Each semester, Episcopal Divinity School at Union selects a theme and book to guide a semester-long discussion on justice issues critical for faith communities to address. This spring 2021, EDS at Union is joining with the Center for Earth Ethics and the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice to focus on the structural challenges facing communities living in poverty and to explore how economic, environmental, and racial issues exacerbate inequality in the United States.
To frame this discussion, we have selected Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret by Catherine Coleman Flowers.
We will host Ms. Flowers for a virtual gathering with the EDS at Union community on the evening of April 7, 2021. We will share more information and a registration link for this public address and audience Q&A in the coming months.
Save the Date: Wednesday, April 7th, at 6:00 pm EST
Purchase Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret
Read Catherine Flowers’ recent essay for the New York Times summarizing the focus of the book.
Past community-wide readings have included Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson, The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy by Anna Clark, No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America by Darnell Moore, Enrique’s Journey by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sonia Nazario, and Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.
Please join us in reading Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret and share your reflections with us this semester.
About Catherine Coleman Flowers
Catherine Coleman Flowers is the founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, Senior Fellow of Environmental Justice & Civic Engagement at Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, and since 2008 has been the rural development manager at the Race and Poverty Initiative of the Equal Justice Initiative. She is the author of Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret, winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Prize for a first book in the public interest (from The New Press). In 2020, Flowers was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She lives in Montgomery, Alabama.