podcasts
* Spotify
* Pocketcasts
* YouTube (video and audio)
* And anywhere else you get your podcasts (click here to find this podcast via your preferred app)
About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
CELDF is a nationwide community of organizers, lawyers, and partners who educate, agitate, and organize to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s reciprocal relationship with the Earth. For over 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate exploitation, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-govern through systems grounded in ecological balance and collective power.
Curious to know more?
* Contact CELDF at https://celdf.org/contact/
* Visit CELDF at https://celdf.org/
* Support CELDF at https://celdf.org/donate/
* Join the CELDF email list at https://secure.everyaction.com/TdVG-tdqbEW229YMqwOaYQ2
Get full access to Truth and Reckoning at celdf.substack.com/subscribe
View all episodes
By CELDFWelcome to Truth and Reckoning, a newsletter from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). We are organizers, lawyers, and revolutionaries who educate and agitate to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s relationship with the Earth.
For more than 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate power, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-governance grounded in ecological balance.
Radical Visions: Reconnecting Academia and Nature, held in March, was CELDF’s second truth, reckoning, and right-relationship convergence (TRRR).
The two-day gathering was aimed at advancing community resistance and resilience by digging into the deeper systems that shape how we learn, how we teach, how we act, and who our education ultimately serves.
An intentionally intergenerational, transdisciplinary and immersive experience., students and faculty from several educational institutions in the greater Cleveland area gave powerful testimony on how the current system is set up to prepare them for corporate labor needs rather than for critical thinking, creativity or civic power.
Through testimony, art and roundtable conversations on topics about connections to local food systems and technology and AI and the harms to not just the environment, but to the physical and mental harms to the students of the future it became clear that no one on the university campuses were talking about these issues, let alone connecting them to the larger system.
What Radical Visions revealed is that the current environment, culture, and business of academia has led to profound student alienation, disengagement and anxiety. The framework of educational nurturing no longer supports deeply intertwined connections with nature, place and humanity, but has been supplanted with “information management”, replaceable “skills” and superficial “credentials”.
This convergence was not just an academic or climate event, but it was a reckoning with the structures that disconnect us from each other, from our histories and from the natural world.
Radical Visions was a direct offshoot from the first CELDF truth, reckoning, and right-relationship with the Great Lakes held in 2023/2024. CELDF’s consulting director began meeting with a few students in July of 2025 to conceive of, plan for, and create this convergence.
And to help expose many others to the TRRR framework, CELDF is working on a TRRR Guidebook as a resource for communities to use as a model for community building, in spite of the single issues and labels that have divided us for too long. What both these gatherings highlighted was that intentional divisions through politics, cultural labels and even educational institutions, were keeping people in place-based communities fragmented when in reality there are a lot of common frustrations and shared values.
The TRRR model is a way to help people figure out ways to connect and re-establish community to work together on creating resilient, healthy communities into the future.
So much of what CELDF does is about relationships. Through those relationships, connections are made and actions ensue. Besides funding needed to develop the TRRR Guidebook into a powerful tool, CELDF also needs your dollars to keep reaching out, making new connections, and nurturing relationships.
The video of this event can also be found on YouTube:
About the Truth and Reckoning Podcast
In this show, we learn from front-line organizers and communities fighting against environmental destruction. We explore different perspectives and innovative strategies for movement building, the potency and potential of rights of nature, and effective action in defense of our communities. And, we share inspiring stories of people working towards right relationship with the land and each other. The show is hosted by CELDF Community Resistance and Resilience Program Co-Director Max Wilbert.
You can find the show on:
* Apple Podcasts
* Spotify
* Pocketcasts
* YouTube (video and audio)
* And anywhere else you get your podcasts (click here to find this podcast via your preferred app)
About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
CELDF is a nationwide community of organizers, lawyers, and partners who educate, agitate, and organize to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s reciprocal relationship with the Earth. For over 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate exploitation, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-govern through systems grounded in ecological balance and collective power.
Curious to know more?
* Contact CELDF at https://celdf.org/contact/
* Visit CELDF at https://celdf.org/
* Support CELDF at https://celdf.org/donate/
* Join the CELDF email list at https://secure.everyaction.com/TdVG-tdqbEW229YMqwOaYQ2
Get full access to Truth and Reckoning at celdf.substack.com/subscribe